The Intercept has an excellent tour down Bad Memory Lane in an interview with Ralph Nader. Nader outlines the series of missteps and betrayals that disgraced the Democratic Party and brought it to its present state of abject powerlessness. The Israelites had nothing on the Democratic Party; they were only lost in the desert for 40 years. Nader makes the case that it’s been downhill for Democrats considerably longer.
With Democrats flip-flopping on single-payer, holding undemocratic elections, proving to be able lobbyists for Republican interests, and ready to throw Pelosi under the bus for someone more palatable to the Right, nobody has any idea where the DNC is headed. Tom Perez hasn’t been much of a Moses to guide the DNC to the Promised Land. But, truth be told, Keith Ellison would have been just as ineffective. A party that has disgraced itself for decades doesn’t earn the electorate’s trust again in just a year. Ask any ex-con.
I’ve been telling people – mostly myself – that the Democratic Party is the only thing standing between total destruction of the United States and the Republicans. But by doing what? And using what power? In the case of the AHCA it’s now five freaked-out Republicans who block the way of Republican Senate colleagues acting as a death panel for their own constituents, not a totally emasculated Democratic Party. And it was Republican corruption, not Democratic opposition, that led to the downfall of several cabinet appointments.
It’s a year and a half from midterm elections and the same Democrats who presided over disaster and disgrace are still running the show. We still don’t have any idea where the Democratic Party is headed on internal democracy, donors, PACs, centrism, globalism, or if the party even has a 50 state strategy for backing and funding candidates – and what kind they’ll run. I see a proliferation of progressive platform planks but, really, not much else is changing.
Even a change of faces may accomplish nothing if the Democratic Party has ultimately lost the confidence of American working people and has no clear path back to power. Nader again:
“There are some people who think the Democratic Party can be reformed from within by changing the personnel. I say good luck to that. What’s happened in the last twenty years? They’ve gotten more entrenched. Get rid of Pelosi, you get Steny Hoyer. You get rid of Harry Reid, you get [Charles] Schumer. Good luck.
Unfortunately, to put it in one phrase, the Democrats are unable to defend the United States of America from the most vicious, ignorant, corporate-indentured, militaristic, anti-union, anti-consumer, anti-environment, anti-posterity [Republican Party] in history.
End of lecture.”
And those new faces Nader mentions – the “new personnel” – that includes even those of us who have stepped into empty local political committees, pledged to work in and revive the party, and fought for platform amendments. But in many ways it feels like a fool’s errand.
For all the new energy, the fresh new faces and good intentions, it may well be that the empty vessel we thought we could fill is just too riddled with chips and cracks. The moment is truly only months away when we may have to face the bitter reality – that it may be time to start from scratch and create a new, credible, and genuine, party of the people.
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