Monday, November 28, 2016

Yo, Chairman Dickey: "It is crucial that our cultural elite, most of it aligned with the New Democrats, not be allowed to shirk their responsibility for Trump’s success."

But Uncle Walt typically had better years.

It starts right here, at the grassroots, and the Floyd County Democratic Party, the only entity hereabouts with an existing structure capable of being retrofitted for some semblance of a purpose, might actively seize this revolutionary moment by initiating dialogue aimed at the future.

So here is our silver lining. This is a revolutionary moment. We must not allow them to shift the blame on to voters. This is their failure, decades in the making. And their failure is our chance to regroup. To clean house in the Democratic party, to retire the old elite and to empower a new generation of FDR Democrats, who look out for the working class – the whole working class.

To be blunt, in the three weeks since the New Democratic Order had its clocked clean locally, regionally and nationally, our Floyd County Democratic leadership cadre (with apologies to leaders who actually heed the literal definition stipulating "one who leads") has emitted little more than the whimpering of lashed curs, a few stray platitudes, and the stench of utter bullshit.

Whether one is inside the local party or outside it, and assuming that the party itself lacks the chutzpah to gift party chairman Adam Dickey with a pink slip, it's obvious that Dickey must resign. Mayor Jeff Gahan is the highest ranking Democrat left woozily wobbling. He actually has a record of winning elections, and so it's his party now -- not that he has any idea what to do with it, just that this is the way politics works following a debacle like 2016.

It is doubtful that more than a handful of local DemoDisneyDixiecrats grasp the immensity of the task ahead.

(Bill Clinton's triangulation) heralded the Obama years, as the New Democrats continued to justify their existence through a focus on social causes that do not threaten corporate power. Or as Krystal Ball put it so powerfully: “We lectured a struggling people watching their kids die of drug overdoses about their white privilege.” Add to this that we did it while their life expectancy dropped through self-destructive behaviors brought on by economic distress.

Nevertheless, the window is cracked open. Can a local political party that finds competitive discourse so highly distasteful that it rigidly censors its own social media platform, thus all but ensuring a culture of losing, look deeply into the mirror and commence the 12-step program for reversing rot and recapturing roots?

It's doubtful. Is there a doctor in the house to check the corpse for a pulse?

Clinton & co are finally gone. That is the silver lining in this disaster, by Hazem Salem (The Guardian)

... Hillary Clinton has given us back our freedom. Only such a crushing defeat could break the chains that bound us to the New Democrat elites. The defeat was the result of decades of moving the Democratic party – the party of FDR – away from what it once was and should have remained: a party that represents workers. All workers ...

Lest we forget:

In a capitalist democracy, the party of the left has one essential reason for existing: to speak for the working class. Capitalist democracies have tended towards two major parties. One, which acts in the interest of the capitalist class – the business owners, the entrepreneurs, the professionals – ensuring their efforts and the risks they took were fairly rewarded. The other party represented workers, unions and later on other groups that made up the working class, including women and oppressed minorities.

This delicate balance ended in the 1990s. Many blame Reagan and Thatcher for destroying unions and unfettering corporations. I don’t. In the 1990s, a New Left arose in the English-speaking world: Bill Clinton’s New Democrats and Tony Blair’s New Labour. Instead of a balancing act, Clinton and Blair presided over an equally aggressive “new centrist” dismantling of the laws that protected workers and the poor.

Responsibility? What a seldom-seen concept locally:

This is not to deny the reality of structural racism or xenophobia or the intolerance shown to Muslims or the antisemitic undertones of Trump’s campaign. I am myself a person of color with a Muslim-sounding name, I know the reality and I am as frightened as everyone else. But it is crucial that our cultural elite, most of it aligned with the New Democrats, not be allowed to shirk their responsibility for Trump’s success.

So let us be as clear about this electoral defeat as possible, because the New Democratic elite will try to pin their failure, and keep their jobs, by blaming this largely on racism, sexism – and FBI director Comey. This is an extremely dangerous conclusion to draw from this election.

I love the smell of purge in the morning. Now, please.

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