It's All Over Now, Party Blue

 

“The rulers are interested in keeping their subjects in darkness because otherwise the injustice, the arbitrariness, the immorality, the irrationality of their own rule will be altogether too easily exposed. So from the early beginnings of man [woman] an age old conspiracy by the few against the many has been organized and kept going , because unless they do this the few cannot keep the many in subjection.”

—Isaiah Berlin, Freedom and Its Betrayal

I stayed up late enough on election night to know what the outcome would be Wednesday morning. So I wasn’t shocked but deeply concerned for the people who are likely to suffer the most—and the soonest—if indeed Trump becomes the president in January (maybe he’ll be in jail by then): undocumented immigrants; the young people protected under the Dream Act; Black Lives Matter activists; the water protectors at Standing Rock; the people on Medicaid. This sadness was tempered only by relief at my almost empty e-mail inbox: no more DNCC pleas of “last chance,” “we’re screwed,” “don’t delete this e-mail” from Barack, Michele, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, James Carville, Brad Schneider and on and on (the relentless release of these e-mails discouraged participation instead of eliciting it, but that’s another story).

Today’s story is that the Democratic Party establishment is first and foremost to blame for Trump's election and for the Republican takeover of Congress and state governments. Ever since the New Deal the Democratic party has been leaning right towards this, our second guilded age, embracing neoliberalism as the path towards 1% rule. That’s why they fought so hard to discredit Bernie in his run for the nomination: he hammered relentlessly on economic inequality that resonated with folks across the country. He was criticized by some on the left for not addressing more directly the issues of race as well as class, but I think he felt his only path towards the nomination was to discredit HRC where she was most vulnerable as a member of the neoliberal elite who has been instrumental in disenfranchising the working class.

Maybe if Bernie had been able to pit his populist message against Trump’s so-called populist message more folks would have seen the latter not as their savior, their “blow-it-up-guy” but as the corporatist financier that he is. Maybe if Bernie, or some other progressive candidate, had been able to direct white people’s anger towards the Republican elite as well as the Democratic elite there would be less of it directed at minorities and others just as disenfranchised as they think they are.

The flip side of these “maybes” is the fact that many of the people who voted for Trump are people who would have voted for him regardless of a more powerful progressive candidate. Statistics show that this country is split right down the middle in terms of party affiliation, and even with a candidate like Trump the rank and file Republicans are going to vote Republican come hell or high water. We know why the rich Republicans vote that way: it’s in their best interests. Why so many whose interests are not represented by the Republican party is the question that many, most famously Thomas Frank, have been asking for years.

As much as I hate to acknowledge it, for fear of being labeled elitist myself (actually, I’m definitely white and privileged but not elitist), a vast group of people in this country, schooled by the Rush Limbaughs and Michael Savages and Bill O’Reillys, are ignorant, misinformed, and fear-driven by identity politics and cultural transformation. They are also the products of a country that prides itself on white Protestant individualism that encourages authoritarianism and discourages empathy (many of these folks are also fundamentalists, which makes it even worse). This is where the white nationalism comes into play upon which Trump fed and flourished. These folks' interests will not be served by Republican or Democratic elites: globalization, financialization, and automation have taken their jobs away and they won’t be coming back. Their lives don’t matter, either. When you’re afraid, when you’re hurting, when you’re confused, find some other population even more vulnerable to blame: immigrants, blacks, Muslims, gays, etc. Then find someone endowed with the authority to build the wall, send them back to where they came from or strip them of their individual liberty: Donald Trump fits the bill.

I’m a Democrat only by registration so I can vote in primaries for local candidates. I voted for Bernie; I didn’t vote for Hilary. That so much of our energy and attention has been invested in this campaign for the last year and a half is obscene. The fight for justice through the ballot box is rigged from the beginning: two parties that severely limit a choice of candidates; big money super PACS that bankroll those candidates; gerrymandering of election districts to wipe out the opposition; the electoral college (HRC won the popular vote); voter suppression, ad infinitum. 

Neither will justice prevail by posting on Facebook. Many social media users were sucked into daily harangues with so-called “Friends” over who we were going to vote for, if we were going to vote, and what we should be doing if we didn’t vote. How many times did you see someone announce that he or she was purging so and so from his or her friend’s list because he or she didn’t like his or her position on HRC? Or how many times did you seen someone announce “I’m not going to post anymore political comments” because all the anger and vitriol in which everyone is engaging is not only not going to change anyone’s mind but that the sources upon which the anger and vitriol are based are unverified and often untrue. Then the next day they were back there with a post claiming that not only Wikileaks but the director of the FBI were throwing the election to Trump.

I’ve been a grassroots organizer and activist engaged in social and environmental justice my entire adult life. I know how difficult it is to fight the machine: so do groups like Occupy and Black Lives Matter, as did La Raza Unida, the Black Panthers, and SDS. In his article in Current Affairs, editor Nathan Robinson ends his take down of the Democratic Party with the immortal words of Joe Hill: “Don’t mourn, organize!” While I fantasize that once Trump gets bored having to be in the Oval Office every day and sit through cabinet meetings he’ll abdicate (he’d have to take Pence with him), Joe Hill’s exhortation is mandatory. There is no other way out.