I haven’t felt much urge to write on politics since Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign. It was such a flagrant subversion of democracy and such a middle finger to the voters the Democrats claim to prize that I’ve pretty much checked out of electoral politics. The Democratic Party is an enemy to all I hold dear and utterly incapable of achieving anything good, and electoral progress will not be possible until it (at minimum) is destroyed. I made my reasons clear last time.
But I still have a lot rattling on my mind, so let’s check in.
International Coups You Probably Ignored
Over in Venezuela, the Maduro government just arrested American mercenaries with a signed contract from Juan Guaido to overthrow the government on his behalf. Whoops. Gee, why were they there? (The actual story of their backing has some pretty weird turns. Roen Kraft?)
The Democratic Party and the Highway to Hell
Let’s see where the Democratic Party stands as of today, May 5, 2020.
After encouraging people to vote in person in the midst of a pandemic, and using the threat of willingly killing off their own voters to pressure Bernie Sanders to suspend his campaign, the Democratic Party is now canceling the New York primary— despite the fact that mail-in voting has been approved and remains perfectly safe. There’s no reason to do this except to throw yet another “fuck you” at Bernie Sanders supporters. (Strategically speaking, they may be trying to keep him from getting enough delegates to negotiate any meaningful reforms.)
As was utterly predictable, the media started covering Tara Reade– a bit and barely— as soon as Biden became the de facto nominee. And when I say “utterly predictable,” I mean utterly predictable:
Sadly, that latter point is also true. One of the most galling aspects of the Reade story is the reaction of liberal feminists. The entire MeToo movement was completely trashed for the political convenience of protecting Joe Biden, the worst and most conservative presidential nominee the Democratic Party has had since 1968. Every politician or writer with a professional brand of Feminist has been twisting themselves in knots to defend Joe Biden, or else just dismissing the allegations altogether, usually with very specious reasoning. From writers such as Amanda Marcotte and Jill Filipovic to politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton (an old article, but like many of her positions, uniquely aged like a turd in the sun) to celebrities who made MeToo their brand like Alyssa Milano, everyone is covering for Joe Biden– including the media.
To a one, all of these Professional Feminist Democrats are making clear that all their professed values in believing women and treating them like equals, or even like they’re valued as people, were merely a matter of political expediency and of professional advancement. (As others have pointed out, these attacks are dishonest bullshit, the same lines of attack conservatives used against Christine Blasey Ford– and for what it’s worth, Reade has more corroboration for her story than Dr. Ford did.) There’s certainly more than enough evidence of Biden behaving inappropriately with girls and women to make this story plausible, atop the increasing number of people who have spoken out to corroborate Reade’s account or to tell their own stories. But Tom Perez is looking the other way.
Meanwhile, Biden Bros online have taken up stalking, death threats, and doxxing Tara Reade. Classy! They’re also calling for Chris Hayes to be fired for talking about the story (not even going in-depth, or offering an opinion, just talking about it), and a prominent Biden surrogate with a history of anti-semitism called for the government to investigate journalists who broke the story.
In the last month, the Democrats have not only abandoned the pretense of representing their actual voting base, but also of having any moral standing over Republicans.
In other news, leading Democrats are either making appeals to Republicans or admonishing their own voters, often in a galling way:
Instead of blaming Black voters for not propping up a Democratic Party that takes our vote for granted without offering anything that benefits our community, Michelle Obama should blame her husband for signing a Blue Lives Matter bill while Black children were being massacred pic.twitter.com/sfWwPx03Uo
— I’m Black and I’m not voting for Biden (@rtyson82) May 4, 2020
Michelle Obama has nicer things to say about George W. Bush than she does about black voters– the same black voters Barack Obama did nothing to help! Indeed, if he wanted their votes, he should have spent more time securing their franchise than mocking their poverty. And if he wanted their votes now, he shouldn’t have worked behind the scenes to nominate Biden and then try to make up for it with cheap rhetorical pablum, the kind his own administration killed any trust in.
Meanwhile, in the field of actual governance, House leadership has completely abandoned any attempts to help people, taking recess and making no efforts to provide aid or relief to ordinary people, only their usual theatrical opposition to Trump combined with an absurd maze of narrowly focused means tested relief programs– and signing off on Trump’s absurd giveaways to businesses and corporations.
Oh yes, and lest I forget:
FUCKING ARMED WHITE SUPREMACIST MILITIAS ARE TAKING OVER GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS
Back to the Democrats:
What is this party doing? Can anyone make a case that they are in any way functioning in the way a political party should– to represent its constituents’ common interests and values and work to gain power? Because it sure looks to me like the Democratic Party is nakedly no longer that.
At best, it’s a group of shiftless elected officials, consultants, and other frauds and grifters primarily concerned with their own power and leverage and paychecks than with any broader political program. To the point that they will tank an election so they can keep raising money to hashtag-resist the opposition, and will throw away every value they claim to fight for to keep the shambling corpse of a candidate they’ve selected from facing scrutiny.
At worst, it’s a group of operatives committed to being capital’s vanguard against the left and preventing a populist, working-class movement from ever gaining power– to the point of utterly refusing to compromise or offer any kind of olive branch to them, to the point of seeking out every opportunity to tell the left “go fuck yourselves,” to the point of going out of their way to piss off and drive those voters from the Democratic Party.
In any case, it’s clear to me that the Democratic Party is an active obstacle to a better future for all of us, and it must go the way of the Whigs if that future is to be brought forth.
If you don’t believe me, ponder this thought experiment:
Assume the Democratic Party is in fact controlled opposition whose only goal was keeping any sort of anti-capitalist, working-class, left-wing movement out of electoral power, before purposely losing to Donald Trump.
What would they be doing differently than they are doing right now?