Archive | Democratic Paarty RSS feed for this section

An Open Letter to the Democratic Party: Right and Wrong Ways of Opposing Trump, Fascist Tendencies in 2025

7 May

[Prefatory Note: the opinion commentary below was published in slightly modified form in CounterPunch on May 6, 2925. A short epilogue is appended to this version.]

An Open Letter to the Democratic Party

A Perspective of Discontent

Ever since Trump’s electoral victory in November 2024 I have been receiving multiple daily solicitations for funds to support the Democratic Party, individual Democratic candidates for Congress or State Offices, and notification of worthy campaigns on public issues such as the protection of Social Security, Medicare, and reproductive rights, as well as on voter protection measures in various forms. I am personally sympathetic with robust resistance to this perverse and dangerous Republican effort to dismantle democracy and constitutional governance in the United States by taking giant steps toward legitimating autocratic rule with fascist features of arbitrary violence and cruelty without empathy and decency.

I expect many will be critical of what I write here as a diversion from attacking the main targets of concern: a White House out of control, a subjugated Republican Congress that does Trump’s bidding as if composed of automatons, and a Supreme Court that endorses the subversive shTrump ethos 90% of the time and is due to be further ‘packed’ with Trumpists in coming years.

My response to this litany of political challenges: recent Democratic Party failures of style and practice deserve to be treated as overdue occasions for self-criticism, and the criticisms of a disappointed ally can be restorative, at least indirectly. At least it is motivated by constructive goals associated with rethinking the relation of money to political competition for support as well as a plea to address controversial issues of foreign policy in a forthright manner, and hopefully in the spirit of our ‘better angels.’

Funding Entrapment Techniques

Against this background, I find myself increasingly alienated by procedural and substantive aspects of the chosen approach being taken by the Democratic Party leadership to oppose such an undesirable and frightening set of developments in the governance of the country. On procedural issues, besides crudely reducing electoral politics to matters of raising money for electoral campaigns, giving the impression to the voting public that democratic politics is little more than a continuous funding appeal. This is the increasingly overt posture of the Democratic Party establishment in recent years. Without overlooking the importance of funding, I find this shift of emphasis from ideas to money deeply distressing.

It lends itself to ultra-manipulative fundraising tactics. This outlook employs a variety of techniques to induce presumed liberal voters with a high frequency to take an opinion survey by responding to simplistic, almost rhetorical, questions about the Trump agenda as opposed to a preferred Democratic alternative. Not a word is mentioned that the survey is a sleeper leadup to a mandatory monetary contribution without which the survey cannot be completed. Gullible respondents are given a fool’s choice between opting out after taking the time to answer the several pages of questions and committing to make a monetary contribution. This is clearly a funding entrapment mechanism that I found alienating in spirit and form.

The choice foisted upon an innocent respondent is to pay or abort the survey. My objection may seem trivial, even captious, but reliance on such technique exhibits a mentality of deception that more and more dominates bipartisan relations of the two political parties with their own followers, and of course with the citizenry as a whole. And not only in relation to electoral politics but across the entire spectrum of public concerns. To restore trust and animate robust activism the Democratic Party needs to cultivate reasoned honesty, however radical, and abandon its present style of hysterical rhetoric pretending either that all is won or everything lost by proclaiming liberal intentions or the significance of Trump’s anger or stumbles in exaggerated language that is incongruous with the grim realities of the political sphere. National policy prospects are bleak enough without resorting to hollow exaggerations (claiming tears of joy or panic) that annoy rather than motivate, much less enlighten.

An Escapist Nationalist Policy Agenda

If anything, my substantive objections to Democratic Party mobilizing tactics are more serious and raise my concerns to such a level of disillusionment that I am teetering on the brink of withdrawing support, financial and otherwise, from the Democratic Party. I am appalled that the party establishment continues to adopt a posture of total silence with regard to US foreign policy, which encourages an interpretation of continuing unconditional support for Israel despite its transparent and prolonged Gaza genocide. Such criminality itself thinly disguises Israel’s territorial objectives that depend upon coerced ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s censure of those who stayed on the sidelines in the struggle against South African apartheid is fully applicable here: “It is my conviction that if we are neutral in situations of injustice, we have chosen the side of the oppressor.” To be silent is even more morally tone deaf than to be neutral. It was Kamala Harris’s silence on hot issues, including but not limited to Gaza, that quite likely led to Trump’s victory last November and certainly undermined her leadership credibility for the future. To play it safe to avoid controversy amounts to the self-neutering of political identity that has long plagued liberal politics by being shamelessly pragmatic rather than principled when it comes to the hard issues that have arisen over the years in US foreign policy. If Harris had expressed either measured and informed opposition to Israel’s policies or even ventured her own Biden-free rationale for continuity of US policy in the Middle East, she would have earned respect rather than indifference, even scorn. If she had not distanced herself from controversy during her listless campaign for the presidency, she might now be heading a revitalized opposition rather than feebly mending fences with a stunned public helplessly watching de-democratization proceed daily without an energizing sense of credibly fighting back.

This unseemly silence by the Democratic Party leadership and liberal media on Israel/Palestine extends to foreign policy in general. Outsiders perceive an America that wants to run the world and is willing to pay the price of doing so but is indifferent to how or why. To be disappointed by Trump only because of his wrecking ball approach to a liberal domestic agenda while overlooking global issues is beyond misleading – it verges on insanity given the nature of the global challenges facing Americans, and indeed all of humanity. It means indifference to the UN, the diplomacy of war and peace, foreign aid, relations with China and Russia, nuclear disarmament, AI, robotics, and support for international law and morality. Its willed blindness surpasses the monkey that sees no evil!

If Trump is subtly attacked for building walls, not bridges, the Democrats are not far behind. It is hard to reconcile this inward turn with their overwhelming support for a huge ‘peacetime’ budget to fund the military while the poor at home suffer and the infrastructure rots. It is hard to explain the disparity between this investment in the world that excites the global imperialists in Washington of both political parties dream about and the measured pursuit of humane forms of sustainable governance that the leaders of the Democratic Party should be championing to meet 21st century challenges at home and internationally. Among the mistakes being made is to suppose that a costly hegemonic foreign policy can be divorced from a humane dedication to domestic priorities. The Democratic Party seems intent on promoting such a divorce, which invites a deep misunderstanding of the linkages between disappointment at home and running the world by relying on a militarized geopolitics.

To explain my discomfort with this presumed disinterest of US voters in anything beyond their borders and to show that I was not overstating this mood of apparent contentment with a walled in America, I list the issues selected in a typical recent funding appeal by the Democratic Party that polls Democrats about their main concerns as a prelude to a funding appeal. The only issue on this list that might justify inclusion in a foreign policy agenda is ‘addressing the climate crisis.’ Even climate concerns so described might be understood as no less domestic than the others given its wording, differing from Trump only with respect to not dismissing global warming as a hoax. The list below copies the exact language used in typical Democratic Party appeals:

“Which of the following best describes why you support Democrats? (Select all that apply.)

I believe in addressing the climate crisis.

I believe in creating more good-paying jobs and supporting unions.

I believe in reproductive freedom.

I believe in affordable health care.

I believe in protecting and expanding rights for the LGBTQ+ community.

I believe in protecting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

I believe in protecting democracy and the right to vote.

I believe in moving our country forward, not backward.

I believe in protecting critical federal services for working people, veterans, children, and the elderly.

I believe in strong, stable leadership.

All of the above

Other:”

Concluding Remarks

My final assessment of this recipe for despair, and continuing defeat, is that without a revitalized internationalism, America’s prospects are dismal at home as well in the world. Unless the Democratic Party reconstitutes itself with a sense of urgency the nation’s future will remain under a darkening sky. To restore hope that is not a cover for ‘wishful thinking’ requires reconnecting what we wish for at home with what we do abroad. Without adding demilitarization and denuclearization to the policy agenda the challenges facing the country and the world will continue to be misconceived. Without dedication to the prevention of and opposition to genocide, apartheid, and ecocide, prospects for cooperative problem-solving in multilateral venues will not be forthcoming. As well, without a stronger United Nations that rejects the primacy of geopolitics, any hopes for humane global governance, let alone war prevention and nuclear disarmament, will be in vain.

Perhaps it is too much to wish for, but by recourse to  ‘a politics of impossibility’ I would like to believe that the leaders of the Democratic Party are still capable of listening to loyal voices of disillusionment. Revisions of messaging to the faithful is only the tip of the iceberg. The underlying challenge is to make opposition to Trump evolve a transformational vision of how to frame political and economic agendas for a brighter future at home and abroad, and that means stepping into the sunlight of truthfulness and controversy, which should in any event be the lifeblood of a healthy democracy.

Tags: , , ,

Biden’s Escapist Vision & Democratic Party’s Evasive Electoral Campaign

10 Jul

[Prefatory Note: With trivial variations, this essay was published in CounterPunchon July 9, 2024. It expresses my dissatisfaction with Biden’s stubborn resolve to challenge Trump despite his impaired capabilities (and I would add his woeful foreign policy toward the Ukraine War and Gaza Genocide) and wooly-headed optimism about the future of America and his ill-conceived optimism about its ability to lead the world. The Democratic Party is faulted for its head-in-the-sand approach to foreign policy, limiting its electoral campaign strategy to the deserved demonization of Trump and Trumpism, but despite these two controversial ‘wars,’ refusing to defend or distance their campaign from these central features of the Biden presidency.]

Critiquing Biden’s Worldview, Democratic Party Tactics, and America’s Destiny

The Democratic Party is waging its 2024 electoral campaign by focusing on two

themes: first, a denunciation of all that Trump proposes to bring to the presidency  centering on  the destruction of American democracy, if elected, and secondly, a celebratory spin on the domestic record of the Biden years with several notable benefits for the American people  including jobs and wages, climate, energy policy, social protection, gun control, and a stock market at record highs. What is missing from this rosy picture of America and even more so from Democratic Party feckless advocacy is neither claims nor explanations of foreign policy, only a deafening silence. It is as if the leadership of the Democratic Party wants the voting public to forget that there is a world out there, beyond national boundaries. While it has pragmatic reasons to adopt this evasive approach, especially in an election year, it is irresponsible about its partial description of America’s role in the world at a critical historical juncture.

Embracing this national posture seems strange as the US has so heavily invested in military capabilities to secure its global dominance in the decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union over 30 years ago.  And as a consequence, finds itself currently engaged controversially in these wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza. It appears that even Biden is reluctant to claim political credit when addressing national audience for US support of Israel and Ukraine, and prefers to speak in generalities about the greatness of America as a country whose future is bright except to the extent dimmed by the threatened advent of Trump and Trumpism. This tendency to ignore the world should be more troubling to American voters than even Biden’s refusal to leave the presidential stage in light of his thinly deniable disabilities of age and mental health that have put his 2024 candidacy in such public peril as to make more likely a Trump victory in November. Such an evasive pattern gives seems to lend itself in Biden’s campaign rhetoric to absurdly boastful, yet distorting and unconvincing, assessments of the present broad political outlook for the country and the world.

Biden’s speech on the 3rd Anniversary of the January 6th Insurrectionary attack on Congress is a typical example. After a lengthy, persuasive recital of warnings about the Trump menace, Biden offers some unhinged general remarks, starting with his oft repeated startling expression of personal confidence in the glorious future of America: “I have never been more optimistic about the future of our country.”  No explanation is given for why this is so, and there could not be one even if Orwellian tropes were relied upon. Biden makes no mention of the dubious wars, of massive homelessness, of dangerously large economic inequalities, of an epidemic of mass shootings, of growing migrant tensions, of backsliding on carbon emissions and the related rise of extreme weather events, of numerous signs of rising risks of future major wars with China and Russia, quite possibly prompting the use of nuclear weapons, of deeply disturbing erosions of academic freedom recently accompanied by punitive encroachments on dissent and freedom of expression, as well as the emergence bitterest and most divisive societal polarization since the American Civil War. I confess that I have never in my life felt more pessimistic about the future of the country. At least the citizenry was entitled expected a self-professed liberal such as Biden to be forthright about addressing the unmet illiberal challenges that have been rampant during his years in the White House, and a program to do so in the increasingly unlikely event that Democrats are given the mandate to govern in November.

Biden also was immaturely boastful on the same occasion. “We’re the greatest nation on the face of the earth.” And possibly betraying his uncertainty about the outlandish claim immediately added reassuring words but no specifics, “We really are.’ Then he proceeded to display the kind of hubris long associated with the twilight of past declining empires. Counter-historically Biden observed that “We know America is winning. That’s American patriotism.’ It underpins the broader claim that evokes doubt and opposition outside the West: “there’s no country in the world better positioned to lead the world than America..Just remember who we are..We are the United States of America, for God’s sake.’ Remembering who we are, or have become, is the ideological leader of the (il)liberal democracies of the West who mostly lent a helping hand to Israel while in recent months it carried out a genocidal assault on the helplessly vulnerable 2.3 million civilian population of the tiny Gaza Strip. This American led complicity in what much of the world’s peoples perceived as a transparent genocide, even proclaimed as such in the rationales articulated and policies pursued by Israel’s political leaders and put into deadly practice by its armed forces. While claiming to be “defending the sacred cause of democracy” Biden doesn’t respect his own citizenry sufficiently to acknowledge Israel’s policies face unprecedented challenges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), offering neither an explanation nor an apology. We must ask ourselves whether such a failure to include the citizenry in evaluating foreign policy that much of the public dissents from is in keeping with an existential commitment to democratic styles of governance. Or for that matter, whether cooperative security arrangements and friendly relations touted by Biden with the governments of India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others can be reconciled with his personal commitment to the promotion of a democratizing world as the only acceptable alternative to its autocratic adversaries.

US democracy from the founding of the republic almost 250 years ago has been associated with a constitutional arrangement that stresses the division of and balance between the three principal branches of government as supplemented by the guiding idea that even the acts of the president are not above the restraints and accountability procedures of law. Currently, both pf these vital pillars of a functioning democracy are crumbling, and near collapse. The US Supreme Court has never been so out of touch with the values of American traditions and the defense of its democratic character, not only by its denial of women’s reproductive rights but in relation to upholding the rule of law in relation to the behavior of the president and the regulation of corporate wrongdoing. Congress, in many vital sectors of public policy, has become captive to well-funded lobbying pressures and the interests of the wealthiest American leading commentators to argue that plutocracy has become a more accurate description of the form of government than democracy, To be optimistic in the face of such developments has all the appearances of playing the role of the fool.

For me an unmistakable indicator of the alienation of the governing process from the citizenry is the extension of a bipartisan invitation to the embattled Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress later in July. This bestowal of such a signal honor on a foreign leader for whom ‘arrest warrants’ has been recommended by the habitually cautious ICC, will be further enhanced by a meeting with the President at the White House undoubtedly accompanied by a TV moment exhibiting harmony between these two leaders that includes unconditional support and a profession of shared values. Such an inappropriate gesture of approval is a slap in the faces of those many American opponents of Israel’s policies in Gaza over the course of recent months, especially a show of disrespect toward young Americans who protested on university campuses across the country, and for their expressions of belief and conscience experienced police brutality and professionally harmful punishments imposed educational administrators, themselves under pressure from donors and politicians. The Netanyahu invitation is an edifying metaphor that helps justify the dark foreboding of skeptics critical of the US global role since the end of the Cold War and deeply pessimistic about the future of the country. From such an angle, Biden’s off-the-wall optimism and the tactics of the Democratic Party establishment are the opposite of reassuring. Rather I find these patterns as strong evidence of dangerous forms of escapism from the uncomfortable realities of national and global circumstances and a stubborn display of a failing leader’s resilient vanity.      

Tags: ,

Monetizing Political Discourse in America

14 May

For some time I have been disturbed by the constant flow of emails from notables in the Democratic Party that tie substance and politics to money, specifically in the form of soliciting donations. The style of such messages is offensive to me. Complete strangers address me in the first person, and assume I share their political outlook, which paints a dark picture of liberal values at risk while never mentioning the illiberal policies of the Democratic presidency. Such messages are signed in a disingenuous manner of faux familiarity, and this includes messages from either President or Ms. Obama, writing to me as if there existed a personal connection between us. The bottom line is a plea ‘to chip in’ by donating $3, $10, or more. See below for a typical such personal message sent to me by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chair of the Democratic National Committee. I wonder if I am alone in being put off by this way of passing the hat in the digital age.

 

It is not just a matter of personal annoyance about being badgered several times a week. It is much more about making politics and policies seem to depend exclusively on who contributes the most money. The Democrats purport in most of these appeals to be fending off reactionary billionaires, such as the infamous Koch Brothers, who are portrayed satanically as using their fortunes to buy elections and tilt the country even further to the right. Underneath this crude reduction of the political process to which party can purchase more TV prime time is the apparent realization that American democracy is no longer a marketplace of ideas, perhaps, never was. The impression I receive from these email messages is that American democracy has become an auction in which elective office and public policy automatically goes to the candidate able to pony up the most lucre, however filthy. Underneath such attitudes is the dangerous belief that the ordinary citizen has no mind of his/her own, and will most likely vote for whomever Is most often seen on TV. This kind of thinking is especially demeaning to the so-called independent voter trying to make up his/her mind in the final days of a campaign.

 

Of course, there is some truth, and even a principled rationale, for this incessant barrage of funding appeals. If the Republican side is spending in great amounts as a result of support from the ultra-rich, then symbolically it is important to suggest that a government responsive to the people means that the Democratic opposition needs to mobilize ordinary citizens who are struggling daily to make ends meet, and yet still greatly prefer political leadership in the White House and Congress that is broadly in accord with their liberal ideas about fairness and decency. Up to a point this way of interpreting political conflict in the United States is convincing.

 

My concerns are mainly of a different order. There is an implicit disempowerment of the citizen whose identity is associated with her or his bank account rather than with the substantive agenda of politics and a more public engagement with political reform. There is embedded in these messages a loopy good/evil imagery of American political realities, whereas the appeal in recent decades of the Democratic Party has been for me and many others reduced to being the lesser of evils on most, yet not all, issues. Consider the treatment by the Democratic leadership of Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, drone warfare, silence about the Egyptian coup and Palestinian ordeal, a slide toward Cold War II in response to the complexities of the Ukraine, and on and on. In other words, it may be pragmatically important to avoid Republican political leadership, but there are many reasons to be disappointed by and even oppose the policies and practices embraced by the current Democratic leadership.

 

Of course, underlying this objection to the sort of either/or choices is a feeling that what is being suppressed is the word and consciousness associated with ‘neither,’ that is neither Republican nor Democrat. But then what? There was that brief rush of fresh air that was brought into the political arena by the Occupy Movement, but without staying power. Subsequently, there has been regression on the public stage. America is not yet a choiceless democracy, but the choices offered do not give much ground for hope in relation to the main challenges facing

either this country or the world, for example, in relation to challenging the excesses of world capitalism, and its byproduct of unsustainable and growing inequality.

 

Getting back to the particulars of this screed, I paste below the latest specimen of this type of political solicitation. Is my reaction naïve, unfair, out of touch? Comments are particularly welcome. And more to the point what might be done to improve the quality of political democracy in this country? How can we as citizens become more effective, not just locally, but nationally and internationally, in this era of the dumbing down and crude monetizing of representative government?

 

 

**************************

 

 

 

The Text of Debbie Wasserman Schultz’ letter:

 

 

Richard —

 

The most thrilling, rewarding, and (sometimes) challenging job I’ve ever had is being a mom — between the twins and my youngest there is never a dull moment.

 

But lately, when I think of my kids, I consider all of the things Democrats are working for that would support my fellow moms and their families the most. We’re the party fighting for equal pay legislation, for raising the minimum wage, protecting Obamacare, and fixing our broken immigration system to keep more moms with their kids. These policies aren’t just good for moms, they’re good for the economy, too.

 

Chip in $10 or more to support Democrats fighting for policies that support moms and families.

 

 

 

We’re celebrating Mother’s Day soon, and I hope we’re all thinking of the millions of moms out there who are doing all they can to raise their kids, support their families, and contribute to their communities. What Democrats are fighting for is personal to me, and probably for you, too.

 

Donate to elect more Democrats who are fighting for policies to support moms:

 

https://my.democrats.org/Stand-with-Moms

 

Thanks,

 

Debbie

 

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Chair

Democratic National Committee

 

P.S. — To all my fellow moms, Happy Mother’s Day this weekend!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: , , ,