Institutional Democrats

I think I’ve made it clear enough that I think Republicans are reprehensible representatives of the bigoted, misogynous, rascist authoritarians that make up the 30% of the United States population who think the War Against Slavery was a War of Northern Aggression, and greedy parasitic Plutocrats that feel dispossessed and robbed now that that it’s illegal to hold and breed Humans as property so they can benefit from their labor without paying for it.

They are hopeless. The only thing to be done is to render them powerless and impotent and let time reduce them to quaint but dangerous relics of a darker era.

Unfortunately Institutional Corporatist Democrats need them to excuse their own corruption as the ‘lesser evil’ and individuals like Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Emanuel, and a host of others gave them a pass in 2008 when their criminal behavior was manifest and their enterprise should have been destroyed and it’s leaders incarcerated.

It remains the fact that the best hope for Left values to prevail is a takeover of the Democratic Party though it is also true that Anti-Slavery Parties sprang up in mere decades to achieve electoral dominance. One might think that their persistent and overwhelming defeats since 2008 might of chastened them and persuaded them to abandon their Mammon worship of Neo Liberalism and Identity Politics, but this is not the case. Therefore Direct Action is required.

Tom Perez Apologizes for Telling the Truth, Showing Why Democrats’ Flaws Urgently Need Attention
by Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
2017-02-09

The more alarmed one is by the Trump administration, the more one should focus on how to fix the systemic, fundamental sickness of the Democratic Party. That Hillary Clinton won the meaningless popular vote on her way to losing to Donald Trump, and that the singular charisma of Barack Obama kept him popular, have enabled many to ignore just how broken and failed the Democrats are as a national political force.

An endless array of stunning statistics can be marshaled to demonstrate the extent of that collapse. But perhaps the most compelling piece of evidence is that even one of the U.S. media’s most stalwart Democratic loyalists, writing in an outlet that is as much of a reliable party organ as the DNC itself, has acknowledged the severity of the destruction. “The Obama years have created a Democratic Party that’s essentially a smoking pile of rubble,” wrote Vox’s Matthew Yglesias after the 2016 debacle, adding that “the story of the 21st-century Democratic Party looks to be overwhelmingly the story of failure.”

A failed, collapsed party cannot form an effective resistance. Trump did not become President and the Republicans do not dominate virtually all levels of government because there is some sort of massive surge in enthusiasm for right-wing extremism. Quite the contrary: this all happened because the Democrats are perceived – with good reason – to be out-of-touch, artificial, talking-points-spouting automatons who serve Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the agenda of endless war, led by millionaires and funded by oligarchs to do the least amount possible for ordinary, powerless citizens while still keeping their votes.
…
(D)emanding that one refrain from critiquing the Democratic Party in order to exclusively denounce Trump over and over is akin to demanding that one single-mindledly denounce cancer without worrying about who the treating doctor is or what type of research is being conducted to cure it. Trump happened because the Democrats failed. And he and similar (or worse) phenomena will continue to happen until they are fixed.

The obvious determination of Democratic establishment leaders to follow the same failed and dreary course explains why the race for DNC Chair has become so heated. In reality, that position is little more than a functionary role – mostly focused on fund-raising and building the party apparatus at the state level – but whoever occupies it does serve as a leading public face of the party.
…
(I)n Tom Perez’s conduct, one sees the mentality and posture that has shaped the Democratic Party: a defense of jobs-killing free trade agreements that big corporate funders love; an inability to speak plainly, without desperately clinging to focus-grouped, talking-points scripts; a petrified fear of addressing controversial issues even (especially) when they involve severe human rights violations by allies; a religious-like commitment never to offend rich donors; and a limitless willingness to publicly abase oneself in pursuit of power by submitting to an apology ritual for having told the truth.

That is the template that has driven the Democratic Party into a ditch so deep and disastrous that even Vox acknowledges it without euphemisms. That is the template that has alienated voters across the country at all levels of elected office and that enabled the Donald Trump presidency. And it is the template that Democratic Party establishment leaders are more determined than ever to protect and further entrench by ensuring that yet another detached, lifeless functionary who embodies it becomes the next face of the party.

One can spend all of one’s time and energy denouncing Donald Trump. But until the systemic causes that gave rise to him are addressed and resolved, those denunciations will do little other than generate social media benefits and flattering applause from those already devoted to opposing him. Focusing on and attempting to counter the fundamental flaws of the Democratic Party is not a distraction from #TheResistance; it is a central priority, a prerequisite for any kind of success.

Not that Keith Ellison is any prize. He is simply, as the “pragmatists” put it, the lesser of two evils.