Yves here. It’s easy to get whiplash trying to keep your eye on the many fallout lines after Trump’s landmark victory on Tuesday. Another spectacle emerging is a much-needed rebuke of the Democratic Party and hopefully a purge of too many who have ended up being elected by the elite and fail to even pretend to care about the common people. Indeed, as I have been told by other PMC members before the election, they are driven by the general Democratic hostility towards all Americans and the irritating insistence that they are superior and therefore only entitled to rule.
If the party is going to fix itself, it needs to fire its architects of failure, starting with the DNC. Naturally, those who are guilty rather try out loud to blame. The latest, revealing spectacle comes from Common Dreams. It shows that the head of the DNC is getting nasty about Sanders’s fair and longstanding criticism that the party has abandoned its roots (he should of all people know, given how badly he was treated).
In an interesting twist of consensus, the Hill recently published a story showing that many party workers understand the election was a disaster and that a major course correction is needed. But will the old guard close ranks to keep them on their current bad form? Trump’s Trump victory leaves Democrats talking about how to start over, suggesting that at least some insiders have reached the 12-step bottom line:
Democrats say they need a fresh start after President-elect Trump’s victory over Vice President Harris, which saw him sweep emerging, small Democratic states in various green states and win significant swaths of the electorate….
“We have to burn the house down and start over,” said one Democratic strategist who worked on recent presidential campaigns.
“We had a warning in 2016 that this wasn’t going to work, we had another chance in 2020 to see that Trump wasn’t going away and was only growing his base, and we ignored it and pretended this was a midterm election.”
As Democrats conduct an autopsy of the Harris campaign and piece together what went wrong, they quickly conclude that their party’s tools and strategies are either up-to-date or ineffective….
Democrats in recent years have lost their way, the strategist added, appealing to the “New York Times elite” while alienating working-class voters who have traditionally supported Democrats.
Contrast this view with the DNC blather below, repeating bogus defenses, like Biden was the best labor president ever when many union members thought otherwise.
Still, despite the breath of fresh air from the Hill’s account, at least for my media audience, I see a great way to stick to the story lines that led to the Democrat’s loss (and diverted attention from voters’ concerns about their standard of living and Democracy). immigration) like Trump is a fascist and his voters are misogynists.
Written by Julia Conley. Originally published on Common Dreams
After Sen. Bernie Sanders expressed his opinion on why Vice President Kamala Harris lost the popular vote and the Electoral College to President-elect Donald Trump in Tuesday’s election – repeating his consistent warning that the Democratic Party must focus on economic justice – CEO Jaime Harrison. he also indicated that the party is unlikely to hear Sanders’ call.
Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a former lobbyist for clients including Bank of America and BP, called Sanders’ statement “straight up BS” and the pro-worker policies adopted by the Biden-Harris administration, suggesting the party has had enough. worked for economic justice—and seemingly ignored all the evidence that working-class voters are gravitating toward Trump and the Republican Party.
“[President Joe] “Biden was the best working-class president in my lifetime—saved union pensions, created millions of good-paying jobs, and even marched across the picket line,” Harrison said.
This is straight up BS… Biden was the most effective working class president in my lifetime, Union pensions saved for a long time, created millions of good paying jobs and even marched on the bankruptcy line and some of the MVP programs would fundamentally change the quality of life and value of money. he banned race…
– Jaime Harrison (@harrisonjaime) November 7, 2024
Biden has been praised by progressive unions and labor unions for establishing labor laws on overtime pay and non-compete agreements, urging Amazon workers in Alabama to unionize, overseeing the National Labor Relations Board that investigates many unfair labor practices at large companies and favors workers. , becoming the first US president to walk the picket line with striking workers.
He also worked closely with Sanders on one of his signature pieces of legislation, the Build Back Better Act, which would have invested in expanding child tax credits, public education, and free community college, among other provisions — but the bill was vetoed by the right. – wing Sen. Joe Manchin (IW.Va.), then a Democrat, and the Republican Party.
In his statement on Thursday, Sanders said “it should come as no surprise that the Democratic Party that abandoned the workers found that the workers have abandoned them.”
He asked if the “well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party” will “learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?”
“Probably not,” he added.
While Harris included in his plans to end price-fixing in the food industry, expand the child tax credit, and expand Medicare coverage for home health care, dental, and eye care, he alarmed progressive lawmakers by raising a small income tax for wealthy Americans. .
As Common Dreamsreported on Thursday, Biden advisers also revealed this week that Harris overturned his initial message that Trump is a “business magnate” by nominating billionaire businessman Mark Cuban as one of his hires.
Whether Democratic leaders, including Harrison, will listen to those concerns from Biden’s inner circle remains to be seen, but he expressed hostility when the message came from Sanders.
“A lot of things are taken after the election and this one is not a good one,” said Harrison.
Journalist Mitchell Northam noted that the Democratic Party has ignored and expressed hostility to Sanders’ call to focus on economic justice and cut ties with Wall Street since the 2016 election, when the senator ran for president as a Democrat.
Bernie had a deep heart about where this all goes back to 2015/16. He had an alliance. He was talking to voters. And the Democratic Alliance party kicked him out of the way.
And, as the chair of the DNC, this result should rest on the shoulders of Jaime Harrison as well. Just take your L, man.
– Mitchell Northam (@primetimeMitch) November 7, 2024
Sanders’ message this week got an unexpected boost from conservatives New York Times David Brooks, who in 2020 dismissed the veteran, popular parliamentarian as “useless” and “worthless.”
“I love it when Democratic candidates run for office,” Brooks wrote. “But I have to admit that Harris did that effectively and it didn’t work. Maybe Democrats should embrace Bernie Sanders-style disruption—something that will make people like me feel uncomfortable.
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch applauded Brooks’ “incredible moment of self-awareness.”
Progressive Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid expressed his hope that Democratic leaders like Harrison will do the same.
“Usually, after a big defeat in the election,” he said, “party leaders step down to create opportunities for new ideas and voices that have not yet had a chance to lead.”