Dear Friends,
The leadership of the Democratic Party has not changed much since Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992. Unfortunately the Democratic Party and its influence has been greatly diminished since that time. Here is a little comparison of political control by the Democrats.
Senate Seats: 1992 Democrats 56 Republicans 44
Post 2016 Republicans at least 51
House Seats: 1992 Democrats 267 Republicans 167
Post 2016 Democrats 193 Republicans 239
Governorships 1992 Democrats 28 Republicans 20
Post 2016 Republicans at least 33
State Legislatures 1992 Democrats 26 Republicans 7 Split 16
Post 2016 Democrats 14 Republicans 32 Split 3
Since 2008, the Democrats have lost control of 30 State legislative chambers (910 seats) and 11 Governorships.
During that same period the Democratic Party Establishment led the Democratic Party further and further to the right as it became Republican lite and courted and did the bidding of Wall Street and the economic elite. The Democratic Party Establishment became more and more out of touch with the traditional base of the Democratic Party. It ignored the rapidly diminishing middle class and the working poor. It failed to fight for unions and trade policies that established level playing fields. It embraced the military industrial complex and the constant pressure for more militarization to feed the profits of that complex.
When the Democratic Party Establishment had the opportunity to return to its roots and embrace its historic values by endorsing Bernie Sanders, it doubled down on its move to the right and selected Hillary Clinton, one of the leaders of the Democratic Party Establishment who epitomizes the rightward movement of the Democratic Party and its too cozy relationship with Wall Street and the military industrial complex. Now that she has been defeated by a racist, misogynist, homophobic, islamophobic, egotistical demagogue, the Democratic Party Establishment is finding fault in everyone else except themselves.
In an interview with Chris Hayes (here) Senator Harry Reid, retiring Democratic leader in the Senate for years, said,
She would have won this election without any problem if Comey had not been the Republican operative that he is...He is the reason she lost the election.He went on to say, "I want everybody in America to understand if Harry Reid can make it in America, anyone can...it doesn't matter what your race is, it used to but it shouldn't anymore". Harry Reid was born into a very poor family and has been a great success, but he was born a white man in America. For him to say that because a white man can overcome birth into a poor family any black man can do the same shows how out of touch with the real America he is.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House for the last 16 years said
...We cannot be taking the full responsibility for what happened in the election. We have to do our after-action review thoroughly and see what we could have done differently. But a lot of it was beyond our control.Senator Chuck Schumer who will replace Harry Reid as the Democratic leader in the Senate was probably the most honest when he said, "we needed a much sharper, bolder, stronger economic message". Senator Schumer was not taking any responsibility for the fact that the Democratic Party has "needed a much sharper, bolder, stronger economic message" for a long time during which he was in a position to promulgate that message but instead he helped move the Democratic Party to the right. He voted for NAFTA, he voted to get rid of Glass-Steagall, he voted for the Iraq War, he voted for the Patriot Act, he protected Wall Street, etc.
The Clinton campaign continues to refuse to acknowledge that Hillary and her campaign were completely out of touch with the economic woes and anxiety of the country. Sure, they moved to the left when forced to by Bernie Sanders, but it was not believable particularly in light of the decades during which the Democratic Party Establishment ignored the middle class and working poor. In an interview on CNN (here), Karen Finney, a spokesperson for the Clinton campaign had a whole list of reasons why Hillary Clinton lost, including sexism, voting rights act, third party candidates, FBI Director Comey, media coverage and Bernie bros. Interestingly enough, she did not mention the lack of an economic message to address the economic woes of the middle class and working poor. When she was pointedly asked what mistakes the Clinton campaign made, there were none of significance.
In fact it is probably true that the Clinton campaign did not make too many mistakes. The problem was that Hillary Clinton was the wrong candidate, and she could not overcome the fact that the Democratic Party Establishment had ignored the middle class and working poor and moved the party to the right for the last several decades. Probably the best analysis of the election that I have seen was the op-ed in The New York Times by Naomi Klein entitled "Trump Defeated Clinton, Not Women" (here). You should read it, if you have not already. I selected some of my favorite paragraphs.
Voters chose a loose cannon of a man with zero government experience over a calm, collected and supremely qualified woman. The root cause of this injustice, many have suggested, can only be sexism — proof that the glass ceiling protecting the highest reaches of power cannot yet be shattered....
The reaction is understandable. It’s also wrong and unnecessarily demoralizing.
Yes, she had a gold-plated résumé that more than qualified her to be president. But that overlooks an important fact: Virtually everything about Mrs. Clinton’s biography made her uniquely unsuited to draw blood where Mr. Trump was most vulnerable....
This election needed a Democrat who could call out, again and again, the myriad hypocrisies and absurdities of Mr. Trump’s claim to be a hero for the downtrodden working class. In the debates, Mrs. Clinton landed points when she exposed Mr. Trump’s history of outsourcing and tax dodging. But by then Mr. Trump had already spent the summer mocking his opponent for her private parties with oligarchs, painting her own lifestyle as profoundly out of touch with ordinary Americans (which it is).
In short, she landed on many of the right messages, but she was the wrong messenger.
Here is the biggest problem with elevating sexism to the defining explanation of Mrs. Clinton’s loss: It lets her machine and her failed policies off the hook. It erases the role played by the appetite for endless war and the comfort with market-friendly incremental change, no matter the urgency of the crisis (from climate change to police violence to raging inequality). It erases the disgust over Mrs. Clinton’s coziness with Wall Street and with the wreckage left behind by trade deals that benefited corporations at the expense of workers....
That Mrs. Clinton could be defeated by the likes of Mr. Trump remains disgraceful. But Mrs. Clinton was too flawed a candidate for this disgrace to go down in history as a defeat for her gender.The Democratic Party needs new leadership and needs to return to its core values. Keith Ellison is running for head of the DNC and even Senator Schumer understands that he needs to support him. Tim Ryan is challenging Nancy Pelosi for leadership of the House Democrats. The traditional values of the Democratic Party should not simply be relegated to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, they should be the values of the entire Democratic Party. We need new leadership to reclaim the Democratic Party.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
