Like many of you, I suspect, I have recently been bombarded with a large number of fundraising emails, usually accompanied by various types of polls, from TrainDemocrats.org.
Now the mission of the Democratic National Training Committee is a good one, at least on its surface. Training people to run for office is an important aspect of our struggle. We do need way more progressives in office, at all levels of local, state and federal government. And yet many things in these fundraising emails cause me grave concern. One of the greatest seems to be the rather wide open definition of the word “progressive” as used in these emails and their accompanying polls. To me, the definition of progressive can be rather easily, but specifically, defined:
1) Understands that our current form of neoliberal economic policy, as practiced by the Right, Center-Right (Clinton) and the Center (Obama) for the last 40 years, has been economically devastating to the working and middle classes of America;
2) Understands that modern Corporatism, as practiced internationally since World War II, is the number 1 root cause of our current dire global environmental straits, and the number 1 barrier to us reaching Sustainability in time;
3) Supports and actively fights for the preservation and expansion of Human Rights (including healthcare and the opportunity for education) in all forms, in all places, and for all groups;
4) Recognizes the need for a massive and ongoing human mobilization effort, in large part due to the Democratic Party’s past collusion in Neo-liberal economic plutocracy, to have any real hope of bringing timely and meaningful change to this decidedly rigged system of political economy.
I would suspect that at least half of the readership of the Daily Kos would generally agree with this basic definition of progressive, although perhaps with some qualification.
Let me take a brief aside here to address Kos and most of the rest of the DK staff. This diary, the criticisms it makes, and the actions for which it advocates, is not an attempt to undermine the Democratic Party. Rather it is an attempt to internally help the Democratic Party recover its lost soul, and avoid the catastrophic danger of its failure to do so, the loss of much of the Millennial and Z generations.
It is absolutely true that I am unable to call myself a Democrat at this point, even though I have voted almost exclusively for Democrats since the mid-1980s. There is one glaring exception to that voting record. In the 2016 general election, I voted for Jill Stien. It made no electoral difference in my very Red state, but it other states it might very well have. Still, I would love to be able to call myself a Democrat.
Other Democratic-leaning independents voted for Trump in 2016. Let us hope they have learned from that. An even larger number of them simply stayed home. Others left-leaning Independents like me, Beau of the Fifth Column, for example, argue quite convincingly that that decision was ethical under the circumstances of the 2016 election.
Again, I am not advocating the abandonment of the Democratic Party for I understand well that this site is here to promote the Democratic Party and its goals. I am, however, pointing out the indisputable reality that the Democrats cannot win in 2020 without Democratic-leaning independents who largely hate American Corporatism and what it has done to this nation.
We might as well have this little internal dispute out right now, 9 months before the first primary ballots are counted. Let us hope for the sake of the progressive movement, both Democratic and Independent, that we can successfully resolve it.
Now, back to the Democratic National Training Committee and the fundraising emails from TrainDemocrats.org.
The first email I received from TrainDemocrats.org stated the Joe Biden (aka Credit Card Joe) was soaring in the polls and asked if I was: 1) very likely to support him, 2) likely, 3) not sure, 4) unlikely, or 5) I won’t. I answered 5) “I won’t”, of course. I was immediately directed to a follow-up survey that asked who my first and second choices for President were, I answered 1st Bernie Sanders and 2nd Tulsi Gabbard. Then the survey asked about the qualities in a Democratic candidate that are important to me and the issues I am concerned about and I checked all of the options presented in both cases including the category of “other”. Incidentally the “other” for me in both cases revolved around the need to deliver our nation from corrupt and highly maladaptive influence of corporatism. This is my number one issue because it is the root cause of human-driven Climate Change. But no opportunity to explain what “other’ meant was offered in the poll.
Next, the poll asked how important it is to me personally that the Democrats win in 2020. I answered, “unsure”, because, up and down the ballot, that question, for me personally, will be determined by whether the Democrat in question is a pro-corporate establishment neo-liberal, or a progressive willing to confront neo-liberal corporate plutocrachy/oligarchy, whether Republican or "Democrat" backed.
The poll then asked if I was ready to do everything I possibly can to support Democrats and make sure they win in 2020. The only option given was “yes”. I didn’t answer. Even a “no” option would not have helped. Again, my answer would depend on the nature of the particular Democrat in question.
There then followed the usual begging for money for the PAC/SuperPAC National Democratic Training Committee. I didn't donate. I will get to why in the conclusions of this diary.
Now the deception in this email was of course at the very top of it. Joe Biden surges in the polls. It didn't say that Joe Biden surges in tilted, misleading or fraudulent polls. It presented that assertion as an unassailable fact, even though both CNN and MSNBC had been recently caught deliberately distorting polls in favor of Credit Card Joe, days before I received the emails. Can we credibly believe that the National Democratic Training Committee was unaware of that fact?
Interestingly enough, the next email I received from TrainDemocrats.Org both defended and promoted CNN and MSNBC. The poll that accompanied it read as follows and asked the following question:
Folks, Trump is trying to DESTROY the news we rely on. |
His constant attacks on MSNBC & CNN and their hardworking journalists are authoritarian and terrifying. |
It’s clear that Trump believes the entire country should watch FOX NEWS like him. |
But we know better. Hard-working and credible journalists like Rachel Maddow & Don Lemon are exposing Trump’s lies every day. |
And although MSNBC and CNN are both great, we’re asking our smartest supporters which network they prefer: |
Do you prefer MSNBC or CNN? |
I had to laugh at the “our smartest supporters” bit. The poll did give a third option, “I watch both”, but failed to offer the obvious forth, "I rarely watch either because both are just the mouthpieces of the corporate neo-liberal establishment."
I received two other emails from TrainDemocrats.org today. Both were of the fear mongering variety. One, quite truthfully, said that the President and the Republicans in the Senate were ready to cut $64 billon out of Social Security. It went on to imply that there was an imminent danger of 55 million people not receiving their hard-earned benefits if “we did not act NOW’, in spite of the significant fact that the House of Representatives is controlled by the Democrats until 2020. Then came the appeal for money….this time allegedly for a Social Security defense fund, but as a PAC/SuperPAC I know of no legal requirement that it actually be used for that purpose, as opposed to say supporting approved Democratic establishment candidates against insurgent progressives.
The last email was even more comically pathetic. It played the Trump card, saying that we were “doomed” if we had 4 more years of Donald Trump. It asked me to take a pledge that I would vote Trump out in 2020…...meaning, of course, “Blue No Matter Who”. I had no interest in making such a ridiculous pledge so I just laughed and exited the email.
Now all of this looks to me like a Democratic Establishment scam. The DNC is in fundraising trouble. The DCCC and DSCC are in similar trouble. Why? Because of what they fucking did in 2016 to Bernie Sanders and the whole anti-corporate wing of the Party. So what is this new batch of emails in my mailbox all about? This is the unoffical DNC trying to desperately take up the slack and hope they can fool progressives into refilling their coffers.
My answer to them follows the general train of thought of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her request that her supporters stop donating to the DCCC because that organization is trying to stack the deck against progressives by their new rules concerning political consultants aimed at protecting incumbant establishment blue dog Dems. no matter how worthless. I would ask every progressive not to donate to TrainDemocrats.org or any other arm of Democratic establishment, until such time as the civil war between the corporate establishment and progressives within the Democratic Party has been resolved. Until that time donate to progressive candidates directly, or to real progressive “down-ticket” organizations like Our Revolution.
Now for those “centrists”, “moderates” and unashamed corporate dems, I cannot answer for you. Follow your hearts in donating to the Democratic Corporate Establishment if you believe that the corporations are not the root cause of climate change, and the number one barrier to addressing it. Donate if you believe that neo-liberal economic policies are “good enough” for American working families. Donate if you believe in unlimited war for the sake of regime change, the stealing of oil and other resources from other nations, and for the profits of the military-industrial complex. Donate to the broken system if you believe that corporate bribes to politicians to ignore the will of their constiutants are a good thing that keep the masses in their place. Or donate to the Democratic Establishment if you know that you have more in common with the Republicans, namely the support for corporatist oligarchy, than with the hated progressives who would go with the wishes of the American People on issues like Medicare for All, Tuition Free College, The Green New Deal, and a Federal infrastructure and jobs program.
At least that way it will be easier to reconcile things when you blow it again and find yourself looking at the incredible harm that Donald Trump will inflict upon America until 2024 because of your centrist false narrative. We toss your fear grenades right back fucking at you.
Why? Because in 2016 you had your chance to prove how “centrism” and “moderation” was the way to go, and it failed miserably. America didn’t want your third way bullshit. Now give us the chance to see if actually acting for the good of the working and middle classes of America can work. And yes, let us positively soak the rich, and most especially the corporatations, because they have been asking for it for about 4 decades now. The pedullum, if it is not artifically stopped in the center, finally begins to swing back to the Left to restore much needed balance. Yes it will suck to be them, and rightfully so. But not nearly as badly as it has economically sucked to be us since about 1980 or so.
It is not about vengence, but it is about justice.
The Democratic establishment is seeking to rig our Primary electoral process yet again, somehow expecting different results from what happened in 2016. It is the textbook example of political insanity, and it might well make the Democratic Party largely irrelevant for a generation when it fails and allienates millions of younger adult and future voters.
The stakes are huge here centrists, far greater than just Donald Trump.
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