Why Democrats care more about stopping Sanders than beating Trump

It’s Super Tuesday. This is why I’m not a Democrat. It’s not about the issues, it’s about the way the Democratic Party treats people who don’t kowtow to its leaders. Like we don’t matter and we need to get in line. We need to “unite” for the common good.

“Unite.” I cringe when I hear that word. When politicians use it, they really mean this: “Do it my way, or else.”

It doesn’t mean getting together and solving problems in an actual give-and-take. It doesn’t mean collaboration or even compromise. It means either you get with the program set by our corporate donors, or you’ll be labeled a troublemaker or worse: a poser or a backstabber or a spy.

Oh, Democrats don’t come out and use these words the way, say, Donald Trump does. But they exert the same kind of political pressure under the table to make sure you don’t rock the boat. They badmouth you on social media and blame you for elections they lost through their own incompetence – because taking personal responsibility has never been their strong suit.

Whenever Trump talks about unity, what he really means is loyalty. Blind loyalty. And the events of the past few days show that Democrats, for all their talk of openness and inclusivity, operate by exactly the same code.

We know where blind loyalty got the Republicans: It got them Trump, a president who’s made a mockery of our nation in the eyes of the world and more than half our own citizens. But not only that, he’s also run roughshod over ideals the Republican Party itself once held sacred, whether you agree with them or not, like free trade and fiscal conservatism.

And now, the Democratic Party is doing precisely the same thing. It’s easy to think of Democrats as the party wrought by the Clintons and, to a lesser extent, Barack Obama – a party of caution that teeters on the verge on paranoia about the mere possibility of offending anyone. Don’t offend the PC police on the left, but don’t offend your corporate donors on the right, either, by daring to defend people who are being forced to choose between the cost of their prescriptions and bankruptcy. Or death.

The idea of free healthcare isn’t “revolutionary.” Every other civilized country does it (or perhaps I should say every civilized country does it and omit the “other,” because any country that puts profits over people isn’t civilized in my book).

The media labels Democrats who hold this position as “moderate,” but that’s a relative term. You’d probably consider the coronavirus as moderate when compared to ebola on the one hand and a common cold on the other, but that doesn’t mean you wan’t to catch it. Letting people die for lack of healthcare isn’t a “moderate” position, it’s an inhumane one.

Democratic devolution

We forget that it wasn’t always this way. The Democratic Party wasn’t always a creature of Super PACs and safe spaces. Once upon a time, it was the party of bold ideas that shone a spotlight on inequity and dared to dream of a better world – and not just dream of it, demand it! Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson fought for the kind of programs today’s Democrats are fighting against. Hell, Republican icon Teddy Roosevelt fought harder for equality and social justice than any of today’s “neoliberals.” These are men and women who give lip service to such ideals ... while taking money under the table to maintain the status quo.

Correction: Not under the table. The rules now make it perfectly legal to pursue financial conflicts of interest. This is the world we live in.

I remember a time when a gay politician named Harvey Milk died fighting for equality. Today, a gay politician named Pete Buttigieg would let Americans die to protect insurance company profits.

And he’s not alone.

In fact, the “neoliberals” spawned by Bill Clinton’s shift to the right a quarter-century ago are fighting harder against the idea of universal healthcare than they are against Donald Trump’s corporate giveaways.

Want to talk about unity? Why is the Democratic Party uniting against Bernie Sanders – a candidate whose platform builds on the bold social and economic ideas of FDR and LBJ? And why are they willing to do so on behalf of a two-time loser known for verbal gaffes who hadn’t won a primary in 32 years of trying before Saturday? A candidate who voted in favor of the Iraq War and didn’t stand up for Anita Hill?

Protecting their turf

There’s an easy answer to that.

But first, I’ll tell you why they’re not doing it. They’re not doing it for “Uncle Joe.” They’re not even doing it because they think it’s their best chance of defeating Trump. Oh, that’s their excuse, but it doesn’t hold up against polls that show Sanders does just as well against Trump as anyone else in the field.

Lately, they’re also saying it will hurt down-ballot candidates to have Sanders at the top of the ticket. Of course, they have zero proof of this, and it fails to take into account that the Sanders’ base is far more energized than the Biden base could ever dream of being.

Energized voters drive turnout. Democrats saw what that did for Trump, but they don’t care about that, either.

Nor do they care about the “next generation.” If they did, they’d be fighting for free education (something we’ve managed to provide at the primary and secondary levels for more than a century) and the forgiveness of student debt. No, to them, the younger generation is a nuisance, just as it was in the 1960s when they were protesting Vietnam and demanding equality for minority citizens. Back then, they said young people should be seen and not heard. They were too loud and cared too much, just like Sanders’ supporters today.

That’s why the old-guard Democratic leaders don’t like them. They like them even less than they like Trump.

They may say they’re fighting against Sanders because they want to beat Trump, but that just doesn’t pass the smell test. Otherwise they wouldn’t be following the exact same losing strategy they did in 2016, when they nominated the least popular Democratic candidate in history because she was the darling of the donor class. Like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden the kind of candidate that loses every time – establishment hacks who rely on big-money donations and believe they should inherit the presidency because it’s “their turn.”

Hubert Humphrey. Walter Mondale. Al Gore. John Kerry. Hillary Clinton. What do they have in common? They were all career politicians. And they all lost.

The candidates who’ve won for the Democrats in the last half-century have all been outsiders who galvanized the youth vote: Carter, Bill Clinton and Obama. Bernie Sanders fits far better into that tradition of winners than does Joe Biden, but it scarcely matters, because, again, Democrats don’t want to win. (Remember, they wanted Hillary Clinton in 2008, too.) They’d rather keep the younger generation in its place and keep the money flowing in.

Incidentally, that’s another reason Sanders scares them: He’s a heretic who relies on small donors rather than super PACs. He’s cut the purse strings. And to make matters worse he’s not even a Democrat.

Oh, the humanity!

What scares Democrats

If Democrats really wanted to beat Trump, they’d be attacking Trump, not Sanders. But the fact is, they view Sanders as a bigger threat to their power than Trump is. And it’s their power, not the country, that matters most to them. Of course, this is the exact same approach taken by Republicans in remaining loyal to Trump – despite the fact that he’s a blithering idiot and a con man. They do so because they see Republican “Never Trumpers” as a bigger threat to them than Democrats. Trump himself referred to them as “human scum.”

Again, the Democrats aren’t as blunt about expressing themselves. They may not say Sanders is human scum, they just treat him like he is. Because they’re scared of him the same way Trump and his minions are scared of the “Never Trumpers.” They back Trump, not because they like him, but because they’re afraid what will happen to them if they don’t.

Democrats are backing Joe Biden for the same reason. These are the same Democrats who railed against GOP senators for their lack of courage during the impeachment proceedings. And they’re showing the very same kind of cowardice now.

Why? It’s not because they’re afraid Sanders will lose. It’s because they’re afraid he’ll win and remake the party the same way Trump has. Except he wouldn’t remake it as a protection racket with a two-bit mob boss at the top of a shrinking pyramid. He’d remake it as a party that values health, the environment and education as human rights, rather than as commodities to be exploited for profit or denied to those who can’t afford them.

The ones who are doing the exploiting are the same corporate control freaks donating to the Democratic establishment. They cover their bets by contributing to both sides: Dems and Republicans alike. It’s not that they care whether one side or the other wins: They couldn’t care less. They merely want to keep both sides in their pockets, so they win regardless of the outcome.

Democrats used to believe in things like bold social and economic reform, the programs championed by FDR, LBJ and, now, Bernie Sanders. It doesn’t anymore, and that’s why I’m not a Democrat. I agree with many of the ideals Democrats claim to espouse, I just happen to believe those ideals are more important than labels or tribal loyalty. Those are things Trump promotes, which is one of the reasons I’m not a Republican, either. I can’t speak for Bernie Sanders, but maybe that’s why he, too, is not a Democrat.

If the Democrats succeed in foisting off a status quo candidate on the electorate this fall, I won’t forget it, and neither will a lot of other people. They can talk about “unity” until they’re blue in the face, but all I’ll hear is a bunch of rich, bought-and-paid-for puppets trying to tell me what to do. Sorry, I’m not buying it. And I will never forgive the Democrats for forcing me to choose between two parties that have utterly abandoned their principles: one led by a corrupt corporate class and the other by a two-bit wannabe dictator.

If they lose, the Democrats won’t blame their own shortsighted, sellout strategy. They’ll blame voters who stayed home because they weren’t excited about the guy they nominated. Or they’ll try. If they do, most of the people they try to blame will probably just shrug and continue staying home. They’ll have had enough of the bullshit, and they’ll figure they just can’t make a difference – which is a shame, because that’s supposed to be the purpose of democracy: making a difference.

Even if the Democrats win, the damage to the party will be incalculable in the long run. Disillusioned young people will become more disillusioned and less engaged. But then again, I don’t think the donor Democrats really care as long as the money keeps rolling in. A New York Times headline said it all: “Democratic Leaders Willing to Risk Party Damage to Stop Sanders.”

It’s not a risk. It’s a guarantee.

Photo by Gage Skidmore, used under Creative Commons 2.0 license

The economy, identity politics and the collapse of neoliberalism

Back in August of 2015, activists with the group Black Lives Matter disrupted two rallies in Seattle for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The group succeeded in keeping Sanders from speaking about his agenda.

The surreal part of all this is that the agenda in question wasn’t some far-right attempt to marginalize African Americans. It was just the opposite: It included such proposals as free college education and a $15 minimum wage – proposals that, if implemented, would have helped poor and working class African Americans more than anything the other major candidates were suggesting.

As of 2010, the poverty rates for African Americans were 27.4 percent, the highest among any racial or ethnic group. Yet despite this, African Americans overwhelmingly preferred Hillary Clinton over Sanders in the Democratic primaries, 76 percent to 23 percent. Some of this might have been chalked up to name recognition, and Clinton certainly had a stronger ground game among black voters.

But on policy, it’s hard to argue that Sanders’ proposals wouldn’t have done more to lift African Americans out of poverty than Clinton’s.

Meanwhile, Sanders actually won a slightly greater proportion of the white vote than Clinton did, appealing to many of the same working-class white Americans whose votes Donald Trump used as the touchstone for his victory over Clinton in the general election.

Where neoliberalism went wrong

So, what happened? Why did poor and working class blacks vote so overwhelmingly for Clinton in the primary, while poor and working class whites turned out in droves for Trump in the general election.

The answer seems obvious, although it won’t be popular among some of my readers: People on both sides of the racial divide have emphasized that divide to such an extent that racial identity has become more important in defining political allegiances than actual policy - even if that policy might help both sides.

Who benefits? Anyone wishing to maintain the economic status quo … which isn’t really a status quo at all, because the wealth gap between rich and poor has continued to grow. And it’s done so with both a Republican (George W. Bush) and a Democrat (Barack Obama) in the White House.

Before anyone yells “false equivalency” – an increasingly common and often fallacious rejoinder that’s intended to shame people into shutting their mouths – I’m not equating Bush’s catastrophic economic policies with Obama’s efforts, which did succeed in bringing the unemployment rate down substantially and stimulating an economic recovery. Few people would (or should) argue that even a sluggish recovery is better than the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, but neither should anyone turn a blind eye to the increasing wage gap and unabated downturn in quality of life for poor and working class Americans of all races.

Yet that’s precisely what the party regulars on both sides did. Jobs continued to be shipped overseas. Mainstream politicians on both sides of the aisle all but ignored the economically fueled Occupy movement. Everything was business as usual.

Going on the defensive

This might not have been surprising from the right, which has long taken a pro-business, anti-labor stance. What is more surprising is that the left hung working class America out to dry. Tired of being branded “socialists,” they stopped defending unions and started to look more and more like proponents of what might be called trickle-down light.

Then, when Sanders drew a large following not just despite but because of his self-identified socialism, they ignored it. And when Trump took up a populist tone in the general election, they tried to ignore that, too. Neither candidate fit into their preconceived notions about how Americans should behave.

Those preconceived notions originated with their decision to abandon the struggle for equality in favor of a struggle for identity. In doing so, they put a premium on lip service to various racial, ethnic and other groups while putting economic concerns on the back burner – even though it was those very concerns that could have united poor and blue-collar blacks, whites, Latinos, LGBT individuals, women and anyone else struggling to make a living.

The result? Low-income black voters weren’t comfortable with Sanders because, even though his policies would have benefited them more than Clinton’s, he didn’t speak the language of identity that the Democratic Party has spoken for more than two decades now. Low-income whites, meanwhile, were turned off by Clinton’s rhetoric precisely because it did put a premium on identity, rather than addressing their concerns about how to put bread on the table.

Neoliberals aren’t entirely to blame for this. Bigotry plays a huge role. African Americans face troubling issues that most white voters don’t have to deal with: social prejudice; police profiling; unjustly harsh sentencing and disproportionately high incarceration rates. The list could go on. Where neoliberalism has failed is in reacting to bigotry defensively, through identity politics, rather than going on the offensive to improve the lives of those targeted by the bigots.

Clinton and the neoliberal Democrats have spoken to these issues – all the while ignoring the economic issues that facilitate prejudice as much as anything else by locking people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. As mentioned earlier, African Americans constitute the highest percentage of those at the bottom.

As economic status solidifies, so does social prejudice. Just look at the rigid Hindu caste system if you want to know where this process ends up.

Identity vs. behavior

Putting identity over equality is, of course, an attractive message to people who have been discriminated against based on the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual orientation. But there’s a difference between standing up for a specific group of people and standing up against bigotry, no matter how it manifests itself.

This is a crucial distinction. The former course, pursued by neoliberals, focuses on defending identity, while the latter focuses on ending bigoted behavior that targets people because of their identity, regardless of how or against whom it manifests itself. Ultimately, it’s not anyone’s identity that is – or should be – the issue, it’s the behavior of the bigot.

So, while the neoliberals have been preoccupied with defending something that shouldn’t need to be defended, guess what? The bigotry that’s been condemned for decades has become normalized. It’s still hard for me to imagine that the American people were so willing to elect a candidate such as Trump, who expressed such unapologetically prejudiced views. But even when the Democrats pointed this out, they were viewed by many as doing so not because they were against bigotry, but because they were trying to enforce the identity politics of political correctness. They came across as playing politics, rather than trying to further the cause of struggling Americans.

Voters, not candidates

Trump and Sanders had one thing in common, as pundits have frequently pointed out: They’ve branded themselves as populists, champions of ordinary, struggling, roll-up-your-sleeves Americans. Sanders lost in the primary because he was competing in a party that long ago abandoned its working-class roots for the sake of embracing identity politics. Trump won the general election precisely by repudiating this gospel of identity and focusing on the economy.

He cast himself as St. George, eager to the dragon of politics as usual, and the millions of voters believed him.

Yes, Clinton won the popular vote, but I’ve had yet to hear anyone argue that she did so by presenting a hopeful message to working-class America. The message she did spread in that regard was largely borrowed – reluctantly and less enthusiastically, it seemed – from Sanders. More likely, Clinton won the popular vote not because of her economic proposals, but because of Trump’s glaring deficiencies in experience, character and common decency.

Without these issues to contend with, it’s a fair guess that any candidate without Trump’s monumental flaws who succeeded in addressing working class concerns would have won the election in a landslide. Party be damned.

Not all Trump voters are bigots. Most of them aren’t. But they’re so concerned with an economic situation they actually share with many Democrats that they overlooked the unprecedented divisiveness of Trump’s campaign to vote for him. By the same token, not all Democrats are tone-deaf to the idea that fighting for equality is more important than clinging to the divisiveness of identity politics. If they were, more than 43 percent of the party wouldn’t have voted for Sanders, who remained in the hunt for the nomination into the summer. (This despite being a virtual unknown who lacked national recognition at the outset of the campaign, not being taken seriously by the media for months and facing active opposition from the party apparatus.)

The sad thing about all this is that bigotry and identity politics have succeeded in dividing Americans with shared economic concerns by pitting both ends against the middle. I have no doubt that, had Sanders won the Democratic nomination, he would have won many of the same voters who supported Trump in the general election, not because he and Trump are anything alike, but because so many voters who backed both men shared the same concerns.

If the 2016 election taught us anything, it’s that the candidates themselves don’t matter nearly as much as the concerns of the voters. We ignore them at our own peril.

As a nation, we can recognize that inequality is an issue that concerns us all. Or we can continue to be pawns in a game of divide-and-conquer that sustains both bigotry of the far right and the identity politics of neoliberalism while accomplishing little to address the shared concerns of those who are struggling.

The choice is ours. I hope we make the right one.