The corporatist mainstream media needed to create a narrative to create the illusion that the Progressive move of within the Democratic Party did not have either lasting traction or staying power. Do not believe it. Here is the reality.
The “Liberal” Washington Post article titled “Democratic Party’s liberal insurgency hits a wall in Midwest primaries” tried to make a caricature of the candidate supported by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders.
The Democratic Party’s left-wing insurgency found its limits Tuesday night, with voters favoring establishment candidates over more liberal challengers in almost every closely watched race across several states.
In Michigan, former state senator Gretchen Whitmer easily won the Democratic nomination for governor over Abdul El-Sayed, a doctor backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) who was vying to become the country’s first Muslim governor.
In suburban House districts across the Midwest, left-wing candidates lost to Democrats backed by party leaders, abortion rights groups and labor unions.
And in St. Louis, where party giant-slayer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez traveled to help another young insurgent candidate topple an incumbent, Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) cruised to an easy primary win over challenger Cori Bush.
Progressives: This is the Democratic Party’s Future
And then there is there is the “Conservative” The American Conservative article titled “The Progressive Bark is Worse Than Their Bite” that echoes a similar message.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the new poster child for the progressive movement, who shocked the nation by clobbering a 10-term incumbent in her New York-area district Democratic primary, has been a woman on a mission. While she is still technically one of hundreds of congressional candidate who need to run and win in November, Ocasio-Cortez has lately spent more time on the trail for progressives in other parts of the country.
While the 28-year-old political newcomer insists she isn’t the spokesman of the Democratic Party’s ascendant grassroots progressive wing, she has acted as though she is. Congressional candidates usually don’t endorse insurgents against establishment Democrats; after all, who wants to ruffle the establishment’s feathers when you have to work them if the voters send you to Washington? Yet Ocasio-Cortez has been crazy enough to do just that, backing challengers to sitting Democratic incumbents in Florida, Massachusetts, Delaware, and Maryland.
Endorsing is one thing, but getting your endorsements across the finish line is very different. The former is painless; the latter impossible if registered Democrats are uncomfortable with the candidate or message. Ocasio-Cortez and her mentor Senator Bernie Sanders learned this the hard way during this week’s volley of Democratic primaries. The progressives and Democratic Socialists may be loud and fired up, but they haven’t yet had much success at winning against the establishment wing of their party.
The masses have the Plutocracy petrified because they understand the game, The wards of the Plutocracy, the Mainstream Media, pundits, and some corporatists politicians are trying to spin that because not all of the insurgent candidates won that somehow it is a Progressive failure. The narrative is false and without merit. Daily Kos’ Dartagnan’s article does a great job of explaining the fallacy away regarding the Michigan race between an “establishment candidate” and the insurgent.
But Ian Millhiser, the chief legal analyst and Justice Editor for Think Progress, points out that this line of thinking is, for the most part, a load of hogwash. Using Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer as an example, he demonstrates how far the left has come in moving the goalposts (or the Overton Window, if you prefer) to embrace the progressive agenda.
A quick look at Whitmer’s website vividly illustrates just how much things have changed in the last five years. She supports Medicaid expansion throughout the state, boosting teacher’s salaries, more funding to Planned Parenthood, expansion of health care services to poor and rural Michigan residents, eliminating oil pipelines in the Great Lakes, ending Citizens United, legalizing marijuana for recreational use (which she touted at Ann Arbor’s “Hash Bash”), expanding civil rights legislation to cover transgender citizens, disallowing so-called “religious freedom” legislation that allows bullying of children, legislating against bullying, banning job discrimination against felons, a multitude of pro-urban policies designed to assist lower income people, universal pre-school, “consent” education in public schools to end sexual harassment, and much more.
There. That’s your “establishment” now. Yes, she did run against Abdul El-Sayed, who received support from Bernie Sanders …
The reality is that Progressives started moving the Democratic Party away from Bill Clinton’s DLC Triangulation back to where it belongs. Bernie Sanders began the process with the platform negotiations that resulted in the most Progressive Democratic Platform likely ever.
A few months ago I wrote the article “Re-inject the Democratic Party with its Progressive soul before it’s too late” where I pointed out the following.
Here is the reality. Bill Clinton never won 50% of the popular vote with his center-right shift. President Obama with his left turn won over 50% in each run even with the headwinds of racism and a determined plutocracy.
When one asks Americans the policies they want without specifying if they are Progressive Policies, it always turns out that they want them. So what is the Democratic Party’s problem with embracing them, with running the appropriate candidates?
The answer is simple. Many in the leadership have been bought out by the plutocracy. Sects within the Democratic Party are just the boundary, the left rail of train tracks moving in the same direction, the direction those that control the economy wants it to go. The result of this reality is that there is not much distinction in the many, not all, of the policies out of Washington,
You see, the Democratic and Republican establishments play the good cop/bad cop game. Why is that important for the Plutocracy? The Democratic Party has become the pacifier for the masses. The Republicans propose policies so bad, that terrible Democratic compromises seem like a good deal. It is all a game and once understood, it is something we can do something about now,
The 2018 election must be instrumental in breaking that paradigm. And there must be no compromising. Only real Progressive candidates must make it through the primaries. We can worry about district-specific narratives after the primaries. Americans must not be distracted by fallacies that state one must elect candidates that are right of center because their district is right of center. Economically no poor or middle-class area is right of center.
I spent four days at Netroots Nation 2018. Every candidate, from the likes of Tim Ryan to Kamala Harris, to Cory Booker, sounded more like Bernie Sanders than like any centrist. Here is the reality, young Progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the future of the Democratic Party if it will continue to exist.