When Did the Madness Start? Our Most Recent Going Off-Track?

 

In the blog post immediately preceding this one, I explored some of the off-road paths we took that led to the madness we are now in. 

I articulated - probably not very well - the two major threads of American History.  Let me try again.

Thread 1 - this thread upholds the ideals of constitutional democracy.  Although it is not a perfect place, it represents the idea that more equality and opportunity will become available over time.  It's found in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that followed.  Except for Prohibition (which was reversed in relatively short order), most of the amendments expanded the concept of democracy, rather than limiting it.  Freeing the slaves, direct vote for Senators, and Civil rights, including women's right to vote, have all been a part of this thread.

Thread 2 - a more authoritarian view of the country, eschewing the benefits of immigration, preferring the dominant culture, and disputing the separation of church and state.  All for so-called economic freedom, which is really just allowing the wealthy and powerful to run roughshod over us. Personal freedom is limited to gun ownership, and the right for their version of religion and morality to control us.

These threads often run concurrently in American History.  However, there have been times when one is more in control than the other.

The circumstances that led us to this point have roots that date back to the country's founding.  However, there has been one event that has most recently and clearly allowed the more virulent and anti-democratic thread to dominate over all the others.

And that was the shoving aside of Bernie Sanders, mostly in 2016, but also in 2020.

It's not that Bernie Sanders is the most golden child of all time.  It's not that Hillary Clinton would not have made an excellent President.  It's more about what it represented in terms of time and opportunity lost by the Democratic Party.

Barack Obama was an excellent President.  He did, however, oversell the "change" aspect of his Presidency. People were quite excited in 2008, ready to move past the disaster that Bush and the mainstream Republicans had led us into.

Even though things seemed relatively stable, the dominant mood in 2016 was a rejection of mainstream politics, as practiced by both the Democratic and Republican parties. Whether the country was advancing or not, they did not see themselves as part of that advancement.

The Republican Party was captured by an outsider, one who promised to blow up politics as usual and make things better for the average American.  Of course, it was a huge lie promoted by a narcissistic conman - but it was clearly different from the controlling political elites.

There was an outsider running in the Democratic Party.  One whose policies were solidly in favor of working families.  It was very exciting and promised a return to true progressive policies, not the Third Way incrementalism that had dominated the party since Bill Clinton.

Well, the powers that be were not going to let that stand.  They put their thumb on the scale and tilted things to ensure Hillary Clinton was the nominee.  Would he have won without this tilting?  Maybe. We'll never know for sure.

The bottom line is that, whether they intended to or not, the Republicans decided on something completely different, and the Democrats decided they would stay the course and promote a highly qualified candidate who was also the very epitome of the establishment that many had grown tired of.

Even with all that, it took considerable Russian interference and the weird vagaries of the electoral college to allow Trump to take the Oval Office.

Once he did, he proved to be quite incompetent.  His only legislation, the Tax Act of 2017, greatly favored the wealthy and powerful.  His behavior during the COVID-19 crisis led to hundreds of thousands of excess deaths that more competent leadership could have avoided. His stupid tariff actions almost broke the American farmer.

In the 2020 primaries, Bernie Sanders was once again emerging as a front-runner, and the Democratic Party was a-twitter-pated.  Biden was dead in the water coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire, but he won in South Carolina.  With Biden revitalized and other primary candidates floundering (except for Bernie), one by one, the other candidates dropped out and endorsed Biden.  It was a stampede to protect the mainstream candidate.

Biden won the 2020 election DECISIVELY (despite whatever lies you've heard), and if you ask me, he was a brilliant leader.  He got us out of the Pandemic and subsequent inflation quicker than anywhere else on Earth.  His economic numbers were the most sterling any President has ever had.  His organization of the international effort to support Ukraine was remarkable. He was as progressive as he could be given the small margins in the House and Senate. And the fact that he was dealing with an ultra-conservative Supreme Court.

But large swaths of the American people did not see that. Their carefully culled media kept them fired up and ready to dismiss Biden - no matter what he achieved.

A bad debate performance and a weak-willed Democratic Party led to him dropping out in 2024.  But his Vice President was highly qualified and made for an exciting campaign.  She picked one of my favorite people, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, to be her running mate, and although this was not quite the progressive turnaround I was hoping for, it went a long way.

Unfortunately, some of the establishment consultants got hold of their campaign, muted her and Tim Walz, so they did not appear to be the progressive powerhouses they could be.  For these and other reasons that may take years of analysis and investigative journalism, they narrowly lost the popular vote to someone who should have been in prison rather than running to be a dictator.

Now that we are clearly losing our democracy, now that the authoritarian thread is unraveling anything the democratic thread tried to do, we are once again seeing that the most popular face of the opposition is...Bernie Sanders.  He has the highest positives of any politician in the country.  His rallies with AOC are setting attendance records, even in traditionally Republican areas.

It's crystal clear.  If the Democrats are ever going to regain their footing, it will have to be with a Bernie Sanders-style approach.  However, well-known establishment Democrats are still fighting back.  Dinosaurs* like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are resisting change and the newer generation as hard as they can.  

A vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), David Hogg (survivor of the Parkland shooting), has suggested running younger, more progressive candidates in primaries against older, more establishment incumbents in safe Democratic districts, to facilitate the change necessary for the Democratic Party to survive. For this effort, establishment Democrats are trying to paint David as a cartoon villain.

It's a tough call to say that the DNC should do this directly.  But...  IT HAS TO BE DONE.

It may take time.  It may not change overnight.  But it does have to change.  Or we really have to sacrifice America's democratic thread.

And I, for one, am not ready to do that.

T. M. Strait

AOC '28

*Yes, Bernie Sanders is old.  But his policies and outlook are forward-thinking.