Democracy Is Messy-- But Fascism Has Nothing To Do With Democracy

I was just 16 when I got my only paid job ever working for a political campaign. I operated the elevator in Bobby Kennedy's Senate campaign headquarters in Manhattan. I was thinking of Kennedy today in regard to the Trumpist terrorists' pictures I see parading around with their assault weapons protesting public health measures designed to save our country from the pandemic. "Democracy is messy, and it's hard," Kennedy famously said. "It's never easy." I don't remember when he said it or in what context. He was assassinated on June 6, 1968, just as my teenage years ended.

Neither fascism nor political assassination, however, are part of messy democracy. Yesterday the NY Times published an essay by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Neil MacFarquhar, The Coronavirus Becomes a Battle Cry for U.S. Extremists. Short version: "White supremacists seek to stoke the fear and disruption caused by the pandemic to push their agenda and to recruit. America’s extremists are attempting to turn the coronavirus pandemic into a potent recruiting tool both in the deep corners of the internet and on the streets of state capitals by twisting the public health crisis to bolster their white supremacist, anti-government agenda."

I admire how Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is standing up to them and I was happily surprised to see Mississippi Tate Reeves ignore them and back off from his open-up-the-state decision after he saw the pandemic infections badly spiking in his state. And I despise how California Governor Gavin Newsom is terrorized by them-- although maybe the pretend Sir Galahad is more terrorized by his corporate financiers than by the clowns-in-camoflage.

Although the protests that have broken out across the country have drawn out a wide variety of people pressing to lift stay-at-home orders, the presence of extremists cannot be missed, with their anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic signs and coded messages aimed at inspiring the faithful, say those who track such movements.

April is typically a busy month for white supremacists. There is Hitler’s birthday, which they contort into a celebration. There is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the domestic attack 25 years ago that killed 168 people and still serves as a rallying call for new extremist recruits.

But this April, something else overshadowed those chilling milestones. It was the coronavirus, and the disruption it wreaked on society, that became the extremists’ battle cry.

Embellishing Covid-19 developments to fit their usual agenda, extremists spread disinformation on the transmission of the virus and disparage stay-at-home orders as “medical martial law”-- the long-anticipated advent of a totalitarian state.

“They are being very effective in capitalizing on the pandemic,” said Devin Burghart, a veteran researcher of white nationalists who runs the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a Seattle-based research center on far right movements.

What success the groups have had in finding fresh recruits is not yet clear, but new research indicates a significant jump in people consuming extremist material while under lockdown. Various violent incidents have been linked to white supremacist or anti-government perpetrators enraged over aspects of the pandemic.

The New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness said in March that white supremacists have encouraged followers to conduct attacks during the crisis to incite fear and target ethnic minorities and immigrants. “We have noticed domestic extremist groups taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic by spreading disinformation,” Jared M. Maples, its director, said in a statement. The coronavirus has been dismissed as a hoax, painted as a Jewish-run conspiracy and, alternatively, described as a disease spread by nonwhite immigrants, he said.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security warned law enforcement officials throughout the United States of the mobilization of violent extremists in response to stay-at-home measures, according to a senior law enforcement official and a congressional staff member, who were not authorized to discuss the warning publicly.

A department memo dated April 23 noted the recent arrests of individuals who had threatened government officials imposing coronavirus-related regulations. The memo was distributed to law enforcement “fusion centers” that counter terrorism nationwide and to congressional committees, the officials said.

Extremist organizations habitually try to exploit any crisis to further their aims. While not monolithic, a spectrum of organizations-- from anti-immigrant groups to those with a variety of grievances and those that overtly espouse violence-- found something to like about the coronavirus.

“They view it as a chance to turn people,” said Megan Squire, a professor at Elon University in North Carolina who tracks online extremist chatter.

New material sprouts regularly on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, while those exiled from mainstream platforms migrate to less-policed venues, including Telegram, Reddit, 4chan and gaming sites.

One subculture known as “accelerationists” lives in constant expectation of a race war that will topple the federal government. The pandemic became the latest in a long line of possible igniters.

Some label their expected second civil war “the boogaloo,” and experts have tracked a spike in interest in the term on social media, plus a proliferation of advice on how to prepare.

The name is a pop culture reference derived from a 1984 movie flop that became a cult classic called “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.” It went through various mutations and emerged sometimes as the “Big Igloo or the “Big Luau.” That is why adherents sometimes wear Hawaiian shirts, say those who track them. Many such shirts were in evidence when armed protesters stormed the state capital in Lansing, Mich., Thursday and they have appeared in rallies across the country.

Enthusiasts riff on the name, calling themselves “boojihadeen” or “the boog.” Not all those in the “boogaloo” movement are white supremacists, but groups who track hate culture find some overlap in terms of Nazi iconography and other extremist symbols.

There are some 125 such groups on Facebook, more than 60 percent created this year, according to a report from the Tech Transparency Project of the Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog group.

Facebook, which had previously said it wrestled with the term because it is also the name of a popular music genre, issued a statement on Friday saying it would remove posts that link the term to violence. “We’re updating our policies to prohibit the use of these terms when accompanied by statements and images depicting armed violence,” said a Facebook spokesman, who spoke on the condition of not being identified, as per company policy.

A common thread found on the internet is that Americans might soon be pitted against their government. In one YouTube video called Top 5 Boogaloo Guns, which has more than 340,000 views, the host warns of “a tyrannical government and you have got to take to the streets and take care of business.” The speaker was wearing a Hawaiian shirt decorated with pineapples and grenades.

Engagement with violent extremist content online in states with extended stay-at-home orders grew 21 percent in early April compared with the eight previous months, according to a report by Moonshot CVE, a start-up that monitors extremist searches on Google.

ISD Global, a London think tank that studies American social media, found that subscriptions to extremist channels also jumped markedly.

There is special concern that impressionable adolescents, bored and spending countless hours online, will be swayed by the hateful material.

This concern was amplified by the revelation in the Estonian newspaper Eesti Ekspress that a leader of a neo-Nazi organization called the Feuerkrieg Division was 13 years old. He had discussed setting up a terrorist training camp, shared bomb-making information and vehemently opposed a proposed merger with the Atomwaffen Division, another accelerationist group that endorses violence.

After President Trump tweeted that he was temporarily stopping immigration in response to the pandemic, the mood among white power advocates ranged from jubilation to cautious optimism.

When Mr. Trump’s suspension proved temporary, some still celebrated that a once fringe talking point had gone mainstream, while others expressed disappointment online.

“Whoop-dee-do,” wrote one critic on a Telegram channel frequented by white supremacists.

Several recent plots have been linked to people that frequented such discussions.

Timothy R. Wilson, 36, an extremist suspected of planning an attack on a Missouri hospital, was killed in a shootout with F.B.I. agents in late March. An F.B.I. statement said he was “motivated by racial, religious, and anti-government animus.”

The federal government sought to harness the pandemic as an “excuse to destroy our people,” Mr. Wilson wrote on an online channel for violent neo-Nazi groups, Dr. Squire said, while also describing it as a Jewish “power grab.”

An Arkansas man, Aaron Swenson, 36, had used an alias to “like” more than a dozen “boogaloo” Facebook pages, said the Tech Transparency Project report. He then went on Facebook Live on April 12 to announce that he was hunting for a law enforcement officer to ambush and execute in Texarkana, Texas, where the police arrested him, according to a police statement.

Mr. Swenson, who remains in jail on $85,000 bail, was charged with making terroristic threats, evading capture and carrying a weapon illegally. He plans to enter a plea of not guilty, said Rick Shumaker, the chief public defender for Bowie County, Texas. No court date has been set.

In a twist, the coronavirus prompted at least one white supremacist to reinvent himself as a disease expert.

Previously, Tom Kawczynski advocated turning New England into a white-run monarchy. After the pandemic erupted, he recast himself as a virus expert, starting a “Coronavirus Central” podcast that is among the most popular on coronavirus themes offered by Apple.

Mr. Kawczynski’s former sentiments did not entirely disappear. With virus cases expanding in New York and elsewhere nearby in early April, he suggested on Twitter that New England had to work “independently for survival.”

Tom Guild is the progressive alternative to one of the half dozen most right-wing Democrats in Congress, Blue Dog Kendra Horn. Tom teaches law at Oklahoma City University and, after armed right-wing terrorists succeeded in forcing Stillwater to reverse its ruling mandating all people using the newly reopened salons, barber shops, restaurants, gyms, museums, movie theaters, etc, I asked him about the rise of fascism during the pandemic. He told me that "It is very concerning that America has a wobbly national government, led by a president who seems to be in over his head-- way over his head. When someone seriously suggests to his chosen scientific experts at a public press conference that household disinfectants can be injected or ingested by humans to kill the coronavirus, he’s clearly not only ignorant but not firing on all cylinders. Wealth and income inequality create a giant chasm between a tiny group of haves and a huge cohort of have nots and create social unrest and destabilization. Massive poverty magnified by unemployment headed to twenty-five percent in a short period of eight weeks creates the mass instability that is fertile soil for crackpots, extremists, and demagogues. Hopefully people’s better angels will prevail. However, the current crisis has accentuated preexisting problems and given racists, anti-Semites, the KKK, xenophobes, and demagogues a climate in which to sow their hate, unleash their venom, and try to manipulate and take advantage of people who in what used to pass for ordinary times wouldn’t give them the time of day. It’s an unsteady, wobbly, and fertile stage for crackpots to exploit. I want to hope that America is better than this and I think rational thinking will prevail. But it is scary to imagine that the haters could make headway in a difficult and painful time in our country’s history. My favorite prayer is, 'God please grant me patience, and could you please hurry.'"





Eva Putzova, an Arizona progressive, taking on a conservative Blue Dog incumbent, also noted that "The terrorist threats from white supremacists, anti-semites, and right wing extremists, encouraged by the President with a wink and a nod, are quite disturbing. The COVID-19 pandemic and stay-at-home orders have  provided them with an excuse to target immigrants, government officials, liberals, Jews, and others as a threat to their 'way of life' they believe. One difficulty in responding to their armed incursions into public spaces is that most people are adhering to the public health recommendation to stay home-- so the streets belong to those who flout those recommendations. We need more public officials to speak out and condemn these armed mobs of white extremists, and we need to insist that law enforcement protect public officials and prosecute those who threaten them in accordance with the law. But most importantly, we need a resurgence of democratic involvement at all levels of society to counter the armed thuggery of the few. This means voting of course, but it also means other forms of active, creative, political  participation consistent with the current constraints of public health restrictions. We simply cannot allow fascist mobs to take over all public spaces while the majority of us are avoiding others and trying to stay safe."

My uncle witnessed Mussolini's final splash on the world stage

Something Happened Yesterday... Will It Last?

Yesterday President Obama was in Milwaukee for Labor Day, and as we mentioned in our Bill Hedrick post, he announced, at long last, the kind of massive infrastructure enterprise that Americans are calling out for-- Americans, but not John Boehner and his obstructionist partisan cronies. Just minutes before I read about the President's intention to go for the infrastructure projects, Paul Krugman's column appeared in the NYTimes warning that Obama would be making a big mistake if he didn't. His thesis all year has been that "the president’s policies have limited the damage, but they were too cautious, and unemployment remains disastrously high. More action is clearly needed."

President Obama’s economists promised not to repeat the mistakes of 1937, when F.D.R. pulled back fiscal stimulus too soon. But by making his program too small and too short-lived, Mr. Obama did just that: the stimulus raised growth while it lasted, but it made only a small dent in unemployment-- and now it’s fading out.

And just as some of us feared, the inadequacy of the administration’s initial economic plan has landed it-- and the nation-- in a political trap. More stimulus is desperately needed, but in the public’s eyes the failure of the initial program to deliver a convincing recovery has discredited government action to create jobs.

Obama's most effective and most progressive cabinet member traveled with him to Milwaukee's Labor Day celebration, Secretay of Labor Hilda Solis. Before they got there she had written an OpEd for the Houston Chronicle in which she discussed what her department is attempting to accomplish:

I know that as we mark Labor Day this year, many workers in Houston, the state of Texas and the nation as a whole are feeling more anxious than festive. Like other places in America, Houston has felt the harshness of the recession. But this administration is committed to the city's workers and to ensuring they all have the skills and opportunities they need to work again.

From the day I walked into the Department of Labor more than a year and a half ago, my vision has been to achieve "good jobs for everyone." My goal is for all people, regardless of ethnicity, gender or age, to have access to a good job. And I know I have much work ahead of me.

But it's really up to the President. And, like I said, he's coming through. Since Boehner was on TV right away whining about how Obama was being mean to Republicans-- who, after all, tanked the economy with their class warfare politics of greed and selfishness-- I have a suspicion he's on the right path.

[T]he problems facing working families are nothing new. But they are more serious than ever. And that makes our cause more urgent than ever. For generations, it was the great American middle class that made our economy the envy of the world. It’s got to be that way again.
 
It was folks like you, after all, who forged that middle class. It was working men and women who made the twentieth century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today-- the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans, those cornerstones of middle class security that all bear the union label. 
 
And it was that greatest of generations that built America into the greatest force for prosperity, opportunity and freedom the world has ever known. Americans like my grandfather, who went off to war just boys, returned home men, and traded one uniform and set of responsibilities for another.  Americans like my grandmother, who rolled up their sleeves and worked in factories on the home front. When the war was over, they studied under the GI Bill; bought homes under the FHA; raised families buttressed by good jobs that paid good wages with good benefits.
 
It was through my grandparents’ experience that I was brought up to believe that anything is possible in America. But they also knew the feeling when that opportunity is pulled out from under you. They would tell me about seeing their fathers or uncles losing jobs during the depression; how it wasn’t just the loss of a paycheck that stung. It was the blow to their dignity; their sense of self-worth. I’ll bet a lot of us have seen people changed after a long bout of unemployment; how it can wear down even the strongest spirits.
 
So my grandparents taught me early on that a job is about more than a paycheck, as important as that is. A job is about waking up every day with a sense of purpose, and going to bed each night fulfilled. A job is about meeting your responsibilities to yourself, to your family, to your community. I carried that lesson with me all those years ago when I got my start fighting for men and women on the South Side of Chicago after their local steel plant shut down. I carried that lesson with me through my time as a state senator and a U.S. Senator. I carry that lesson with me today.
 
And I know that there are folks right here in Milwaukee and all across America who are going through these kinds of struggles.  Eight million Americans lost their jobs in this recession. And while we’ve had eight straight months of private sector job growth, the new jobs haven’t been coming fast enough. Now, the plain truth is, there’s no silver bullet or quick fix to the problem. Even when I was running for this office, we knew it would take time to reverse the damage of a decade’s worth of policies that saw a few folks prosper while the middle class kept falling behind-- and it will take more time than any of us wants to dig out of the hole created by this economic crisis.
 
But on this Labor Day, there are two things I want you to know, Milwaukee. Number one: I’m going to keep fighting, every single day, to turn this economy around; to put our people back to work; to renew the American Dream for your families and for future generations.
 
Number two-- and this I believe with every fiber of my being: America cannot have a strong, growing economy without a strong, growing middle class, and the chance for everybody, no matter how humble their beginnings, to join that middle class. A middle class built on the idea that if you work hard and live up to your responsibilities, you can get ahead – and enjoy some basic guarantees in life. A good job that pays a good wage.  Health care that’ll be there when you get sick. A secure retirement even if you’re not rich. An education that’ll give our kids a better life than we had.  These are simple ideas. American ideas.

I was thinking about this last week. On the day I announced the end to our combat mission in Iraq, I spent some time, as I often do, with our soldiers and veterans. This new generation of troops coming home from Iraq has earned its place alongside that greatest generation. Like them, they have the skills and training and drive to move America’s economy forward once more. And from the time I took office, we’ve been investing in new care, new opportunity, and a new commitment to their service that’s worthy of their sacrifice. But they’re coming home to an economy hit by recession deeper than any we’ve seen. And the question is, how do we create the same kind of middle class opportunity my grandparents’ generation came home to? How do we build our economy on the same kind of strong, stable foundation for growth?
 
Well, anyone who thinks we can move this economy forward with a few doing well at the top, hoping it’ll trickle down to working folks running faster and faster just to keep up-- they just haven’t studied our history. We didn’t become the most prosperous country in the world by rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn’t come this far by letting special interests run wild. We didn’t do it by just gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We did it by producing goods we could sell; we did it with sweat and effort and innovation. We did it by investing in the people who built this country from the ground up-- workers, and middle-class families, and small business owners. We did it by out-working, out-educating, and out-competing everyone else.
 
Milwaukee, that’s what we’re going to do again. That’s what’s been at the heart of all our efforts: building our economy on a new foundation so that our middle class doesn’t just survive this crisis-- but thrives once we emerge. And over the last two years, that’s meant taking on some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for too long.
 
That’s why we passed financial reform that provides new accountability and tough oversight of Wall Street; reform that will stop credit card companies from gouging you with hidden fees and unfair rate hikes; reform that ends the era of taxpayer bailouts for Wall Street once and for all.
 
That’s why we eliminated tens of billions of dollars in wasteful taxpayer subsidies to big banks that provide student loans. We’re using those savings to put a college education within reach for working families.
 
That’s why we passed health insurance reform that will make coverage affordable; reform that ends the indignity of insurance companies jacking up your premiums at will or denying you coverage just because you get sick; reform that shifts control from them to you.
 
That’s why we’re making it easier for workers to save for retirement, with new ways of saving your tax refunds, a simpler system for enrolling in plans like 401(k)s, and fighting to strengthen Social Security for the future. And to those who may still run for office planning to privatize Social Security, let me be clear: as long as I’m President, I’ll fight every effort to take the retirement savings of a generation of Americans and hand it over to Wall Street. Not on my watch.
 
That’s why we’ve given tax cuts to small business owners. Tax cuts to clean energy companies. A tax cut to 95 percent of working Americans, just like I promised you on the campaign. And instead of giving tax breaks to corporations to create jobs overseas, we’re cutting taxes for companies that put our people to work here at home. 
 
That’s why we’re investing in growth industries like clean energy and manufacturing. And you’ve got leaders here like Tom Barrett and Jim Doyle who have been fighting to bring those jobs to Milwaukee and to Wisconsin. Because we want to see the solar panels and wind turbines and electric cars of tomorrow manufactured here. We don’t just want to buy stuff made elsewhere; we want to grow our exports so the world buys products that say “Made in America.”
 
Because there are no better workers than American workers, and I’ll place my bet on you any day of the week. When the naysayers said we should just let the American auto industry vanish and take hundreds of thousands of jobs down with it, we said we’d stand by them if they made the tough choices necessary to compete once again-- and today, that industry is on the way back.
 
Now, another thing we’ve done is make sound and long-overdue investments in upgrading our outdated and inefficient national infrastructure. We’re not just talking new roads, bridges, dams and levees; but also a smart electric grid and the broadband internet and high-speed rail lines required to compete in the 21st century economy. We’re talking investments in tomorrow that are creating hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs today.
 
It was because of these investments, and the tens of thousands of projects they spurred all over the country, that the battered construction sector actually grew last month for the first time in a long time. Still, nearly one in five construction workers are unemployed. And it doesn’t do anybody any good when so many American workers have been idled for months, even years, at a time when there is so much of America to rebuild.
 
That’s why, today, I am announcing a new plan for rebuilding and modernizing America’s roads, rails and runways for the long-term.
 
Over the next six years, we are going to rebuild 150,000 miles of our roads-- enough to circle the world six times. We’re going to lay and maintain 4,000 miles of our railways-- enough to stretch coast-to-coast. We’re going to restore 150 miles of runways and advance a next generation air-traffic control system to reduce travel time and delays for American travelers-- something I think folks across the political spectrum could agree on.
 
This is a plan that will be fully paid for and will not add to the deficit over time-- we’re going to work with Congress to see to that. It sets up an Infrastructure Bank to leverage federal dollars and focus on the smartest investments. It will continue our strategy to build a national high-speed rail network that reduces congestion, travel times, and harmful emissions. It will cut waste and bureaucracy by consolidating and collapsing more than 100 different, often duplicative programs. And it will change the way Washington spends your tax dollars; reforming the haphazard and patchwork way we fund and maintain our infrastructure to focus less on wasteful earmarks and outdated formulas, and more on competition and innovation that gives us the best bang for the buck.
 
All of this will not only create jobs now, but will make our economy run better over the long haul.  It’s a plan that history tells us can and should attract bipartisan support. It’s a plan that says even in the still-smoldering aftermath of the worst recession in our lifetimes, America can act to shape our own destiny, to move this country forward, to leave our children something better-- something lasting.
 
So these are the things we’ve been working for. These are some of the victories that you helped us achieve. And we’re not done. We’ve got a lot more progress to make. And I believe we will.
 
But there are some folks in Washington who see things differently. When it comes to just about everything we’ve done to strengthen the middle class and rebuild our economy, almost every Republican in Congress said no. Even where we usually agree, they say no. They think it’s better to score political points before an election than actually solve problems. So they said no to help for small businesses. No to middle-class tax cuts. No to unemployment insurance. No to clean energy jobs. No to making college affordable. No to reforming Wall Street. Even as we speak, these guys are saying no to cutting more taxes for small business owners. I mean, come on!  Remember when our campaign slogan was “Yes We Can?” These guys are running on “No, We Can’t,” and proud of it. Really inspiring, huh?
 
To steal a line from our old friend, Ted Kennedy: what is it about working men and women that they find so offensive?
 
When we passed a bill earlier this summer to help states save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, nurses, police officers and firefighters that were about to be laid off, they said “no” to that, too. In fact, the Republican who’s already planning to take over as Speaker of the House dismissed them as “government jobs” that weren’t worth saving. Not worth saving?  These are the people who teach our kids.  Who keep our streets safe. Who put their lives on the line for our own.  I don’t know about you, but I think those jobs are worth saving.
 
We made sure that bill wouldn’t add to the deficit, either. We paid for it by finally closing a ridiculous tax loophole that actually rewarded corporations for shipping jobs and profits overseas. It let them write off the taxes they pay foreign governments-- even when they don’t pay taxes here. How do you like that-- middle class families footing tax breaks for corporations that create jobs somewhere else! Even a lot of America’s biggest corporations agreed the loophole should be closed, that it wasn’t fair-- but the man with the plan to be Speaker is already aiming to open it up again.
 
Bottom line is, these guys refuse to give up on the economic philosophy they peddled for most of the last decade. You know that philosophy: you cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires; you cut rules for special interests; you cut working folks like you loose to fend for yourselves. They called it the ownership society. What it really boiled down to was: if you couldn’t find a job, or afford college, or got dropped by your insurance company-- you’re on your own.
 
Well, that philosophy didn’t work out so well for working folks. It didn’t work out so well for our country. All it did was rack up record deficits and result in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
 
I’m not bringing this up to re-litigate the past; I’m bringing it up because I don’t want to re-live the past. It would be one thing if Republicans in Washington had new ideas or policies to offer; if they said, you know, we’ve learned from our mistakes. We’ll do things differently this time. But that’s not what they’re doing. When the leader of their campaign committee was asked on national television what Republicans would do if they took over Congress, he actually said they’d follow “the exact same agenda” as they did before I took office. The exact same agenda.
 
So basically, they’re betting that between now and November, you’ll come down with a case of amnesia. They think you’ll forget what their agenda did to this country. They think you’ll just believe that they’ve changed. These are the folks whose policies helped devastate our middle class and drive our economy into a ditch. And now they’re asking you for the keys back.
 
Do you want to give them the keys back? Me neither. And do you know why? Because they don’t know how to drive! At a time when we’re just getting out of the ditch, they’d pop it in reverse, let the special interests ride shotgun, and hit the gas, careening right back into that ditch.
 
Well, I refuse to go backwards, Milwaukee. And that’s the choice America faces this fall. Do we go back to the policies of the past? Or do we move forward? I say we move forward. America always moves forward. And we are going to keep moving forward today.

Yesterday I also got a note from Alan Grayson reminding me about another Democratic hero, one who was murdered before he was able to reach the presidency, Robert F. Kennedy. From the first time I ever met Grayson he's been talking with me about how to make the lives of ordinary Americans better-- not what one usually hears from many politicians. Yesterday's letter was classic Grayson:

Today is Labor Day. All across America, millions of people are discovering that the best way to celebrate Labor Day is by not working.

Do you live to work, or do you work to live?

If you are married, look at your wedding album; are there any pictures in there of you at work?

And on your tombstone, do you want it to say, "I wish that I could have spent more time at work"?

Here is what Robert Kennedy had to say about this, 42 years ago:

"Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that-- counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

When Robert Kennedy said these words, the unemployment rate in America was 3.7%. Today, it is almost three times as high. Too many of our working brothers and sisters are out of work, thanks to over a decade of economic mismanagement. 10% of us are unemployed, and the other 90% work like dogs to try to avoid joining them. Which is just what the bosses want.

But it doesn't have to be that way. I look forward to a Labor Day where every worker has a job, every worker has a pension, every worker has paid vacations, and every worker has the health care to enjoy life.

My opponents call that France. I call it America, an America that is Number One.

Not #1 in wasted military expenditures.

Not #1 in number of foreign countries occupied.

Number One in jobs. Number One in health. Number One in education. Number One in happiness.

As Robert Kennedy famously said, "I dream of things that never were, and ask 'why not?'" Why not? Let's make it happen.

And then all of us who are Americans, including the ones today who are jobless, homeless, sick and suffering, we all can then say, "I am proud to be an American."

Are you with me?

At Blue America we sure are, and we want so, so much to be with Obama too. So, so much, the way we were yesterday.

Does The Democratic Party Stand For Something Beyond Just A Career Vehicle For A Bunch Of Mostly Slimy Political Hacks?

The Democratic Party of founder Thomas Jefferson certainly did (ergo: the Declaration of Independence, vociferously and violently opposed by conservatives). The Democratic Party transformed by William Jennings Bryan certainly did ("We will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them 'You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold'"). The Democratic Party of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt certainly did. The DLC and Blue Dog conservatives-- predominantly reactionary southerners-- have a very different vision of the Democratic party than the progressives who have made it mean something hopeful to millions of Americans. With Blue Dogs and DLC scumbags endeavoring almost as hard as their Republican allies to maintain the status quo, derail health care reform, turn back the clock on women's choice, deny equality to gay men and women, ignore the dual looming climate change/energy crisis and, most important, keep the corrupt corporate money flowing in their direction, I thought it might be a good time to re-familairize ourselves with something Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a great Democrat, said when I was just a schoolboy, working for him (as an elevator operator in his NYC campaign headquarters):

In this entire century the Democratic Party has never been invested with power on the basis of a program which promised to keep things as they were. We have won when we pledged to meet the new challenges of each succeeding year. We have triumphed not in spite of controversy but because of it; not because we avoided problems but because we faced them. We have won not because we bent and diluted our principles, but because we stood fast to the ideals which represent the most noble and generous portion of the American spirit.

What a slap in the face to corporate shills and other conservative Democrats! It isn't just seeing how bribe-besotted DLCers like Evan Bayh (IN), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Ben Nelson (NE) and Mary Landrieu (LA), and equally corrupt and even more conservative Blue Dogs like Mike Ross (AR), Jim Cooper (TN), Bobby Bright (AL), Travis Childers (MS), Jim Marshall (GA), John Barrow (GA) and Heath Shuler (NC), are selling out the fundamental principles and values of the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, the Roosevelts and the Kennedys that brought RFK's quote to mind. It was also a post written yesterday by Digby at Hullabaloo that reminded me of his words.

Following up on dday's post below, can I just ask if those of you who are older than 35 or so are getting that strange familiar feeling? You know the one, where the media are suddenly hostile to the president, the Democrats are running for the hills and the country is confused and doesn't know what to think? The one where cable news gets obsessed with manufactured wingnut shitstorms designed to distract and diminish the president's stature and sap his political capital just when he needs it the most? We've seen this movie before, haven't we?

...Obama's "problem," as it is for all Democratic presidents, is that he is allegedly "out of step" with the people --- like Matthews and his firefighter brothers, and that cop in Cambridge and Rush and other Real Americans who are upset about how "liberal" he's being with his tax 'n spend health reform and the horrible deficits and his defense of loudmouthed black professors who are no better than they ought to be. You can feel the Big Money, the right wing noise and the Village all starting to find their collective voice and take control.

You can blame Obama for walking into the lion's maw, as I'm hearing many of his allies do today-- liberals always blamed Clinton for failing to be perfect too. But believe me, there's no way to avoid this stuff when the frenzy begins. Once they smell blood they always find something.

Yes, they do-- and they always have. Let me string some quotes together from Mike Lux's inspiring book, The Progressive Revolution as he wraps up a discussion of how Democrats have tried to deal with conservative fear mongering-- some with caution (some might say cowardice) and some with Hope.

The entire history of American political debtae can, in some sense, be described as the argument between the hope of progressives for a better future vs. the fear of conservatives who want to protect the way things are now... [They rant about how they] fear the democratic mob. Fear of the freed slave. Fear of a liberated woman destroying the traditional family. Fear of freethinkers destroying traditional religion. Fear of communism. Fear of gays and lesbians. Fear of hippies, "free love," and the drug culture. Fear of the immigrant. In a bizarre twist Social Darwinism gave us fear of the weak, and in the modern version of Social Darwinism, Reagan gave us fear of the poor on welfare. Post 9/11, you can now add in the ever-potent fear of terrorism.

The Republican conservatives' fear-mongering on behalf of the elites and the status quo has been met with cautious conservatism-- very comfortable conservatism in most cases-- by careerist Blue Dogs. That's the Democratic Party at its worst and when it's least effective as a vehicle for the goals and aspirations of our country's working families. The opposite is Hope. And it's too early to tell if Hope, for a man whose first appointment was corrupt, reptilian Wall Street shill Rahm Emanuel, was more than a smart campaign slogan.