What is the truth? 40% of GOP voters still believe Obama was not born in the US, another 1/3 are not sure. WTF. With Trump tweeting and Fox spouting an endless stream of fake-truth and millions believing it. Where could this lead? And while we should get all hot and bothered about the GOP, and now that Donna Brazile blew the cover on the DNC and HRC, it would be nice if Centrist Dems were a bit more willing to examine and fix the DNC.
Keller for ABQ Mayor. Before we dabble in collusion among the GOP and the Dems, please click here to find out what you can do from your couch to ensure that Albuquerque has an utterly honest, genuinely progressive Mayor. Tim Keller deserves your vote and the election is less than ten days away. You can call to get folks to vote early and on election day you can call to get them to the polls. Please do it.
Collusion and Delusion: The American Political System in a Nutshell
In Wednesday and Thursday’s blogs I reported on the extent to which a corporate-controlled political system can allow corporations to essentially steal from the poor and working class. In the past I have reported on how both the GOP and Democratic parties have betrayed their constituencies to do the dirty work of the ultra rich and CEOs. Essentially the corporatocracy is in collusion with our political system to screw you-know-who. But as Mueller and now Donna Brazile have found, collusion comes in many forms. And the lynchpin to this system of collusion lies in the media–what it reports and how. As revealed in an excellent Vox article, increasingly the media in all forms is reporting half-truths and bold-faced lies. So, even with Mueller handing down indictments, Trump can tweet that this is all BS and that there is NO COLLUSION and Fox can claim that it is all a conspiracy to undermine the GOP tax plan and people believe.
It is in this context that only 30% of Republicans actually believe that Obama was born in the US, another 30% are not sure and over 40% do not believe he was born in the US. That is 12 million politically active people who have been deluded by the media. Vox asks what else might they believe: “It is similarly difficult for most people to imagine believing that Hillary Clinton has had multiple people killed, that Obama is a secret Muslim who wasn’t born in the US, that Trump had millions of votes stolen, that Barack Obama wiretapped Trump’s White House, that Seth Rich (the mid-level Democratic staffer who was tragically murdered) was assassinated for stealing DNC emails and giving them to WikiLeaks, or that Antifa, the fringe anti-fascist movement, will begin going door-to-door, killing white people, starting on November 4. And yet millions of Americans fervently believe these things.”
Vox goes on to extrapolate on what may be in store for us in a context where truth means nothing. What will Trump, Fox and Koch report as true, if more indictments fall or if Trump asks Sessions to resign so Trump can appoint a new Atty. General who can then fire Mueller. Vox’s extrapolation is not pretty. The source of Vox’s fears is captured here. “Pundits and yellers in right-wing media compete to freak out the base and reinforce its allegiance to Donald Trump. The base leans on politicians. And most elected GOP officials are in seats safe enough that they fear a primary challenge from the base more than a Democratic challenger. The only way to stave off a primary is pay obeisance. That’s why Jeff Flake and Bob Corker are leaving the Senate. They no longer have any control over what their constituents believe or want, and their constituents believe and want increasingly ugly things. Sen. John McCain is saying all the right things now, but back when he faced his own Tea Party challenger, he sprinted right as fast as he could.” To read about where Vox feels all this could lead, click here.
If Honest Examination of the Facts Is Good for the GOP, It Is Good for the Dems., As Well
But if we are going to hold the GOP accountable and ask their elected officials to stand up to Trump’s collusion and delusion, it is equally important that the Democratic Party be honest about its own practices. Before I go forward, recall that Donna Brazile is a centrist Democrat, a member of the DNC Central Committee and that she was also guilty of collusion with the HRC campaign, providing debate questions to her campaign. She is not a Bernicrat and indeed, when after Wasserman-Schultz was forced to resign and she was appointed Interim Director of the DNC, progressives went bonkers. If we are going to criticize the GOP for trying to undermine Mueller, himself a Republican who served as a GOP appointed Attorney General, it is important that Centrist Democrats not disregard what Brazile has found. And what she found is even worse than any extreme Bernie supporter imagined. In a stunning Politico report, Donna Brazile has just revealed that there is now absolutely no doubt that beginning only a very few months after announcing her candidacy, Clinton essentially ran the DNC and the Democratic fund raising machine and that she manipulated the system in what may have been legal but as Brazile notes, was entirely unethical. As CNN reported yesterday, “she didn’t tilt the scale, she owned it.” It is clear that by August 2015, every DNC memo, hiring, budget expenditure, and fund raising strategy had to be approved by the HRC campaign. Please re-read the definition of collusion above. It is also clear that via a Joint Fundraising Agreement with 33 states, HRC was able to funnel millions of big donations that would otherwise have been prohibited, except she had those donations directed first to the DNC then to states and then to the HRC campaign, with states getting less than 1% of that money. DURING THE PRIMARIES. Please re-read the definition of collusion again. Brazile calls this money laundering, plain and simple and she claims to have broken down in tears when she finally obtained incontrovertible proof that this was so. I am not sure I buy her sob story, after all she likely didn’t shed many tears when she provided the HRC campaign with debate questions.
I am hoping the reaction of some Hillary supporters and Democratic Centrists will not be that by focusing on this we are only hurting the Party, only undermining Democratic chances in 2018, but it is really Party apologists who are the ones hurting the Party by refusing to examine unethical practices and fixing them. Before DPNM again asks me for a donation to the national, state or local Democratic Party I want to see letters from all of our NM DNC members and from Richard Ellenberg condemning what happened and demanding that the party open itself to scrutiny and make absolutely certain that this can’t happen again. This isn’t about recriminations, it is about ensuring the Democratic Party is the democratic party. Click here for the full Politico report.
In solidarity,
Paul & Roxanne
Categories: Election, Political Reform & National Politics, Influence of Media
I am astounded that there does not seem to be a group focused on primary election reform and/or a National Primary. As long as the primary process is controlled by the state party organizations, we are doomed to existence in a frame in which we are constantly faced with a forced choice between two corrupt entities. ‘Party Loyalty’ itself is a twisted concept in which WE are supposed to be loyal to the Party. I suggest that the Party needs to be loyal to its supporters. It seems that after the 2016 primary process, this (primary reform) is something that Dems, GOPers, Greens, etc. could all get behind.
Today’s feature on PPM is a brief new video from VOX entitled “How to break the two-party hold on American politics”. You can view it directly on YouTube here:
Isn’t it awful to have been right all along? Not sure what the solution is except to keep to our ethics and principles, keep steady, and ask that all who identify as Democrats do the same. I agree, the party needs to be loyal to its supporters, not the other way around.