By Bob Dorn
I got one of those faux political surveys from the Democratic National Committee in the mail recently, the one my now-deceased mother-in-law used to receive because we listed her address as our own after she fell into Alzheimers years ago. The surveys continued to arrive at our address, perhaps four times a year, until this time my name showed up on the envelope.
The introductory letter from the chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, addressed me as a party leader — odd because I’m registered as “no party preference” — but I suppose that means Wasserman Schultz sees me as a California leftie and dropped the survey on me in hopes I can be attracted to Hillary.
This is the same Wasserman Schultz who opposes enlightened mariuana laws. She’s just announced she’s sponsoring a House bill that would handcuff the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Elizabeth Warren fought hard and long to establish this new federal agency, as it attempts to protect the working poor against confiscatory interest rates on payday loans.
The same Wasserman Schultz who tried to deny Bernie Sanders access to the mailing list and candidate accounts of the DNC, but a national outcry and a Sanders lawsuit forced her to reopen the door to Bernie.
Now, she and the DNC are pretending to be interested in what I think. Rather than mail her survey back with the bubbles filled out I thought it best to mail her this:
Stop pretending Hillary Clinton is invincible and inevitable.
On March 2, the Washington Post and other major news outlets reported that the Department of Justice granted immunity from criminal prosecution to the guy who designed Clinton’s private server, presumably in exchange for his cooperation with the FBI’s investigation into national security breaches. This is a wild card that must be sending shivers through DNC campaigners.
The Super Tuesday that Clinton won overwhelmingly was based on a very low turnout of Democratic party voters. It looked good on the monitors of MSNBC and FOX News, but on CNN, where they post the raw numbers of Democratic Party voters, the Republicans could be seen to have drawn as much as 70% of the total votes cast.
In fact, 8.5 million Republicans turned out to vote Super Tuesday, up from 4.7 million in 2012 when John McCain and Palin were on the ballots. The reverse was true of the Democrats this year as 5.9 million voted this year compared to 8.5 million in 2008.
This leads to a second concern the Democratic Party ought to have.
The death of the GOP is not in any way a good thing for the Democratic Party.
Today’s GOP is a broken alliance of Wall Street, established party professionals, Tea Partiers, gun radicals and Whites who feel they’re disenfranchised and/or that their religion is under attack. All it would take is for a strong man to step in and unite them all behind some nativist, nationalist, mythicizing movement with the general idea of Take Back America. Sound familiar?
And… if Trump bolts from the Republican Party, he could still win the Presidency.
He’s repeatedly threatened to run as an Independent from the days after his announcement if, as he puts it, the GOP doesn’t treat him fairly. It hardly seems likely that he could drag all the Republicans into a Trump Towers Party. Cruz people might go there, a few Rubio cubes might, Carsons people might be less likely to and, if Romney or Ryan are artificially inseminated at the Republican convention, the GOP establishment might make a comeback.
On the other hand, where do the Koch Bros and Sheldon Adelson put their money? Trump could orbit the planet if people like these put their money there.
So… what to tell the DNC, the New Democrats of which Hillary Clinton is a principal, and the surviving Blue Dog Democrats, all of whom would rather be elected than do the right thing?
Get behind the New Deal.
When was the last time you heard Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman praised? Establishment Democrats don’t mention those names; the party today seems embarrassed by them. Yet we are living with the programs they and many, many other Democrats put together after The Great Depression.
Social Security (continue to keep it out of Wall Street’s hands). Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which keeps a bank failure from becoming your own; you get your deposits back when the bank gets busted.
With roads and bridges falling apart nationally and locally we could use another Works Progress Administration, which put together one of San Diego’s most beautiful and grand buildings, the County Administration Building. To get a grasp on what a new federal works program could do for unemployment and underemployment, see Erik Loomis’ article that appeared in the San Diego Free Press in 2014.
And, finally, why not revive Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society?
Have we won The War on Poverty yet? How ’bout using the Civil Rights Acts from 1964 and 1965 to investigate how we can prevent the deaths of hundreds of Black Americans at the hands of police? Is Medicare and Medicaid funding adequate, or have these programs suffered severe austerity cuts?
More and more Americans are living longer. Can the Older Americans Act still serve that population? Shouldn’t we be making colleges more accessible to the children of the middle class?
So, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, that’s what your empty, pointless survey makes me think. And that’s why I won’t be sending the DNC a check as your survey, by the way, begs me to do. I’ll send the $18, $25, $35, $50 or “my best gift” to Bernie, Russ Feingold or Elizabeth Warren and MoveOn instead. They already know what I’d like to see happen in the Democratic Party.
Bob Dorn
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The Republican Party continues to put on Good Shows with their interminable debates featuring The Trumpster and a host of lesser lights. No wonder Repubs are getting bigger voter turnouts than the Dems. They are putting on better shows. All the vulgarity and insults traded back and forth by Trump and the tag teaming of Rubio and Cruz only add to the entertainment value.
Hillary and Bernie can’t compete with that. The Dems can be thankful that Bernie is still in the race. Otherwise, Hillary would be put in the position of debating herself, and nobody wants to see that.
Although the media decries the low level of Republican debates, they are more or less at the same level of contemporary American movie and TV entertainment. Even the movie, The Big Short couldn’t get two words out of its mouth without using the F word. Americans find debate exchanges about the size of Trump’s penis very amusing.
Hmmm… So, if the entertainment of the Rep debates actually increases voter turnout, then perhaps “the media” is right after all in turning the political campaign into sheer entertainment.
Paddy Chayefsky scores another win.
Les Moonves is ecstatic about all the money the media is making from the political show.
Been trying to get the artificial insemination of the Republican party via Ryan&Romney out of my mind all morning, but it’s too hard to let go of this sentence: “Cruz people might go there, a few Rubio cubes might, Carsons people might be less likely to and, if Romney or Ryan are artificially inseminated at the Republican convention, the GOP establishment might make a comeback.”
As a registered Independent, I could easily declare a pox on both houses. Fortunately, Bernie is also an Independent whom I can support. Trump is also an Independent whom I cannot. Alas, we need two major political parties to keep our politics middle-of-the-road. The question in 2016 is which road? Trump’s way is his way or the highway. Bernie’s way is FDR’s way. Both ways are pot-holed & mired in mud. I will vote for Bernie in California’s primary in June, but only as designated driver, fully expecting a regular driver to come along later. Mrs. Clinton can drive my car, but I will be a nagging back-seat driver, urging her to take the road less-traveled, usually veering to the left. I hope she’s renewed her license.
Nice analogical images!
um’…
* ABC = ANYBODY But Clinton *
we’ve already seen & are living the clinton nightmare.
Reigle/Neal; Gramm/Leach/Bliley; NAFTA, PNTR, etc, etc…
…doubters, or God forbid, Clinton fans – DO SOME RESEARCH – a good place to start is RALPH NADER on Militarist, Corporatist Hillary.
Due Dilligence people.
get me once …shame on you – get me twice …shame on me.
Thanks for this. The fight for the heart of the Democratic Party is upon us. I think the Millennials are reminding us what the party is about and lead us in the right direction…..
Most Millennials are too young to vote, but they make great dressing on our window to the future,if you believe they will go to the polls in any larger numbers than in past elections. The average Millennial doesn’t know FDR from LOL, so their support for Bernie is, at best, probably based on their first reading of Howard Zinn. The real force behind Bernie is those of us who have been witnessing the Republican dismantling of the New Deal coalition since 1980. The programs still stand, but they no longer seem beneficial to the young & the restless, who appear to be motivated by hope of gain (student loan forgiveness) & fear of loss (war & joblessness). The Republican propaganda machine has cast a smoke screen over our country’s dependence on war for jobs, which only a few Millennials seem to realize. When they will wake up from their video games & smart phones is anybody’s guess. Don’t count them out, but don’t count them in either.
Hey, Joe, take a few breaths and a shower. You’ll feel better.
Freeping much more refreshing & it takes my breath away.
A fragmented GOP forces traditional Republican Party donors to find a candidate representing their interests in the Democratic Party.
If one votes for the candidate likely to do the least harm, 2016 is presenting a quandary.
Couldn’t agree more. The talk was that Bernie was moving Clinton to the left a bit, which was encouraging. On global trade she gave up on TPP, and, she loosed the phrase “special interests” on the financial world recently (without saying how she’d go about breaking down that T Rex grip it has on politics). Rhetoric is cheap decal on a homeless person’s backpack.
Bob Dorn I REALLY enjoyed your article. I live in Canada and am die-hard Bernie fan.
I have been following Hillary’s email story through about a dozen news outlets. This is my take of the immunity deal given to Pagliano. Feel free to fact check / correct my opinion:
1 – Pagliano took the 5th because he may have some potential personal legal issues and needed to cover his behind.
2 – Pagliano was paid by HRC personally to set up the server and was paid $5,000 per month (?) by HRC to maintain the server. This arrangement was ongoing during HRC time at State.
3 – Pagliano did not declare this income on his taxes. He did not declare this income to State when he was employed there. He did not inform State of the work he was doing for HRC and did not inform State of the server’s existence.
4 – IF Pagliano signed a confidentiality agreement with HRC he may have needed immunity to void that contract to protect himself from lawsuits – pure speculation on my part and I am not sure how these agreements work in the case of a possible criminal investigation.
If the above is the worst Pagliano did then I think most people can understand the immunity deal and live with it.
I am a very low tech person. I don’t have a cell phone (don’t need or want one) but I am not a complete luddite. I love my home PC but use it mainly for emails, health matters, banking, playing my Hidden Object games and the news/weather reports etc. HRC was Secretary of State, a supposedly intelligent person, and is now running for POTUS. Even little old me has enough sense TO HAVE TWO SEPARATE EMAIL ACCOUNTS – one for personal matters and the other for online news scrolling and as a link to my Facebook account. HRC can’t grasp this simple concept but wants to run a country. I look at what is evolving around her and all I see is another Watergate in the making. Nixon “lost” 18 minutes of taped conversation – Hillary, who is playing the “I’m technically unsophisticated” charade, had no problem finding and using the DELETE button. I’m sure that is what happened to her Wall Street / GS speeches as well.
Our media’s a big part of our problem, probably bigger than the damage The Donald and The Republicans are causing. Last night we finally got to see a presentation of your prime minister, Justin Trudeau, the leader of our neighbor to the north, on our 60 Minutes. He’s a good looking amateur boxer and son of a prior p.m. but it was the first time I remember seeing a major story on him. We know far more about El Chapo, the Cartel Master of Mexico, than we do about Canada in general.
Trudeau’s advice to the USA, paraphrased, was:
A people so preoccupied about being the model and protector
of the free world ought to know more about that world.
Let’s see a boxing match between Trudeau and The Donald.
Donald would send a body double.
And he would own world-wide rights, of course :-)