Why Democrats Suck - A Neverending Story
Two focused and well written examples of how the Democratic Party has sold out poor and working class Americans and why they keep losing elections.
The first article is from The New Yorker's Daily Intelligencer blog:
Democrats Paid a Huge Price for Letting Unions Die
One problem that unions have complained about for fifty years or more is that every newspaper has a Business Section, but they never have a Labor Section. There are a lot of institutional and structural reasons for the decline of American unions.
Eric Levita points out a fundamental political truth:
The GOP understands how important labor unions are to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, historically, has not.
A brief history of the Labor Movement's monumental efforts for Democrats:
With its financial contributions and grassroots organizing, the labor movement helped give Democrats full control of the federal government three times in the last four decades. And all three of those times — under Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama — Democrats failed to pass labor law reforms that would to bolster the union cause. In hindsight, it’s clear that the Democratic Party didn’t merely betray organized labor with these failures, but also, itself.
The decline and fall of American unions:
Between 1978 and 2017, the union membership rate in the United States fell by more than half — from 26 to 10.7 percent. Some of this decline probably couldn’t have been averted — or, at least, not by changes in labor law alone.
Here comes the failure of Neoliberal Democrats:
Nevertheless, there was lot that Democrats could have done — through labor law reform — to shelter the union movement from these changes, and help it establish a bigger footprint in the service sector.
Example one is a betrayal by Barack Obama:
Democrats could have increased the penalties for violating labor law, enabled unions to circumvent the election process if a majority of workers signed union cards (a.k.a. “card check”), and required employers to enter arbitration with unions if no contract was reached within 120 days of their formation — as Barack Obama promised the labor movement they would, in 2008.
Example two:
Or, if they were feeling a bit more radical, they could have repealed the part of the Taft-Hartley Act that allows conservatives states to pass “right to work” laws. Such laws undermine organized labor by allowing workers who join a unionized workplace to enjoy the benefits of a collective bargaining agreement without paying dues to the union that negotiated it. This encourages other workers to skirt their dues, which can then drain a union of the funds it needs to survive.
Why it matters:
If the Democratic Party wasn’t bleeding support from white working-class voters in its old labor strongholds, it would dominate our national politics.
Two very salient questions:
If right-to-work laws alone cost Democrats roughly 3.5 percent of a given state’s vote share, how many votes has the party lost since 1978 by refusing to prioritize progressive labor reforms?
What kind of country would we live in today, if they hadn’t?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/democrats-paid-a-huge-price...
The second article by David Masciota at Salon examines how the Democratic Party dropped the ball on CHIP:
The odd silence surrounding the near death of CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) offers further proof of what is rapidly becoming clear: American politics is adrift from the moral universe.
That observation has been common knowledge at c99p since day one. You could even say it was a fundamental reason for starting c99p in the first place. Masciota also points out the dual failure of the MSM and the Democratic Party:
It is worth examining how and why the American media has become so hypnotized by the transformation of politics into entertainment and the severity of Democratic Party incompetence, that the difference between saving children’s lives, and placing them at greater risk of death, does not rate as a story worthy of coverage or a cause of galvanization.
At one brief point in time the Democratic Party had a moral compass:
The late Senator Edward Kennedy would often argue that the best way to convince skeptical Americans of the efficacy of public health care programs is not to argue for the creation of something new, but merely make the case for the expansion of popular programs that already exist, namely CHIP and Medicare.
The elementary wisdom of Kennedy is long gone, and the bumbling Democrats of today would not know a good argument if it arrived to Capitol Hill in a package labeled, “Good Argument.”
A constant refrain by many of the writers here has been that the real problem is not that Neoliberal Dems "don't know a good argument", but rather that the policy implications are unacceptable to their donor fat cats.
I missed this analysis of polling data, but I am not surprised:
Vox recently compiled polling data to identify a nauseating but not shocking conclusion: Accusations of racism and sexism do not have any measurable impact on President Trump’s approval rating.
While everyone speculates about the Trump pivot to sanity, which will never happen, Democrats should telegraph a more important pivot. They must offer America an alternative and grand vision for the improvement of day-to-day life.
I hope nobody is holding their breath waiting for the Democrat's pivot to a "grand vision".
https://www.salon.com/2018/01/27/democrats-had-an-opportunity-with-the-f...
Comments
It's hard to argue when you have Wisconsin
Wisconsin union membership down nearly 40 percent since Act 10
Living in the past..
Why can't you "barely make it out of High School" and get a decent job at a decent wage anymore?
Why would you pay compulsory dues when you don't have to and apparently get nothing in return for doing so? The workers are voting with their feet every time and that's why Unions can't find a way to keep going. Unless of course it's AFSCME, where they still have real pensions etc, etc. FDR warned you collective bargain for Federal Employees was unacceptable. The part of the New Deal we conveniently ignore.
This is not about a "Party". This is about a fundamental failure of our elected officials and our letting them go on for decades about political advantage for their own self-interest and their desire to stay in Gubmint for Fng decades, cause it's their fng job. The average Union eligible person only hears about the bankrupting of towns and counties and states for unfunded pensions, medical insurance and retirement benefit liabilities that exceed their hope of ever getting ahead.
All people who are the Union are good people. The symbiotic toxic relationship between elected officials and Union Bosses not so much.
Remind me again, Jimmy Hoffa is where?
Sheeple of the world, UNITE!
Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!
Firesign Theater
Stop the War!
Solid Red Wisconsin
That's a description of Wisconsin I saw a week ago. The only politicians I knew about from Wisconsin were Scott Walker and Russ Feingold so I Binged Wisconsin politics and found out that "solid red" is a misleading description of Wisconsin voters. "Solid red" may be accurate from 2010 to the present, but historically the Democratic Party was very competitive:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_Wisconsin
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
The quiet supplanting of Labor sections by Business
sections in all newspapers is a reflection of how the fascists who own them have turned everyone into "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" and against one another in that pursuit.
Add to that the similar every ten minute AM radio business news with Dow Jones and NASDAQ updates.
Everybody's been duped into thinking there just one lottery ticket or Ponzi scheme or financial scam from being the next contestant on the Who Wants To Be The Next Millionaire reality TV series. Instead of thinking collectively in solidarity against the 1%.
What was that joke, the American worker looks at the bosses mansion on the hill and says, "someday I'm going to be there myself." But the Irish worker looks and says, "someday I'm going to get that bastard."
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
The Media Ignore Labor Issues
The first time it was pointed out to me that newspapers don't have Labor Sections was when I was with The Boilermakers & Ornamental Iron Workers union back in 1973-74. I'm guessing the problem goes back further. Not sure if labor issues have ever been well covered by the media.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Isn't it easy to find which campaign promises Obama kept
then to find the ones that he didn't? How hard would it have been to pass card check during his first two years? CHIP could have been funded for 10 years at a time, yet it wasn't because it's used as a bargaining chip every time it comes up. Why haven't the democrats fought back against gerrymandering and ID laws?
The DCCC article blew the door off the democrats saying that when they take back congress they will work for us again. Look at all the things that they didn't work on in 2009-10. But yay, Lily Ledbetter got passed. Did Obama wear his walking shoes that day? The article should tell the people who keep saying that the democrats just need to do this if they want to hold congress again.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Nice List of Obama Failures
This one really irks me:
Republican gerrymandering is widespread but nothing but crickets from Democrats. Nothing about black box voting and returning to paper ballots either. I am totally convinced the Corporate Dems have no interest in honest elections.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Yup. It took me too long to figure that out
Why didn't I see the reason for not enough voting machines in areas that had high democrats voters? People have to wait in line for hours to vote because there aren't enough machines. I kept wondering why they didn't get more so people could vote faster the way republicans voters can. Duh! Because they want people to give up and go home and not vote. Funny how removing blinders let's one see what is happening on purpose, isn't it?
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
This Site Removed My Blinders
I was only partially clued in until I came here. It isn't easy cutting through the information smog coming from the media political consensus.
Another article I read about The Women's March pointed out that it was much larger and more geographically widespread than The Tea Party ever was. The media coverage was far less than coverage of The Tea Party, because The Women's March did not have the full throttled support of the Democratic Party, in the same way that the Republican Party/Right Wing Media helped The Tea Party.
Our struggle will not be easy without a media megaphone. To the best of my knowledge, even Bernie's recent Medicare For All Town Hall received very little coverage from the MSM.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
It took Obama's FISA vote for me to wake up to how
congress doesn't represent us. I feel so stuupid for believing in what he was saying and I should have listened to the people who were trying to warn me.
What did the women's march accomplish last year that they needed to march again to finish it? Nada. None of our protest marches do a damn thing. As you said the media ignores them unless the cops make them become violent. Then the media is all over it. The PTB have put us on warning when they arrested 200 people who protested Trump's inauguration. Even people who were just walking through the area were arrested and charged with felony rioting because a few windows were broken by a few people. Other states are creating legislation that could have consequences for anyone who protects. And we saw how far they were willing to go at the DAPL protests when a private security company was put in charge of them.
Unless there is millions of people in the streets protesting, the door for doing something has closed. I wonder if even a couple million would be what stops them?
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
I'm surprised by
anyone who is asking 'why' about the dems.
They are owned by the $$, that is why.
dfarrah
The Lily Ledbetter List
What you got when you criticized the failings of Saint Obama on Daily Kos. Usually they listed the Lily Ledbetter Act, the early stimulus package, followed by twenty or so line items picked out of the Affordable Care Act. It became their answer to everything. No banksters went to jail? Have a Lily Ledbetter List. Continuation of Bush's NSA spying? Have a Lily Ledbetter List (often accompanied by an accusation of White privilege). War in Afghanistan still going on? Have a Lily Ledbetter List. "Look forward, not backward"(tm)? You guessed it, have a Lily Ledbetter List.
And so it went . . .
Heh, you nailed it
How many times did we see that in comments after we criticized him? It's gotten so bad over there that anyone who says anything that they think is critical gets jumped on. And if you're not into the Russian propaganda, don't bother saying anything.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
The democrats hijacked the recent marches
Speaking of the blue wave that's supposed to be an opportunity for the democrats to change directions if they are the majority party. Again. They have been the majority how many times already and what did they do during the time? Did they work on increasing the minimum wage or undo any of the legislation that was passed during the Bush administration? Nope. They worked to maintain the status quo. I'm not saying anything that you don't already know.
They hold women hostage because of the possibility of the republicans appointing someone who can reverse Roe v Wade. Did they try to increase the minimum wage? Nope. We saw that Hillary thought that incrementally increasing it starting with $12 was the way to go. And her supporters agreed with her. The first woman president didn't want to go boldly where no one had ever been before.
The Clinton foundation doesn't even pay women as much as they do men. Now that shows me what Her stands for. The recent article about the religious dude who sexually harassed a woman who worked on her 2008 wasn't fired and shown the door, he went to therapy and was rehired for her 2016 campaign. Why wasn't he fired?
Sigh
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
I'll never support HRC,
but I think the notion that any man who harasses a woman at work should be fired is ridiculous - except for the egregious acts like Weinstein.
This guy was told to get counseling, and the women was transferred away from reporting to him.
If his behavior showed no improvement, then fire him.
dfarrah
Thanks for the essay!
I looked at that and wondered how much effect the decades of blatant lies and 'crying wolf' have had in blunting or obviating the impact of such objections among the American public. Not to mention the decades of heavy, divide-and-conquer propaganda campaigns directing the public against each other, often on racist grounds, because it's easy to tell when somebody's skin colour's different from your own and this therefore can be drilled in as a Bad And Scary Thing.
Sorta like the way the corporate Dems and corporate Repubs often accuse each other not of what they've done but of evil they can possibly prove they haven't done/or some variation similar/related to evils that they have indeed done - but not accurately, to inoculate each other against accusations of the evils they ought to have been tossed out of public office - and quite often into prison - for; actual abuses and crimes for which even where guilt is known or proven, accountability is almost never an issue for The Right People.
Is it surprising that acceptance of a disastrous and grossly untrue notion that the powerful are supposed to be 'above the law' has been ingrained in some, because they're always been shown by example and told by the powerful that the powerful can enact any and all evil with impunity?
Of course, the corporate Repub's have long done quite a lot of their evil in the open, using media propaganda to make 'right-wing' listeners accepting and even approving of the inflicted abuses, just as the corporate Dems have been doing so heavily of late. Those giant, pathological government-controlling corporations need to discorporate. So we never thirst without water to share. They can all just frack off.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Absolutely. And one remark stands out:
Not any more.
Fault also lies with union leadership corruption. From Hoffa to these people:
Union leafership really isn’t helping.
And imembers are not being represented in regard to union endorsements of political candidates. For example;
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
They helped bankrupt Fiat
Which cost tens of thousands of jobs to be lost after they were bribed with $1.5 million.
What's worse is that many Americans think that unions are bad for the country and people who work in the BART (Bay Area rapid transit) system are paid too much money. And they shouldn't have their generous pensions. Just more of the decades long propaganda that we have been subjected to.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
I try to remain hopeful,
but democrats have been nothing but republicans' Kabuki partner for as long as I can remember.
Mike Taylor
The Democrats are still there
to keep everyone thinking they're the alternative to the Republicans. They're not. They gave away 900 state legislative seats during Obama's tenure to keep the populists from having them. There are now six states with Dem governors and Dem legislatures.
To say that "Democrats had an opportunity blah blah blah" is still to be lost in the fog of fantasy. This WAS the Democrats' opportunity, they took it, and it's been successful beyond their wildest dreams. The Democrats successfully got out of politics and into phoniness and it's paying off in spades. The DCCC now works with the Blue Dog coalition and Emily's List to create "strategies" that keep Democrats from being elected while at the same time destroying the candidacies of Democrats who want to be elected, and they're getting quite a bit of money for themselves in the process.
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/23/dccc-democratic-primaries-congress-p...
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
So it is noted by
Vox, to its dismay, that the continued racism and harassment complaints about Trump have not had an affect on his supporters.
Boo hoo.
This is what happens when you cry wolf over and over and over again.
dfarrah
This may be a bit off topic but...
It all fits in with the stupid neoliberal crap being forced down our throats daily. Look at the following video...and towards the end look at that woman we call Hillary Clinton. When the video was paused by Jimmy, my VERY first reaction was...who's that woman being interviewed? Take a good look at her...I am no where near a conspiracy theorist but isn't that Hillary's double doing the interview? Hillary is known for her "Joker-looking" cheekbones and this woman doesn't have that feature. Plus the voice sounds strange...like it is dubbed or something. Just my impressions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-4FiLJBwL0
Well done is better than well said-Ben Franklin