You Haven't Resisted Nothin!'

I recently saw this wonderful video that contextualized Stevie Wonder's "You Haven't Done Nothin'" - originally written as an anti-Nixon song - as an attack on Donald Trump, interweaving the original record and Trump's own words about black Americans with several black people singing "Donald Trump, you haven't done nothin.'"

But if Wonder's song fits Trump perfectly, it also fits the Democratic elitists who claim to "resist" him.

A good deal of the so-called  resistance against Trump is a bunch of mostly disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters and establishment Democrats who helped Trump win in the first place by not nominating someone other than Hillary for President.  How many times do I have to remind you all that Hillary promoted Trump when she as a candidate in the Democratic presidential primaries because she knew she'd get the nomination and she had a feeling that she'd lose against John Kasich or Marco Rubio if the Republicans nominated either one of them?  How many times do I have to point out that her candidacy was based on family entitlement and gender identity politics and not on connecting with angry voters in the heartland who lost their jobs?  I recently saw Fareed Zakaria's CNN special on how Trump was elected, and Zakaria explained that the Democrats had become the party of white-collar professionals who lost touch with everyday people and ignored the warning signs that middle-class and working-class people were with both parties and how Trump cut through all that and exploited that anger.  The Democrats helped realize this nightmare by not fighting with fire with fire and not nominating someone who talked about jobs and the middle class and could take on Trump on those same issues.  They nominated Hillary instead. And these elitist Democrats are going to resist Trump?

They haven't resisted diddly-squat.  As PBS's Jeff Greenfield pointed out, they haven't stopped Trump from dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency, placing Neil Gorsuch and other young right-wingers on the federal bench for lifetime appointments, or pursuing racist law-enforcement policies.  All they did was get steamrolled.  What have they stopped?  What?  Repeal of Obamacare?  The Democrats didn't stop that; the Republicans did by trying to do it.  Which is why I'm sick and tired of hearing a bunch of white bourgeois Democratic elitists who think that hanging out with pop stars is the same as connecting with the common people say that they'll make right out of wrong.  

And by the way, the party's Clinton wing is already trying to figure out how to anoint one of their own (the identity of said Clintonite to be determined) as the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee in waiting.  Democrats, you're going the way of the Whigs, and you brought this nightmare on yourself.

Why must you go on saying you'll fight . . . to take what's wrong and make it right?  'Cause if you really want to hear my views . . . you haven't resisted nothin'!  

Sing along with me! Whigging out!  Oh, wo ho, Whigging out!  Oh, wo ho, Whigging out!  Oh, wo ho, Whigging out!  Oh, wo ho, Whigging out!  (Sing it loud and for the people!)  Say, Whigging out! Oh, wo ho, Whigging out! Oh, wo ho, Whigging out . . . 

The New Democratic National Committee Chairman

It's Tom Perez.

Although Keith Ellison and several other candidates for the post of Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman fought the good fight, the 447 members of the committee, who voted yesterday (the vote was not scheduled for today, as I had stated earlier), chose a party insider who has been loyal to the establishment and is seen to be friendlier to wealthy donors and to the Clintons than to the millions of people who backed Bernie Sanders and the dozen or so of us who were for Martin O'Malley.  (O'Malley, who made Perez his Secretary of Labor, Licensing and Regulation when he became governor of Maryland, wouldn't back Perez for the DNC chairmanship.  That should tell you something.)

The Democrats could have gotten someone new and fresh  - alas, South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg withdrew at the last minute - but chose instead a political hack who is seen, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald, as "a reliable functionary and trustworthy loyalist by those who have controlled the party and run it into the ground."  Indeed - he blindly supported Hillary Clinton (that's the only way you could do it - blindly) in the 2016 presidential primaries (and O'Malley was clearly getting even by supporting Buttigieg, not that it mattered), and he's pretty much at Bill and Hillary's beck and call.  In fact, he advised Hillary Clinton during her 2016 primary campaign, and he suggested that she paint Sanders as the "white candidate" to build and shore up her support among minorities.  And isn't it weird that Hillary Clinton herself would put out a video message of resistance to Donald Trump on the eve of the DNC chairmanship vote to convince us that she's still relevant?  (She wants to run for President again.) 

Oh yeah, on a separate vote, a resolution that would have banned "registered, federal corporate lobbyists" from serving as at-large DNC members was rejected.  Money talks, and the people walk.

Although Perez made Ellison his deputy chairman to quell angry progressives and promised to go after the working-class and rural and exurban voters who backed Trump in 2016, most liberals realize that the Democratic Party no longer represents their interests (and hasn't since the Vietnam War ended) and are ready to bolt the party.  There have already been calls for a convention to found a new party . . . similar to the calls for meetings in Michigan and Wisconsin in 1854 that led to the Republican Party, which quickly supplanted the Whigs and recruited ex-Whigs Abraham Lincoln and William Seward, as well as the Frelinghuysen political dynasty in New Jersey, among others.  And the Huffington Post has been circulating a petition to make it happen.

I predict that Perez's elevation to the DNC chairmanship is going to accelerate a mass exodus from the Democratic Party and cause the first major change of the nation's two-party system in 160 years.  Any Democrat currently eyeing a White House run in 2020 will have to make a decision whether to stay with the old party or join the new one.  All Democrats now have to understand that they should either lead, follow, or get out of the way.  

We all know what the DNC chose to do. :-(

(Some good news: Stephanie Hansen won the state Senate special election in Delaware.)

President Trump???

This is not good.

The Democrats had an excellent chance to keep the White House and possibly win back the Senate, and they blew it.  There were several good reasons to keep the Democratic hold on the executive branch, but the party's now-discredited establishment couldn't think of one.  All Hillary Clinton offered was that, under her administration, Americans would be "stronger together."  And now Donald Trump is to become the forty-fifth President of the United States!

Before I continue, I have to address the fact that I voted for Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein.  I don't regret casting my ballot for Dr. Stein one iota.  I would never have voted for her if I thought for a second that she could win enough votes in New Jersey to deprive Hillary Clinton of the state's fourteen electoral votes and give them to Trump.   And, she didn't.  Hillary won the Garden State with 53 percent of the vote.  I'm proud of my vote for Dr. Stein; I did my part to help her get to the five-percent threshold necessary for the Greens to get federal matching funds for the 2020 presidential election . . . even though Dr. Stein didn't quite make it.

That out of the way, I now turn to the election results. Trump won on fouls, using every epithet in the book against women, racial and ethnic minorities, and Muslims, and feeding into people's paranoia and resentments.  He exploited the legitimate concerns and grievances of the cratering middle class and turned them against convenient scapegoats.  And all Hillary Clinton could offer in response was that she was not Trump.  She never offered a positive domestic program to help people get ahead and never explained why her interventionist foreign policy proposals would make America safe.  She merely promised more of the same of President Obama's policies without explaining why this would be good enough.

There's a whole class of people who feel alienated from the natural constituencies of both major parties, Republican fat cats and Democratic cultural elitists.  They resent Wall Street bankers for getting rich at their expense and entertainers who live good lives paid for in part by their fans. Many of them are working low-wage jobs and seethe with resentment toward these constituencies and for a long time were like powder kegs waiting to explode. That sound you heard on Election Day was those same people going "Kaboom."  And Donald Trump lit the fuse.

It didn't have to be this way.  The Democrats had presidential candidates who had the same ability to speak to disaffected Americans that Trump did.  Joe Biden, who ultimately decided not to run, had it.  Bernie Sanders had it.  Jim Webb had it.  Certainly Martin O'Malley had it.  Hillary didn't.  But the Democratic establishment wasn't interested in anyone other than Hillary being their standard bearer.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her minions tipped the scales for Hillary, discouraged and silenced those Democrats who wanted to run for the nomination against Hillary, and brought the hammer down on those who did.  Hillary's supporters happily approved.  They didn't care that she was  a fundamentally flawed candidate. They didn't seem to mind her ties to Wall Street.  They overlooked her hawkish call for a no-fly zone in Syria and how it risked a military confrontation with Russia.  They were all too busy chanting, "La la la,  first female President!"

I saw how the Democratic establishment pushed Hillary and stifled alternative voices.  As a Martin O'Malley supporter, I saw my candidate ignored when he called for more primary debates.   I saw how he was marginalized, along with Webb and Lincoln Chafee, and not given the chance to make his case.  Then, after O'Malley dropped out and Bernie Sanders surged and had a realistic shot of winning the Democratic nomination, Hillary's underlings undermined Sanders at every turn. Despite the fact that Hillary was a flawed nominee, they forced her on the electorate and assumed, once it became apparent that Trump would be the Republican nominee, that Hillary would win because she was not Trump.  Hillary herself acted like she was entitled to the Presidency, not so much because she's a woman, but because her husband had been President in the 1990s and because she thought it was her turn.  The Democrats could have come up with a strong nominee who could beat Trump had they held a fair nomination contest, but they gambled everything on Hillary, and now they're paying for it.

Not only was the Democratic establishment so smug about the 2016 election, so were Hillary's rank-and-file supporters.  I quit several Democratic Facebook pages because of the nasty comments from so many Hillary fans about her competitors for the nomination  - O'Malley's obscurity, Sanders's far-left policy proposals - and the ridicule and insults I got simply for supporting O'Malley.  When I  backed Dr. Stein in the general election, Hillary supporters ridiculed her and her movement to build up the Greens.  Then they tried to gaslight me into voting for Hillary because they said a vote for Dr. Stein would help Trump by splitting the anti-Trump vote.  They weren't reaching out to me with friendly persuasion; they were chewing me out with angry threats.

All through this campaign, from the start of the nomination contest in the spring of 2015 to the nominating conventions, I kept saying that Hillary was a flawed presidential candidate, and Hillary supporters laughed at me.  Several of Hillary's opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination kept warning that Trump could win, especially Martin O'Malley, and so did I.  Hillary supporters kept laughing.  It looks like I have the last laugh now . . . although I don't feel like laughing.  The Republicans have all the power in Washington, having kept control of both houses of Congress, and the Democrats are completely devastated . . . and, like I once said, looking very Whiggish.

I can't let this go without calling out the media for being complicit in anointing Hillary as being inevitable and treating her opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination with contempt while giving Donald Trump the free media that proved to be the oxygen for his victorious campaign and thinking it wouldn't lead to his victory.  The press let us down as much as the Democratic establishment.

If there's any bright side to all this (and I'm stretching it here), it's that Hillary Clinton appears to have won the popular vote, and the Democrats gained two seats in the Senate in Illinois and New Hampshire . . . and may win a third Senate seat in Louisiana next month, thus denying the GOP a three-fifths filibuster-proof majority.  Trump doesn't have the mandate he thinks he has.  So the opposition has to get its act together and do what Martin O'Malley asked of his supporters - "hold strong."  Liberals in the Democratic Party ought to be ready to bolt the Democrats and form a new progressive party with the Greens.  I hope O'Malley himself does what his mentor Gary Hart did the night Ronald Reagan was re-elected President - begin recruiting for another presidential campaign for the next election.

In the meantime, the notion of "President Trump" is a reality.  And to Hillary supporters, I hate to say I told you so, but . . . I told you so. :-(

Jill Stein: Why Can't Hillary Supporters Handle Her?

Ever since I started telling people I was planning to vote for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in November, I've gotten a lot of criticism for wanting to "waste" my vote on a minor-party candidate who can't win, and I've done my best to ignore that.  But as the polls have tightened between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Hillary supporters have gone ballistic with Dr. Stein and her supporters.  On her Medium page, film blogger and Hillary supporter Sasha Stone assailed Stein backers for preparing to give Dr. Stein enough votes to deprive Hillary of a victory and help Trump win the Presidency, and she dismissed them as being selfish and uncaring toward the well-being of the country and caring only - wait for it - about their coolness.  "The last thing you care about is what happens to anyone else," Stone wrote. "You don’t care about the environment. You don’t care about the future of the already endangered animals. You don’t care about the Supreme Court because all you really care about is yourself. Your coolness matters more than the welfare of others. You know that people pay attention to you when you say you’re voting for Jill Stein because it means you’re edgy and not a sheep and not a mainstreamer."

Someone needs to take an anger management course.

It isn't just scribes like Stone trying to gaslight Stein supporters.  Sean Colarossi, writing in PoliticusUSA.com, insists that the polls are so close that any vote for Dr. Stein would be irresponsible and put Trump in the White House.  Dan Savage has said that disaster will come to minority groups if the "pasty white Green Party supporters" vote for Dr. Stein and skew the results in Trump's favor. On his TV show "Real Time," Bill Maher said it was important to support Hillary to keep Trump from winning by default and told liberals to do what they've been told to do for thirty years - that is, put aside their pet causes - and vote for Hillary because the country's future depends on it.  Actress Kerry Washington, appearing on Maher's show a few weeks later and sporting an oversized Hillary button, said we would be "voting against ourselves" by voting for a third-party candidate (though, to be fair, she did not mention Dr. Stein by name).  I have friends who are supporting Hillary and bashing Dr. Stein and her backers; one of them said on Facebook that Stein supporters are annoying and irrational.

Gee, why are all of these Hillary backers bashing, insulting, and smearing a nice lady like Dr. Stein - and her supporters?  Could it be, maybe, just maybe, that they know they're backing a fundamentally flawed candidate who represents the corrupt, bourgeois Democratic establishment and they're threatened by, of all things, a real liberal who appeals to progressive voters who, having repeatedly been thrown under the bus by the Democratic Party for decades, have had enough of establishment Democrats and aren't going to take their crap any more?

Dr. Stein has an ambitious agenda to put America back on the right track, with plans to get the country on a renewable-energy grid by 2030, guarantee health care to all, end police brutality and mass incarceration, advance rights for women and minorities, and end the Citizens United ruling. And Hillary . . . well, I'm not sure what Hillary wants to do, but she's made some mealy-mouthed comments about granting tax credits for the poor and expanding child care.  I also know she's supported an interventionist policy in the Middle East, she doesn't think we need to restore the Glass-Steagall Act to rein in big banks, she only came out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal after Bernie Sanders did, and she's been supported by Monsanto.   And what I know most about Hillary is not what she is, but what she isn't.  She's not Donald Trump.

Not good enough.  Trump is a clown, a buffoon, and a bigot (though he does have a good singing voice!), but Hillary is going to have to do more than not be Trump if she wants to earn the votes and trust of the millions of liberals who backed Bernie Sanders for President and the dozen or so of us who backed Martin O'Malley for President.  I haven't heard Hillary offer any bold, ambitious plans that would make me vote for her in a heartbeat.  She can't.  She's too tied to a Democratic establishment in bed with Wall Street bankers and major corporations to offer another New Deal, which only serves to remind us that she'll only offer another raw deal.

Let's get a few things straight. Every time a Democrat has been elected President since the 1980s, we liberals have always expected a change for the better and have ended up getting business as usual.  We've seen Republicans unite to resist change and seen first Bill Clinton and then Barack Obama try to work with the Republicans only to see the GOP take over one or both houses of Congress and reinstate right-wing supply-side economics.  If we get anything we support, it's usually in watered-down form, be it tax credits or a tweak of the health care "system."  More social programs?  Nah.  Democrats don't have time for that.  They're too busy pursuing neoliberalism, that lamebrained theory of trying to provide for the greater good through market "reform" and privatization.  

Maybe that's why the Democrats have been declining and falling lately. On President Obama's watch, they've lost the House, they're down to eighteen governorships and majority control of only 30 out of 99 state legislative chambers, they've lost the Senate, and Democratic "rising stars" now have brilliant futures behind them.  And after all that, the Democratic establishment, convinced that Hillary was their only hope of winning the 2016 presidential election, discouraged Hillary's potential opponents for the party's presidential nomination, punished those who actually ran, tried to stifle debate during the primaries and caucuses, and then used its muscle to discredit and demolish Bernie Sanders when he turned out to be far more for real than Martin O'Malley ended up being.  And now these same people who offended those of us who supported Sanders or O'Malley by tipping the scales for Hillary and running roughshod over us are demanding that we vote for Hillary, because if we don't and if we vote for Dr. Stein instead, Trump will win and destroy the Republic and it will be all our fault.  That's not the way to get us liberals on their side. Bullying us and threatening us only serves to remind us why we're so sick of the Democratic establishment.  Dr. Stein scares establishment Democrats because she is providing a place for progressives who should be in the Democratic Party but who no longer feel welcome there . . . or never felt welcome at all. That's why Hillary Clinton's backers are attacking Dr. Stein; she threatens them and their candidate more than Trump. 

Which is ironic, because Gary Johnson, the Libertarian presidential nominee, appears to be hurting Hillary more than Dr. Stein is.  Not only is Johnson far ahead of Dr. Stein in the polls, he's attracting moderate and conservative Republicans and independents repulsed by Trump who had considered voting for Hillary but are now giving Johnson a serious look.  Hillary's supporters can't say that liberals who should vote for her but vote for Dr. Stein help Trump, and they shouldn't say that she's losing these liberal voters to Dr. Stein . . . because Hillary never had them in the first place.  They either backed someone else in the primaries and caucuses or skipped them altogether.  

Another reason Dr. Stein scares Hillary backers is because, like Sanders, she's exposed neoliberalism as a crock and reminds the Democrats of their proud but forsaken New Deal/Great Society past.  But unlike Sanders, she can't be controlled.  Nor can anyone control Ajamu Baraka, Dr. Stein's vice presidential running mate, who acidly noted on a recent CNN appearance that Obama's failures as President aren't only because of Republican racism.  Baraka said that Obama had "an historic opportunity to transform this country," but did not live up to it.  "He allowed his commitment to neoliberal policies and a neoliberal world view," Baraka said, "to undermine the possibility of greatness." 

No, Sasha Stone, I am not selfish . . . and I am not cool.  Geez,  I still love Jethro Tull.  No, Sean Colarossi, I am not irresponsible.  Forgetful, maybe, like when I fail to take out the trash once in awhile, but not irresponsible.  And no, Kerry Washington, going third party and challenging the major-party duopoly is not voting against yourself; it's being true to yourself.  So why don't all of you Hillary backers leave us Stein supporters alone?  And the Democratic establishment has a lot of damn gall to force Hillary on us liberals and then try to scare us into voting for her because the alternative is Donald Trump.  The Democrats had an opportunity to nominate Bernie Sanders or Martin O'Malley and run on a real progressive agenda and rebuild the party for the future.  Instead, they've nominated a candidate who represents the failures of their recent past.  The Democrats didn't do themselves any favors by making history with the nomination of Hillary as their first female presidential candidate; in fact, they may have consigned themselves to the dustbin of history.