From the working class perspective, the Democratic Party is neither democratic nor a party.
It exists as a counter-revolutionary tendency which serves to redirect back into itself those who otherwise would organize a genuinely revolutionary party of the working class.
There will be no way forward and no answer to war and authoritarianism unless or until the working class resolutely and irrevocably breaks with the Democratic Party.
It is socialist revolution, democracy and peace, or it is counterrevolution, authoritarianism and war.
I think the biggest fear of the establishment of all politicians is that the working class and poor will get together and force the system to change.
We citizens who are part of the great unwashed from the elite viewpoint have much more in common with each other than the political class that tries to divide us.
I guess this is why they say populism is a bad thing.
They DO divide us. This is the problem that must be overcome before we effectively push back on the authoritarians! I consider myself a democrat “workhorse” - I do a lot for the party without being in the elected leadership or paid workers and I very often want to pull my Democratic Party membership. This article summarized nicely why I feel this urge so frequently. It also makes it hard to convince my millennial and gen Z kids to care. They see through the bullshit.
The Democratic Party is a GOP asset. It strangles genuine opposition to the ruling class on one hand, and often participates with GOP demands on the other.
The ruling class [10%] is fine with the dictatorship of the ruling class.
What terrifies the ruling class is the dictatorship of the working class, the 90%.
It is not ‘changing the system; it is changing systems. Under these conditions, the few who have all power have none, and those who have none hold all the power.
The ‘10%’ is derived from Marx’ analysis which postulates that under the Capitalist system of social organization, there exist three social classes based on their relationship to the system of production. This is the basis of all Marxist thought and work.
The bourgeoisie is the top 1% of the population. It has immense wealth and social prestige. It is represented by the GOP.
The petit bourgeoisie is the Next 9% after the top 1%. They have nowhere near the wealth and prestige of the 1%. The Democratic Party represents this class. But either can rule alone.
The 1% is too few. Alone, it would be swept aside literally overnight.
The Next 9% lacks the wealth and prestige to rule.
Each needs what the other has to govern. This results in an alliance of necessary but mutually
hostility.
The proletariat [the 90%] has nothing invested in either. It has no political representations with neither party. The way forward requires breaking the alliance and transferring all power and authority to the working class.
… and even then, [the recent October Revolution very much in mind], the ‘New Deal’ was in essence, a BRIBE to the US working class NOT to repeat said event in the US.
FDR wanted to go much further. Tried to stack the courts to get it done. Eleanor talked him out of it. Many still resent the betrayal of Eastern Europe effectively abandoning them to Stalin’s “mercy”. So, there all that too.
‘[The Democratic Party] exists as a counter-revolutionary tendency which serves to redirect back into itself those who otherwise would organize a genuinely revolutionary party of the working class.’
One is an idiot to believe that the January 28, 1828 slaveocracy Party is now prepared to accept revolutionary leadership.
On the premise that you are no idiot, one must wonder if a party hack is attempting to redirect back into itself ‘those who otherwise would organize a genuinely revolutionary party of the working class.’
Edit: a quick check indicates your awareness of Democratic Party early history. I’m still at a loss to understand why you would propose ‘winning st the primaries.’
The campaign against war and counterrevolution [i.e. fascism] must be conducted outside the framework of all existing capitalist parties.
Robert, the existing parties brought us where we are in context of a confluence of many socioeconomic forces. It is those forces, those powers, which brought us where we are. Only the dismantling of the capitalist system and the complete reorganization of society to serve the need of all, not the greed of a handful of royals will suffice.
I don’t mean to sound abrasive, but the point must be understood and it is non-negotiable.
I care about actual change. And I’m willing to give it to the people. Strong welfare, a loophole-free tax system and all the goodies they’ve been left out on.
Democrats have surrendered rural America without a fight and wonder why they keep losing. This catastrophic failure isn’t just electoral suicide—it’s class betrayal.
While Democrats chase suburban votes and donor dollars, rural communities collapse under corporate consolidation, opioid epidemics, and crumbling infrastructure. The party's absence created a vacuum filled by right-wing propaganda that redirects justified economic rage toward cultural scapegoats.
Let's be brutally honest: the professional-class Democrats running the party have more in common with Republican executives than with any working person. They've abandoned class politics for hollow identity gestures that cost donors nothing.
The shameful truth? Democrats helped create this crisis. Who signed NAFTA? Who deregulated Wall Street? Who let agribusiness crush family farms? The same Democratic establishment now wringing its hands about "losing touch" with rural voters.
Here's what a serious rural strategy demands:
1. Stop treating rural America as culturally backward. Rural abandonment is about policy choices and corporate power, not culture wars.
2. Fight corporate monopolies crushing rural communities—from healthcare conglomerates closing hospitals to agricultural giants destroying family farms.
3. Deliver material benefits immediately—rural broadband, healthcare facilities, good jobs—not empty promises.
4. Build permanent organizing infrastructure instead of parachuting in during election years.
The working class—rural and urban—faces the same enemies: corporate monopolies, predatory healthcare, and an economy rigged for the wealthy. Every closed rural hospital, every foreclosed family farm strengthens the same powers gentrifying urban neighborhoods.
Democrats face a choice: continue as the party of professional-class comfort or rebuild as a fighting force for working people everywhere. The current strategy has failed spectacularly. Time to try actually fighting for the working class—all of it.
My grandparents came from salt of the earth rural roots. We cannot forget our roots, and that is the people who built this country. While I benefit from a system that came together briefly to create the greatest economy on earth and the closet parity between classes, such that my parents got an education while growing up in the middle of nowhere Northern England to coal miner and scullery maid parents, with no toilet in their homes, no stove and no hot water, to come to this country and build the weapons that kept our soldiers safe and allowed me to have a middle to middle upper class life. The more we forget that our roots are in the country, then we lose site of what it means to be human. For the record, salt of the earth folks are the same the world over and while they may be conservative in value, traditions, god, country and family as my grandad was…they were also socialists, who fought for the right to be treated as human. To unionize. To fight against the opulence of giant corporations or the wealthy that tossed my grandmother out because she got married. These folks are indeed the very people you want to ensure are given that hand up that they gave us. Without them, I don’t exist.
This was one of the most profound things I've read in awhile.
Just yesterday I wrote about the 'misinformation' narrative and the institutional and personal reluctances to take accountability for COVID lies and errors as being-partly-moral problems. Some of the issue is institutional incentives and limited information and such. More of it is cowardice and self-serving 'leaders'. Everyone is afraid of failure and embarrassment, because careers and status are all they have. They're dedicated their lives to such things. The idea that integrity or civic virtue or noble sacrifice might call them towards different decisions is COMPLETELY alien to such people.
Hi Baz! Oh no! Im not great at getting my responses to go to the originator, that is, to the article I’m responding to—they get added to someone else’s comment, as a reply, especially if there’s a time gap between when I write it and get it to actually post! So I can just imagine the total non sequiturs! 🤓
My apologies - I’ve attempted to post my own content and fail mostly. All my devices display substack functions differently and most of my posts just go into Notes. I haven’t yet had time to dive into substack’s functionality. I actually set my substack up as kind of a test account for future authoring use, but then I read an article linked to Substack and well…. ;)
My question — was questioning your post title itself. From my vantage point, I see the Contrarian, Reich, Hopium, Krugman, People Power, your JPF, and a bunch of other great voices on Substack really trying to make a difference, which is fantastic. However, they are, in my opinion, stuck inside “The Democratic Party” box which, like a Russian doll, sits inside, “two party system”, etc. I would like to see a new political movement / party because I feel we are wasting precious time with all the discussion, analysis, and attempts at alignment within an already fractured party. I’m also concerned that carrying forward with “The Democratic Party” instead of starting fresh with something new will simply force us to be stuck in the future with the same infighting, corruption, and lack of cohesion and vision we’ve seen from “The Democratic Party” for decades. That it is broken is not a new realization — why are we still acting as if that is our only path forward? Is that really where our energies are best invested?
I completely agree with you Nunya, and like your image of the “Democratic Party box”. I also used to believe we need a third party but have come to have doubts after reading John Nichols’ book: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party. Henry Wallace, FDR’s former vice president, ran on a third party ticket in 1948 and lost to Truman even though he had significant popularity. Rather than third party, maybe we need an insurgent progressive left faction to take over the Democratic Party in the primaries. It will take a nationwide unified effort, running a slate of candidates that will work collectively to win over voters to a party of New Democrats, somewhat as the Tea Party took over Republicans.
This is great, and I know the relationship stuff was mainly a metaphor, but I'm actually fascinated by it and would love to dissect that more. In a loving relationship I think it's best to enter into conversations in good faith, each assuming the best intentions of the other. I don't think that really carries over into political representation- I don't think the Dems have the best of intent for me and people like me. It might be better than the Republicans but your comparison to a relationship makes me even more sure that I need more from my representatives than "give us money and we probably won't betray you." Is it even possible to have a good faith relationship with a party or a state? I'm not sure that it is, but I kinda yearn for it.
You are close, I think, to articulating the problem. But you lean on an idea of “elite” that gets in the way of identifying the real, underlying challenge for Democrats. On one of the Sunday shows, Schumer was clearly trapped in a bubble of archaic (you might call it ‘elite’) thinking, arguing that what he and some Republicans, apparently awakened by policy differences with tRump, are going to do in the midterms. He is mired in the old Senate culture of being “the world’s most effective deliberative body” and fails to recognize that those days are gone forever, destroyed by tRump’s bulldozing of the GOP and, with it, Senate and democratic norms. The old Democratic Party is collateral damage, which is to your point. He fails to recognize that the landscape has been forever altered. Deliberation is dead. It’s time for revolt, not deliberation. The old institutional protections can’t be depended on any more, because they have been effectively neutered.
I would argue that the rot that grew into the foul mildew of tRump began at the root of all evil, the love of money. Citizen’s United made money speech, without anticipating the Katrina-esque flood of money that, like water, always finds its level, and always results in the collapse of structures under the weight of an inevitable secondary fungal infestation. tRump and his fungus-like infestation and destruction of American government institutional structures are the inevitable result of the Citizen’s United flood of money. Democrats thought (and apparently like Schumer, still think) the high ground would protect them. But the flood of money was too deep and too powerful for even them.
Floyd, I wholeheartedly agree with you that citizens united was the nail in the coffin for democracy. Now it’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work to “right the ship” before it’s too late!
I agree with your analysis, but would add that much of the sclerosis and inertia in the system beyond specific corrupt politicians and power brokers is just sort of in the intrinsic nature of bureaucracy. Regardless of the intentions of good actors or would-be reformers, the system has its own logic of continual growth and gratuitous paperwork. So even if the progressive base can succeed in throwing out the old leadership/cronies to install earnest next generation progressives, I'm not sure how much of how the system lumbers along can really be upgraded as much as a lot of people would hope.
I agree but i am pretty sure it’s not just the rural central states being abandoned, as you describe. Overall Dems have not aimed wide enough as a party. And Biden as a President didn't tell the public & explain enough about what he was doing. Citizens United really screwed American voters by removing caps on how much candidates could accept from (corporate) donors [someone feel free to correct this—i know they /corporations now count as a person w/rights🙄) & candidates get billions$ now, & other than bitcoin that can bypass disclosure requirements at this time, i am not !00% clear how we got to $billion campaigns….😤) as well. We all have senators & Reps in Washington & these folks better be around locally, listening, & carrying those cares to their floors. At the same time, we all have to realize we exist(ed) as a democratic republic based in a Constitution, and we are a very diverse country. Thus every law passed has to be reached through not just negotiation, but compromise as well, typically on both sides if it’s a controversial bill. Presidential candidates will always only drop in during the campaign. For the most part, their role is for all & in DC. They don’t travel a lot outside campaigns in the US, and abroad, for the sake of National interests, our safety. (At least this was how we worked for 250 years…😐🙄) but i agree we need younger & less entrenched Congresspeople, smart, educated, with a civil service attitude, not career politicians in it for themselves…
We all can hear the voices of the real leaders coming forward right now, can’t we? And they mostly speak for and about ‘the people’ not the party. The transition is happening. Alternative media is helping. Let’s facilitate and support the message of ‘the people’, who happen to be rising out of Dem party…. Younger Dems are not clones of the old guard…
Very well stated. I think this is why Bernie and AOC were so smart to take their message on the road so they can shove their “for the people” stance down the throats of the Dem establishment.
What you say of Democrats applies also to Republicans. Put 'em all in a can, shake it and turn it upside down. Everyone inside will fall out with an open mouth and an out-stretched hand.
I *halfway* agree with this piece. I think during the campaign the Democrats ran on the wrong messages - *but* they certainly could have mounted a credible defence of their own record.
Biden's administration delivered wages which rose faster than inflation, and moreover rose fastest of all among the poorest. Prosperity up, inequality down - what's not to like about that? Surely a highly defensible record. (Incidentally they accomplished this by taking advice from serious left-of-centre economists who know what they're talking about - or in other words, those dastardly elites that everyone hates.)
The problem was none of their campaigning was about this. First they tried to fight fire with fire and win the "vibes" war with that cringe "brat" thing. Then when that failed they pivoted to abstract talk about democracy - obviously this is really important but it's also far-removed from the day-to-day lives of swing voters. At no point did they ever remember that "it's the economy, stupid!"
And so, entirely through unforced errors, they allowed Trump's bollocks to fill the vacuum and become the narrative. Suddenly it was all egg prices and tariffs. He was talking absolute horeshit, but at least he was talking about the main thing Americans cared about. And they just... didn't fight back against this? Just vacated the battlefield? Truly the most incompetent campaign in American political history.
And you know what? I think part of the problem was a lack of confidence. I think there were too many staffers inside the White House and the Democratic Party who did indeed consider Biden a failure in policy terms. Radical dreamers for whom whatever a Democrat president, with all the constraints of reality, did would never be enough. No wonder the insiders ended up running the campaign on variations of the only message they all agreed to - "Trump bad". And if you don't defend your own record, nobody else is going to defend it for you.
From the working class perspective, the Democratic Party is neither democratic nor a party.
It exists as a counter-revolutionary tendency which serves to redirect back into itself those who otherwise would organize a genuinely revolutionary party of the working class.
There will be no way forward and no answer to war and authoritarianism unless or until the working class resolutely and irrevocably breaks with the Democratic Party.
It is socialist revolution, democracy and peace, or it is counterrevolution, authoritarianism and war.
I think the biggest fear of the establishment of all politicians is that the working class and poor will get together and force the system to change.
We citizens who are part of the great unwashed from the elite viewpoint have much more in common with each other than the political class that tries to divide us.
I guess this is why they say populism is a bad thing.
They DO divide us. This is the problem that must be overcome before we effectively push back on the authoritarians! I consider myself a democrat “workhorse” - I do a lot for the party without being in the elected leadership or paid workers and I very often want to pull my Democratic Party membership. This article summarized nicely why I feel this urge so frequently. It also makes it hard to convince my millennial and gen Z kids to care. They see through the bullshit.
Sue:
The Democratic Party is a GOP asset. It strangles genuine opposition to the ruling class on one hand, and often participates with GOP demands on the other.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/03/27/okcg-m27.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/03/17/onyo-m17.html
The ruling class [10%] is fine with the dictatorship of the ruling class.
What terrifies the ruling class is the dictatorship of the working class, the 90%.
It is not ‘changing the system; it is changing systems. Under these conditions, the few who have all power have none, and those who have none hold all the power.
10%? At most half of that.
Edward:
The ‘10%’ is derived from Marx’ analysis which postulates that under the Capitalist system of social organization, there exist three social classes based on their relationship to the system of production. This is the basis of all Marxist thought and work.
The bourgeoisie is the top 1% of the population. It has immense wealth and social prestige. It is represented by the GOP.
The petit bourgeoisie is the Next 9% after the top 1%. They have nowhere near the wealth and prestige of the 1%. The Democratic Party represents this class. But either can rule alone.
The 1% is too few. Alone, it would be swept aside literally overnight.
The Next 9% lacks the wealth and prestige to rule.
Each needs what the other has to govern. This results in an alliance of necessary but mutually
hostility.
The proletariat [the 90%] has nothing invested in either. It has no political representations with neither party. The way forward requires breaking the alliance and transferring all power and authority to the working class.
The way forward
Thank you GS-z-14-1.
Succinct, accurate , and precise analysis. Well done.
The Dems haven’t been “revolutionary” since the days of FDR.
… and even then, [the recent October Revolution very much in mind], the ‘New Deal’ was in essence, a BRIBE to the US working class NOT to repeat said event in the US.
wsws.org
FDR wanted to go much further. Tried to stack the courts to get it done. Eleanor talked him out of it. Many still resent the betrayal of Eastern Europe effectively abandoning them to Stalin’s “mercy”. So, there all that too.
Had Trotsky lived, much would have been different.
Or we take over the Democratic Party by winning primaries.
Just as I said …
‘[The Democratic Party] exists as a counter-revolutionary tendency which serves to redirect back into itself those who otherwise would organize a genuinely revolutionary party of the working class.’
One is an idiot to believe that the January 28, 1828 slaveocracy Party is now prepared to accept revolutionary leadership.
On the premise that you are no idiot, one must wonder if a party hack is attempting to redirect back into itself ‘those who otherwise would organize a genuinely revolutionary party of the working class.’
Edit: a quick check indicates your awareness of Democratic Party early history. I’m still at a loss to understand why you would propose ‘winning st the primaries.’
The campaign against war and counterrevolution [i.e. fascism] must be conducted outside the framework of all existing capitalist parties.
Robert, the existing parties brought us where we are in context of a confluence of many socioeconomic forces. It is those forces, those powers, which brought us where we are. Only the dismantling of the capitalist system and the complete reorganization of society to serve the need of all, not the greed of a handful of royals will suffice.
I don’t mean to sound abrasive, but the point must be understood and it is non-negotiable.
https://www.wsws.org/en/special/pages/sep/us/home.html?redirect=true
Bravo, well stated! Thank you
Controlled opposition doesn't care about actual change
I care about actual change. And I’m willing to give it to the people. Strong welfare, a loophole-free tax system and all the goodies they’ve been left out on.
Establishment Democrats not into that
Who says i need their opinion? They were dragging their feet for years.
Yes that’s been the case for years
Well spoken and Spot ON.
Thanks for your support!
You’re most welcome 🙏🏽!
https://salmun.substack.com/p/the-rural-strategy-democrats-must?r=jt2di
The Rural Strategy Democrats Must Embrace Now
Democrats have surrendered rural America without a fight and wonder why they keep losing. This catastrophic failure isn’t just electoral suicide—it’s class betrayal.
While Democrats chase suburban votes and donor dollars, rural communities collapse under corporate consolidation, opioid epidemics, and crumbling infrastructure. The party's absence created a vacuum filled by right-wing propaganda that redirects justified economic rage toward cultural scapegoats.
Let's be brutally honest: the professional-class Democrats running the party have more in common with Republican executives than with any working person. They've abandoned class politics for hollow identity gestures that cost donors nothing.
The shameful truth? Democrats helped create this crisis. Who signed NAFTA? Who deregulated Wall Street? Who let agribusiness crush family farms? The same Democratic establishment now wringing its hands about "losing touch" with rural voters.
Here's what a serious rural strategy demands:
1. Stop treating rural America as culturally backward. Rural abandonment is about policy choices and corporate power, not culture wars.
2. Fight corporate monopolies crushing rural communities—from healthcare conglomerates closing hospitals to agricultural giants destroying family farms.
3. Deliver material benefits immediately—rural broadband, healthcare facilities, good jobs—not empty promises.
4. Build permanent organizing infrastructure instead of parachuting in during election years.
The working class—rural and urban—faces the same enemies: corporate monopolies, predatory healthcare, and an economy rigged for the wealthy. Every closed rural hospital, every foreclosed family farm strengthens the same powers gentrifying urban neighborhoods.
Democrats face a choice: continue as the party of professional-class comfort or rebuild as a fighting force for working people everywhere. The current strategy has failed spectacularly. Time to try actually fighting for the working class—all of it.
My grandparents came from salt of the earth rural roots. We cannot forget our roots, and that is the people who built this country. While I benefit from a system that came together briefly to create the greatest economy on earth and the closet parity between classes, such that my parents got an education while growing up in the middle of nowhere Northern England to coal miner and scullery maid parents, with no toilet in their homes, no stove and no hot water, to come to this country and build the weapons that kept our soldiers safe and allowed me to have a middle to middle upper class life. The more we forget that our roots are in the country, then we lose site of what it means to be human. For the record, salt of the earth folks are the same the world over and while they may be conservative in value, traditions, god, country and family as my grandad was…they were also socialists, who fought for the right to be treated as human. To unionize. To fight against the opulence of giant corporations or the wealthy that tossed my grandmother out because she got married. These folks are indeed the very people you want to ensure are given that hand up that they gave us. Without them, I don’t exist.
Thank you from a prisoner of the closed primary state of New York.
This made me giggle. My pleasure Cassandra.
Old New York is in CHARGE:
Always has been.
They’ve hidden it well in the past.
The “mask” is starting to peel these days though:
Isn’t it?
More than just a “face lift” is needed:
An entirely new body is necessary.
This was one of the most profound things I've read in awhile.
Just yesterday I wrote about the 'misinformation' narrative and the institutional and personal reluctances to take accountability for COVID lies and errors as being-partly-moral problems. Some of the issue is institutional incentives and limited information and such. More of it is cowardice and self-serving 'leaders'. Everyone is afraid of failure and embarrassment, because careers and status are all they have. They're dedicated their lives to such things. The idea that integrity or civic virtue or noble sacrifice might call them towards different decisions is COMPLETELY alien to such people.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/quietly-correcting-the-covid-narrative
I agree. Succinctly written.
Shout out to Crighton.
They exist in a different “universal”. zeitgeist James.
Then why are so many authors spending so much time and energy talking about “The Democratic Party”?
Is writing about the Democratic party the same as the Democratic party’s message?
You often write nonsensical responses, Nunya! You remind me of someone 😂
Hi Baz! Oh no! Im not great at getting my responses to go to the originator, that is, to the article I’m responding to—they get added to someone else’s comment, as a reply, especially if there’s a time gap between when I write it and get it to actually post! So I can just imagine the total non sequiturs! 🤓
My apologies - I’ve attempted to post my own content and fail mostly. All my devices display substack functions differently and most of my posts just go into Notes. I haven’t yet had time to dive into substack’s functionality. I actually set my substack up as kind of a test account for future authoring use, but then I read an article linked to Substack and well…. ;)
My question — was questioning your post title itself. From my vantage point, I see the Contrarian, Reich, Hopium, Krugman, People Power, your JPF, and a bunch of other great voices on Substack really trying to make a difference, which is fantastic. However, they are, in my opinion, stuck inside “The Democratic Party” box which, like a Russian doll, sits inside, “two party system”, etc. I would like to see a new political movement / party because I feel we are wasting precious time with all the discussion, analysis, and attempts at alignment within an already fractured party. I’m also concerned that carrying forward with “The Democratic Party” instead of starting fresh with something new will simply force us to be stuck in the future with the same infighting, corruption, and lack of cohesion and vision we’ve seen from “The Democratic Party” for decades. That it is broken is not a new realization — why are we still acting as if that is our only path forward? Is that really where our energies are best invested?
Still nonsensical?
I completely agree with you Nunya, and like your image of the “Democratic Party box”. I also used to believe we need a third party but have come to have doubts after reading John Nichols’ book: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party. Henry Wallace, FDR’s former vice president, ran on a third party ticket in 1948 and lost to Truman even though he had significant popularity. Rather than third party, maybe we need an insurgent progressive left faction to take over the Democratic Party in the primaries. It will take a nationwide unified effort, running a slate of candidates that will work collectively to win over voters to a party of New Democrats, somewhat as the Tea Party took over Republicans.
This is great, and I know the relationship stuff was mainly a metaphor, but I'm actually fascinated by it and would love to dissect that more. In a loving relationship I think it's best to enter into conversations in good faith, each assuming the best intentions of the other. I don't think that really carries over into political representation- I don't think the Dems have the best of intent for me and people like me. It might be better than the Republicans but your comparison to a relationship makes me even more sure that I need more from my representatives than "give us money and we probably won't betray you." Is it even possible to have a good faith relationship with a party or a state? I'm not sure that it is, but I kinda yearn for it.
You are close, I think, to articulating the problem. But you lean on an idea of “elite” that gets in the way of identifying the real, underlying challenge for Democrats. On one of the Sunday shows, Schumer was clearly trapped in a bubble of archaic (you might call it ‘elite’) thinking, arguing that what he and some Republicans, apparently awakened by policy differences with tRump, are going to do in the midterms. He is mired in the old Senate culture of being “the world’s most effective deliberative body” and fails to recognize that those days are gone forever, destroyed by tRump’s bulldozing of the GOP and, with it, Senate and democratic norms. The old Democratic Party is collateral damage, which is to your point. He fails to recognize that the landscape has been forever altered. Deliberation is dead. It’s time for revolt, not deliberation. The old institutional protections can’t be depended on any more, because they have been effectively neutered.
I would argue that the rot that grew into the foul mildew of tRump began at the root of all evil, the love of money. Citizen’s United made money speech, without anticipating the Katrina-esque flood of money that, like water, always finds its level, and always results in the collapse of structures under the weight of an inevitable secondary fungal infestation. tRump and his fungus-like infestation and destruction of American government institutional structures are the inevitable result of the Citizen’s United flood of money. Democrats thought (and apparently like Schumer, still think) the high ground would protect them. But the flood of money was too deep and too powerful for even them.
Floyd, I wholeheartedly agree with you that citizens united was the nail in the coffin for democracy. Now it’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work to “right the ship” before it’s too late!
I agree with your analysis, but would add that much of the sclerosis and inertia in the system beyond specific corrupt politicians and power brokers is just sort of in the intrinsic nature of bureaucracy. Regardless of the intentions of good actors or would-be reformers, the system has its own logic of continual growth and gratuitous paperwork. So even if the progressive base can succeed in throwing out the old leadership/cronies to install earnest next generation progressives, I'm not sure how much of how the system lumbers along can really be upgraded as much as a lot of people would hope.
I agree but i am pretty sure it’s not just the rural central states being abandoned, as you describe. Overall Dems have not aimed wide enough as a party. And Biden as a President didn't tell the public & explain enough about what he was doing. Citizens United really screwed American voters by removing caps on how much candidates could accept from (corporate) donors [someone feel free to correct this—i know they /corporations now count as a person w/rights🙄) & candidates get billions$ now, & other than bitcoin that can bypass disclosure requirements at this time, i am not !00% clear how we got to $billion campaigns….😤) as well. We all have senators & Reps in Washington & these folks better be around locally, listening, & carrying those cares to their floors. At the same time, we all have to realize we exist(ed) as a democratic republic based in a Constitution, and we are a very diverse country. Thus every law passed has to be reached through not just negotiation, but compromise as well, typically on both sides if it’s a controversial bill. Presidential candidates will always only drop in during the campaign. For the most part, their role is for all & in DC. They don’t travel a lot outside campaigns in the US, and abroad, for the sake of National interests, our safety. (At least this was how we worked for 250 years…😐🙄) but i agree we need younger & less entrenched Congresspeople, smart, educated, with a civil service attitude, not career politicians in it for themselves…
Yes.
We all can hear the voices of the real leaders coming forward right now, can’t we? And they mostly speak for and about ‘the people’ not the party. The transition is happening. Alternative media is helping. Let’s facilitate and support the message of ‘the people’, who happen to be rising out of Dem party…. Younger Dems are not clones of the old guard…
Very well stated. I think this is why Bernie and AOC were so smart to take their message on the road so they can shove their “for the people” stance down the throats of the Dem establishment.
What you say of Democrats applies also to Republicans. Put 'em all in a can, shake it and turn it upside down. Everyone inside will fall out with an open mouth and an out-stretched hand.
The despicable "Mitch" is the prime example.
Spot ON scott m.
I *halfway* agree with this piece. I think during the campaign the Democrats ran on the wrong messages - *but* they certainly could have mounted a credible defence of their own record.
Biden's administration delivered wages which rose faster than inflation, and moreover rose fastest of all among the poorest. Prosperity up, inequality down - what's not to like about that? Surely a highly defensible record. (Incidentally they accomplished this by taking advice from serious left-of-centre economists who know what they're talking about - or in other words, those dastardly elites that everyone hates.)
The problem was none of their campaigning was about this. First they tried to fight fire with fire and win the "vibes" war with that cringe "brat" thing. Then when that failed they pivoted to abstract talk about democracy - obviously this is really important but it's also far-removed from the day-to-day lives of swing voters. At no point did they ever remember that "it's the economy, stupid!"
And so, entirely through unforced errors, they allowed Trump's bollocks to fill the vacuum and become the narrative. Suddenly it was all egg prices and tariffs. He was talking absolute horeshit, but at least he was talking about the main thing Americans cared about. And they just... didn't fight back against this? Just vacated the battlefield? Truly the most incompetent campaign in American political history.
And you know what? I think part of the problem was a lack of confidence. I think there were too many staffers inside the White House and the Democratic Party who did indeed consider Biden a failure in policy terms. Radical dreamers for whom whatever a Democrat president, with all the constraints of reality, did would never be enough. No wonder the insiders ended up running the campaign on variations of the only message they all agreed to - "Trump bad". And if you don't defend your own record, nobody else is going to defend it for you.
Practical “Magic” vs Pragmatic Reality.
Reality always wins; even if it’s ignored.
Thank you Alex , and WELL said.
The people want REAL REPRESENTATIVES. Not elites! From EITHER PARTY.
https://salmun.substack.com/p/the-rural-strategy-democrats-must?r=jt2di