The US is a one-party state and that party can be accurately called the Pro-War, Pro-Business Party (PWPBP) controlled by the oligarchy. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans. Ideological debate within this party is restricted to a narrow spectrum that only encompasses neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and right-wing extremism. This party has unanimous support from the establishment media and much of the intelligentsia, two groups that can be accurately labeled by the Chinese pejorative of ‘running dogs’, because of the tendency of dogs to do what their masters says in return for a few scraps. (It is an accurate label but one I hesitate to use because of my fondness for dogs who have many sterling qualities that these running dogs lack.)
The function of these running dogs is to police the thinking of the public so that they do not stray too far from PWPBP orthodoxy. They do this by disguising the fact that we live in this one-party state. So they put on a show of vigorous debate in the mainstream media, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing since the fundamental issue of power and who wields it and for what purposes is never addressed.
The one-party nature comes closest to being exposed when occasionally someone or some group manages to break through the cordon and gain visibility and traction among the public who sense that something is not right. We saw that with the candidacy of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and Sanders and Elizabeth Warren this year. Both are strongly challenging the Pro-Business agenda. Sanders is more strongly against the Pro-War agenda than Warren but she is better than most of the other Democratic candidates on this issue too. These two scare the hell out of the PWPBP because they are challenging the core ideology of the ruling class
The result is predictable. The media immediately finds ways to undermine these two candidates. One is to immediately label them as ‘unelectable’ because their polices are ‘too extreme’, despite the fact that their progressive policies poll extremely well. But facts don’t matter. The idea is to put fear in voters’ minds that these candidates are merely spoilers who have no chance of winning against Trump. We are also told repeatedly that the only voters worth targeting belong among those who voted for Trump. So voters are urged to back someone who is ‘centrist’, ‘moderate’ and ‘electable’, which is code for someone who is part of the PWPBP, who supposedly can win over these alleged ‘swing’ voters. In 2016, that person was Hillary Clinton. This time it is Joe Biden. Polls are conducted showing that Biden is the front-runner, hardly a surprise, given that he has been in politics for four decades and had high visibility and name recognition as vice president for eight years. Clinton also had huge leads in the polls at a corresponding time in the 2016 election before the Sanders surge began.
It is astonishing that an argument is being put forward that a spirited primary race to decide which person should be the Democratic nominee to challenge Donald Trump is seen as a bad thing when that is the very purpose of primaries. We are told that people should quickly coalesce behind the most electable candidate (i.e., Biden) and aim their fire at Trump. It takes a condescending attitude towards the public, that they do not have the sense to argue fiercely as to who should be their party nominee but then coalesce behind whoever does eventually win the nomination. The running dogs conveniently ignore the fact that the Republicans in 2016 waged an extremely bitter fight and that the insults hurled by candidates against each other and at Trump were extraordinarily vitriolic. And yet Republicans had little difficulty falling in line once he was the nominee and electing him president. Why does the PWPBP think that Democrats cannot do that? The answer is that of course they know that the Democrats can also do it but they are afraid that they will coalesce behind someone they cannot control. So dangerous candidates like Sanders and Warren must be cut off at the pass, early on the process, before they can win.
I am strongly opposed to Biden, seeing him as an utterly awful candidate, but would vote for him over Trump without any hesitation. The thought of abstaining or voting for Trump is unthinkable. I do not think I am unusual in thinking this way. I suspect that pretty much all the people who normally vote and support the various Democratic candidates think the same.
The real challenge is to attract those voters who realize, perhaps at a deep subconscious level, that the PWPBP does not work for them and have disengaged from the system entirely. And as we have seen in numerous local elections, when these people are targeted with messages that resonate with them by candidates who have a long track record of consistency on those issues, they come out and vote. But every effort will be made by the PWPBP to undermine that progressive agenda. Their allies in the mainstream media will try to find ways to discredit people like Sanders and Warren. Look for a never-ending series of articles explaining why they cannot win or on wedge issues and why they are not sufficiently advocating for this or that issue.
We see something similar in the UK when against all odds, Jeremy Corbyn, another democratic socialist like Sanders, found a chink in the armor of the UK’s version of the PWPBP and improbably became the Labour party leader. The thought of somepne who does not adhere to the PWPBP agenda scared the hell of the UK’s ruling class and ever since then, there has been a sniping campaign against him even by the so-called ‘liberal’ media to try and oust him as party leader, even going to the extent of smearing him as an anti-Semite or coddler of anti-Semites even though Corbyn, like Sanders, has an enviable record of standing for human rights and social justice his entire life and does not seem to have a racist or bigoted bone in his body.
So be prepared as we go through the next year or so to be deluged with articles hurling vague accusations against Sanders and Warren in the US and Corbyn in the UK to make voters think that there is something wrong with them though they cannot quite put the finger on what that might be. That is how the PWPBP and its running dogs operate. We have to be smarter than them.
It’s instructive to read up on Nancy Pelosi’s personal history, and her history in politics. She’s, well, to put it generously -- a money-grubbing manipulative hack. The role of speaker is perfect for her, because, like most sociopaths attracted to power, it gives her a tremendous amount of influence and she’s not expected to accomplish anything tangible. Since her ascent to power, her primary focus appears to be maintaining her power, with everything else a distant second.
She has pretended to be a liberal but she’s not. She’s just another morally flexible sociopathic democrat, who’ll say one thing and do something completely different because what she said in the first place never mattered to her at all. In other words, she’s exactly the wrong person to have running anything in the country, at this time, and she’s two heartbeats from being president.
“The thought of abstaining or voting for Trump is unthinkable.”
Think of the victims of Obama’s drone wars when you try to vote another war criminal into the White House, while justifying a rotten political system. It’s like voting for Trotsky because Stalin was even worse.
“The real challenge is to attract those voters who realize that the PWPBP does not work for them and have disengaged from the system entirely.”
You just failed.
mnbo@#2:
You just failed
I’m still trying to figure out how we can have a non-violent revolution. I don’t think the regime will let go without a fight. Perhaps some friendly power (“Russia, are you listening?”) will step in and help. No, wait, maybe not ask for that.
mnb0, I’d say you just failed…at making a coherent…argument? Was that even supposed to be an argument? Was it supposed to be some sort of point? Or just commentary?
I particularly do not understand what you’re getting at when you say, “when you try to vote another war criminal into the White House.” First, how would voting for Biden, when one would rather have a better option, qualify as “trying”? (Or, likewise, “justifying a rotten political system”?) Second, are you suggesting that abstaining, since you left that part of the quote in, is also not an acceptable option? Is there some fourth option you think is being left out? (Please don’t say “vote for a third party candidate.”)
Which is still the most reasonable of those limited choices.
I think a better understanding of the United States is as a THEOCRACY. Our God is Money, Mammonism. The CEO class is the priesthood. Look at how the media promotes the self-righteous bleatings of the Jamie Dimons of the world as Great Wisdom.
I always call the Republican Party “Hezbollah” Or maybe Hezbomammon. At least the real Hezbollah operates a social welfare system, of course. Which Hezbomammon does not approve of in any way.
Rep.Tulsi Gabbard has good positions on issues, but she is not acceptable to “the owners” of the system/media, the “Deep State,” so she gets very little coverage. See her interviews, please. She is calm and logical, and caring.
I do hope Tulsi will avoid the apocalyptic/extreme position re climate and fossil fuels. For sense on that subject, please see Gail the Actuary (Gail Tverberg.)
Thank you, George
I think you’ve been underinformed about how Corbyn became leader. He was a joke candidate, who snuck in his application for election with literally minutes to spare. He was convinced to do so because it was felt that the lineup of Blairites contesting the leadership “looked bad”, so they needed an old-style, obviously unelectable lefty on the card to balance it up. But the rules of the party meant any yahoo that could spell their name could join the party for the price of a cup of coffee and get a vote. The sensible, Blairite vote was split, and a lot of conservatives joined Labour in order to spoil the result by voting for the obvious joke candidate, Corbyn. To the conservatives’ delight, Corbyn won -- and has proven since to be a boon for the shambles that is the Conservative party. He has offered absolutely zero effective opposition to the worst government in hundreds of years, and in the teeth of the absolute chaos of the post-Brexit election, utterly failed to even topple the PM then.
One of my most recent posts on faecebook highlighted this headline: “Corbyn backs soft EU exit and says second referendum ‘some way off'”.
I summarised this as follows: It is no longer possible to pretend this man has any desire to win an election. He is *actively* avoiding power by making sure literally everyone is opposed to him -- Remain people who want a referendum now AND hard Brexit people who don’t want another at all.
It’s simply incredible what a terrible job he’s making of leading Labour, and while it’s possible he’s not personally an anti-Semite (and I remain to be convinced*), he’s done the worst possible job of proving it and dealing with the anti-Semites who definitely exist within the Labour party.
*He has shared platforms with anti-Semites and amplified clearly anti-Semitic “artworks”. It’s not credible that a person in his position is ignorant of the meaning of anti-Semitic tropes. He has dog-whistled his anti-Jewish position every bit as effectively and insidiously as Donald Trump has dog-whistled Islamophobia and white supremacism.
Not so obvious, given that he swept the leadership comfortably.
Sorry, what? Was sensible supposed to be in scare quotes maybe?
@Holms, 10:
>>obviously unelectable lefty
>Not so obvious, given that he swept the leadership comfortably.
It’s hard to know how to respond to this. Mainly because I suspect you already know all of what I’m about to retort with, which makes your response all the more bafflingly obtuse.
Yes, he was “electable” as leader, because, as I pointed out, the opposing party recognised that he was by far the worst candidate for leader that Labour had had in a generation. They recognised also that the lax rules for the leadership election meant that people opposed to Labour could join for pocket change and vote him in to further their own agenda by making sure Labour didn’t win a general election when led by such a dreadful failure.
And when Theresa May, comfortable the worst Prime Minister this country has had in two hundred years, called a snap general election amid the absolute car crash chaos of post-Brexit nonsense, any opposition leader worth the shit off my shoe should have walked into Downing Street on a wave of support. What did we get instead? A hung parliament. Corbyn was unable and/or unwilling to capitalise on the mistake this government has made. Hence, obviously, “unelectable”. It’s proven, in the only test that matters, which is why I say I’m somewhat baffled that you’d try to dispute it.
Blair (and Blairites) gave us the Good Friday Agreement, the minimum wage, civil partnerships for gay couples, SureStart centres, the Bank of England monetary policy committee which removed control of interest rates from petty day to day political control and maintained an historically low and stable rate of inflation and interest rates, and devolution of power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
So no, “sensible” was not supposed to be in scare quotes. Blair gave us 13 years of progressive government after 18 years of dismal Tory dismantling of public services. He recognised, as Corby refuses to, that all the progressive posturing in the world is worse than worthless if you refuse to pursue and take power. Blair prioritised power, and when he got it, he mainly used it for good. It’s tragic that all of what I listed in the previous paragraph seems already forgotten and that his footnote in history will be the single word “Iraq”, and Brown (who followed him) was unfortunate to be identified (wrongly) as to blame for a financial crisis inflicted upon the world by the USA.