Introduction
Over
the past few decades, insurgent mass movements reflecting political discontent
with the domestic economy and imperialist foreign policy have emerged to
challenge the leadership and policies of the Democratic Party (DP). There are
good reasons for this: The Democratic Party in power in Congress and the White
House presided over: (1) the deepening of inequality between labor and capital;
(2) the decline of real wages; (3) the approval of repressive legislation; (4)
the reduction of trade union membership by two-thirds; (5) deepening inequality
between the races; (6) a trillion dollar (and counting) bailout of the banks
and Wall Street; (7) mortgage foreclosure against millions of homeowners; (8)
endless ‘police state’ abuses by federal and local police; (9) deregulation of
the financial system; and. (10) the off-shoring of manufacturing jobs and service
employment.
Over
the same period, the Democratic Party has supported wars and invasions against
Indo-China, Panama, Grenada, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria,
Somalia and scores of ‘clandestine’ military operations – including the recent
and current proxy-wars in Georgia and Ukraine.
Popular
movements have emerged and mass public opinion has expressed hostility toward
both major parties. Hence, the third parties struck a responsive note among the
electorate to which the Democratic Party leadership felt threatened by a
possible defection by wage and salaried voters, especially to supporting Ralph
Nader.
Yet in
the end, nothing came of the discontent. Despite large-scale and deeply
felt anger and popular outbursts of protests, including the million-strong
street demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003, the Democratic
Party continued to dominate the ‘progressive’ electorate or relegated it
to demoralized abstention.
This
essay addresses the following questions:
- Why have mass movements and genuinely disaffected progressive voters and
activists been unable to break with the Democratic Party, despite its
consistently abominable record on foreign and domestic policy.
- How was the pro-Wall Street, pro-imperialist Democratic Party able to
retain the support of an electorate, which overwhelmingly polls in favor of
health care reform via a national, single-payer health plan, a living minimum
wage, the end to police-state surveillance and against serial wars and
invasions?
From Protest to Political Hostages
American
mass movements have been successful in mobilizing hundreds of thousands
in opposition to Washington’s support of the South African apartheid regime,
Central American dictators, wars in the Middle East and racist legislation. Progressives
have educated and organized millions to oppose Wall Street and the Democratic
Party’s more recent bailout of banks.
Without
fail every time mass movements and the popular electorate have opted for
independent social action outside of the Democratic Party, a ‘dissident’
politician has emerged from within the Party mouthing many of the
criticisms and demands of the social movements and the critical electorate.
These
Democrat ‘dissidents’ organize ‘grass roots’ campaigns in popular
venues, soliciting small scale contributions and making promises to put an end
to ‘Big Money and Big Business’ domination of the electoral process.
Such
Democrat ‘dissidents’ round up millions of votes and hundreds of
delegates to the Democratic Convention and then…they inevitably lose to the
Party machine and meekly submit...reasserting their loyalty to the
‘greater good’ against the ‘greater evil’.
The radical
rhetoric used during the campaign is consciously designed to obscure the ‘dissidents’
fundamental loyalty to the Democratic Party, its military machine, its
billionaire fundraisers and its Wall Street economic policy strategists.
The
pre-ordained primary campaign defeat of the Democrat ‘dissidents’ is not
the real issue here: The essential political consequence is that the “dissidents”
channel mass social disaffection back into the Democratic Party thereby
undermining any independent political initiative capable of breaking the
duopoly stranglehold. In animal husbandry, they are like the handsome goat who
tricks the flock into entering the big slaughter-pen of their social and
political aspirations.
By
endorsing the crowned Party nominee, these ‘dissidents’ discredit the very
critical ideas and social programs they claimed to promote. They demoralize and
depoliticize important segments of the electorate. They demobilize and
disorient the social activists who had worked for the social transformation
promised by their campaign program.
Most
important, by reorienting the peace and justice movements and the neighborhood
and anti-racism community organizations into Democratic Party electoral
politics, they empty the streets, neighborhoods and workplaces of effective
activists.
A
brief survey of presidential campaigns over the past thirty-five years confirms
this analysis.
Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Hustle: 1984
and 1988
Jesse
Jackson was an important leader-activist in the civil rights movement. Based in
Chicago, he helped organize tens of thousands of Afro-Americans and develop
ties with other minorities, white progressives and trade unions.
Jackson
opposed President Reagan’s assault on the trade unions, especially the firing
of thousands of air controllers. Jackson’s opposition to Apartheid South Africa
and Reagan’s invasion of Grenada and the escalation of military spending gained
him credibility in the peace movement.
Millions
looked to Jesse Jackson for political leadership and a new political direction.
He negotiated with the bosses of the Democratic Party for his entry into the
primaries. The deal was that he would compete with the traditional politicians,
but immediately submit to the leadership if he lost the nomination.
Jackson
mobilized hundreds of thousands of activists from the northern ghettos to the
Ivy League college campuses and from the textile factories of North Carolina to
the cotton fields of Mississippi. He rolled out the rhetoric about social
justice, raising the minimum wage, a single payer (Medicare for All) national
health plan and a massive transfer of public funds from the Pentagon to
domestic social programs.
He
secured an impressive 18% of the vote in the 1984 Democratic primaries. Upon
defeat, he immediately capitulated and endorsed the Wall Street Cold Warrior Walter
Mondale. He campaigned for Mondale with the promise that the ‘Rainbow
Coalition’ would influence the campaign and subsequent Mondale presidency. Nothing
of the sort happened. Mondale lost. Reagan was re-elected. The ‘rainbow
coalition’ was as ephemeral as its namesake.
Four
years later, a recycled Jesse Jackson trotted out the same rhetoric, the ‘grass
roots’ organizing, the ghetto gab, the poverty hustle and the pot of gold at
the end of the rainbow coalition with white and black togetherness... to the
amusement of the party bosses and corporate funders.
It was
‘All hands on deck’: The street movements shifted from concrete local
struggles to door-to-door voter registration for the Democrats. Trade union
locals were attracted to Jackson’s ‘save American jobs’ rhetoric. Middle
class progressives were attracted to Jackson’s promise to cut the military
budget.
Jackson
received a substantial 29% of the Democratic primary vote. Michael Dukakis won
the nomination and, as promised, Jesse Jackson endorsed the party’s choice and
instructed all the civil rights, social justice and peace activists and
anti-Wall Streeters to work for his election. Dukakis was resoundingly defeated
by George Bush Sr. in the 1988 election.
At the
end of the ‘rainbow’ and over a demoralized and de-politicized peace movement,
the Bush Administration led the US into the First Gulf War. The wreckage from
the popular movements- turned- electoral machines offered little resistance.
Confused
by Jackson’s double discourse, the disaffected masses fractured. Four years
later, the few pieces were picked up by Wall Street flunky “Bill” Clinton. Once
in office and after tooting his victorious saxophone, President ‘Slick Willy’
proceeded to decimate welfare programs, roll back the Glass-Steagal Laws and
deregulate the banks, launch a merciless ninety day war to break up Yugoslavia
and maintain ten years of bombs and starvation sanctions against Iraq – causing
the deaths of 500,000 children and many more adults.
Cowboy Dennis Kucinich and the 2004
Primaries: Keeping Progressive Livestock in the Democratic Party Corral
Just
when disgust at the consequences of Clinton’s rotten policies and peccadilloes
and George Bush, Jr’s grotesque wars were beginning to unite the disaffected,
Dennis Kucinich popped up ‘from nowhere’ to launch a white working class
version of the Jesse Jackson ‘Rainbow Coalition’ in the Democratic Party
primaries of 2004. Saving a lot of money on placards, he re-cycled the same
slogans about a national health system, minimum wage boost, higher taxes for
the rich, anti-Wall Street rhetoric and public ownership of utilities – from
the Jacksonites.
Since
there was still a substantial strong anti-war movement, he called for
the impeachment of President Bush (Jr.) for lying to the American people about
Iraq. He criticized Congressional Democrats for supporting the fabricated
pretexts to invade Iraq and called for the withdrawal of US troops from the
Middle East.
His
presidential primary campaign within the Democratic Party attracted a small
army of disaffected voters and contributors who otherwise would have bolted
from the party for the Greens and their candidate, Ralph Nader. In the
Democratic Party Convention, Dennis (looking more like ‘Alfred E. Newman’ than
any righteous working class leader) petered out with nary a mumble. He lost the
nomination to the uber-militarist and upper class hero, John Kerry, without
even a floor-fight or speech. He endorsed the obnoxious crown prince of the
Democratic bosses, Kerry, an ardent pro-war, member of the billionaire class
and defender of the US Constitution-shredding Patriot Act.
Kucinich
managed to corral the anti-war and anti-Wall Street Democrats into submission,
seriously undermining the anti-Bush mass movements, especially the anti-war
activists, and the rising tide of Americans who openly favored the Single Payer
National Health program – an extension of Medicare for All.
Kucinich
ran again in 2008 but he was already damaged goods. His ‘belly crawl’
performance at the 2004 Democratic Convention had alienated most of his
backers. But even more important in relegating Dennis to the dustbin was the
emergence of a new, slicker and infinitely more persuasive con-man: Barack
Obama, the Hawaii-raised, Ivy-league polished and Chicago-crowned chameleon of
many colors, cadences, and clichés, who burst on the scene playing every
instrument in the band!
Barack Obama: The Ultimate Progressive
Rabble Rouser and Master of Deceit
Barack
Obama’s con-job far surpassed any previous effort by Jackson or
Kucinich. His mind-boggling ascension on rhetorical bubbles left rival Hillary
Clinton, long used to the cant of ‘Slick Willie’, literally pop-eyed and slack
jawed. During the 2008 primary he embraced the progressive demands of
the anti-war movement, promising to end the Iraq war, bring home the troops
from Afghanistan and close the US torture camp at Guantanamo Bay. He promised
to finally develop a national health plan (hinting broadly at a
Medicare-for-All model) and regulate Wall Street’s unbridled swindles and
speculation.
Easily
seeing through his fluffy rhetoric, the Democratic Party’s Wall Street backers
secured hundreds of millions from billionaires with which to finance a real ‘grass
roots movement- in style’ defeating an astonished Hilary Clinton in the
Democratic primaries and swamping the mega-millionaire Republican candidate
‘Mitt’ Romney in the general election.
The
Zelig-like Obama adopted the Baptist minister’s deep and musical cadences in
front of black audiences while savaging and disowning his militant black
religious mentor from his Chicago ‘community-organizing’ day, the Reverend
Jeremiah Wright, who had condemned the war in Iraq in frank Biblical terms and
alienated his Chicago Zionist financial backers and Israel-centric inner
council. No longer useful, the good Reverend was effectively ‘thrown under the
bus’ – an object lesson on introducing Ivy League graduates into mass community
struggles and enabling their ambitions.
In
office, Obama allocated a trillion dollars to bailout Wall Street while
letting two million American householders sink under mortgage debt and
foreclosures.
He
expanded on-going wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and went on to launch new wars
in Libya, Syria and Yemen. He supported the violent coups against popularly
elected governments (‘regime changes’) in Honduras, Ukraine and Egypt.
The
re-cycled and bamboozled anti-war leaders, who backed his candidacy and lies,
were discredited, the remaining “movement” fractured.
Initially
upward of 80% of US public opinion expressed support for the anti-Wall Street ‘Occupy
Movement’ but they had no mass-based political organization to sustain the
struggle after many of their leaders swam and ultimately sank, tied to the lies
of Obama.
Under
Obama more American blacks have been murdered by police with complete impunity;
more abortion providers assassinated and clinics bombed than under any white
Republican president. As for ‘humanitarian intervention’: In Libya, tens
of thousands of ethnic sub-Saharan Africans (contract workers and Libyan
citizens) died in the post-Kaddafi ethnic cleansing of Libya by the racist
warlords unleashed by Obama’s air assault.
The
bewitched progressives were befuddled by the Ivy League’s ‘black’
president and didn’t notice that social inequalities had deepened at an
alarming rate. As for access to health care, the American people were forced to
‘buy private insurance plans’ (many of which were worthless), meanwhile
deductibles and co-pays skyrocketed forcing all but the well-salaried to forego
necessary medical care. The notion that ‘access to health insurance’ was
equivalent to having effective health care has been one of the biggest
shams of the Obama era: Life expectancy for large segments of the low income
rural and small town Americans has dropped – an unimaginable development in
previous eras.
During Obama’s Presidency, the political
climate turned rabid rightwing and the progressives turned tail and ran. Right
wing extremists swept the Republican Party and then seized control of the
Congress and the Senate.
After
7 years of failures, frustration and futility under Obama, progressives found
themselves without a movement or prospects. Over 92% of US private sector
workers were unorganized and faced continued decline in their standard of
living. Black, Chicano and Asian neighborhoods were subject to large-scale,
brutal police raids and the extra-judicial killing of minority youth, the
homeless, mentally ill and the poor continued with impunity. Over 2 million
immigrant workers were incarcerated and expelled. Tens of thousands of young
immigrant and refugee mothers and their children were held in private prison
camps.
The
Republicans promised to extend Obama’s reactionary agenda without the smiling
blackface mask. They assured greater tax handouts to Wall Street, with none of
the embarrassing rhetorical flourishes, and more wars, without the
sanctimonious ‘humanitarian’ cant.
Against
this expanding panorama of social deterioration and war-weariness, (a backdrop,
which would normally open up the possibility for alternative politics), Bernie
appeared. Bernie Sanders was to incarnate the Fourth Coming of
the progressive Democratic primary campaigner-messiah and scupper any real
movement to the left.
Bernie Sanders: After the Black
Con-Artist Bring out the Jewish House Radical!
By
2015, US society was deeply polarized. After 7 years of Wall Street pillage,
under Democratic President Obama, the mass of working people were looking for
an alternative. On the horizon there was only more of the same promised from
the rabid right which ran the Republican Party. Massive voter abstention had
propelled the Republicans to power in ‘both Houses’ in the elections of 2010,
2012 and 2014. Terror-mongering, the so-called “Global War on Terror”,
no longer cut any ice with a population terrified of losing their miserable
jobs or getting bankrupted by an illness in the family. The Pentagon resorted
to paying unemployed actors to stage ‘spontaneous’ displays of patriotism at
huge sporting events – dressing up as veterans and running about on the fields
with huge flags. There has been a big drop in healthy young Americans willing
to ‘sign up’ and fight in overseas wars despite the continued prospect of being
mired in poverty-wage jobs in the so-called ‘recovered domestic economy’. The
mass of disaffected working people were not flocking to the Democratic Party’s
plutocrat-of-choice, Hilary Clinton, the war monger, Wall Street favorite and
pro-Israel candidate par excellence. The stage was now set for mass voter
abstention and a resounding electoral defeat for a deflated Democratic Party
with a disgusted electorate. As a presidential candidate Hillary would have to
fight tooth and nail to meet the challenge of even the most marginal lunatic
candidate from the increasingly bizarre Republican Party – because the
Democrat’s disaffected voter base would stay home.
Behold!
A raspy rabble rouser, a ‘democratic socialist’, floated in on a cloud
of self-righteousness, conjuring up the illusion of a movement with promises of
‘profound (and even profounder) changes’.
Like
Jackson and Kucinich before him, Sanders launched right into The Rant:
Against Wall Street, for a National Health Plan and a reduction of military
spending (but not too much…). He added a few new planks about cancelling
student debt, lowering tuition, ending the cap on the social security tax and
greater regulation of Wall Street.
Early
polls have given Sanders 25% of the Democratic preferences.
Bernie
assured his worried Democratic Party handlers that should Madame Clinton win
the primaries, Bernie (and his followers) would immediately and
unconditionally support the Party’s war mongering, Wall Street candidate
of choice.
What
are we to make of his promises and his radical program, if from one day to the
other he can easily make a 180 degree turn to support the most discredited
dregs of the Democratic Party – those largely responsible for the country’s social
and economic decline?
Conclusion
The
whole history of Democratic Party ‘progressives’ is one of deceit,
hypocrisy and betrayal of millions of workers, minorities and other oppressed
and excluded groups.
They
rant and rave, till the votes are counted and then they dissolve their
electoral organization and push their supporters into the Party electoral
campaign!
They
do not continue the struggle outside of the corrupt party – they simply
go belly up, ‘graciously conceding defeat’ and waging their tails hoping for a
reward (like some inconsequential, toothless position within the
administration) if the Democrats win.
After
every one of the ‘radicals’ defeats, their supporters are left adrift. Indeed,
they are worse off than before because their movements had been diverted into
the Democratic primaries and away from the communities. The historical record
is clear: After Jesse Jackson lost, the Rainbow Coalition fell apart; civil
rights movements were weakened; police violence against blacks continued and
even worsened.
After
Kucinich ran and lost, his grass roots supporters within the trade unions had
no mechanism to block the relocation of auto, steel and textile plants
overseas.
After Obama conned progressive Americans,
the peace and justice movement virtually disappeared. The church, trade union,
neighborhood alliances who celebrated Barack Obama’s ‘historic victory’
have in reality experienced historical retreats. The only things
“historic” about Obama’s terms in office have been: (1) the trillion
dollar bailout of Wall Street; (2) the number of simultaneous wars waged by the
Pentagon; (3) the millions of people of color slaughtered in Libya, Syria, and
Yemen; (4) the thousands of minorities killed in cities, big and small of the
USA; (5) and the tens of thousands lost to premature deaths in economically
devastated rural and small town America.
The
current “Bernie” Sanders road-show is just recycling the past,
right down to the same rhetorical and inconsequential promises of his predecessors’.
Some
of his gullible followers claim that he is important for “raising issues”
– when in fact he will just raise them and then demoralize their advocates.
Other
pundits claim he is ‘challenging’ the Democratic Party ‘from the left’ when
in fact he is doing everything possible to prevent millions of disaffected
ex-Democratic voters, mostly workers and minorities, from rejecting the
Democrats and joining or forming alternative political movements.
The
key to understanding why millions of Americans, fed up with 30 years of
declining living and health standards, deepening inequalities and perpetual
wars, do not form an ‘alternative party’ is that they have been repeatedly
conned and corralled in the Democratic Party by the “house radicals”.
Jackson,
Kucinich, Obama and Sanders promised radical changes in the primaries and then
have gone on to hand their supporters, mostly disaffected workers, over to the
Party oligarchs, abandoning them without their past social movements or future
hope: like cast-off condoms. Is there any wonder why so many abstain!
Note:
James Petras's latest books include:
- James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer (2014), Extractive Imperialism in the Americas: Capitalism’s New Frontier, published by Brill (Leiden/Boston) (Studies in Critical Social Sciences Series).
- James Petras (2014), The Politics of Empire: The US, Israel and the Middle East, published by Clarity Press, Atlanta.
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