There is no time to recriminate because the stakes are so high. Yes, the current Democratic electoral apparatus failed miserably to deliver the necessary votes. And yes the Democratic Party over the past 40 years chose to collaborate with Republicans in an increasingly one-sided pact. And new leadership is needed. But the Democratic Party remains the only vehicle to save the United States and the World from impending doom.
Hillary Clinton and President Obama were wrong. Trump is the Republican Party. He is not an aberration. So we must fight the Republican Party at all levels as if our lives depend on it, because they do. That means immediately creating the vehicles to contest the 2018 elections at local, state and national levels.
We will soon be faced with false-flag provocations. The scene is being teed up. Intolerable protests and insults to the President-elect are being trotted out as reasons for the suppression of free speech and free assembly. The script has been readied and has already gone through a trial run. Millions of peaceable, productive people are being told they will be yanked from their homes because someone like them once committed a crime. A news organization was shut down by the courts for publicizing less than flattering information about a public figure — Hulk Hogan. The BLM movement highlighted the large number of extrajudicial killings in the United States, whose underlying rationale is to keep the post-slave African American intimidated and down. The framework for repression and fascism is building before our eyes. It must be stopped and reversed — but eating our own and rearranging the deck chairs of policy prescriptions is not the way.
There is nothing wrong with Democratic Party policies and instincts. They are in place. They need to be brushed off, coherently and thematically laid out and universally adopted by all Democrats on the understanding that no help or quarter will come from the Republican side. Compromise with Republicans, and blue dog democrats, was never compromise — it only meant the incorporation of poison pills into otherwise viable policies. For we are and we have been at war. At the end of the day James Comey was not a patriot but a Republican operative. We cannot, and the American people cannot be bamboozled by the double speak and nonsense of our current Brave New World.
There is no time because the Republican Party and its bosses have been rewarded time and time again for undermining democracy by stealing elections through actual theft, through the creation of spewers of the big lie throughout the media, through the destruction of unions and through the stocking of the courts with martinets trained in dominionism and sophistry, and not the law. Acorn was destroyed overnight on false allegations. Planned Parenthood is in the crosshairs.
Republicans are emboldened by their success and the weakness of the opposition and they are now advocating extra-legal tactics to suppress and cow the American people. They are counting on most of us remaining “Good Americans.”
In short the Democratic Party is the last best hope for America. Its fundamental approach to public policy is not the problem.
Free trade is not the problem. Free trade as a means for undermining the rights of workers and undeservedly enriching the rich and the corporate elite is the problem. Germany and other nations have shown that by maintaining a strong safety net (health & welfare) and strong unions, trade works to increase wealth and the efficient allocation of scarce global resources. And it can be a vital vehicle for fighting global warming.
Welfare reform was not the problem because it was to be replaced by a new social safety net that was to provide mental health, job training and child care in addition to time limited . It was the lack of funding the new structures that were to support America’s most vulnerable, and the block granting of funds that were made available. So the red states pocketed the money which was inadequate in any case.
Capitalism harnesses human greed and individual ingenuity to deliver prosperity and innovation but only in the context of well regulated markets. Without regulation and discipline capitalism is a cancer, where monopoly and great concentrations of wealth undermine government and the very economies upon which capitalism is built. Those regulations are on our books.
So policy is not the problem. It is weakness and compromise and an unwillingness to effectively counter the dark forces which are enveloping our country. But there is still time. The modern day Ruhr is being militarized, but this process can be stopped and it can be stopped peaceably.
By organization and mobilization for 2018 and by unceasing focus on and opposition to the depredations we are beginning to see coming from Washington.
There is no play in the Republican edifice. It is lock step. Bannon and Priebus are two sides of the same political force.