rootsaction
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rootsaction.org autopsy dems last fall, superdelgate CA</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://rootsaction.org/">https://rootsaction.org/</a>
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><div><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-august-21-2018/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-august-21-2018/</font></a></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div class="article-content" style="margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0.4em 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">As Donald Trump enters his tenth month in office, public opinion polls find he is the most unpopular president at this stage in his term than any other occupant of the Oval Office in modern American history. His actions at home and abroad have alarmed Democrats, Republicans and independents. Apart from recent indictments by the independent counsel investigating charges of collusion between the Trump’s campaign and Russia, the president is seen to have triggered an number of ugly spats with Gold Star family members, NFL players, and the mayor of San Juan, Puerto, exacerbated tensions with North Korea and praised white supremacists as “very fine people.”
But as many U.S. voters remember the shock and dread they felt on election day 2016, when Donald Trump unexpectedly won the presidency, there are growing concerns that the Democratic party has failed to learn the lessons of last year’s election defeat.<b style="background-color: transparent;"> The Democratic National Committee chose not to do a public “autopsy,” examining the reasons their party no longer has control of any branch of the federal government, only holds 16 of 50 governorships, and has lost 1,000 state legislative seats since 2009.</b>
<b style="background-color: transparent;">Filing this void, a group of activists with the nonprofit Action for a Progressive Future, wrote a 34-page report titled, “Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis”</b> The report focuses on some key factors that have contributed to the Democrats' recent string of defeats, including low voter turnout among the party’s base. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Pia Gallegos, a longtime civil-rights lawyer and New Mexico activist, who was one of the team of four authors of the Autopsy. Here, she <b style="background-color: transparent;">summarizes the report’s conclusions</b> and recommendations.
<span class="bold" style="background: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">PIA GALLEGOS:</span> The Democratic party itself did not do a self-analysis or a critique regarding its failures of how and why it lost the presidential election in 2016. Oftentimes, a party does that when it loses a major election. It didn't do that, and if it did, it didn't publicize it. And so, a group of us took it upon ourselves under the leadership of Norman Solomon to do this report. And so, we looked various factors that failed within the Democratic party.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> We looked at<b> corporate power </b>and the party and we looked at race, and we looked the youth vote, and we looked at social movements and we looked at democracy – or the failure of democracy – within the party, and war and the party.</span>
And we divided the report into sections like that and showed how the Democratic party has continuously, in all of these areas, failed to address the concerns of its constituencies.
<span class="bold" style="background: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BETWEEN THE LINES:</span> Maybe you could talk a little bit about what you see in terms of the leadership of the Democratic party right now, following the election defeat.
<span class="bold" style="background: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">PIA GALLEGOS:</span> Right. I'm sorry to say that there's really<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> two wings to the Democratic party and we see this even with the head of Democratic party right now, T<b>om Perez who's head of the DNC. And he's just acted recently to purge the DNC of some of the most progressive members of the DNC </b>––because he's allowed to appoint people and to depose people from the post. And so he's brought in a whole bunch of political operatives and lobbyists – corporate lobbyists – as members of the DNC who will have superdelegate status, which means that they will be able to vote for a presidential candidate without regard to the pledged delegates that are required on every state level through the Electoral College. </span>
As long as the Electoral College is not allowing a popular vote to determine who's going to be president, the Democratic party has superimposed on top of that flawed scheme this idea of superdelegates who are people who are not responsive to the vote at all, who have no obligation to vote the will of the people, but who can vote the will of their corporate sponsors.
<b>Perez also gets to nominate his own superdelegates and he has chosen corporate operatives and corporate lobbyists</b>. So the Democratic party is far away from the will of the people and the realities of poor people who are struggling and students who are burdened by thousands and tens of thousands of dollars of student debt, and we do have a fractious Democratic party here.
But fortunately, you know, the people who are working the footsoldiers of the Democratic party – the ones who are working on the level of the neighborhoods – we're the ones who are right trying to get the elected Democrats to be accountable, to be held accountable to what it is our real needs on the level of neighborhoods and working class people.
<span class="bold" style="background: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BETWEEN THE LINES:</span> A lot of pundits these days look at the Democratic party these days and they see this ongoing conflict between the forces that supported Hillary Clinton and those that supported Sen. Bernie Sanders. Are you concerned that this conflict, if it continues on within the party will detract from any gains that the Democrats could make as a party in the upcoming critical 2018 election, given the stakes are so with all the rollbacks of progressive policies with the Trump administration in the White House and Republicans controlling Congress?
<span class="bold" style="background: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">PIA GALLEGOS:</span> It is absolutely essential for the Democrats to get elected to be taking care of the people of color and the youth vote and listening to their voices. That's how they're going to bring them back. If we could pay attention black communities and the Native American communities and the Latino communities and bring them back to vote, that's how we're going to win elections here. And so, we're doing the only thing that can be done to get the Democratic party in power again – which is to go to those neglected communities. That's the only way we're going to win.
See the report at titled, “Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis” at <a href="https://democraticautopsy.org/wp-content/uploads/Autopsy-The-Democratic-Party-In-Crisis.pdf" target="blank" style="background: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis [pdf]</a> or <a href="https://www.laprogressive.com/democratic-party-autopsy/" target="blank" style="background: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">laprogressive.com/democratic-party-autopsy</a></font></p><p style="background: transparent; margin: 0.4em 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Published by <a href="http://www.btlonline.org/2017/seg/171117bf-btl-gallegos.html" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Between the Lines</a>.</font></p></div><span class="article_separator" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); height: 3em; clear: both; display: block;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div class="article-title clearfix" style="margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; z-index: 1;"><h2 class="contentheading chBtns-none" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; letter-spacing: 0.03em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Ghost of Hubert Humphrey</font></h2></div><div class="page-content" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); clear: both;"><div class="article-meta-wrap metaTop" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; clear: both;"><div class="article-meta-content clearfix" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="createby" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">by <strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Norman Solomon, Truthdig</strong></span> <span class="createdate" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">on <strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">December 13, 2017</strong></span></font></div></div><div class="article-content" style="margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He was one of the most acclaimed—and ultimately destructive—liberal icons in American history.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Four decades after his death, Democratic politicians rarely mention his name. Yet <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=hubert+humphrey&oq=hubert+humphrey&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.8761j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Hubert H. Humphrey</a> haunts the Democratic Party.
The ghost of HHH is hovering over a party led by people who support endless war abroad while claiming to be champions of humane policies at home.
Fifty years ago, Humphrey was a major cog in the U.S. war machine as it inflicted mass carnage in Vietnam. Today, he’s a prototype for conformist Democratic politicians who go along to get along with the warfare state.
“I did not become vice president with <a href="http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-lyndon-b-johnson" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Lyndon Johnson</a> to cause him trouble,” Humphrey said in 1965, shortly after reaching the nation’s second-highest office. Expediency and party unity were top priorities. Decency was gone. And escalation of the war in Vietnam went on … and on … and on.
Like countless Democratic officeholders since then, Humphrey relied on his image to induce the party faithful to cut him some slack. After all, he was known to be a real good guy.
Of course, Humphrey tried to coast on his reputation. He had spoken out for civil rights before it was popular, while exuding an avuncular devotion to progressive social change. From the time of his stirring speech at the 1948 Democratic National Convention—telling the party to “get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights,” infuriating Dixiecrats in the process—Hubert Humphrey seemed to personify the virtues of American liberalism.
HHH was a beacon of that liberalism in the U.S. Senate from 1949 to 1964. And then, after the landslide triumph of the <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=johnson-humphrey+landslide&oq=johnson-humphrey+landslide&aqs=chrome..69i57.5199j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Johnson-Humphrey</a> ticket, he soon became a beacon of craven ambition. At the start of the 1960s, he’d represented the best of the Democratic Party. Midway through it, he was well on his way to representing the worst.
Humphrey could not, would not get off the war train. His party loyalty and ambition were too great. He had plenty of company in Washington. Year after year, hundreds of Democrats in Congress, along with Republicans, kept selling their souls to aid the slaughter of the Vietnamese people.
Today, in the Senate, there are many Democrats akin to Hubert Humphrey. They can be heard demanding protection of civil rights and calling for more funds on behalf of social programs, safety nets, education and housing. The routine is to tout support for such domestic programs while fueling militarism.
So, in September, when the Senate voted 89-8 for a $700 billion military budget, boosting largesse for the Pentagon by $80 billion, only four Democrats—Kirsten Gillibrand, Patrick Leahy, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden—joined with independent Bernie Sanders and three Republicans to vote against the measure. Little attention went to the fact that such lavish spending <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/09/18/the-senates-military-spending-increase-alone-is-enough-to-make-public-college-free/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">could instead be applied</a> to actually helping people instead of further revving up the United States’ killing engines.
Perpetual war—like its twin, mass surveillance—became normalized as bipartisan during the eight years of the Obama presidency. Even the strongest anti-war voices in Congress among Democrats tended to tamp down the outrage while one of their own was in the Oval Office. Most, in effect, were echoing the Hubert Humphrey of 1965. They were not in the Senate or House under party leader Barack Obama “to cause him trouble.”
Very few congressional Democrats have stood up to the pro-war avalanche from the mass media. The ritual is to go with the kind of hand-wringing statements favored by the likes of The New York Times editorial board (which Adam Johnson deconstructed in a piece for the media watchdog group FAIR, headlined “<a href="http://fair.org/home/nyt-laments-forever-wars-its-editorials-helped-create/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">NYT Laments ‘Forever Wars’ Its Editorials Helped Create</a><span class="glyph" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">”)</span>.
Throughout the mid-1960s and even later, members of Congress willing to raise their voices unequivocally against the <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=vietnam+war&oq=vietnam+war&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.172373j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Vietnam War</a> were scarce, and the same was true of the mass media. The submissive moral cowardice of politicians and journalists mirrored each other. A survey conducted by The Boston Globe in early 1968 found that—out of 39 major American daily newspapers—not a single one had editorially called for U.S. military withdrawal from Vietnam.
Now, few members of Congress are willing to clearly speak out against the self-perpetuating madness of the “war on terror.” And this year, one of the most overwhelming—and dangerous—party lines among Democrats on Capitol Hill has been the vilification of Russia. The corrosive conformity is stunning.
Even the brave congresswoman who was the only member of Congress to vote against the blank-check war resolution three days after 9/11, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=rep+barbara+lee&oq=rep+barbara+lee&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l4.60342j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Barbara Lee</a> of California, drifted with the partisan anti-Russia tide. While she has rightly joined with other Democrats in calling for the U.S. government to negotiate rather than escalate with North Korea, she has <a href="http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/When-Barbara-Lee-doesn-t-speak-for-me-11305910.php" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">voiced condemnation</a> instead of encouragement for top-level diplomacy between the United States and Russia—countries that both have arsenals with several thousand nuclear weapons.
From the era of Hubert Humphrey’s avid support for the U.S. war on Vietnam to the current era of diffuse U.S. warfare on several continents, much has changed. And yet, a timeworn truism applies: History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes an awful lot.
A recently released report, “Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis” (which I co-wrote as part of a task force), includes a section on “<a href="https://democraticautopsy.org/war-and-the-party/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">War and the Party</a>.” It points out:
</font></p><blockquote style="margin: 0.4em 0px 1em; padding: 1em 20px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(236, 236, 236); line-height: 1.6em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">Given that the all-volunteer U.S. military gains recruits in a social context of extreme income inequality, a de facto “economic draft” puts the heaviest burdens of war on the working class. Those burdens have largely worn out their welcome. Yet Democratic Party leaders have rarely made an issue out of the spiraling military costs or the long-term consequences of what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.” While frequently invoking the legacy of Dr. King, the Democratic leadership has had no use for his cogent warnings about the home-front ravages of war. In a landmark 1967 <a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_beyond_vietnam/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">speech</a> at New York’s Riverside Church, Dr. King deplored the priorities of a bipartisan establishment demonstrating its “hostility to the poor”—appropriating “military funds with alacrity and generosity,” but providing “poverty funds with miserliness.”
</font></blockquote><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fifty years later, the vast majority of Democratic leaders go along with such warfare-state priorities. Hubert Humphrey wanted to pretend that war abroad could be compatible with a great society at home. Today, at the top of the Democratic Party, the pretense is similar, as if continual U.S. warfare overseas can coexist with some kind of decent social policy at home. The mix of delusion and deception continues to cause vast human suffering.
</font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Published by <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/ghost-hubert-humphrey/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Truthdig</em></a>.</font></p></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">autopsydem</font></div><div>
</div><div><b>Executive Summary</b></div><div>
</div><div>Sample of Findings</div><div>
</div><div>The Party’s Base</div><div>
</div><div>• Aggregated data and analysis show that<b> policies, operations and campaign priorities of the national Democratic Party undermined support and turnout from its base in the 2016 general election. Since then, the Democratic leadership has done little to indicate that it is heeding key lessons from the 2016 disaster.</b></div><div>
</div><div>• The Democratic National Committee and the party’s<b> congressional leadership remain bent on prioritizing the chase for elusive Republican voters over the Democratic base: especially people of color, young people and working-class voters overall.</b></div><div>
</div><div>• <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">After suffering from a falloff of turnout among people of color in the 2016 general election, the party appears to be losing ground with its most reliable voting bloc, African-American women. “The Democratic Party has experienced an 11 percent drop in support from black women according to one survey, while the percentage of black women who said neither party represents them went from 13 percent in 2016 to 21 percent in 2017.</span>”</div><div>
</div><div>• One of the large groups with a voter-turnout issue is<b> young people</b>, “who encounter a toxic combination of a depressed economic reality, GOP efforts at voter suppression, and anemic messaging on the part of Democrats.”</div><div>
</div><div>• “Emerging sectors of the electorate are compelling the Democratic Party to come to terms with <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">adamant grassroots rejection of economic injustice, institutionalized racism, gender inequality, environmental destruction and <b>corporate domination</b></span><b>.</b> Siding with the people who constitute the base isn’t truly possible when party leaders seem to be afraid of them.”</div><div>
</div><div>• The DNC has refused to renounce, or commit to end, its undemocratic practices during the 2016 primary campaign that caused so much discord and distrust from many party activists and voters among core constituencies.</div><div>
</div><div>• Working to defeat restrictions on <b>voting rights</b> is of enormous importance. Yet the Democratic National Committee failed to make such work a DNC staffing priority.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Populism and Party Decline</b></div><div>
</div><div>• The Democratic Party’s claims of fighting for “working families” have been undermined by its refusal to directly challenge corporate power, enabling Trump to masquerade as a champion of the people. “Democrats will not win if they continue to bring a wonk knife to a populist gunfight. Nor can Democratic leaders and operatives be seen as real allies of the working class if they’re afraid to alienate big funders or to harm future job or consulting prospects.”</div><div>
</div><div>• “Since Obama’s victory in 2008, the Democratic Party has lost control of both houses of Congress and more than 1,000 state legislative seats. The GOP now controls the governorship as well as the entire legislature in 26 states, while Democrats exercise such control in only six states…. Despite this Democratic decline, bold proposals with the national party’s imprint are scarce.”</div><div>
</div><div>• “After a decade and a half of nonstop warfare, research data from voting patterns suggest that the Clinton campaign’s hawkish stance was a political detriment in working-class communities hard-hit by American casualties from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.”</div><div>
</div><div>• “Operating from a place of defensiveness and denial will not turn the party around. Neither will status quo methodology.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Sample of Recommendations</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Party Operations and Outreach</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div>• The Democratic National Committee must make up for lost time by accelerating its very recent gear-up of staffing to fight against the multi-front assaults on voting rights that include voter ID laws, purges of voter rolls and intimidation tactics.</div><div>
</div><div>• The Democratic National Committee should commit itself to scrupulously adhering to its Charter, which requires the DNC to be evenhanded in the presidential nominating process.</div><div>
</div><div>• Because “the superdelegate system, by its very nature, undermines the vital precept of one person, one vote,” the voting power of all superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention must end.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">• “Social movements cannot be understood as tools to get Democrats elected. The ebb and flow of social movements offer a rising tide in their own right that along the way can lift Democratic Party candidates — if the party is able to embrace the broad popular sentiment that the movements embody.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>• “This is about more than just increasing voter turnout. It is about energizing as well as expanding the base of the party. To do this we must aggressively pursue two tracks: fighting right-wing efforts to rig the political system, and giving people who can vote a truly compelling reason to do so.”</div><div>
</div><div>• “The enduring point of community outreach is to build an ongoing relationship that aims for the party to become part of the fabric of everyday life. It means acknowledging the validity and power of people-driven movements as well as recognizing and supporting authentic progressive community leaders. It means focusing on how the party can best serve communities, not the other way around. Most of all, it means persisting with such engagement on an ongoing basis, not just at election time.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Party Policies and Programs</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">• The party should avidly promote inspiring programs such as single-payer Medicare for all, free public college tuition, economic security, infrastructure and green jobs initiatives, and tackling the <b>climate crisis</b></span><b>.</b></div><div>
</div><div>• While the Democratic Party fights for an agenda to benefit all Americans, the party must develop new policies and strategies for more substantial engagement with people of color — directly addressing realities of their lives that include disproportionately high rates of poverty and ongoing vulnerability to a racist criminal justice system.</div><div>
</div><div>• With its policies and programs, not just its public statements, the Democratic Party must emphasize that “in the real world, the well-being of women is indivisible from their economic circumstances and security.” To truly advance gender equality, the party needs to fight for the economic rights of all women.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">• The Democratic Party should end its neglect of rural voters, a process that must include aligning the party with the interests of farming families and others who live in the countryside rather than with Big Agriculture and monopolies.</span></div><div>
</div><div>• “While the short-term prospects for meaningful federal action on climate are exceedingly bleak, state-level initiatives are important and attainable. Meanwhile, it’s crucial that the<b> Democratic Party stop confining its climate agenda to inadequate steps that are palatable to Big Oil and mega-players on Wall Street.”</b></div><div>
</div><div>• “What must now take place includes honest self-reflection and confronting a hard truth: that many view the party as often in service to a rapacious oligarchy and increasingly out of touch with people in its own base.” The Democratic Party should disentangle itself — ideologically and financially — from Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and other corporate interests that put profits ahead of public needs. [Top]</div><div>
</div><div><b>Corporate Power and the Party</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Corporate domination over the party’s agenda — and, perhaps more importantly, the perception of corporate control over the party’s agenda — rendered the Democrats’ messaging on economic issues ideologically rudderless and resulted in a decline in support among working-class people across racial lines.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">First, it’s important to debunk some facile media myths about Donald Trump and “the working class.” <b>The bulk of Trump’s support is still from well-off whites who have always composed the core of the Republican Party funding and much of its voting base, </b>and one should work hard to not feed into the easy media trope that Trump is overwhelmingly popular among “blue collar” or working-class voters</span>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Nor should one fall into the trap (as some pundits have) of using “working class” and “white working class” interchangeably. Aside from erasing working people of color, this trap overlooks the fact that <b>Hillary Clinton in fact won the working class across races, if one uses those making less than $50,000 a year as a proxy for the label.</b></span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">What did happen — and what ought to deeply worry Democrats moving forward — is the massive swing of white working-class voters from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 and the depressed turnout of black and Latino voters for Clinton relative to 2012 Obama.</span> There was a 16-point swing across all races (though this is overwhelmingly due to whites) for those making less than $30,000 from the D to R column and a six-point swing for those making between $30,000 and $50,000. Turnout among African Americans and Latinos was also far lower than many expected, which represents an ominous trend for the party moving forward. To put it in marketing terms: the Democrat Party is failing, on a systemic level, to inspire, bring out, and get a sufficient majority of the votes of the working class.</div><div>
</div><div>The Democratic Party, as pollster Stanley Greenberg emphasizes, doesn’t have a “white working-class problem” — it has a working-class problem. “If there was one area where Democratic turnout was undeniably weaker in 2016 than 2012 it was among African Americans,” Patrick Ruffini wrote in FiveThirtyEight. Black turnout, especially in key swing states, was 14.1 percent less than election models predicted — far more than the 3.2 percent decline among whites.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> While it’s important to note the damaging effect of Republican Party attempts at minority voter suppression through gerrymandering and voter ID laws, the Democratic Party has failed to give many of those who can vote a reason to do so.</span></div><div>
</div><div>This is animated, in part, by the perception that the party is in the pocket of the rich. A poll in spring 2017 found that two-thirds of the public sees the Democratic Party as “out of touch with the concerns of most people in the United States today.” Meanwhile, a recent review of census data by the Washington Post found that African Americans are “the only U.S. racial group earning less than they did in 2000.” The unfettered capitalist economy partly enabled by Democrats since the 1990s has devastated the working class, doubly so the black working class, and the Democratic Party’s major role in that devastation continues to have a harmful effect on party prospects.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The party has attempted to convince working-class voters that it can advance the interests of the rich and working people with equal vigor. This sleight-of-hand was more feasible pre-2008 economic crash, but it has since lost credibility as inequality grows and entire communities are gutted by free market, anti-union, anti-worker ideology and policy. </span>The champions of the growth-raises-all-boats mythology had their chance and they failed the vast bulk of working Americans. President Obama, with his unique political skills, preempted and co-opted economic populism to some extent (though it surfaced briefly and strongly with the<b> Occupy Wall Street </b>movement in 2011/2012), but it re-emerged with Bernie Sanders’ insurgent primary campaign. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In her 2016 general election loss, Clinton was outflanked on economic messaging by Trump’s huckster appeals to anti-NAFTA and anti-free-market sentiment.</span></div><div>....</div><div>much more</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div>