It’s hard to empathize with the corporate liberals who streamed from the Javits Center in tears Tuesday night. Their corrupt Democratic Party had a good if not great candidate in Bernie Sanders and their DNC deliberately fought to keep him from winning the primaries. In every poll taken during his campaign, Sanders beat Donald Trump in a hypothetical general election.
Oh, they’ll start pouring out their bile now, blaming everyone but themselves and their candidate. It was the media’s fault for popularizing Trump (a Clinton strategy). It was the FBI’s fault for re-opening the email case (thanks to Huma Abedin’s ex). It was stupid Middle America’s fault for being racist and sexist (was that why they voted for Trump?). It was third-party supporters who screwed us in Florida again (Paul Krugman and Rachel Maddow are furious that leftists didn’t vote for their heroine). It was Russia’s fault for hacking the DNC (no evidence) and plotting to invade Europe (no evidence).
While I agree that the Democratic establishment has no one to blame other than themselves for the loss of the presidency when Bernie Sanders was demonstrably a much stronger candidate and popular preference much more aligned with his stance, the GOP killed it down ticket, taking both branches of Congress and sweeping a plurality of state offices.
Even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.
Democratic strategists, take note. You need a better game across the board to be competitive.
Counterpunch
Blaming Everybody
Jason Hirthler
1 comment:
And it is also the mirror image of the Dem Establishment, the Clinton Hate Derangement Syndrome prism to be exact, that will also need to be put aside if the Left ever wants a comeback.
Not only did Clinton win the national popular vote (likely to approach a +3M on net), Trump's victories in the key states of FL,PA,MI and WI were razor thin. His reason for winner those is the same for his larger victories in OH, IA, NC and likely other states. He flipped working class '12 Obama voters to '16 Trump voters.
It's a little doubtful that these folks who supported not only '12 Obama, but come from a family tradition of supporting the New Deal and LBJ's Great Society as well as unions would be dissuaded by an email server, pantsuits, or the other nonsense your linked Joan Williams gaseous article tries to hoist on the '12Obama/'16Trump voters - she instead is providing the Archie Bunker caricature that has been voting for their financial masters on the Right since before Reagan.
No, it is the political consequences of being left behind after 30+ years of neoliberalism and Trump hitting that cord perfectly - whether he delivers is unlikely however. We might get the infrastructure spending, the tax cuts, and the other stimulus goodies MMT salivate over, but it will come with letting the financial vampire squids running amok again, and combined, will put the income equity gap on steroids. And combining that with the ever accelerating automation of production, the certainty of of a degrading foundation of any aggregate demand that will provide sustainability.
As to Sanders, the GOP would have presented his tax increases (including a payroll tax increase for godsakes!) sliced and diced to those '12Obama/'16Trump voters and they would stomped what was little life he had left out. Even with Stephanie Kelton on his committee staff, Bernie was too afraid to tell the truth that deficit spending is a good thing - can't blame him, he's as much a politician as any of them, and Profiles in Courage is no longer a thing. The voters would have smelt the fear in him.
Bernie and the Dems instead left it to President Trump to tell the tale - that "deficits don't matter." We'll see if McConnell and Ryan buy into a Ron Ray-gun repeat. If they do, we get the big GDP push while the termites from a true lack of aggregate demand eat away at the foundation - just like with Bush, the collapse will take several years and Trump will get re-elected in 2020. If not, I'm not sure he'll withstand the '12Obama/'16Trump feelings of betrayal to run in 2020.
Dems need to get their heads out of the rearends with pointing fingers at each other. They need to put their thinking caps on.. and discover how our monetary system actually works.
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