Tag Archive for: Will Rogers

Will Rogers very famously said:

“I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”

That was made sometime in the 1930’s I think, but it is enduringly true.

So, where will the Democratic party go now that they have had their ass handed to them by Trump? Who will lead the Democratic party going forward?

The calls are already ringing out. Liz Warren! Bernie Sanders! Keith Ellison (Sanders has even issued an email ask as to Ellison)! But there is a serious money people and Clintonian push for Howard Dean. Which is truly mind numbing.

Howard Dean is moldy cheese that needs to be taken out with the next non-recycle trash dump. He did neither himself, nor the party, any favors in the 2016 election clownshow cycle. Seriously, in the 2016 election cycle, Sarah Palin may have been more reserved and credible than Howard Dean.

Dean’s 50 state op got Obama elected in 2008, but he is smelly garbage now. Screw this always retread manure. Dean needs to dry up and go away.

And the Democratic Party needs to extricate their head from their ass and move to the future.

New blood. Dems CANNOT be the same old constantly revanchist assholes every time they lose bigly. And, boy did they lose bigly.

The Dem go to kleptomaniacs like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Rahm Emanuel not only did not help the party expand but set it back in serious ways in places like MO, KS, AZ and the entire United States.

And, while we are at it, the high holy “Senator Professor Warren” ain’t immune either. She had a moment and a shot, and she cowardly whiffed. Maybe it is something she just truly did not want, and, if so, fine. But don’t tell me that someone that is little more than a year younger than Hillary, and who consciously forfeited both her, and Bernie’s, shot in 2016, will be the Democratic holy savior in 2020.

Don’t do that. This is the same ignorant reset idiocy that got Democrats here today. That time is done. If Democrats do one thing ever, it ought be to build the bridge for the young’s of the United States to clean up the shithole we left them. Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders can be a huge part in doing that. But only as bridge builders, not as the man or woman who will be the avatar in 2020. We need them terribly, but not themselves as the embodiment of the future. That kind of thinking is the idiocy of the past.

There is a future. Although CNN’s Jeff Zucker and Trump/Breitbartism’s Steve Bannon are brothers in clickbait cuck arms that birthed, literally, President Trump, and will not easily give up their money raking news cycles.

The “new normal” is that CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, New York Times, Washington Post, and an endless roll call of dying, wimpering subservient media jackasses, who rode Trump’s clickbait train to a place in hell, will find it’s new Stockholm Syndromed place and start lecturing us how it is all good and just a “function of normal democracy”. It is already occurring, just watch any Wolf Blitzer on CNN or Chris Matthews on MSNBC moment. They are getting climax happy legs on Trump and Giuliani fascism as we speak.

That is one vision, and the early reality, of what the “press” will do in the coming Trump Presidency. The competing vision, which is what I hope and ascribe to, is that the media extricates their heads from their asses and brings real scrutiny to try to mitigate the hell they helped gestate. Are there enough Brian Stelters and Jay Rosens to get us there?

The brokenhearted Dems have some serious soul searching to engage in. So do the currently unapologetic and furiously rationalizing media and “pundits” who so helped get us here.

“Balanced” is NOT fair. Honest is fair. Accurate is fair. Truth is fair. Putting on panels of bickering loud mouthed bought and paid for political assholes as “news coverage” is NOT fair. Nor is it “balanced” news. Jeff Zucker makes Roger Goodell look like a piker in terms of the pantheon of American assholes.

While the media, especially cable, has a circle jerk field day congratulating themselves over their “wall to wall coverage”, and “looking forward to the transition”, just remember how the Trumpism and fascism germinated. Not shockingly, it germinated the same way it always has. When the gatekeepers of a rational society become more about themselves and their money than their jobs representing society.

There is a lesson here, too, for the Dems in media interaction. You got played and hosed royally. Don’t be the brokenhearted, be the, for once, party that learns from its mistakes and failures, and does better.

Just once, do this. If you can.

UPDATE: Commenter GK James posted something below that I think crystallizes much of what I was trying to say far better than I did, even if from a slightly different perspective.

Sure, but doesn’t that effectively absolve the demos that does the choosing? Aren’t Democrats up against a larger problem, one that they’ve had to wrestle with since Reagan? How do you advocate a progressive worldview when the majority of an aging, increasingly atomized, entertainment-addicted population doesn’t want that? It’s easy enough to say, after the fact, that Clinton should have focused more on those disadvantaged by globalization, or that, had they only chosen Sanders, the Democrats would have won. But recall that, without moving to the center, Bill Clinton would never have made it. A lousy bargain in retrospect, but not a crazy one at the time.

Yes, the DNC needs new blood. But assuming someone is found who can articulate a crisp clear message of what Democrats stand for—and who’s telegenic, personable, and entertaining to boot—how would that change the stranglehold that Republicans have on state governments, state legislatures, and the US Congress? The clear majority likes the status quo, having no problem with gerrymandered districts, voter suppression, or bought-and-paid-for legislators who enjoy an incumbency rate of 90%+. And the infotainment complex is likely to help keep it that way by making sure that its customers are never overtaxed by complicated thoughts. There will still be people, adults, who read, think, and have constructive ideas about matters of public import, which they’ll express in complete sentences. But they’ll be increasingly outnumbered and marginalized in a Twittered world.

Can’t argue with that, and don’t know the answers to the questions. But the Democratic party, if it is to continue (and I think it must), has to start finding those answers quickly.