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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Before We Can Look Ahead to 2020, We Must Process These Midterms

Stacey Abrams was the first black female gubernatorial candidate in American history. She should have won in Georgia, but her opponent’s blatant use of voter suppression tactics allowed him to steal the election. In this screenshot, Abrams can be seen giving a TED talk. There, she talked about how people can respond to setbacks. (Video)

It’s almost 2019 where I am, and we’re already gearing up for the 2020 presidential elections. But before we even talk about those elections in depth, we must first look back to the 2018 midterms and process what just happened.

This post is late, although I gave myself a month to finish the last one. (It was tedious work, with the coding and amount of research for races that aren’t entirely settled.) Anyway, I wanted to get this done before New Year’s Day, so this will be my last post of 2018.

That said, what do I think about what transpired? Let’s first do a recap of the 2018 midterm primaries.

Note: This post will, of course, have a left-leaning focus for much of it.

What Can Prevent a Blue Wave? The Democratic Party Can.

Chuck Schumer is the Senate Majority Leader, but he is the worst leaders Democrats could have at the worst time. In this screenshot (video), he is seen during a press conference, attended by a few other congressional Democrats and representatives for teachers’ unions in May 2018. The Democrats were introducing a plank of their “Better Deal” platform. I believe that the Democrats came up with a newer slogan, but I forgot how it went. That’s how forgettable it was.

What could threaten a blue wave in 2018? Quite frankly, the Democratic establishment could. Other top Democratic leaders can, as well.

These midterms should be a referendum on Donald Trump and the Republican agenda, but for both to be successfully rebuked, the opposition needs to be united and to have a cohesive message. Unfortunately, far too many Democratic leaders have gotten in the way of the messages presented by progressives while presenting none of their own. On top of that, these so-called leaders have failed to capitalize on the Republicans’ forced errors and have committed a series of their own missteps.

All these things have threatened to depress the vote and to undermine the energy on the left and make the notion of a blue wave seem like a distant dream. In this post (another LAP — sorry), I will explain why I’ve come to that conclusion.

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The Rift on the Left: An Afterword

Tom Perez is a terrible DNC Chairman. There, I said it. Photo by Mobilus In Mobili (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

When I started this series, I had hoped to get to the bottom of what ailed American liberals and try to find a path forward, but I soon realized that the rift on the left could not just be examined in one or two posts. I outline my thoughts, but outlines had to be updated and reexamined as I became aware of new information and looked into older developments. My thoughts thus grew into a series and this series became my version of the autopsy for the Democratic Party.¹

If you had hoped this post would provide an answer for uniting liberals and progressives, you may be disappointed because the rift on the left is deeper than I thought it was. At first, you might have thought that the problems on the left all stemmed from the 2016 presidential election. Yet those problems were always there and they were fully exposed during that race.

The truth is, a bunch of conversations have been ignored and put off for far too long. It was only a matter of time before things bubbled up and gave rise to a demagogue like Donald Trump.

As I researched this topic, what I found made me more knowledgeable, but angrier than I was when I started this series. In particular, I became angrier at the leadership of the Democratic Party, although there were a few bright spots. And I was angry at the Democratic Party because I realized the national leadership was the problem.

Donna Brazile said that she “found the cancer” when she investigated a joint fundraising agreement the DNC had with the Hillary Victory Fund, but the party is dealing with numerous cancers, mostly tied to money.

Democrats: Who Should ‘We’ Run in 2018? Who Excites Me?

The Senate race in West Virginia excites me. Although I wouldn’t want Joe Manchin’s seat to turn read, he is essentially a Republican.

Who should the Democrats run in 2018? That’s not an easy question to answer, but of course, many people have already started their races for next year.

Let’s cut to the chase: The 2018 midterm elections might be a bloodbath in favor of the Democrats, but only if they play their cards right.

The Rift on the Left: The Current State of the Democratic Party

No, it’s not fine.

What can I say about the current state of the Democratic Party? Oh, boy …

In late July 2017, the Democratic National Committee’s Deputy Vice Chair of Civic Engagement Frank Spencer spoke during a #DNCTakeBack news conference at Politicon. Mr. Spencer took around ten minutes clarifying some parts of the Democrats’ “bold” new platform. Spencer said that the party had listened to the people and would thus promote a populist platform. During the question and answer section, Spencer admitted that the Democrats tried to run as centrists largely because the party’s donors wouldn’t let the party’s candidates run on populist issues.

As it turns out, that news conference in Pasadena, CA was a fake one. It was staged by The Yes Men, with the help of grassroots activists, for a bipartisan audience of 100 people. Andy Bichlaum of the parody duo played the part of a DNC representative who came to talk about the Democrats’ “A Better Deal,” the platform the party had released a week prior.

Bichlaum had a few people going for a while. Yet sadly, in telling people things they wanted to hear, he made a commentary on the sad state of affairs in “the party of the people.”

With that in mind, Let’s review some things I have already talked about in this series, while discussing what has transpired over the past year-and a half.

The Rift on the Left: The Internal Politics of the Democratic Party

This was not a good look.

Now it is time to address the internal politics of the Democratic Party.  If you manage to get through this post, it might make you mad. You might be mad at me for dredging all this up again. Or you will be mad because you’re being reminded of things that got you hot in the first place. Or I might make you mad because I’m telling you about things you didn’t know and wish you hadn’t.

Overall, there are some truly worrying things happening in the Democratic National Committee and within the party on a national level. Unfortunately, I will have to look at the last presidential election because it exposed the party’s current problems. However, there are more problems that have been developing for decades. I do not trace the latter in this post, but they are apparent.

This post is big because in it is a complex topic and I will be looking at six areas that pertain to the DNC and Democratic Party at large. I will start with the unity tour.

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.

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.