Rep. Beto O’Rourke of El Paso, Texas, is a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, running against incumbent Ted Cruz, an extreme and unpopular right-winger.
He was recently asked whether he thinks NFL football players who kneel during the national anthem, in order to protest police brutality against black people, are showing disrespect to the nation and to veterans.
O’Rourke gave a great answer, which was straightforward, respectful of the questioner and ended:
I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights anytime, anywhere, any place.
He is financing his campaign with small donations and does not accept PAC money, but seems to be out-raising Cruz. I admire the way he campaigns. I’d like to think he could win.
Thomas Frank is one of my favorite writers. I like his books. I like his magazine articles. I enjoy watching videos of his speeches and interviews. But there is one thing he doesn’t quite get.
His basic idea is that the Democratic Party is losing because it has abandoned the American working class and the policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The leaves them vulnerable to the fake populism of Donald Trump and the right wing of the Republican Party.
Democrats rely on African-Americans, Hispanics and educated professionals of all races reacting against President Trump’s appeal to prejudice against African-Americans and immigrants.
That’s not enough, Frank writes. Democrats need to stand up for working people of all races—provide free college tuition and Medicare for all, enforce the anti-trust laws and renegotiate NAFTA and other pro-corporate trade treaties.
All this is true and important.
Frank’s mistake is to think that the reason top Democrats are pro-corporate is that they fail to understand their situation.
Shortly after the 36th minute in the video above. he says that the reason the Clintons and their allies have abandoned American labor is that the signature achievement of their generation was to their successful revolt against the New Deal, and nobody will disavow their generation’s signature achievement.
If they really don’t understand, it is because, as Upton Sinclair once put it, “it is hard to make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
The wealth and power of the Clintons, like that of the Obamas, is based on their allegiance to Wall Street and the corporate elite. If they had advocated breaking up the “too big to fail” banks or prosecuting financial fraud, they wouldn’t get six-figure lecture fees from bankers and hedge fund managers.
On a lower levels of government, there is the revolving door between Congress and regulatory agencies on the one hand and Washington lobbyists, law firms and regulated industries on the others. Neil Barofsky, whose job was oversight of the TARP bailout program, was warned that if he did his job too zealously, he would lose the chance of a good post-government job. He’s not the only one.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee supports a whole ecology of fund-raisers, pollsters, media specialists and campaign consultants who depend on a system whereby candidates concentrate on raising money and spending it on designated funds.
So it’s not just a matter of waking up to what’s really going on. It’s a matter of people knowing which side their bread is buttered on. Or, as the Japanese might say, nobody willingly lets their rice bowl be broken.
Randy Bryce, an iron worker who has never held public office except in his union, is running for Congress against Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in 2018.
The odds are against him. Ryan beat his Democratic opponent by 35 percentage points in 2016.
But Bryce has raised more money – $1.74 million – than any other Democratic congressional candidate at this point, and it’s all or mostly in donations of $22 or less.
Times are changing. Nowadays you can run for office and have a chance to win, without being a rich person and without being beholden to rich people.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, as part of a fund-raising e-mail, asked donors to vote on which of the following they prefer for the next DCCC bumper sticker. They illustrate what’s wrong with the Democratic Party.
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What’s noteworthy about these slogans is that they are almost empty of content. They only point they make is that Democrats are not Republicans. This actually is the main Democratic talking point.
The middle two refer to an incident that most voters have probably forgotten or didn’t notice in the first place. Also, in the context of present-day American politics, Resistance as a political stance is a defense of the status quo. It doesn’t offer a path to anything better.
To show what I mean, here are meaningful slogans.
END THE WARS! DEMOCRATS 2018
DEFEND THE BILL OF RIGHTS! DEMOCRATS 2018
PUT AMERICANS TO WORK! DEMOCRATS 2018
HEALTH CARE FOR ALL! DEMOCRATS 2018
HANDS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY! DEMOCRATS 2018
I have a much longer list of issues in mind, but you get the idea.
Of course the present leaders of the Democratic Party would never adopt such slogans, and not just because they would open up so many incumbent Democrats to charges of hypocrisy.
