“We got wiped out…
We’re toxic in the Midwest, and we’re toxic in the South.”
Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan in his failed effort to unseat House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi
Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan in his failed effort to unseat House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi
Leaving one of America’s
most popular presidencies in modern history (the Obama administration), to put
it mildly, the Democrats went from top to bottom on November 8th. They lost the
low-hanging-fruit – the presidency itself – though hubris, mismanagement and a
complete failure to understand social media and how to use it. Recent
accusations from Donna Brazile, who became interim chairwoman of the Democratic
National Committee, echoed by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, that the
Clinton campaign marginalized and manipulated the DNC through severe financial
controls, reflect the backroom infighting that has hurt the Party’s image and
efforts toward unity.
The jury is out if
Russian attempts to sow discord among the electorate, through a clever and often
robotically-implemented social media campaign, created the final tipping point.
Clearly, the American voting structure itself – electoral districts vs a
popular vote – gave rural voters a disproportionate edge, effectively
disenfranchising the approximately 3 million voters who took the majority of
the popular votes to Hillary Clinton. The House, Senate and Presidency… and
increasingly the Supreme Court… are now under GOP control.
Now what? With Democratic
traditionalist Clinton crushed by GOP populist Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders’
strong showing in the primary process, the progressives in the Democratic Party
felt justified to move their platform to the fore… time for a new surge to the
left, a new direction, a new message. Single payer healthcare and dealing with
the untenable student loan debt that was crippling recent college grads were
high priorities. Lots of taxes on the rich and deep scrutiny, suspicion and
regulation of corporate America. A really hard sell to “Americans in the
middle,” the typical deciders in any presidential election. A concept that
might be inevitable but clearly not yet ripe to most Americans.
Clinton-Traditionalists,
led by super-fund-raiser House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, want to return to
their fundamental platforms: making the rich pay higher taxes, passing a higher
minimum wage, fixing Obamacare, reinstituting financial and environmental
regulation and focusing on institutionalized injustices to minorities of every
race, religion and ethnicity. Not enough to get Hillary elected, and now that
the stock market and GDP are up, real estate prices are soaring and
unemployment statistics show a pretty low unemployment rate, Republicans can
take the high ground on the economy… even though rosy numbers belie those
already purged from the work world and the gnawing feeling that we all share
that a bubble burst is looming.
The Dems have lost a big
chunk of their traditional “working class” constituency to Trump, a pile of
voters who are terrified that the new economy is cutting them out and leaving
them irretrievably left behind. These voters have focused on the evils of
“globalization” as having cost them their jobs. They still have not grasped
that globalization is not remotely the job-destroyer that automation has
become. These disenfranchised millions bought into the undeliverable
anti-globalization, GOP pledge of getting their old jobs and earning power
back; they believe the deeply discredited Republican trickle-down economic
policies (rewarding the rich – now falsely labeled as “job creators” – with
deregulation and lower taxes) and all that “good economic news” noted above.
And if these “deliverables” don’t show results, Trump has already set the stage
to blame the swamp, Dems and “disloyal” Republicans.
Will America buy this
strategy? After all, Trump’s “base” is less than 30% of the electorate. First,
Trump isn’t running in 2018, even though if you look at the campaign platforms
of local Democratic candidates, unable to produce a coherent party platform,
you might think he is. Second, somebody forgot that “all politics is local” and
“it’s the economy stupid.” The 2018 mid-terms are all local elections! Third,
the Dems have completely failed to address the job disruption that is
increasingly robbing domestic jobs, white and blue collar, and pushing more
money to the rich owners of those “machines” and away from the folks who used
to do the work that automation has rendered obsolete. Income inequality on
steroids.
The mid-terms aren’t even
a reflection of the administration’s increasingly failing foreign policy, with
“terrorism” and a nuclear war with North Korea being the only real fear factors
that concern most ordinary Americans. Trump isn’t on the ballot!!!
Is Bernie the Dem’s
“savior”? Hey, Bernie ain’t a Democrat no more! It was a very short stint as a
Dem, but Bernie is back to being a Vermont “independent.” Left-leaning
Elizabeth Warren is currently the leader of that progressive movement. Sorry,
Elizabeth, but you are probably a decade too early to convince that “middle-or-the-road”
packet of election deciders into a new socialist direction. Bernie may rail and
complain, but his choice of leaving the Democratic Party pulls him out of much
of the platform-forming process. So far, the progressive voice has been brushed
aside by Party leaders.
What’s more, the Dems
have other factions jockeying for planks in a going-forward platform: the Black
Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, the conservative Blue Dogs and the New Democrats,
among others. As fiscal conservatives with a conscience leave the increasingly
radical Trump Republican Party – the latest to drop out is Arizona Republican
Senator, Jeff Flake – there is growing group of “middle-of-the-road”
Republicans without a voice. Democrats-in-training? But all the Dems could
muster is a pile of generic hogwash called a “Better Deal,” a stunningly
underwhelming attempt at rebuilding a new pan-Democratic message. And the
same-old-same-old stumbled forward… or sideways.
Back on November 30th,
Nancy Pelosi produced a two-thirds plurality to get reelected House Minority
Leader. “[Her] only opponent was Tim Ryan, a young congressman and former high
school quarterback star from Ohio’s 13th District, the ailing industrial region
surrounding Youngstown and Akron…
“Pelosi won easily, but
fully a third of the Democratic caucus voted against their leader, and Ryan’s
insurrection seemed to have left a mark: After the election, three well-liked
and nonrebellious members — Cheri Bustos of Illinois, Hakeem Jeffries of New
York and David Cicilline of Rhode Island — were chosen by the caucus to help
manage the rebranding of the party. The three of them spent the first half of
2017 dutifully interviewing nearly every member of the caucus and conducting
more than a dozen listening sessions with authors, pollsters and former Obama
cabinet secretaries. They hosted a dinner at which the party’s various factions
[of the Democratic Party] mingled as if meeting for the first time…
“In late July, Pelosi,
Bustos, Jeffries and Cicilline stood on a stage with six other Democrats under
a wiltingly hot summer sky in the city park of Berryville, Va. — a town of
4,306 residents in a purple district within easy driving distance of Washington
— and unveiled their new agenda, titled ‘A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better
Wages, Better Future.’ The phrase, which had been poll-tested by the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee, was an intentional echo of F.D.R.’s New Deal
— and, less intentionally, of a Papa John’s pizza slogan. But its biggest debt
was to the author of ‘The Art of the Deal,’ and to his crimson-jowled populism.
“‘A Better Deal’ called
for retraining in America’s fading manufacturing sector [seriously skipping
over the automation issue], renegotiating trade deals [a Trump cry], raising
the minimum wage to $15 an hour and fighting the corporate consolidation that
had affected the prices of everything from eyeglasses to beer. None of the 10
speakers invoked President Barack Obama. In fact, one of the key provisions in
‘A Better Deal’ — renegotiating drug prices for Medicare recipients — was an
implicit rebuke of the former president, who had agreed with the pharmaceutical
industry to freeze Medicare drug prices in exchange for its support of the
Affordable Care Act.
“But even before the
rollout, Pelosi diminished the substance of ‘A Better Deal’ in an interview
with The Washington Post, clarifying that it was not ‘a course correction, but
it’s a presentation correction.’ A Quinnipiac poll in August found that only 33
percent of Democrats and 12 percent of independents had a favorable opinion of
the new Democratic agenda. The self-consciousness of the rebranding, one
congressman mused to me at the time, ‘seems like what you would do in a
different era.’…
“[San Diego House
Democrat, Scott Peters said,] “organizationally, the party is in disarray.
We’re at the lowest level of elected officeholders since Hoover. We got a bit
lazy and found ourselves relying on Barack Obama’s charisma, and it left us in
bad shape.’
“Barring seismic
developments, [since there are more long-standing GOP incumbents than Dems
running in the mid-terms,] the G.O.P. is still likely to control both the White
House and the Senate until at least January 2021. But nine months into Trump’s
presidency, the chances of the Democrats’ retaking the House are much better.
Multiple polls in recent months have shown generic Democratic candidates
beating generic Republicans by as many as 15 points— a spread that, in past
elections, correlated with winning more than enough seats for the Democrats to
gain a House majority next year. And if they do, the consequences will be
enormous. A Democrat-controlled House in 2019 would very likely derail the
Republican legislative agenda. It could also conceivably set the stage for
impeachment proceedings against the president — a move that many Democrats have
openly proposed for months now.” New York Times, November 1st.
The Democrats need to
update their message, embrace the obvious, and focus heavily on voter turnout –
even as that GOP majority of state legislatures clings to imposing voter
restrictions and depends on gerrymandering – among minorities and younger and
usually better-educated voters (who stayed away in droves on November 8th). If
they do not take over at least one branch of Congress – the House or Senate –
they will be forced to watch the United States reconfigure into Trump’s vision
of America… as passive but helpless witnesses to that ugly transition.
I’m
Peter Dekom, and somewhere, the Dems need to listen to the man who lost to
Nancy Pelosi or enjoy the disaster they will foment.
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