Remember articles like this one by corporate media pundit Greg Sargent in the Washington Post, where the elite media types were saying that Hillary Clinton has been through the wringer for 30 years of attacks and that Bernie had never been tested like Clinton?
Well, now we have Hillary Clinton saying the relatively light attacks Bernie made during the primary season of 2015-2016 are what somehow hurt her so fragile candidacy.
As I have said to people, here is the way we know it is not the progressive wing that is responsible for the civil war among Democrats. First, ask, are we in a populist moment? If the answer we receive is "no," then the person with whom we are speaking is delusional and there is no reason to continue the conversation, other than give that person the name of a psychiatrist to spend some time with.
If the person much more reasonably answers "yes," then we need to say the following: "Then, unity means uniting behind a populist message to get to electoral victories."
This is the very argument the Democratic Leadership Council, led by Clinton and Gore, made to unions and progressive groups in the wake of 1988's loss to George Herbert Walker Bush--except they asked, "Are we no longer in a New Deal moment so that we have to be more pro-business to compete?" So union and progressive support went to "centrist" (meaning pro-corporate) Democrats and the Dems won electoral victories. That meant union money. That meant progressive money. That meant union workers and progressive activists on the ground, doing voter registration, doing phone banks, doing trips back and forth to the polling places to ensure people had rides to the polls. I know. I was one of those who was no fan of Bill Clinton from the start and I saw union people wary of his "mend the NAFTA" line out there too.
But note now what we are seeing from corporate Democrats and their acolytes in the professional political class and corporate owned media, even after they acknowledge (really, they HAVE to acknowledge) they are in a populist moment. They snarl, they wrap themselves tighter around their bubble where it is always 1992 or 1996, and they suddenly decide that abortion must be a litmus test when of course Pelosi, Biden, Obama and the Clintons themselves did not believe that in deep Red places either. No, abortion is not their litmus test. That is a cover. What is the true litmus test for corporate Democrats is economic privilege. They despise and have nothing but contempt for unions and populist anger.
They then say, "Well, you guys win a few elections, and we'll talk." Well, sorry. We live in a corporate media and money-based electoral culture that requires money to succeed and what we are saying is, If you want unity, recognize the moment and put your money where unity is, just like the progressive and union groups did in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s and up through corporate Obama's election of 2008.
There is no civil war without the corporate Democrats' snarling. The fact that Hillary Clinton cannot leave this wound alone shows why we cannot move forward in unity. People like Clinton and the corporate Dems do not want unity except on their own terms, even when this is no longer their moment or time. If they really cared about the Supreme Court membership, if they really cared about "Dreamers," about abortion, they would be uniting behind the most popular politician in the United States today, Bernie Sanders. Who the heck cares whether he calls himself a Democratic Party member? He is more in touch with the populist moment and he is more in the heart of the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt than most other politicians in office today.
This is not about the past, by the way. This is not about fighting last election's battles between Sanders and Clinton. This is about the way forward. Democrats want victories? Then, corporate Dems need to do what progressive and union groups did and get in the back seat, support with money populist candidates and let the progressive populists drive. Bernie's views on public college tuition, health insurance, infrastructure, taxing the rich, the minimum wage and the environment have the support of a full on majority of Americans. He is the true centrist if we define the term with any rationality of the meaning of "center," as opposed to the corporate media meaning, which too often just means "pro-corporate."
Again, there is no civil war without the corporate Democrats refusing to unify in a populist moment. And really, Hillary Clinton, finally, and truly, it's not your turn anymore and never was. I know it's hard to take but really, it's not about you.
