Cross-posted from GoS.

Mainstream thinking, not just Republican thinking, is consistently wrong. Justification and support for the Iraq War? WRONG. Catastrophically wrong. Multi-generational even. Centennial even. An amazingly catastrophic mass lapse of establishment "reason" indeed.

It is too easy to blame Republicans and the mainstream media for the whole thing.Why? Because the truth, or rather the fraudulence, was there in plain sight the whole time for anyone who could and wanted to know it. The Democratic Establishment, including HRC, deliberately chose to ignore all that and adopt the language of the revenge-seekers, the military solution promoters, the warmongers, the war profiteers. They gave obviously, disastrously wrongheaded thinking respect and currency in mainstream dialog. Either because of colossally bad judgement and/or outright cowardice. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. And we have paid dearly and will continue to do so for decades.

Quoting Chris Matthews, "How could we let a man of limited rhetorical skill lead us into war?", one commenter noted, "What do you mean WE white man?"

HRC was (and still is) just such a person. Many, many people are willing to give her (and themselves???) a pass for her disastrous role in cowing to the establishment groupthink, a very prominent, public role. UM, NO! If she were otherwise an iconoclast, someone who routinely thinks outside the box, someone who actually is, as some insist, "her own person," giving her a pass might not be entirely misguided. Given that she is a mainstream groupthinker, perhaps ever since her traumatic experience with HillaryCare twenty-three years ago, neither she (nor Kerry before her), deserve any such pass. They consistently drink from the Beltway Kool-Aid, and it is an unfolding disaster and a gathering shitstorm for the middle class, the biosphere, world peace and national security all at the same time.

Consider also beltway economic logic lo these past few decades, essentially Reaganomics, which has

1) effectively made un- and under- employment an accepted staple, full employment a bygone aspiration,
2) led to slashing the value of the minimum wage by two-thirds and decimated the middle class, the majority of workers today, while
3) simultaneously diverting 95% of the proceeds from productivity to the 1%, all with a straight face, as if this is acceptable, normal, even, to some people, desirable, even evidence that the rising tide is lifting all ships. WTF?

And some of these people are numbers, money people. Mainstream Democrats have told me our new Gilded Age is a good thing because rising tide. When 95% of the ships rise on 5%, 1% rise on 95%? Our poor people live well you say? This is good how? This is acceptable why? Establishment economic groupthink and its followers are to be endorsed and supported why?

(In fact, Bernie Sanders recently reported from some source that it is now 99% of gains that go to the 1%. So, in the other common analogy, it turns out growing the pie is NOT helping everyone. Not only are people getting less of the original pie, they are getting almost none of the new pie. And the establishment isn't blinking over that, either.)

How do I know that people aren't blinking over 1% getting 99% of the economic gains in our society?

First, because many believe that the fact the 1% is getting that 99% is not because of three decades of stacking the deck but because the 1% EARNED it. That because many of them work hard they deserve whatever they can get their hands on before the money is distributed. They believe that any significant (not token) effort to level the playing field is unfair and/or dangerously disruptive to markets. They believe that protecting TBTFB and the Wall St. Mob is more important than fixing the system that wiped out millions and millions of people. They believe that any effort to broadly distribute the gains is not a matter of distributing those gains in a fairer, healthier manner for all but of re-distributing the money that the 1% EARNED. Charity. Charity they may endorse, but charity nonetheless. As in no one else works hard and deserves more of the money up front, before it is appropriated by the speculators, er, "job creators." As in none of it is actually OUR money pre-appropriated by legalized theft. BULLSHITE.

Second, because they consider HRC a viable candidate for the Democratic Party, for the political organization that is the only bulwark in this society for democracy. They think that someone 1) thoroughly entrenched in the business and political establishment, 2) thoroughly versed in its fraudulent, self-serving language on how the economy (of the 10%) "works" (best with limited to no regulation), 3) completely bought to protect the status quo from any but the most incremental (insufficient) change that will never keep up with the ongoing rigging of the system (e.g., TPP), 4) who hasn't championed a substantive economic advance for the 99% since HillaryCare, especially not without simultaneously giving credence to other, far more impactful, offsetting regressive ideas and policies. [Ditto for her ideas on defense and national security. She is THOROUGHLY enmeshed in MIC groupthink, which is a security disaster, a foreign policy disaster, and a crony disaster capitalism disaster.]

How many ways does the establishment and one person that thoroughly epitomizes it have to be wrong to be the WRONG candidate for a supposedly "Democratic" Party? How far from not only not promoting but actually destroying democracy does one person have to be in order to be the WRONG candidate?

The only reason this can happen is because the establishment of the Democratic Party and its blind partisan supporters are brainwashed by the same establishment groupthink of the Republicans, Wall St. and the executive and investor classes, the groupthink that sees and justifies everything through the lens of producing enormous profits for a small number of people, a very bad thing for civilization and the biosphere, which is casually justified as being inevitable and normal:

Iraq War. Check.
Pass Patriot Act to gut the Bill of Rights. Check.
Military Commissions to further gut due process. Check.
Pass energy legislation to unleash fracking hell. Check.
Pursue compromise with scorched earth Party, wasting the opportunity of a generation. Check.
Fail to prosecute war crimes, adopt neocon policies and practices. Check.
Bail out the banks, not the mortgage holders. Check.
Allow the banks to essentially use bail-out funds for bonuses. Check.
Let the credibility of Wall St. go completely unchallenged. Check.
Let the banks who created the worst crash in 80 years run Scott Free. Check.
Allow robo-signing to defraud victims. Check.
Slap hand of Ratings Agencies. Check.
Ignore all the blatantly fraudulent subprime-backed securities sold.
Ignore the tens of trillions of dollars of toxic derivatives sold.
Allow rampant, dubious foreclosures. Check.
Leave derivatives un-regulated, check.
Allow TBTFB to grow exponentially, check.
Allow profits to be privatized, risk to be socialized. Check.
Shared responsibility with the victims. Check.
Follow through on Afghanistan surge even while the economy is in turmoil. Check.
Pre-empt public option, truly affordable univeral healthcare. Check.
Attempt Grand Bargain? Check.
Fail to modify filibuster rules for five years of obstruction? Check.
Limit modification of filibuster rules to appointments? Check.
Fail to make much use of new filibuster rules until eve of loss of the Senate? Check.
Sequestration? Austerity? Check. Check.
Attempt Chained CPI cut to safety net? Check.
Records numbers of additional drillable acres in ever more fragile habitats? Check.
Fail to pursue aggressive student loan relief for graduates in a market ruined by the establishment? Check.
Continue to aggressively pursue, lock-up minor drug offenders? Check.
Continue to aggressively pursue ICE raids, deportations? Check.
Continue to ratchet up terrorism fear-mongering while antagonizing recruitment populations, increasing blowback? Check.
Mass surveillance? Check.
Militarize police forces nationwide? Check.
War on Whistleblowers, blank check for exposed wrongdoers. Check.
Pursue TPA while demonizing Democratic opponents? Check.
Pursue TPP power grab for the .1% as a "trade" policy, even at the risk of having a chilling effect on Climate Change mitigation, again, while demonizing those speaking truth to power? Check.

How many ways? Endlessly. One bad establishment groupthink decision after another. Pile 'em high. No matter how horrendous. Wrong as DICK CHENEY. As predictable and certain as death and taxes is the force of wrong-headedness and treachery in this establishment.

Better than the Republicans? On economics, defense, national security, civil rights of dissenters; hardly. Enough to matter for the health of the 90%, democracy, the biosphere and world peace? NO FUCKING WAY. NO FUCKING WAY.

All while beating up on those who are consistently right. All while driving away more than 70% of the voting populace, the interpretation of and response to which: WRONG and WRONG.

Fact is, the Democratic establishment is in no position to criticize the Republican establishment for 47% attitudes or its ability to judge whether or not the Iraq War is a good idea. They sup from the same establishment groupthink that assumes the 47% are lazy and imbibe the same blowback-inducing kool-aid; they too are unconscionably mindless and consistently WRONG.

"What do you call a dying middle class?"

You call a dying middle class:

Irrelevant and/or "recovered."
Quaint. A veritable unicorn, like democracy.
Time for more cooperation with Wall St., the MIC, and the executive and investor classes. More trickle-down, lower paying, part-time jobs. Trust us.
Time for more concentration of income, wealth and power.
Time for incremental bandaid "solutions" to shut up whiners, AKA the 90%.
Time to elect another neoliberal dynasty member.
Time to smell the inevitability and give into increasing decline.

[With her background in hedge fund management, Chelsea will be a cinch for implementing the "final solution" to the middle class while installing the final brick in the Wall of Hedgemony.]

Never is the question asked: is our establishment and its supporters learning?

The answer quite clearly is NO.

Hiring someone who
1) is only now getting wise to the fact we have a rigged system (and even then only because there is a hue and cry and she is running for office, not through any interest or insight of her own),
2) will never go after the establishment culprits on Wall St. or in the executive and investor classes,
3) will never pursue truly meaningful regulatory reform and/or enforcement against the business and finance establishment,
4) will not attack the fraudulent, WRONG groupthink concepts at the root of this disaster economy,

is worse than stupid. It's irresponsible. It is a betrayal to our descendants. Betrayal heaped on betrayal of a Party that built the greatest middle class ever and is now conspiring to systematically destroy it and democracy it purports to love, by giving ever greater wealth and power to a few.

And to think that the poor are singled out for bad judgement and decisions.

If this Party rank & file knows what is good for it, it will 1) reject the insane idea that HRC is a solution, 2) pull out all the stops to elect Bernie Sanders, 3) hoist him and a gaggle of like-minded representatives into power in '16, and get on with the business of promoting a democratic civilization.

Is Sanders perfect? No. Is he pure? No. Is he a messiah? Hardly. Except in comparison to HRC. In comparison to people like HRC, Obama, Rahm, Chuck and the rest of the serious establishment groupthinkers cum self-serving oligarch lapdogs, Sanders and Elizabeth are fucking demi-gods.

On a related topic, establishment supporters may want to get on the TPP thing. One way is to NOT give HRC a pass. Consider it her 3AM WAKE-UP CALL. Because if it goes through, it is going to be as big a disaster as the election of George W. Bush for the 90%. No better test of her credibility on challenging the establishment groupthink: clear, unequivocal rejection of disastrous 1% power grab masked as "trade" policy.

Another case in which the establishment groupthink is WRONG and HRC is AWOL.

I've spent the last twenty-three years voting for people who forfeited the economy to the 1%, bargaining that they could get my vote for one or two social issues. Social issues I have fought and marched for anyway. Well, I'm not making that bargain anymore. Other people may be willing to sacrifice the lower and middle classes and a free, open democratic society itself for an advance here and there on a given social issue, but I no longer am. I'm done with that loser's divide and conquer gambit. United on the platform we stand, divided on pet issues we fall. Either the Party recommits itself unwaveringly to economic justice for the 99% or it holds NO INTEREST to me and gets none of my support. It's not that I don't care about social issues, it's that I refuse to be played while I watch 90% of the economy suffer and democracy be treated like a unicorn. I'm having none of it. You want LGBT rights? Get Bernie in the WH. You want reproductive rights? Get Bernie in the WH. No credible champion for economic justice for the 90%? No vote. Period. You think HRC is an easier sell (I don't)? Tough. Time for the establishment supporters to suck it up, set aside their WRONG attitudes and EARN the votes of the DFHs who have consistently been RIGHT. It was acceptable until we stopped accepting it, and more and more of us no longer accept it. Get Bernie in the WH. Period.

The establishment routinely, arrogantly DECLARES WAR on the progressive Left. This is a counter-declaration. Put up for the Democratic Party platform--the entire platform--or STFU on our votes. And that's just for starters. END OF DEBATE.

On a related topic, THIS.