@ZimInSeattle but I'm not certain I care much. While I don't want to see any unnecessary suffering or chaos, I don't see the apparatchiks and oligarchs relinquishing control of the party, even to the point of their own destruction. Maybe further losses in 2018 are what it will take to finally be rid of those parasites.

losses in 2018.

@ZimInSeattle Agree with you that they will not change, and to expect even MORE losses in 2018. That would be a good reason to start a 3rd, 99%-centric party. So that Dem losses don't turn into Repub gains. By mid-terms, I expect that most Trump voters will be in the same place I was in concerning Obama and the Dems back in 2010. -Furious that I had been totally taken in, yet again.

I think that if we wait for the Great Donkey to die, it will take longer than we have. we need a new animal in the mix.

losses in 2018.

@Amanda Matthews Then find some better economists with better ideas.

I'd suggest Stephanie Kelton, Warren Mosler and Sandy Darity and the idea of a Guaranteed Jobs Program.

Steve Keen for a modern day debt jubilee.

But I'm open to ideas - but the point is we need ideas, not just opposition to the existing order.

That was hilarious. Reich has a lot of nerve. He and Krugman had a Hell of a lot to do with why we're in this fix, these master 'economists'.

They have 8 years to do something. In the end all they could come up with is "I'm with her".

@eltee What you have written is excellent - you've got it covered - thanks.

To be an economist today you must forever divorce the "political" from the "economy" and only study the economy as if it exists independent of the power structure. An economist who studies and writes about the political economy is labeled "radical" and is unemployable by academia and corporations.

This divorcement has led academic economists to be mere apologists for capital instead of social scientists. They want that Riksbank prize, mislabled a Nobel prize.(There is no Nobel prize for economics - Alfred Nobel created 5 prizes and economics was not one of them.) The Swedish bank prize dates from 1969 and goes to someone in the service to big capital. The winners this year studied the socially useless topic of CEO compensation and argued that the enormous pay packages to them was fully justified - apologetics is what they got their money for.

Squabbling is, for the establishment Dems, a TACTIC to keep everyone so distracted and divided that they won't start discussing all the ugliness and corruption infecting the current Democratic party. And that has been definitely exposed by Wikileaks.

And Reich is helping them with this "Try this one weird trick" essay. He leaves out who is starting all the squabbling but many of us can simply go to TOP's front page to prove that truth. But I digress.

Had he been truly sincere in wanting to help the party find their way again into our hearts, his list would have looked like this:

1. Admit that corruption has infected the party. ADMIT that MONEY CAN AND DOES INFLUENCE politics AND PEOPLE...in VERY, VERY bad and awful ways. Expose the wrong do-ers in your party by providing clear proof that both congress AND THE SUPREME COURT can use to change existing laws. Then go get some American history books and document how we have successfully fixed or prevented corrupt influences in government in the past. Make a report of all this and distribute it as REQUIRED READING to every member of the Democratic party.

2. Now FIX your goddamn party. Everyone in your ranks must focus on ways and methods to made it incorruptible. Implement those ways and methods. And then prove it works. And prove it again. Offer rewards to anyone who can still find (corrupt) bugs in your system. It'll be very much like playing whack-a-mole.

4. Discard all journalist's phone numbers/emails from all DNC rolodexes. Including Reich's. Anyone caught trying to plant stories gets banished immediately. Let reporters come up with their OWN stories. If you want stories written about the GOOD things you're doing here's how: DO GOOD THINGS THAT ARE NEWSWORTHY. Allow ANY journalist to cover your activities. Eradicate any attitudes or efforts to "sell access" in exchange for reporters simply accepting your dictation. Fuck reporter's ego's. Make them to do their own god damn job by arousing their curiosity AND refuse to write their questions for them. Ask vast swathes of reporters to KEEP YOU HONEST. (Because duh, that's THEIR FUCKING JOB.)
4a. For extra credit, do a thesis about why the founding fathers wrote the First Amendment and what they envisioned the role of a free press to be when it came to making Democracy work. Make sure you thoroughly cover the concept of The Fourth Estate and how the press brought down Nixon and ended the Vietnam War. And finally, discuss why today's "free press" can't seem to find their way out of a paper bag. Then...(shock)...go back into history and highlight the stuff that enabled our press to wield enough power to bring down presidents and end wars. Share your findings...find someone who can make it go viral. Send it to every journalist in your Rolodex before those cards away. Again, publicly plea with them to DO THEIR JOBS. (And when DO start doing their jobs, LET them ask anything, anytime, anywhere...DELIGHT in them holding you accountable.)

5. Apologize for encouraging all those mainstream journalists to cover Trump during the primary. Seriously. You don't have to apologize for encouraging them to NOT cover Bernie but the Trump shit was absolutely unforgivable. Own up to it and apologize. Profusely. Don't blame your journalistic toadies. Take full responsibility.
5a. Also admit it doesn't fucking matter who leaked the emails, any more than it mattered who leaked the fucking Pentagon Papers. Does knowing the identity of Deep Throat vindicate Nixon? Seriously, just stop with your Russian shit. No one is buying it except the reporters who are acting as your stenographers.

6. Inform your entire membership that they are no longer allowed to use "they have no where to go" as a legitimate campaign strategy. In fact, anyone caught using it, saying it, writing it, or hinting at it should be banished from the party immediately. This was ALWAYS a bad way to think about things...whoever made this up was just trying to tell you what you wanted to hear. It wasn't the truth. Now you know.

7. Hire a mental health professional to identify all the psychopaths and sociopaths in the party. And banish them immediately. We'll let you do this one quietly.

8. Hire a professional media company to create some entertaining Public Service Campaigns that do quick "Stuff you probably didn't know." And that stuff should be historical facts that SHOW/PROVE our country is wisest when it puts its people over corporations. Such as when we decided to break away from King George and the CORPORATION he had hired to govern us. And then that other time, after WWII, we encouraged people to travel ALL OVER the nation by building our highway system AND subsidizing airlines (while also forcing them to fly to even small cities...) There are so many instances where our country found EXACTLY the right balance between capitalism and socialism (especially before the latter was even a term) that the people's wealth and well being EXPLODED. This is how you build your market. When a critical mass of people begin to "get it" you'll have a shiny new, INCORRUPTIBLE party ready to go for them.

9. Discourage identity politics. Banish "us versus them" mentalities and anything that leverages or encourages that kind of thinking in your ranks. If you don't know how to do this or what I'm talking about...go ask Bernie and then FOLLOW WHAT HE SAYS.

10. Encourage younger people to get into politics and when they do LISTEN TO THEM instead of trying to tell them how they should do it YOUR way. Because YOUR way sucked and is still sucking as of this writing. Let them innovate and for god's sake quit letting old career politicians suck all the air out of the room. Find sincere, honest, diplomatic but passionate new faces that truly want to SERVE the people and/or change the world for the better. If you recruit them...I guarantee we won't be able to get enough of them.

11. Don't let Hillary or anyone connected to her campaigns anywhere near another Dem's campaign. Ever. Any advice you hear or read from any of them should be ignored. Banish her and hers immediately. Admit she was bad for the party and, having made a total disaster of TWO runs for president, she would have been a disaster as the chief executive of the nation. Just do it because you know it's true and it'll allow many of us to breath easier (and more trustfully) that the Clinton infection has been totally eradicated and isn't just laying in wait to re-infect at a later date. Consider this a REQUIRED VACCINATION against future infections.

@eltee @eltee You get to the heart of a great many things about the underpinnings of why both the Dems remain mired in dysfunctional party machinery philosophy and how propaganda thrives in the MSM, with both the Democratic Party and the MSM working together no less.

Love the idea of public service campaigns to show that many of the answers and antidotes to today's Wall St/corporate heist, monopoly ownership of all of our resources and unbridled capitalism are to be found in our past. Just as many sat bemused by Occupy, it's because they didn't know that literally the country was formed through acts of civil disobedience.

The big problem is we don't teach real history to our children, a big impediment being the RW infiltration of the Education boards (DeVos is a glaring and frightening examples by proposed by the Orange Anti-intellect himself) which dumbs it down and propagandizes it. The education system has been sanctioned and sanitized to prop up false and dangerous ideas of American Exceptionalism, the purposely elusive American Dream and the very unhealthy and stupid Worship of the Rich, while conveniently omitting or not emphasizing that the country was founded on civil disobedience.

Overall, we must get people to change their reflexive negative notions of protest to a positive one, in which everyone begins to naturally gravitate toward shutting shit down (i.e. as in France) and feeling comfortable standing together in public against injustice (after all that's all we've got. As Hedges says, "you can't vote against the interest of Goldman Sachs"). Besides being fulfilling, it's fun.

TYT had a good segment on why the Dem party failed that overlaps some of what you are saying:

(damn autocorrect wreaks havoc on me sometimes!)

Squabbling is, for the establishment Dems, a TACTIC to keep everyone so distracted and divided that they won't start discussing all the ugliness and corruption infecting the current Democratic party. And that has been definitely exposed by Wikileaks.

And Reich is helping them with this "Try this one weird trick" essay. He leaves out who is starting all the squabbling but many of us can simply go to TOP's front page to prove that truth. But I digress.

Had he been truly sincere in wanting to help the party find their way again into our hearts, his list would have looked like this:

1. Admit that corruption has infected the party. ADMIT that MONEY CAN AND DOES INFLUENCE politics AND PEOPLE...in VERY, VERY bad and awful ways. Expose the wrong do-ers in your party by providing clear proof that both congress AND THE SUPREME COURT can use to change existing laws. Then go get some American history books and document how we have successfully fixed or prevented corrupt influences in government in the past. Make a report of all this and distribute it as REQUIRED READING to every member of the Democratic party.

2. Now FIX your goddamn party. Everyone in your ranks must focus on ways and methods to made it incorruptible. Implement those ways and methods. And then prove it works. And prove it again. Offer rewards to anyone who can still find (corrupt) bugs in your system. It'll be very much like playing whack-a-mole.

4. Discard all journalist's phone numbers/emails from all DNC rolodexes. Including Reich's. Anyone caught trying to plant stories gets banished immediately. Let reporters come up with their OWN stories. If you want stories written about the GOOD things you're doing here's how: DO GOOD THINGS THAT ARE NEWSWORTHY. Allow ANY journalist to cover your activities. Eradicate any attitudes or efforts to "sell access" in exchange for reporters simply accepting your dictation. Fuck reporter's ego's. Make them to do their own god damn job by arousing their curiosity AND refuse to write their questions for them. Ask vast swathes of reporters to KEEP YOU HONEST. (Because duh, that's THEIR FUCKING JOB.)
4a. For extra credit, do a thesis about why the founding fathers wrote the First Amendment and what they envisioned the role of a free press to be when it came to making Democracy work. Make sure you thoroughly cover the concept of The Fourth Estate and how the press brought down Nixon and ended the Vietnam War. And finally, discuss why today's "free press" can't seem to find their way out of a paper bag. Then...(shock)...go back into history and highlight the stuff that enabled our press to wield enough power to bring down presidents and end wars. Share your findings...find someone who can make it go viral. Send it to every journalist in your Rolodex before those cards away. Again, publicly plea with them to DO THEIR JOBS. (And when DO start doing their jobs, LET them ask anything, anytime, anywhere...DELIGHT in them holding you accountable.)

5. Apologize for encouraging all those mainstream journalists to cover Trump during the primary. Seriously. You don't have to apologize for encouraging them to NOT cover Bernie but the Trump shit was absolutely unforgivable. Own up to it and apologize. Profusely. Don't blame your journalistic toadies. Take full responsibility.
5a. Also admit it doesn't fucking matter who leaked the emails, any more than it mattered who leaked the fucking Pentagon Papers. Does knowing the identity of Deep Throat vindicate Nixon? Seriously, just stop with your Russian shit. No one is buying it except the reporters who are acting as your stenographers.

6. Inform your entire membership that they are no longer allowed to use "they have no where to go" as a legitimate campaign strategy. In fact, anyone caught using it, saying it, writing it, or hinting at it should be banished from the party immediately. This was ALWAYS a bad way to think about things...whoever made this up was just trying to tell you what you wanted to hear. It wasn't the truth. Now you know.

7. Hire a mental health professional to identify all the psychopaths and sociopaths in the party. And banish them immediately. We'll let you do this one quietly.

8. Hire a professional media company to create some entertaining Public Service Campaigns that do quick "Stuff you probably didn't know." And that stuff should be historical facts that SHOW/PROVE our country is wisest when it puts its people over corporations. Such as when we decided to break away from King George and the CORPORATION he had hired to govern us. And then that other time, after WWII, we encouraged people to travel ALL OVER the nation by building our highway system AND subsidizing airlines (while also forcing them to fly to even small cities...) There are so many instances where our country found EXACTLY the right balance between capitalism and socialism (especially before the latter was even a term) that the people's wealth and well being EXPLODED. This is how you build your market. When a critical mass of people begin to "get it" you'll have a shiny new, INCORRUPTIBLE party ready to go for them.

9. Discourage identity politics. Banish "us versus them" mentalities and anything that leverages or encourages that kind of thinking in your ranks. If you don't know how to do this or what I'm talking about...go ask Bernie and then FOLLOW WHAT HE SAYS.

10. Encourage younger people to get into politics and when they do LISTEN TO THEM instead of trying to tell them how they should do it YOUR way. Because YOUR way sucked and is still sucking as of this writing. Let them innovate and for god's sake quit letting old career politicians suck all the air out of the room. Find sincere, honest, diplomatic but passionate new faces that truly want to SERVE the people and/or change the world for the better. If you recruit them...I guarantee we won't be able to get enough of them.

11. Don't let Hillary or anyone connected to her campaigns anywhere near another Dem's campaign. Ever. Any advice you hear or read from any of them should be ignored. Banish her and hers immediately. Admit she was bad for the party and, having made a total disaster of TWO runs for president, she would have been a disaster as the chief executive of the nation. Just do it because you know it's true and it'll allow many of us to breath easier (and more trustfully) that the Clinton infection has been totally eradicated and isn't just laying in wait to re-infect at a later date. Consider this a REQUIRED VACCINATION against future infections.