From the recent events in Portland, Seattle, Michigan and elsewhere, you may likely have noticed that America is pretty angry right now. Aside from being physically threatened with a pandemic that’s left over 300,000 of us dead, millions unemployed and uncertain for our future, unsupported by our government and made the laughing stock of the international community, we constituents ask ourselves who we can turn to for help and leadership out of this tragic morass. For a good many among us, the only viable answer is the Democratic Party. However serious questions arise about that for many potential voters, and NOT because of Russian interference and propaganda, NOT screeds from Fox news luminaries and NOT from social media invectives. None of that… nope, it’s because of something called “optics”.
You see, there’s this well-documented history that, while many have tried to put a spin on it, nevertheless contains baked-in examples of why there’s that opinion among independent voters and many educated youth that Democratic politicians wouldn’t be much more effective at reversing the massive damage done to the country by Trump, the republican party and the general conservative agenda. And it isn’t as though that history is brief and a product of recent events: the overall effect of 40 years worth of florid speechmaking, fist pounding and media sound bites then consequent missteps, mistakes, verbal flubs, policy capitulation, salacious behavior and flat-out abandonment of principles in favor of legislative expediency calls the integrity of the overall party into serious question for many while providing massive amounts of ammunition for conservative’s well-funded smear tactics. While it isn’t true in the strictest sense of the word, those who continually promote “both-siderism” have a cosmetically reasoned argument.
The examples as they see them are manifest: Legislatively, support for the perpetual continuing resolutions to fund illegal wars, the crippling of bankruptcy laws that favor corporate interests, failure to enforce requirements for court orders for wiretapping, knee-jerk support for the Patriot Act, welfare and food stamp program funding reductions, failing to eliminate the cap on Social Security contributions in order to protect the retirement fund, failing to overhaul the Veterans Administration health care system - refusal to prosecute Wall Street bankers responsible for the 2008 financial collapse - in fact it goes back even further to the Tip O’Neil days under Reagan, when tax cuts on corporations coupled with accelerated defense spending nearly bankrupted the nation, and then later the largest tax increase on the Middle Class in history was ramrodded through Congress in order to compensate for it. The “both-siderism” people then ask: “During all that time, where were the principles that the Democratic Party were supposed to uphold? Weren’t they worth fighting for?” To them, it’s as though at some point after Nixon was deposed back in 1975, a decision was made by the party elite to abandon just about every basic moral tenet of the Franklin Roosevelt era in favor of what can only be called “Dixiecrat” expediency, attempting to counter the GOP’s “Southern Strategy” agenda by trying to appeal to racist Luddites, tribalistic evangelical fundies and jug band rabble. The DNC apparently had decided that those people constituted the large majority of America, and adjusted their legislative support and campaign optics accordingly, while suffering from the same old crippling infighting driven by identity politics and ineffective counter-attacks directed at the likes of Norquist, Gingrich, Limbaugh and Cheney.
So now here we are in the second decade of the 21st Century - broke, broken, sick and fearful. Racial bigotry is back almost as strong as it was in 1859. Our economy is teetering on the brink for everyone except the 5% of us who hold 90% of the wealth. The planet and the oceans are polluted, overheating and slowly endangering life on this planet - all of it manmade. Yes, the situation is dire… it calls for bold action, policy reversals, courage of convictions, a strong moral compass and fortitude to stand up to the inevitable detractors to get things done. And what will happen should the Democratic Party prevail in November, retaking the Senate, holding onto the House and providing “regime change” in the White House?
Remember… we were at this point in history before. Barack Obama became President in 2009- not because he was a vanity decision based on racial harmony and good will, but because America was sick and tired of war, lies, disappearing Middle Class opportunities and because 10 years of the Commodity Future Modernization Act of 2000 had eliminated the regulations on corporate, banking, insurance company investments and speculation that resulted in nearly destroying the economy. The people even gave him a Democratic Congress as a present to help him implement that “Hope and Change” mantra that he beat like a drum throughout his campaign. So what happened? Without going into histrionic details, the only actual enduring major accomplishment of his 8 years in office (other than hunting down and eliminating Osama Bin laden) was the Affordable Health Care Act. And that turned out to be a brutally complex, poorly implemented, cobbled-together law that was tweaked by some of the most illustrious luminaries in the party to satiate conservative demand that the insurance industry wouldn’t suffer because of it- they even gave the insurance industry 4 years after the law was signed to adjust their corporate management strategy before it went into effect. In fact had it not been for Nancy Pelosi, that law in any form would have never made it through a committee, let alone hit the President’s desk for signature - her likely reasoning was “…better something than nothing at all - this President needs some kind of legacy because the republicans won’t let him have anything else.” What should have been Medicare For All ended up as warmed-over taxpayer-funded corporate insurance industry “get out of jail free” card that was designed to cover “most” while giving conservatives an excuse to scream bloody murder for years to come. And, during the following 6 years, Obama not only lost his Democratic majority in both legislative houses because of DNC ineptitude, naiive attempts at compromise and neocon delay, they were replaced with the most intransigent, wrong-headed, fascistic cabal of intellectually and morally bankrupt thugs that ever set foot in Capital chambers, which led up to their lionizing the likes of Donald Trump as a paen to Grover Norquist’s old plan for the destruction of our government by “…drowning it in the bathtub”, as he so indelicately characterized it.
There is reason to hope for the change that Obama had based his campaigned on 12 years ago: progressive candidates and supporters have made significant inroads in driving policy changes within the party and many policy issues that were once considered too “radical” by DNC leadership are now mainstream and widely accepted as best practices; a few progressive luminaries have been recognized for their aggressive stances in speaking to the truth (predictably earning vicious vituperative slander and invectives from republican politicians and media); and Trump himself has done more to alienate people from conservative misanthropy than practically anything that the most well-funded Democratic superpac could accomplish. We even have assistance (however expensive the political payback may be in the future) from some members of the republican cabal and the Lincoln Project.
HOWEVER:
The other side of the coin is that modern Americans have a peculiar mental disease that’s best described as “amnesia”. On election day they can’t seem to remember who continues to have a consistent record of destroying the country’s economy, starting illegal wars, bankrupting and abandoning the Middle Class and ruining the country’s international reputation — and then who eventually gets to follow up having to trail after them like a street janitor following an elephant parade with a coal shovel. Consistently it has fallen on the Democrats who received the baton of leadership and power passed to them after an election to actually use it effectively, fearlessly and forcefully with integrity in the service of ALL Americans; and yet over the past 40 years that necessity has been diluted by appeasers, an over-emphasis on “compromise” and failure to retain the courage of one’s convictions. Given the current state of this country right now at this moment in its history, it would be in the best interest of everyone on this planet if modern medical science could clone Franklin Roosevelt’s DNA and implant it in today’s Democratic Party - the ENTIRE party… not just those who call themselves progressives. Because history has undeniably, invariably and consistently shown that starting in 2021 after a Democratic Party election landslide, anything less will result in another neocon government in 2025, and at that point the United States of America will have been successfully terminated.