How Much Better Off Would The Country Be If The Two Establishment Parties Just Disappeared?

Apparently George Washington was both prescient and correct when he warned, in his "farewell address" (1796), that political parties serve "always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection."

The Founders made a big mistake, though-- still not corrected all these years later-- in not including the choice "none of the above"-- in all elections. The country's politics would likely be a lot different-- and probably not worse.

Yesterday we had Washington's prescient on full display on day one of The Trump Show, a "convention" with no platform, just a shameful and repulsive pledge of allegiance to a cult of personality presidency. In effect, this is the 2020 Republican Party platform:

WHEREAS, The RNC enthusiastically supports President Trump and continues to reject the policy positions of the Obama-Biden Administration, as well as those espoused by the Democratic National Committee today; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda;

RESOVLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention;

RESOLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention calls on the media to engage in accurate and unbiased reporting, especially as it relates to the strong support of the RNC for President Trump and his Administration; and

RESOLVED, That any motion to amend the 2016 Platform or to adopt a new platform, including any motion to suspend the procedures that will allow doing so, will be ruled out of order.

Although no sitting Republican members of Congress have the guts to stand up to the Nazification of the GOP, yesterday Fox News reported that that a couple dozen ex members of Congress have endorsed Biden. Three are conservative former senators: Jeff Flake (AZ), John Warner (VA) and Gordon Humphrey (NH). And former members of the House include:

• Steve Bartlett (TX)
• Bill Clinger (PA)
• Tom Coleman (MO)
• Charlie Dent (PA)
• Charles Djou (HI)
• Mickey Edwards (OK)
• Wayne Gilchrest (MD)
• Jim Greenwood (PA)
• Bob Inglis (SC)
• Jim Kolbe (AZ)
• Steve Kuykendall (CA)
• Ray LaHood (IL)
• Jim Leach (IA)
• Connie Morella (MD)
• Mike Parker (MS)
• Jack Quinn (NY)
• Claudine Schneider (RI)
• Chris Shays (CT)
• Peter Smith (VT)
• Alan Steelman (TX)
• Bill Whitehurst (VA)
• Dick Zimmer (NJ)
• Jim Walsh (NY)

Former Staten Island Republican Congresswoman Susan Molinari spoke at the Democratic Convention last week and also endorsed Biden. Lookin' good for Biden, right? Yeah, I guess. Trump is down by about 10 points in the new CBS/YouGov poll. But-- look again-- independent voters seem to have drifted back in Trump's direction-- and that should be very worrying.

What did you make of the video up top? As someone who supports clean government, abhors corruption and doesn't believe in voting for lesser evils, there's nothing on earth that would get me to ever vote for Biden (let alone Trump), but I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from following their own conscience and telling themselves that getting rid of Trump-- the existential threat-- and then "dealing with" the lesser threat once Biden is in the White House, is paramount. Best of luck with that, kids.

This was an encouraging MI-06 poll result yesterday. Hoadley is a progressive state Rep and Upton is a hereditary multimillionaire and Trump enabler:

I posted it on Twitter and one wag replied: When is Biden going to endorse Upton, something he did in 2018, helping the conservative Republican win against a progressive Democrat.

Have you read about the People's Party convention coming up next Sunday, August 30? Speakers include Cornel West, Nina Turner, Jimmy Dore, Ryan Knight, Marianne Williamson and Mike Gravel. I won't argue with this and wish them all the best and will do what I can to help support them in my own small way. I mean doesn't this sound good?

Our vision is a major new progressive populist party that will deliver what regular people take for granted in so many other countries: single-payer health care, free public college, money out of politics, an infrastructure jobs program, a $15 minimum wage, financial regulations, and more.

We need actual representation in our government. A majority of people in the US don’t feel represented by either the Democratic or Republican parties. We’ve watched these parties turn their backs on us to answer every call of the billionaires and donors. Overwhelming numbers of Americans understand these parties cannot be salvaged. Polls show that almost two out of three Americans are now calling for a major new party.  It’s time to build the party we’re looking for-- one that brings us all together.

When the pandemic hit, the Democrats and Republicans spent trillions of dollars bailing out Wall Street while leaving tens of millions of people unable to afford food and housing. Movement for a People’s Party, along with our partner organizations, led more than fifty rallies, on two different Saturdays in July, to let members of Congress know: “Do the right thing, help the people, or we will evict you from office!”

The Movement for a People’s Party continues to stand in solidarity with the communities whose pain and struggle have been deeply exacerbated these past few months.

At Too Much Information yesterday, David Sirota went after Rahm Emanuel and the corrupt Republican wing the Democratic Party he represents. "Progressives," wrote Sirota, "are told to keep quiet until after the election-- meanwhile, corporate Dems are blasting out divisive ideological messages that could demoralize Democratic voters and depress turnout... [A]t the very moment many good progressives are blunting their criticism and making clear that defeating Trump is of utmost importance, Corporate Democrats aren’t being asked to wait or hold their tongues. In fact, they are doing the opposite: Rahm Emanuel-- who has been advising Biden-- just went on television to show that the corporate wing of the party is intent on using the stretch run of the Most Important Election Of Our Lifetime™ not to doggedly focus on actually winning the election, but to instead try to predetermine post-election policy outcomes. Emanuel and his ilk depict themselves as evincing a non-ideological “just win, baby” attitude. But they are most decidedly pushing a very clear corporate ideology-- and they are doing so in dangerously divisive ways that could depress the big turnout that’s desperately needed to defeat Trump."





Emanuel was exulting in the defeat of popular progressive agenda items: "[T]here’s no new Green Deal, there’s no Medicare For All, probably the single two topics that were discussed the most. That’s not even in the platform."

Emanuel also isn’t just some random blowhard pundit spewing a corporate line. The Chicago Tribune in May reported that “Emanuel is having regular conversations with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his top advisers about economic policy."

So when Emanuel is refusing to self-censor in the name of “unity” and making these kinds of divisive declarations that stomp on progressive voters, he’s speaking from a position of real power. And he’s not just tweeting these comments, which could depress voter enthusiasm. He’s making them to a giant national television audience.

Corporate Democrats Are Not Holding Their Tongues

Now sure, you could try to write off Emanuel’s rhetoric as just the anomalous bloviations of notorious super-villain who pushed NAFTA and anti-immigration policies and who famously called progressives “f-ing retarded.” But sorry, this isn’t a one-off-- this is part of a larger pattern over the last few weeks and months.

As progressives are told to keep quiet, Democratic Party officials engineered a convention light on policy proposals, but one that gave prime convention speaking slots to the anti-climate-science, anti-union former Republican Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and to Colin Powell, who lied America into a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. In his CNBC interview, Emanuel said “this will be the year of the Biden Republican”-- and he noted that promoting these figures was designed to help Biden deliberately send an anti-progressive message to voters because “John Kasich and Colin Powell don’t exactly endorse (or) support big-P progressive policies.”

This is the kind of move that is potentially disillusioning for Democratic voters who were previously told that a Democratic victory isn’t just a return to status quo-- but a step forward in strengthening the movements for climate action, worker rights and a more sane foreign policy.

Similarly, as progressives are told to shut the hell up, Democratic aides on Capitol Hill leaked word that the party’s lawmakers may immediately replay the 2009 debacle and block a public health insurance option after the election-- a move that is potentially demotivating for millions of Americans currently losing their private health insurance.

As progressives are told to mute themselves, Team Biden last week publicly signaled that a new Democratic president might prioritize deficit reduction and budget austerity in the middle of an economic crisis-- a move that is potentially deflating for millions of voters who have previously been told that President Biden’s agenda makes him the next FDR.

As progressives are told to keep quiet, Biden’s campaign leaks to Politico that the transition team building Biden’s prospective administration is being advised by Wall Street pal Larry Summers and former corporate super-lobbyist Steve Richetti.

And as progressives are told to muzzle themselves, Corporate Democrats went scorched earth and spent $15 million to intervene in primaries, stymie progressive Democratic candidates and tilt intraparty contests to business-friendly candidates. Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi works to unseat Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, one of the Senate’s few progressive lawmakers, and to crush a spirited primary challenge to Rep. Richard Neal, who has used his committee chairmanship to block even modest health care reforms.

‘Hold the line. Win. Lead.’

Clearly, this is a coordinated campaign by the right-wing of the Democratic Party to prioritize its policy goals above everything-- even motivating core Democratic voters to turnout in record numbers during the general election.

The best response to such an onslaught isn’t to ignore it or succumb to dishonest unity-themed demands for silence and fealty. After all, the folks making those demands don’t actually want unity-- they are aiming for corporate victory at all costs, even if waging a war for that intraparty win could depress enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket.

The smarter response is to follow the lead of Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who last week pushed back against the Corporate Democrats’ attempt to resurrect GOP-style austerity politics. Rather than just sitting there and staying silent, she declared that if the party wins in November, it must make “massive investment in our country or it will fall apart. This is not a joke. To adopt GOP deficit-hawking now, when millions of lives are at stake, is utterly irresponsible. Hold the line. Win. Lead.”

The brilliance of this kind of response is that it accomplishes two objectives: It stands up for a real change, and it reassures Democratic voters that there are at least some people who are serious about going to Washington and fighting for what the party purports to believe in.

Put another way, it fortifies the progressive agenda and it helps energize Democratic voters to turn out, because it casts the election not just as a meaningless charade that won’t matter after November because everyone will sell out anyway. It instead depicts the election as an event with high stakes beyond Trump-- a turning point that can create new policies that will actually matter in people’s lived experience.

This is how you avoid the 1988-Dukakis-collapse debacle and motivate the big turnout that can defeat Trump.

You don’t tell voters that “nothing would fundamentally change.”

You don’t blast out a story about how the Democratic presidential nominee told his Wall Street donors that he isn’t proposing new legislation to change corporate behavior.

You don’t turn your party convention into a pageant for Republican icons.

You don’t have the disgraced-mayor-turned-Wall-Street guy advise your presidential candidate-- or have him go on Corporate America’s favorite television station during a health care emergency and a climate crisis to effectively laugh at progressives who are pushing Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.

To paraphrase one of the best tweets in history, you don’t try to turn the election into a centrist rally for the idea that better things aren’t possible-- and you sure as hell don’t ask progressives to shut up.

You instead focus intently on telling your party’s voters how the election will materially improve their lives.

Of course, the Democratic Party machine and the Biden campaign aren’t really interested in doing that right now. They want to run an anti-Trump campaign, and nothing else.

In light of that, progressives shouldn’t unilaterally disarm and stay silent when Corporate Democrats are getting bolder and more brazen about using this pre-election period to push their depressing, better-things-aren’t-possible policy agenda.

Staying quiet in the face of that pablum doesn’t help. The real way to help boost turnout and energize voters is for progressives to push back against the corporate propaganda and make clear that-- whether the establishment likes it or not-- this election can and will offer the opportunity to achieve something even bigger than just getting rid of Trump.

Does Trumpanzee Psycho-Babble Actually Mean Something?

Trump can't call a gaggle of press people to the White House and say, "Look, I snorted up a little too much Adderall when I woke up on Saturday and got carried away. I know Obama never wire-tapped me. Sorry, let's just forget the whole thing." No, that's not Trump. He's just going to keep digging. As George Lakoff famously pronounced ages ago, "Being a minority president drives Trump crazy. Never stop reminding him that he lost the popular vote big league." In January Lakoff was on NPR with Brooke Gladstone looking a the patterns in Trumpish tweeting. First let me suggest you look at this relatively calm one from yesterday-- along with my own photographic response:

The picture on the right is the sparsely attended Spirit of America Rally Trump rally in front of the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines on Saturday. At its peak, there were maybe two hundred sad, pathetic Trump supporters. The picture on the left is the anti-Trump Sister Rally at the same location where thousands of Iowans showed up to express their opposition to Trumpism. There was also a Trumpist rally Saturday in Council Bluffs, in the reddest part of Iowa. You want to see sad?

In mid-January, Gladstone and Lakoff explored how understanding Trump's uses language in his tweets is essentially for understanding how to deal with them. Lakoff offered his first premise: "[T]he idea of preemptive framing is to frame an issue before other people get a chance to, to put the idea out there first, for example, quote, 'The only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big, they were totally embarrassed.' [T]he idea is that the hacking of the DNC was the fault of the DNC... You have to understand what the framing is and what the framing is he’s trying to avoid. You know, he said, 'In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote, if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.' Right? No reason to think anybody voted illegally, but what he's doing is trying to reframe the popular vote."

Lakoff then explored the concept of the diversion tweet which "occurs when there's some major issue that's come up, and what he'll do is do things like attack Meryl Streep, you know, Meryl Streep, one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood. She is a Hillary flunky who lost big. The idea is to get people on TV talking about Meryl Streep, not talking about the real issues, in this case, conflict of interest and the Russian hacking. Before that, he had done the attack on Hamilton, you know, 'The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to Mike Pence for their terrible behavior.' So that all the people on New York radio and TV and so on are going to talk about Hamilton, instead of talking about the [$25 million settlement in] the Trump University [scandal]."

The third category is the trial balloon tweet. Lakoff: "He says, 'The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capacity until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.' He’s going to see how people react to this, and then he'll know what to do in the future. People were confused, they talked about, you know, nuclear proliferation a little bit and then it went away. And then the fourth category is deflection, where you attack the messenger, so he attacked BuzzFeed, CNN, the BBC for putting out the discussion of the Russian leaks."

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Obviously, you don't think the media are handling these utterances very well. What do you suggest that we do?

GEORGE LAKOFF:  The media is addicted to breaking news, so we have to give the tweet first. That’s the breaking news. Wrong, because that allows him to manipulate you as a reporter and manipulate the truth.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  So you're saying don't report on the tweet?

GEORGE LAKOFF:  You begin by telling the truth and giving the evidence for that truth, then mention his tweet, point out that that contradicts the truth and then talk about what kind of tweet this is. You know, you say, this is a case of diversion. Here’s what he is diverting, quickly. Don't have a panel discussion about it, you know, [LAUGHS] just do it and go on. Keep going back to substance and the truth.

Also, what is the effect of his tweeting on the truth? He’s trying to say, usually, that this truth is a general truth. And that’s another thing that I should add to this list of the things he does, is to take a specific case and say that it's the general case... There is a rape or a murder, a shooting by a Mexican, he says, they’re rapists and killers. He does that all the time.

Former White House press secretary Josh Earnest has a slightly different way of looking at Trump's tweeting. He told This Week viewers yesterday that Trump tweets to distract from scandals: "There is one page in the Trump White House crisis management playbook. And that is simply to tweet or say something outrageous to distract from a scandal. And the bigger the scandal, the more outrageous the tweet."

Writing for The Nation a few days ago, William Greider lured in readers with the provocative title, Is our President Bonkers? but pivoted immediately: "Maybe, but this screwball won because he saw something about the American condition that neither Democrats nor Republicans have the nerve to acknowledge." Greider acknowledges that "Trump has chosen some scary right-wing goofballs as his intimate advisers" but says we've "survived a lot worse than Donald Trump."

Trump’s freakish behavior and obsessive lying (not to mention the foul racist slurs) have captured the public’s fascination, like watching a scary picture show. Every day the news is Trump, Trump, Trump. People argue endlessly over how it’s going to end. Some on the hysterical left insist the country is on the brink of fascism, but I know some old hands in Washington’s permanent governing class who have a calmer perspective. They assume that Trump’s people can do a lot of damage but will ultimately fail on the big stuff, because they don’t understand the intimate politics of governing, and every day they do one thing or another to undercut their own power and influence with Congress and lobbyists. Watching the Trump presidency stumble is like slowing down on the highway to get a better look at the wreck on the roadside.

But this begs an obvious question: How did this screwball get to the White House in the first place? Put aside his odious traits and egomaniacal vanity. What explains the extraordinary success of this neophyte politician?

I have a theory: Trump baffled and defeated his conventional opponents because he expressed an emotional truth about the American condition that people feel in their guts. But neither Democrats nor Republicans have the nerve to acknowledge it. The “American Century” is over, Trump declared in so many words (“We never win anymore!”). The long and mostly successful saga of US triumphalism, in which Washington essentially ran the world, is finally stumbling toward a confused and chaotic conclusion. Governing elites, though, refuse to accept that reality. It would sound cowardly, unpatriotic.

Never mind the endless succession of losing wars, never mind the gargantuan US debt, meant to keep the world economy from sinking into the full catastrophe of global depression. We are still the “indispensable nation” celebrated by New York Times columnists and certain learned professors.

Only, Americans at large aren’t buying it any more. Odd as it sounds, ordinary people came to a clear understanding of our national predicament long before the power elites and most of the economics profession, and especially before the data wizards of our major political parties. Trump saw an opportunity, and now his victory has generated a kind of nervous breakdown among the elites. Hard-shell conservatives are trying to talk like working-class champions. They are not so afraid of Democrats, but what if Trump puts the plug on them in the next election?

Yes, Trump sold a magical package of solutions when he promised to restore America’s “greatness.” He even revved up a fearsome echo of 1930s/early ’40s isolationism, when Americans in general really didn’t want to get involved in Hitler’s war in Europe. But “America First” sounds reassuring to many Americans (many of whom are unaware of the historical echoes), and Trump’s criticisms of trade treaties sound right to them too.

The United States is still fabulously wealthy and inventive, still largely a beacon of hope and freedom for other parts of the world, but our singular preeminence and power base have been matched, even eclipsed in some respects. The governing class doesn’t want to give up dominant influence-- that’s understandable-- but Trump is right when he says other countries are often free riders on our willingness to pick up the tab. On the other hand, the United States spends way too much on its own military, and its arms industry is always looking for customers among our allies.

Trump’s popular appeal is mainly driven by sentimental nostalgia for the American past-- a longing for the glory years when the United States liberated the world and created a new global order, when prosperity was shared more widely and rising opportunities were more plentiful at home and abroad.

That saga ended in America a generation ago, and it’s nowhere more evident than in the diverging path of wage and income distribution. The rich have gotten richer and working people are struggling to maintain their status and losing. Many are now competing with $2-a-day child labor in Asian sweatshops. Families tried to keep up for a time by working two jobs while borrowing more and more, to no avail. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) made her name by attacking the vicious bankruptcy laws that tightened the squeeze on working people (lots of banker-friendly Democrats voted for those laws).

My point is this: Trump (along with Bernie Sanders) deserves credit for forcing this new working-class consciousness into the brain-dead political debate of Washington. If Sanders had won, we could reasonably hope for the dawn of a new reform era. But don’t count on Donald Trump. We already know he is unreliable with facts. More to the point, he looks back nostalgically at lost glory and imagines that certain familiar economic measures-- mainly, pro-business tax cuts-- will restore the good times. As technologist Joe Costello says, Trump’s program is “reactionary nostalgia.”

In fact, Trump’s proposals (with the possible exception of trade reform) are sure to increase economic inequality. His ideas are patterned after Ronald Reagan’s regressive tax reductions — a massive looting of the Treasury in behalf big business and big wealth holders. Despite warnings from budget analysts, the Gipper’s early 1980s giveaway launched the modern era of swollen federal deficits. Only now, instead of billions, US indebtedness is counted in trillions.

Most Democrats are looking backward too. Like Trump, their new ideas are mostly retreads. If rank-and-file Dems want to get real influence, they should copy a successful Republican device. Ask every Democrat running for office-- from the US House and Senate to state legislatures and governorships-- to take the following pledge: They must promise that they will not vote for any tax measure that favors the billionaires and big corporations, thereby increasing the income inequality that is already a national scandal. If the Democratic candidates refuse to sign the pledge, put them on the hit list.

Hit list? OK, these are the dozen worst garbage Democrats in the House who have earned spot on the hit list... and primary opponents (the order is adjusted by the partisan makeup of their districts, giving a slight break to the ones in redder seats):

• Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Tom Suozzi (NY)
• Lou Correa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Charlie Crist (FL)
• Vicente González (TX)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog- MN)
• Jacky Rosen (NV)

By the way, there's only one Democrat in the House today with a PERFECT 100% lifetime ProgressivePunch crucial vote score: Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). Credit where credit is due. You can help make sure Pramila is reelected by contributing to her campaign here. In fact, everyone of that list at the link is nothing short of essential. These are the most effective and persistent congressional voices of The Resistance against Trumpism.