Tag: political strategy

The War Within – Why Progressives need to accept the war Corporate Dems have waged.

~ rebelwillfarnaby ~ Leave a comment

Ever since the corporate Democrats and their donors teamed up against Bernie in the primaries, the debate has gone back and forth on whether we should just fall in line and support Biden. For Bernie supporters our next move will possibly be the most important of the movement, do we stay organized, our splinter into a thousand pieces? Let’s really start to think about how we can accomplish the agenda, but most importantly we need a thorough understanding of our enemies and how they sabotage us. We will also explore the flimsy reason why we wouldn’t go to war with Biden and company. In life and especially in politics you are never sitting still, if you aren’t moving forward, you are moving backward.

Flashback to 2015 when Debbie Wasserman-Shultz and Hillary Clinton rigged the DNC and democratic primary against Bernie Sanders. Did you know the DNC didn’t even allow Bernie access to their voter database(they give access to all candidates)? If you aren’t familiar with the process, imagine the RNC choosing Ted Cruz over Trump, and giving all data and resources to Cruz. Bernie had to start completely from scratch on outreach. Despite being essentially cheated and constantly dogged by Hillary and the rest of the corporate dream team, he still fought like hell to stop Donald Trump. Then after she lost the election, she spent all of her time publicly blaming Bernie for her loss, pathetic! It is truly amazing that Bernie has the integrity to take the high road and not blow up on them. 

Back then, we had no idea how to react to Trump, we were led to believe this was the evilest human to date. It was a no brainer that we could never support Trump, and any vote against Hillary could only be sexism or racism. Plus the first time around Bernie was such a long shot that it lessened the feeling that something had been taken from us, in a sense we couldn’t lose what we didn’t have. It was mostly in hindsight that we saw the Clinton shenanigans with the DNC and with the Iowa vote count, that we realized how close we were. More importantly, the first run showed us that we did exist in politically relevant numbers. Perhaps the biggest lesson missed was the strength and determination of the Corporate Dems aka our opponents. We underestimated them then, and underestimated them in 2020, to our downfall.

The 2020 Sanders campaign showed so much grit and experience from the first time around, yet no amount of skill and experience could win. When Bernie pulled ahead of Warren and started knocking Pete around at the polls, it looked like a sure victory. Then came a crucial lesson for us, the media bats last. After a pitiful campaign full of gaffs Joe Biden leaned into the political establishment and won South Carolina handily. Even though Bernie won Nevada by a similar margin, Joe received 4x the amount of positive coverage as Bernie. 

Then the unthinkable happened, behind closed doors, every greedy corporate Dem led by Obama connived up a plan to stop Bernie Sanders at all cost. They would all drop out to endorse the man in 4th place who had no agenda and seemed to be facing rapid mental decline. Never in history has someone in Pete Buttigieg’s position dropped out so early. Never forget that when this weasel gets a cabinet position in the Biden administration and Bernie doesn’t. Another lesson we didn’t learn with Warren in 2016 that we must remember with Pete- our most dangerous enemies are in blue and they are right beside us. If you don’t remember Warren endorsed Hillary when she could have tipped the race for Bernie, we should have known she would be the final dagger on Super Tuesday when she refused to drop out despite never finishing second in any state. If you watch Game of Thrones(Spoiler alert!), this is exactly like the scene where the knights watch all stab John Snow with the deception being led by Ollie, the small boy that John mentors, who stick the very last knife in his stomach. 

This is where we have to take a step back and really study our adversaries. In 2020 we quickly forgot who was really against us and how motivated they were to stop us. Clearly, we are losing the internal battle for the party. Let’s not forget the Democratic party is a shell that stands for nothing except the person in charge. If we want someone like Bernie to ever be able to win, we have to start picking off his adversaries. Replicating AOC’s victory should be our number one goal, let’s pick off vulnerable corporate Dems. Even if we can’t beat them we cannot allow them to ignore us by staying quiet and submitting to them. The Republicans cream us because they allow invigorated and aggressive members to take the world by storm. Pelosi can’t let people like Bernie in because they expose her as what she truly is- Republican Lite. The big picture lesson, we will never beat the Republicans, without beating the Corporate pseudo-Republicans on our own team first. Despite the trash-talking, we actually have to prove we have more voters than them. Say we actually go toe to toe with them and fight just as hard but keep losing, then we will have to look internally at the fact that our message does not resonate. For the time being, our enemies in blue seem to be a larger roadblock than our message.

No-Legislation Attached

~ rebelwillfarnaby ~ Leave a comment

If you ask most of your Democratic friends about the state of America and the culture wars, most would say the battle against oppression has never been more grave. The right is at our throats. What’s strange is there is a paradox here – The left believes they are losing the culture wars, even though they control 90% of the media(look at major endorsements of Trump v Hillary), the messaging on every television channel,  and the film industry. Yet the right has dominated legislatively since Reagan(de-unionizing, placing judges, repealing labor laws) and they believe they are losing their country more than ever. 

First lets highlight that panic and fear are powerful motivators, even when your status doesn’t warrant panic. Anecdotally I hear Republican voters say “this is the most important election of our lifetime, no matter if you like Trump or not we have to get those supreme court judges, because if the other side gets them we will lose the presidency for the next 50 years.” OFF TOPIC- of course we lose to them, our language is weak and passive. On the left you only see this kind of language used towards celebrities that have tweeted something racist or homophobic. The big difference is where Republican and Democratic leadership direct the energy and anger of their voters. 

So what are the results of each of these strategies? The Republicans have run the table on placing judges, stopping dem judges, passing tax cuts, killing unions through labor laws, and generally any economic legislation. The Democrats have succeeded at keeping their voters permanently on the hook with No-Legislation Attached Issues. Whether intentional or not, our voters don’t attach organization and legislation with change. We keep fighting stupid games with stupid prizes. And rest assured the class that funds the republicans, they don’t play stupid games- they play the most important games with the most important prizes. They use legislation to shape the economy in their favor as we argue. 

Why does the left take up this strategy? The same reason as the right, their donors. How many corporations have run racial inclusion, BLM, social justice ads since George Floyd? The is a complete perversion for many reasons. This is capitalism rotting just causes from the inside out. We are seeing companies that engage in near slave labor overseas, yet also claiming to stand for racial justice in the USA just to sell more sneakers, hamburgers, and purses. Talk about delegitimizing a cause, make the whole fight nothing but lip service via tv ads that include no solutions. The second reason businesses are so keen to take up these social justice narratives is specifically because there is No-Legislation Attached! Why is the CEO of Citigroup, one of the major banks that no doubt plays a role in racist policies that make it more difficult and expensive for African Americans to buy a home, now being highlighted by the left!? It is much more affordable to shoot out a tweet and cash in on a hot marketing fad than to actually help Black Lives in America. 

There is a lot of talk, but how much do Black Lives Matter when we cripple so many hard working black women with a stagnant starvation wage that we refer to as minimum wage? How much do Black Lives Matter when we let predatory lenders prey on the impoverished and unbanked in their community? How much could a Black Life matter when we let them die in the street if they do not have insurance? Those questions require legislation, the kind MLK and Bernie Sanders fought for, and it is going to cost. This is were our supposed “friends” at the DNC stop agreeing with us and take up their donors position that we must be destroyed. MLK told many around him that once he started down the road for economic justice for workers, he wouldn’t be around much longer. He told those around him, his white allies will soon abandon him on his next fight – the fight for economic justice would cost them, literally. While his white allies might have taken some risk backing him, they had plenty to gain, they seemed like heroes for not being racist. Yet he knew they only wanted the image or “checked box” of helping, and when it came to making this system fair on economic grounds, they had no intention of seeing Black Lives prosper. 

“What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t afford to buy a hamburger?” – Martin Luther King Jr.