FEBRUARY 25, 2020
The events of the past week—beginning with the TV
debates of the candidates on February 19 and culminating in the Nevada Democrat
Party caucus in Nevada on February 22 this past Saturday—show a growing
desperation in the ranks of the Democratic Party’s corporate-driven leadership
as the Sanders campaign has assumed a clear lead in the race for the Democratic
Party nomination.
Having ascended in the late 1980s to a controlling
role of the party through the Democrat Leadership Conference (DLC) faction, the
Democratic party’s leadership now sees itself at a critical juncture. If
it has not yet crossed the political ‘Rubicon’, it at least has arrived at its
opposite shore and is preparing to do so.
The choice the leadership faces is whether to
transform itself into a Trump-like party, openly run by oligarchs and
billionaires; or to return to a pre-1990 Democrat party—before the DLC faction
takeover—and allow Bernie Sanders to become its presidential candidate.
The party leadership’s current actions clearly show
it now leans heavily toward the former. Its plan is to unite itself around
Bloomberg, rather than return to former, more democratic roots with Sanders.
In the worst-case scenario, some of the wealthiest
of the Democrat Party’s backers—like former Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein
( a big financial backer of Hillary and Obama campaigns)—are even
suggesting a third way. They have begun to say privately, and even
publicly, they would vote for Trump instead of Sanders in November.
They’ve done that before: When progressive grassroots forces coalesced around
the party’s nominee, George McGovern, in 1972 and the leadership turned to
support Richard Nixon. And before that in 1956 to some extent, when Adlai
Stevenson was the nominee.
In other words, there’s a long-standing history in
the Democratic Party of the corporate wing sabotaging its candidate in a
presidential election by supporting the Republican party’s candidate, either
indirectly or directly.
Democrat
Party As an Indicator of Political Crisis
Just as the traditional Republican party imploded
in 2016 and thereafter became the Party of Trump—so too is a similar
fundamental transformation now underway in the Democrat party.
It was a grassroots social movement that enabled
the Republican party’s transformation. It’s no less a grassroots movement in
the Democrat party today driving the transformation, the final outcome yet to
be determined. And in both cases, Democrat party leaders were (and are)
unable to understand movement dynamics: in 2016 they couldn’t understand (or
predict) why Trump won. And today, in 2020, they can’t understand how and why
Sanders is gaining growing support within their party’s ranks.
Just take a look at the Democratic Party at
present: Neither of the leading candidates to date is really ‘Democrats’:
there’s Bernie Sanders, the independent running under the banner of the
Democrat Party; and there’s Mike Bloomberg, a Republican billionaire running in
the primaries after having ‘bought his way into’ the debates and primaries by
contributing tens of millions of dollars to the Democrat National Committee
(DNC). The DNC was more than glad to change the rules to allow Bloomberg
to jump into the middle of the pack in exchange for Bloomberg’s millions in
last-minute party contributions
Like Joe Biden, the prior ‘chose one’ has faded, and
continues to fade, the DNC-corporate moneybag wing of the party has clearly
opted for Mike Bloomberg. And, at the same time, are intensifying their attacks
on Sanders.
The Sanders vs. Bloomberg contest represents the
fundamental contest in the primaries. The rest is an overlay. That primary
two-candidate contest will become even clearer after Super Tuesday primaries
are concluded in early March. And by the end of March, the lesser candidates
will have been effectively cleared from the field.
What all this represents is a collapse of the
traditional Democratic party center, in favor of the two ‘outliers’ (Sanders
& Bloomberg). The ‘outlier effect’ in turn reflects the fact that
voters have little confidence in the leaderships’ various centrist choices to
date—i.e. Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, etc. The voters have lost confidence in
the leadership’s political proposals and programs—i.e. the policies that have
been pushed and promoted by the corporate wing for the past three decades since
the late 1980s, when the corporate wing rallied around the faction called the
Democratic Leadership Caucus (DLC) and took over the party and its policies.
Those policies pushed free trade treaties, allowed
Reagan-George W. Bush multi-trillion-dollar corporate-investor tax cuts to
continue, bailed out bankers but not Main St. after 2009, refused to restore
Union rights in organizing and bargaining, offered token minimalist market
solutions to the healthcare crisis, allowed the government to rip off students
by imposing interest rates on student loans even higher than private lenders,
allowed pensions and retirement security to collapse, provided a tepid response
to police brutality, failed to stop widespread Republican gerrymandering and
voter suppression at the states level that’s given Trump and the radical right
a near ‘lock-hold’ on the so-called red states in national elections. That’s
just a shortlist.
Voters sense that these neoliberal policies of the
mainstream Democrat party leaders have not, and cannot, reverse or resolve
the growing economic—and now political—crises now deepening within the core of
America.
The ‘Get
Sanders’ Party Leadership Response
As the party leaders’ former favorite, Joe Biden,
fades at the polls and in the primaries, party campaign operatives—both former
and current—are now being unleashed by party leaders to go after Sanders with
gusto.
Meanwhile, across the country, more local party
officials (mayors, party brokers, state legislators, governors, i.e. those
folks comprising the majority of the so-called Special Delegates to the
Democrat Party Convention) is busy increasingly endorsing publicly Bloomberg.
The ‘Get Sanders’ crowd includes some of the big
names of the corporate wing of the party:
There’s Obama, who is already allowing his image
and statements to be used by Bloomberg in his political ads (now totaling more
than $450 million as of mid-February 2020). Expect Obama to come out more
directly against Sanders soon, likely right after Super Tuesday or even before.
There’s the Clintonites, from Hillary to hack hatched man, James Carville,
former key campaign advisor to Bill, whose anti-Sanders slander is also
rising. (Watch Bill stumble along in Hillary’s wake as well, once
Obama comes out publicly directly opposing Sanders in the next few weeks).
Then there’s the analog to Fox News on the
Trump-Republican right—the TV news channel MSNBC (sometimes called MSDNC)—that
has been escalating its anti-Sanders commentary. Its star talk show host, Chris
Mathews, recently declared Sanders’ win in the Nevada Caucus is similar to the
Nazi conquest of France in 1940. The Mathews remark has released a flood
of criticism from not only the Sanders organization but the middle ranks of
the party and independents as well, who points out that Sanders’ family members
were actually murdered in the Nazi holocaust.
On the print news side, not to be forgotten, is the
New York Times’ editorial page that is filled almost daily now with
anti-Sanders’ screeds by writers Douthout, Leonhardt, Krugman and others.
Mathews, Hillary, Carville, the NY Times’
mouthpieces, and a growing crescendo of other Sanders slanderers together
represent the forward scouting parties being sent undercover across the
‘political Rubicon’ early, in order to lay the land mines designed to implode
rational public opinion and discussion of Sanders’ programs and proposals.
They’re there, behind the lines, to prepare the main assault by the Democratic
Party moneybags and leaders, as they deliberate when and where to best cross
the river in force.
A new anti-Sanders theme launched this past week
was the statement by the US intelligence bureaucracy that the Russian's new
prime target is to support Sanders. Russian interference in the 2020 elections
thus will focus on Sanders. Somehow, the media spin goes, that’s supposed to
help Trump get elected. The argument being that Sanders will be the
easiest candidate for Trump to defeat. But it’s an argument that fails to
acknowledge that in various national polls, Sanders leads Trump by 49% to 45%,
while all other Democrat candidates are either tied with Trump or losing to
Trump!
Most important here, the ‘Russia favors Sanders’
slander is backed by no evidence whatsoever from US intelligence sources.
It’s just a leaked opinion by some bureaucrat, picked up by the party’s big
media friends and thrown out there for the electorate to chew on. When
asked what’s the proof, the advocates simply hide behind the cover of ‘can’t
tell you, it’s classified information’.
In the week(s) ahead, a flood of further
fear-mongering ‘Sanders slanders’ are certainly to appear from the party’s
Clinton-Obama hacks and their ‘in-house’ media sources like MSNBC. We’ll hear
ad nauseam themes like “Sanders can’t defeat Trump”. “Sanders will result in
losses ‘down ballot’” (i.e. Congress Reps & Senators). “Sanders has always
been a friend of Russia and Putin”. “Sanders is not really a Democrat”.
“Sanders can’t attract the needed moderate Republicans and Independents in
swing states”. And let’s not forget the even more direct charge, voiced by
Bloomberg in the last debate, that “He’s a Commie”. Fox News will no
doubt stretch that one to the limit and beyond.
The Pre-Nevada
TV Debate
Last week’s TV debates showed clearly the limits of
Bloomberg as a candidate. Warren and Biden know well that Bloomberg is there to
steal their support. Warren’s scathing critique of Bloomberg in the pre-Nevada
caucus TV debate exposed him as a Trump retread. Like Trump, Bloomberg carries
similar baggage of non-disclosure agreements involving abused women, refusal to
release his tax returns, his stop & frisk unconstitutional policing in New
York while mayor and Bloomberg’s public statement and belief that the end of
‘red-lining’ in housing was the cause of the 2008-09 housing crash (yes, he
said that!).
Bloomberg’s only message in the debate was only he
could defeat Trump. Really? Polls show he performs worst against Trump than
almost all the other candidates. Meanwhile, as Warren went after
Bloomberg in the debate, Buttigieg and Klobuchar engaged in an on-stage ‘food
fight’ over who failed more to deliver results for their constituents. Not to
be outdone, Biden on occasion awoke briefly from his deep political sleep, only
to fall into a political coma onstage again.
The Meaning
of the Nevada Caucus Results
According to the latest count, Sanders won 47% or
more of the popular vote. Biden only 21%. Thus sleepy Joe’s much-heralded
‘wall’ of union and Latino support in Nevada was breached and shattered by
Sanders. Despite Sanders’ overwhelming win, however, it is reported that
he will receive only 9 of the potential 36 Nevada caucus delegates—i.e. another
indicator of how the caucus and primary rules have been rigged against him. While
winning the popular vote in all three of the contests thus far in Iowa, New
Hampshire, Nevada—a feat never before accomplished by any candidate in a
Democratic Party primary season—Sanders still has accumulated only 30 votes (+
the 9?), while Buttigieg reportedly has been awarded 27.
The Nevada caucus shows the under 35 youth
vote—both union and minority—are moving to Sanders. Biden’s
campaign is now on life support. If he doesn’t win big by a wide margin in the
next primary in South Carolina next weekend, he is campaign toast. If the
same dynamic occurs as did in Nevada, with the youth minority vote going to
Sanders, then Biden’s ‘wall of black support’ will crash just as his
union-Latino wall did in Nevada.
The South
Carolina Primary
The Democrat voter base is 60% black in South
Carolina. Polls show Biden with only 27% black support to Sanders’ 23%.
Biden can’t afford to win that narrowly. If he does, his money support—already
dwindling—will collapse just as the Super Tuesday primaries begin. He must win
big over Sanders in South Carolina or else his days in the primaries are
numbered. But if Bernie has 23% support now and momentum, it’s clear he’s going
to peel off much of the under-35 black vote in the South Carolina primary next
weekend.
A second place by Sanders in North Carolina will be
viewed as another big victory for him; a weak first place by Biden will be
viewed as the last nail in his primary campaign coffin.
What the Democrat party leadership and their candidates
don’t understand is the dynamics of movement politics. Sanders has a
movement behind him, focused around the youth, and increasingly minority, voter
surge toward Sanders. Sanders’ support remains solid in the 35% or more range,
steadily growing. Bloomberg is siphoning off the support of the other
candidates, not Sanders’. Warren and others know this. Thus her, and their,
targeting Bloomberg in the last debate. What irks Elizabeth and the other
candidates most, however, is that Bloomberg is buying his way into their base.
In some ways, the Sanders movement is beginning to
show signs, not unlike the Obama surge in 2008. There are also elements of
similarity to Trump’s 2016 movement and campaign. But Democrat Party
leaders don’t understand the movement dynamic going on today in their own
party—any more than they understood the movement dynamic that brought Trump to
the top of the Republican ticket in 2016. They failed to predict Trump’s win;
they’re failing to predict Sanders’.
The Super Tuesday (March 3) Primaries
The 15 state primaries to be held next week will
reveal the fundamental contest behind the cacophony of the multiple candidates’
campaigns. That contest is between the money interests and leadership of the
Democrat Party vs. the bottom-up surge demanding change and the re-direction of
the party away from the neoliberal policies and those money interests
dominating the party that has been the case at least since the early 1990s.
No less than 37% of all the party’s Milwaukee
convention’s 1,991 delegates will be determined by Super Tuesday, a week from
now. By the end of March, it will be 60%. That’s not counting, of course, the
more than 500 Special Delegates the party leadership is holding in its back
pocket. They will be released on the second ballot at the convention by the
party leadership, in order to ensure their choice nominee gets the party’s
presidential nod at the convention. And their choice is Bloomberg, not Sanders.
The party leadership’s prime strategic goal now is
to stop Sanders. Their boy Biden can’t do it. So they’ve brought Bloomberg in
from the wings (after reportedly taking a $50 million contribution from him to
their general campaign fund). The other candidates are being kept in the race
in order to split the votes in the primaries, to prevent Sanders from getting a
clear majority on the first ballot at the convention. After that, the
leadership will release the ‘Kraken’ of the 500 Special Delegates to vote for
their own billionaire in the presidential race, Bloomberg.
The
Consequences of the Democrat Leadership’s Current Strategy
The leadership-corporate wing clearly believes they
can win the November election even if they scuttle Sanders once again and
prevent him from getting the nomination. One can almost hear them talking in
the backrooms and cloakrooms at the primary city hotels: “We only lost in 2016
by 70 electoral votes in 3 swing states. We can take those states
(Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin) in 2020 even without Bernie. The minorities
have nowhere else to go. The Union top leaders are with us. Middle-class white
women hate Trump, especially in the swing state suburbs and exurbs. We’ll put a
woman or a minority on the ticket as VP. That’ll keep the youth and
progressives in tow. We’ll adopt Sanders’ programs in our campaign speeches,
then drop them after the election. We can win without Sanders on the ticket!”.
But they are wrong. Sanders’ voters will largely
abstain. Being prevented from the nomination twice, in 2016 and now 2020, they
will mostly not vote. Trump will eat Bloomberg alive in the presidential
debates. And the Democrats will lose in November with Bloomberg…once again.
They will prove they are strategically inept and tactically incapable once
again.
What the party’s leadership will accomplish should
they scuttle Sanders in 2020, however, is to set in motion a process leading to
the creation of a bonafide third party. This time rising from a real grassroots movement base, not via some top-down declaration by left intellectuals or
some ambitious politician. This time the real thing.
Should it lose in November, the Democrat Party
leadership will be painted as having re-elected Trump by having maneuvered in
Bloomberg and pushed out Sanders. Even if they win with Bloomberg in November,
given the deep economic crisis that will erupt immediately after the election
(if not sooner), they will once again propose Obama-like neoliberal policies
that won’t resolve that crisis any better for Main St. in 2021 than had Obama
in 2009. And unlike Obama in 2012, they won’t be given a second chance.
Should that joint political-economic crisis
scenario emerge post-November 2020, what remains of the Democrat party will
implode. US politics in 2024 will thereafter be on a totally new plane.
Jack Rasmus is author of the recently
published book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and
the Coming Depression’, Clarity Press, August 2017. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and his twitter handle is @drjackrasmus.
His website is http://kyklosproductions.com.
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