by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
The Democrats continue their decades-long lurch to the right. The party funds right-wing congressional candidates in hopes of appealing to Trump voters, but resists its own supporters’ calls for single payer health care and other reforms. The treachery provokes hardly a peep of complaint from Black politicians, who are busy searching for lurking Russians. Meanwhile, Barack Obama has been “hanging out with royalty in the United Kingdom.”
Freedom Rider: Under the Democrats’ Bus
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“The Democratic rank and file always end up being the losers, whether their party wins or doesn’t.”
Democratic party leaders are up to their old tricks. They have lost at every level of government across the country because they fail to give voters reasons to support them. This seemingly inexplicable behavior is quite deliberate. Giving the people what they want endangers their relations with wealthy individuals, corporations and big banks. Because they can no longer fool all of the people all of the time they have returned to a more open and obvious move to the right.
They are already planning to throw black voters and political progressives under the bus. The people who have been relied upon to give them the margin of victory are cast aside in favor of people who either won’t vote for them at all or who will pull the party to the right. Of course that was also Hillary Clinton’s orientation so it isn’t very different from the outcome they wanted.
Democrats cry out that Trump voters aren’t all racists and will still vote for Democrats. So says senator Al Franken among others. He spoke of “Franken-Trump” voters. He recommends, “You have to go and talk to them. And you have to listen.” Bernie Sanders joins in and says that Trump voters aren’t “sexist, racist, homophobes” even though many of them fall into those categories by their own admission.
Words like these ought to set off alarm bells. While even Bernie Sanders talks about winning over people who are quite happy with their political choices, they say little or nothing about meeting the needs of Democrats who have left the party in frustration.
“Democrats cry out that Trump voters aren’t all racists and will still vote for Democrats.”
For years the leadership made the case for bringing so-called “Reagan Democrats” back into the fold. They not only don’t advocate for their base of supporters being rewarded but actively work against their interests. Black America’s rewards for putting Bill Clinton in the White House were the crime bill and the end of public assistance as a right. Black people got nothing for their Clinton love except higher poverty rates and prisons bursting at the seams.
Black voters have been slowly neutered over time and are still recovering from the Obama love fest. There isn’t even a peep about being so openly taken for granted. In years past even the most callow black politician would manage to mutter some complaint about being ignored and disrespected.
Neither Hillary Clinton nor her $1 billion team of campaign consultants knew that she was in danger of losing several key states that traditionally voted Democratic in presidential elections. A mere 80,000 votes would have given her an Electoral College victory. The Democrats won’t own that this debacle is of their making, a result of making vapid appeals to people who wanted to see real change. Instead they declare that making overt appeals to Trump voters is a new political goal.
The Democratic response to losing to Trump has been all too typical. In Montana, one of the reddest of the red states, they wasted resources on a congressional seat they never had a hope of winning. In Georgia, Democrats have been exhorted to raise $15 million to win a congressional seat. Jon Ossoff, the Democratic Party nominee, is quite conservative. The only reason to make winning these seats a priority is to establish conservative bona fides, and keep corporate sugar daddies happy.
“Black America’s rewards for putting Bill Clinton in the White House were the crime bill and the end of public assistance as a right.”
Unfortunately, their plan has worked in the past. Bill Clinton won the nomination and presidency by making the case for his conservatism. Barack Obama was even more slippery than Slick Willie. He raised more money from Wall Street than any other presidential candidate while simultaneously marketing himself as a progressive. So great is Democratic trauma regarding the Trump victory that they may successfully use these or new ruses to pull off another presidential win.
But the Democratic rank and file always end up being the losers, whether their party wins or doesn’t. The banks always get a bailout and so does the military industrial complex. Even Obamacare was a Republican plan promoted by right wing thank tanks. Election outcomes never give banksters, defense contractors or Big Pharma cause for alarm.
Barack Obama is still working to promote the interests of the world’s ruling elites. Former presidents usually disappear from view and write their memoirs. But Obama is openly making election endorsements in France and Germany, and hanging out with royalty in the United Kingdom. His activities are not accidental, they are an extension of what the Democrats do at home. The ruling classes need to be mollified and that apparently is permanent job for Mr. Hope and Change.
The Democratic Party is proving itself to be treacherous yet again. There must be a movement away from them, a debate about how to achieve true political success. If not there will be more repeats of the past with a party emerging victorious while its voters remain the losers.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
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