By Tom Crofton
The Commoner Call (10/23/17)
The recent purge of progressive dems from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) would be shocking if the DNC and Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW) were truly parties of the people; forces building a better world and safe harbors for those working in the name of basic common sense, humanity, or sustainability.
But forgetaboutit.
The DNC has a long, sordid history of selling out the base it pretends it has, but the statements of then DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wassermann-Schultz during the last presidential race were a transparent indictment of duplicity of a party that wants “to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a
position where they are running against grassroots activists.”
This fix came home to roost in Wisconsin in the 2016 Presidential primary, where Sanders won 56% of the
vote and 71 out of 72 counties yet received only 1 out of 10 superdelegate votes for a near tie in delegate
count (49/47) with Clinton.
As the local grassroots, we are expected to jump in and work hard for these folks after they openly mock and dismiss our concerns, needs, ideas and judgment. But what is their vision?
Natives to be exploited
The DNC has become an enabler of a Wall Street/Silicon Valley-funded high-tech Pax Americana mired in devastating inequality; a uniquely American type of imperialism where in a globalized world economy all working people (and that includes us) are merely natives to be exploited and controlled.
As the local grassroots, we are expected to jump in and work hard for these folks after they openly mock and dismiss our concerns, needs, ideas and judgment. But what is their vision?
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin is little more than an urban-corporate fundraising machine for the DNC; just another DNC franchise operation. Their involvement in rural communities has been disruptive at best. The coordinated campaign that comes around every four years is an embarrassment to thinking people. Do you wonder why your neighbors don’t vote Democratic, or vote at all?
Does the democratic party really give them a reason to vote – and hope – for a better, more just future?
The issues working people need addressed are the building blocks of a new society: peace; prosperity; sustainability; and good health care for all.
Democrats, elected and appointed, support war and assassination by drone in the third world, saying for
example that 500,000 dead Iraqi children were a price worth paying for stability in a region where our corporations
had an economic interest.
Democrats, like Barack Obama, once in office refuse to convict the white collar thieves who wrecked the prosperity of working people and drove many to bankruptcy and despair in 2008, and then hired the same thieves too run the economy.
Democrats are all too willing to support the dirty, deadly and dead-end extractive exploitation of the planet in the name of short-term profit without recognizing the external costs that make those actions losers, socially, politically, and
economically.
Democrats have sold their souls to the health insurance industry and Big Pharma for campaign contributions when they could make a simple case that we don’t need health insurance at all, just health care for all; you know just like every other western industrialized country on the planet manages to do for a fraction of the price we pay for a hobbled and sick system.
One may think the Republican wave has finally crashed over Wisconsin and the US, and the time is ripe for
good government and progressive leadership to pull us out of the deadly, crippled spin we are in. You’d be right to think that, unfortunately, as the backroom dealing this week at the DNC meeting in Las Vegas proves you’d be disappointed.
Don’t count on the DPW or DNC to provide that clear vision and leadership.