I was told over the past year and a half that Donald Trump was destroying the Republican Party, that he was so weird and so out there that if he was elected he would face fierce opposition from figures like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and House Leader and human turtle Mitch McConnell. This would mean that the Trumpists and the establishment would be at war with each other and the GOP as we know it would be over. Even if they did manage to survive, the Democrats would regain the Senate and filibuster them at every turn. I accepted that idea at first because, among other things, I thought that Hillary would win. I even wrote an article about how I thought Trump was going to go down in history as the biggest loser in American history.
Of course, that didn’t happen.
On November 8th, the American people elected a fascist Cheeto in a suit in the most stunning upset in the history of the United States; and, as if that wasn’t terrible enough, the Republicans maintained control of the House and Senate, as well as 69 out of 99 legislative chambers. The GOP now controls the Presidency, Congress, the Supreme Court and State Legislatures, and the Democratic Party has been left in shambles in the most embarrassing string of losses in its history. Even though I feel genuinely bad for Secretary Hillary Clinton and the fact that she’s been building up her resume for 30 years to run for President, only to lose to Donald Trump, I cannot in good conscience support what the Democratic establishment has been doing. That is why, at least for now, the Democratic Party has left me.
I hate to say that because, if you look at the two major parties in the U.S., the Democrats are by far the better party. The thing is, though, the dynamic between the two parties has always been that the Republicans stand up for the protections of multinational corporations and the Democrats stand up for the rights of working people. Or, at least that’s how it used to be. After years of cozying up to Wall Street execs and taking money from billionaires, the Democratic Party is a shell of what it once was. While Bernie Sanders was holding free rallies in sold-out stadiums, his opponent was charging hundreds of thousands of dollars to hear her speak at George Clooney’s house. All these years of selling out have led to politicians like Debbie Wasserman Schultz who openly take money from Wall Street and payday lenders and then do their bidding. Hillary Clinton is no better; she also takes money from the people she supposedly said “cut it out” to, and we saw from WikiLeaks that was far from the truth.
We were supposed to ignore all that though, because Donna Brazile, who took over the DNC after Wasserman Schultz resigned in disgrace, made it her job to reassure voters that Hillary’s Goldman Sachs speeches should be ignored because they were stolen by Russians (a claim she has provided zero evidence to back up). CNN’s Chris Cuomo followed her lead and actually claimed it’s illegal to read the transcripts while Robby Mook, chief strategist for the Clinton campaign, would refuse to answer questions about the issue because, otherwise, the Russians win. I’m not joking about any of this, go ahead and Google it.
After losing the election to the most beatable candidate in history, the Democrats refused to reinvent themselves in order to recover. Instead of choosing figures like Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren to lead the party in a new direction, the Democratic establishment has elected Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer, the latter of which openly advocated for snubbing blue-collar Democrats, to be the new face of the Democratic Party. And, to make matters worse, they are also relentlessly pushing the likes of Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker, two overrated corporate shills, to lead the Democratic ticket in 2020. Needless to say that, if that happens, I’ll vote third party again.
And I won’t even mention how the Democratic establishment played dirty politics in this election; I wrote an article analyzing it in depth last year. Just let me add that it’s exactly because of their arrogance and hubris, the fact that they would’ve preferred to lose with the establishment than win with a progressive, a progressive that a poll shows would have beaten Donald Trump by 12 points. If the DNC hadn’t been so arrogant, we’d have a President-elect Bernie Sanders right now. But, of course, we’ll soon have President Trump, a Republican Congress, Legislature, and Supreme Court. Funny how that turned out.
So, what’s going to happen now? Since the Republicans dominate all three branches of government, they now have the votes to do whatever they want. If they want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which has provided healthcare for 30 million Americans, they have the votes to do it; if they want to build a wall or ban all Muslims, they have the votes for that too; if they want to reverse Roe vs. Wade or re-illegalize gay marriage, guess what? They can do all of those things because they not only have strong control of government, but they have the weakest opposition in Charles Schumer and Nancy Pelosi that will roll over at every turn to give into the demands of our new autocratic, corrupt leaders.
The Democratic Party has abandoned not only me, but the millions of Americans who were left in the cold by a party who refused to stand up for them when they were arrested for smoking a joint, or when their job went to China or Mexico, or when they couldn’t afford to go to the doctor when they got sick, or when they work full time and are still living in poverty. Now, they have left us with no choice but to fight. The era of the establishment is over; now it’s time for the 99 per cent to take over and fight for the Democratic Party we believe in, the one who fights for working people and the middle class. To steal a phrase from our soon-to-be President, we will win again. Bigly.
