Can We Work Within the Democratic Party? (My Response to CalicoJack)

On November 3, 2020 (Election Day in the United States), I published an extraordinarily long post in which I discussed my thoughts about the presidential election, why I would not vote for the top two candidates running (Joe Biden and Donald Trump), and the prospect of voting third-party. I don’t know who read that post (it was long and I wrote some things that many people will disagree with), but I was always ready to defend my views because I have been sitting with those thoughts for a very long time.

On Monday, November 16, 2020, I received this comment from CalicoJack regarding the post:

CalicoJack

Howdy Shmaltz!

I understand your frustration with the two-party system and your desire to vote third-party, but I don’t agree. I’ll distill my argument to this: why do you think Sanders ran as a Democrat and not as a third-party candidate. He never thought he could win apart from a heady month or so in 2016 and another in 2020. So, why’d he do it? Because he recognizes that true reform and change in the US will not come from revolution and throwing out the Constitution for a re-written one. If you think the powers that be control elections, you can be damn sure they’ll control that process. But, through incremental — although he was going for more than incremental change — from the inside. He pushed the Overton window to the left. It is now imperative that we take advantage of that by electing Democrats who can enact legislation and reforms that will be left-leaning.

Democracies will always be centerist governments. Democracies blend the voices, opinions, and desires of their electorates. In a sense they average us. The fundamental flaw in our democracy is that it is dominated by big money interests and that was before Citizen’s United. The only way out of it, though, is by electing Democratic majorities who are right now responding to the progressive element of the party and willing to pass electoral reform. By 2022, they likely will have moved on. New issues will be on the table and the electorate will be regressing towards the mean.

My opinion is that we work within the system to move it to the left because democracies will always hover around the middle.

Huzzah!
Jack

November 16, 2020 at 10:24 pm  

This comment was thoughtful, and it was rich, but I must respectfully disagree with Jack here. Now, I wanted to respond to him under the original post, but to avoid writing a monster comment under a monster post, I decided to write out a thorough response in another post.

Before I continue, I must warn you: I plan to go hard against powerful people in this post. I don’t like to shame voters, but I won’t be surprised if this post offends some people who read it. However, there is a difference between shaming voters, which I don’t really care for and trying to hold politicians accountable.

Now, what do I want to say? For starters, I would like to talk about why Bernie Sanders ran in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. Other topics in this post include: how feasible it is the work within the Democratic Party, what the Democratic Party should have been in this two-party system, and what the fundamental flaws in the American system of government are. As a bonus, I want to talk about the need for a new Constitution, despite how hard it may be to get one.

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So, Politico Ran a Hit Piece About Our Revolution …

On May 21, 2017, Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote a hit piece on Our Revolution, a group founded by former Bernie Sanders staffers. In his article, Dovere used internal struggles within the less-than-2-year-old organization to take aim at Sanders and one of his surrogates, Our Revolution President Nina Turner. While it was firmly established that the organization was independent of the Independent senator from Vermont …

Sanders, who is legally separated from Our Revolution, does not keep up with its day-to-day activities and has expressed discomfort with attacks by affiliates of Our Revolution against some politicians.

Dovere still tried to establish that the organization was a reflection of Sanders and that its stumbles could hurt him politically.

Bernie Sanders’ top operatives formed “Our Revolution” after he lost the 2016 primaries to keep his army organized and motivated — and potentially prepare for another presidential run in 2020.

Beyond that, Dovere decided to highlight comments and whispers that Turner was using the organization to promote her own interests. Some bits of information sounded bad at face value. For example:

• Our Revolution was pulling in less money than it did during the same period in 2017.
• Some candidates, board members, and state chapters were frustrated with the endorsement process.
• Dovere said the group was affected by Nina Turner’s personal aspirations.
• Allegedly, there was a dustup over Turner’s decision to hire Tezlyn Figaro, Turner’s personal consultant.

Are any of these things true? Most of this is a stretch. Now, I would like to pull select quotes from his article, so I can counter the weakest points Dovere made and break down the anatomy of a smear job.

The Rift on the Left: The Bernie Sanders Effect

Sen. Bernie Sanders is a source of hope and disdain, depending on whom you ask (on the left). Why is that so? There are a least a few obvious reasons.

How did Bernie Sanders become a factor in the 2016 election and what were the long-term effects of his candidacy?

To be quite honest, I never really heard of Bernie Sanders until a few years ago. That should tell you how little I paid attention to politics.

Yet from 2010-2012, I could only find one person who consistently praised Sanders. I thought, “What makes this Senator so special?” without bothering to do much research on him. At the time I was preoccupied with life in general and trying to finish up school.

By the time 2016 rolled around, I began to know more about this independent Senator from Vermont. And it became clear why he had a growing following. But he was running as a Democrat and going up against the eventual Democratic nominee. The odds were stacked against him and I never really expected him to win.

However:

As the primary went on, Sanders was closing the initial gap between him and Clinton. At the same time, the race on the Democratic side was getting more contentious. Naturally, there was bickering as the Clinton and Sanders factions were getting louder.

The acrimony between the factions increased as Sanders supporters accused the DNC of collusion and vote-rigging and they were being chided for various reasons. I will get into these accusations in subsequent posts, but I address part of the anger here.

The Rift on the Left: We Have to Revisit the 2016 Presidential Election

Finally! After months of research, I can now present my in-depth breakdown of the 2016 presidential election. In keeping with the overall theme of this series, this post will cover a lot of the narratives an immediate fallout.

Originally, I wanted to take a look at the highlights I can remember from the past election, beginning in the spring of 2015. However, I thought about it and realized that I needed to simplify things for myself by separating the overall themes and making a timeline later, for my own purposes. I still ended up putting some extra work in.

Unfortunately, it’s hard for me to summarize the election without going through all the important highlights (and there are so many to mention). Therefore, I am skipping to the end and pointing out some things I feel are important.

That said I cannot get into the aftermath without first looking at the important issues leading up to the 2016 presidential race and discussing the three most important players in the race. And after that, I want to discuss the following narratives that came out of this election.

About Hillary Clinton’s New [Burn] Book

You’re not alone, Hillary. I couldn’t believe what happened on Election Night. Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr. Some rights reserved.

This is a couple of days late, but I wanted to weigh in on What Happened, a new book that dropped on September 12. Well, after looking at a number of reviews and find a buttload of quotes, I would call this a burn book because it contains a series of essays where Hillary Clinton unloads on a bunch of people including James Comey, Jill Stein, Vladimir Putin, The Bohemian Professor, and The Sad Bambino.

The Reception of this book was mixed (even before the official release), which is to be expected of the offering of such a polarizing figure.

The have been a number of memes where Twitter users shared photoshopped images of the book.

pic.twitter.com/o1x6X2qQdM

— Trumpism 9.0™ (@Team_Trump45) September 3, 2017

There was even a controversy with Amazon reviews.

But the book tour has been selling out in blue states and sales of the book itself have already set 2017 records.

Now what do I think of the book? Well, I haven’t read it. However, I have found some in-depth reviews and I have found quite a few quotes from the book to boot.

Based on the limited information I have, this is a non-review. But it looks like the book is covering everything Clinton has already said about this past election ad I do have thoughts on those areas.

Here goes.

The Rift on the Left: An Overview

The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election started in earnest, but things soon became heated between two factions: The Hillary Clinton wing of the party and the “insurgent” Bernie Sanders Wing of the Party. This is an overview. Image via Disney | ABC Television Group/Flickr (Some rights reserved).

Just like I did for my Sexism in Naruto series, I’m going to give an overview for this one. It’s been awhile since I made the introduction for this series, so I want to leave my readers with something.

Now, I have already started writing a couple of posts in this series, but I cannot move forward until I write the 2016 Presidential Election Recap. That will be the hardest post for me to write but only due to the sheer volume of research and writing I still need to do.

We Need to Talk About the Rift on the Left

The rift on the left was made more apparent during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Photograph by A. Shaker/VOA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The 2016 election was one of the ugliest in recent memory. I know many will agree with me on that, but for different reasons. Regardless, one thing that cannot be ignored is how this past election — and the primary alone — exposed the chasms that already existed within the Democratic Party and deepened the rift on the left overall.

My Thoughts on Obama’s Planned Fall Speech

President Barack Obama went to the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. with his daughters, Sasha and Malia, on November 29, 2014 to promote Small Business Saturday. Credit Evan Vucci/Associated Press

This past week, it was revealed that former President Barack Obama signed a contract to speak at the Cantor Fitzgerald LP’s planned health care summit. According to the terms of the contract, Obama could back out if there are any scheduling conflicts or any other concerns. If Obama does give a speech, he will receive $400,000.

That announcement was soon met with some grumbling on the left, notably from two highly regarded U.S. senators.

My Thoughts on Hillary Clinton’s Leaked Audio

This past week, many of us may have heard about the leaked audio from one of Hillary Clinton’s fundraisers. The fundraiser in question took place on February 16, 2016 and the speech lasted close to 50 minutes.

The Washington Free Beacon obtained the leaked audio and shared it on SoundCloud. Now, while the accompanying article from the news outlet focused on Clinton’s Nuclear concerns, many people could not ignore the comments Clinton made about her opponents in the race and specifically, the comments Clinton Bernie Sanders’ supporters.

My Bernie Sanders Meme (WAW)

Did someone say Bernie Sanders?

Hey everyone. This will be another short Write Anything Wednesday post.