Democratic Party Leaders – Time to Wake Up

By Arthur Schwartz

I cut my teeth in politics in the 1960s. That’s when the Democratic Party, led by President Lyndon Johnson was, to my young cohorts, the epitome of evil. Even after passing the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, he sent hundreds of thousands of young men to Vietnam and a war which made no sense to many. In 1968 people began to rally around the anti-Johnson figure from Minnesota, Senator Eugene McCarthy who almost won the New Hampshire primary. Johnson withdrew and in rode Bobby Kennedy, whose speeches sounded much like Bernie Sanders of today. He took on the oligarchic structure of politics, called for an end to the war, and expanded health care and a higher minimum wage.

Then Kennedy was gunned down and leaders of the Democratic Party, who he was railing against, embraced Johnson’s VP, Hubert Humphrey. Much like Kamala Harris, he had no answer for inflation, was uncritical of the war, and had no answer to the riots happening in Black communities. At the Democratic Convention, thousands of protestors were beaten by police as tear gas drifted onto the convention floor. The party leaders had their man, and he was crushed by someone even more awful than Donald Trump ─ a washed up political hack named Richard Nixon.

But the New Left ─ the post-McCarthy red scare radicals of the day ─ didn’t give up. Following the violent 1968 convention, the party created the McGovern-Fraser Commission to reform delegate selection. The new rules banned secret boss-controlled selections, mandated primaries or state conventions with elected delegates and mandated that delegations include fair proportions of women, youth, and racial minorities. This effectively dismantled the old-guard party machinery that previously handpicked nominees. McGovern ran a disciplined campaign built on the new primary rules. His team mobilized thousands of young, anti-Vietnam War activists to dominate local caucuses and state convention processes, even in non-primary states. They outmaneuvered the party bosses and treated the nomination as a bottom-up grassroots war. McGovern was nominated and he was the first presidential candidate I got to vote for. But he was crushed.

Why? First because he ran a one-issue campaign. Nixon had tamed inflation with price controls. He made a big issue of crime and the continuing riots, he gave labor the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and started winding down the war. But perhaps most importantly, the Democratic leadership decided to make an example of McGovern who had alienated the party elite. With that, he lost access to traditional party support, a powerful donor network and the party-aligned labor movement. It also didn’t help that McGovern was running against a completely unscrupulous and well-seasoned opponent.

The Democratic elite took back the party, and except for the Obama 2008 campaign ─ after which the party leaders taught Obama a lesson, with the Blue Dog Caucus in Congress reigning him in ─ national politics has been dominated by the “Third Way” approach adopted by Bill and Hillary Clinton. This blended traditional liberal social goals with conservative fiscal and economic ideas. Big money didn’t just throw its dollars at the Republicans, they also supported the Third Way Democratic leaders – they were not a threat to the “one percent” controlling the economic life of the United States.

In 2016 Bernie Sanders almost threw them off track. At a nationwide press briefing in Washington he explained what he meant by being a “democratic socialist.” This included national health care (Medicare for All). universal pre-K, free university education, reigning in the fossil fuel industry, raising the minimum wage and making it easier for workers to unionize. Like today’s “socialists,” in or out of DSA, he did not call for state ownership of the means of production, the abolition of private property, or the creation of a one party state. Sanders won 42% of the primary vote and was probably cheated out of the nomination. And what did we get? Trump.

Why do I talk about history? Because we ─ meaning the Democratic Party (and I am the Democratic Party district leader for Greenwich Village, and a member of a party executive committee) ─ seem to be going around in circles. On July 23, E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote in the New York Times: “Do Democrats want to win this year’s midterm elections? Or would they prefer to indulge in self-involved arguments over the relative merits of capitalism and socialism that are irrelevant to the choices they’ll face if they win power?”

And you should hear James Carville, the top political advisor to the Clintons, and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who wants to ride a “centrist wave” to the presidency. These folks, who continue to receive lots of corporate money, aren’t listening to people who vote. Trump’s approval rating is around 32%.The Democratic Party’s approval rating hovers at the same number. In this setting – high inflation and an endless war − Democrats should be looking to pick up 40 seats in the House this November. But polls show a net gain of 3-8 seats.

The American voters don’t think Democrats have answers. Just saying “Trump is bad” isn’t enough.

Look at the energy these Social Democratic candidates have brought to the table – excitement, large scale door-to-door mobilization, and lots of votes. What do they say that people like? Progressive taxation, a single-payer health care system, universal childcare and housing, enhanced worker rights, climate action, a higher minimum wage, enforceable civil rights and voting rights, expansion and enforcement of anti-monopoly laws. Look at the “horrible” issues Zohran ran on: a rent freeze, public groceries (food justice), universal childcare, free buses, and construction of 200,000 new units of permanently affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes over the next 10 years. Hardly sounds like “communism” to me. And people loved it. And despite being attacked in the media, he retains a 59% approval rating.

It’s not enough to keep repeating the word “affordability.” Its’s not enough to say “Trump’s horrible.” (It irks me that roughly 450,000 New Yorkers lost their health coverage under New York’s Essential Plan on July 1 due to federal cuts. Neither Gov. Hochul nor the Democratic State Legislature did one thing to plug this hole.)

The villains around the country are not the same as in New York. In some places it’s broken right-to-repair laws, bad landlords or electric monopolies. In other places it’s specific billionaires or corporations, excessive heat or fires, or housing foreclosures.

I think that within Democratic establishment there is a belief that we are in a “populist moment” and that if we can just get through this moment and control Congress, the Republican Party will collapse. This frustrates me intensely because I don’t think there is any electoral indication that this is true. I think there is going to be a populist future in this country. It is a question of who’s going to control it − and if it is not the Democratic Party − then it is only going to get worse. And so we need to start looking at what has been working, and learn from it, before there’s no one left.

I will end with a quote from columnist Jamelle Bouie. In the July 26 New York Times he wrote about the same “red scare” that Trump and Democratic Party leaders are drumming up. “Both Trump and his movement are, as you might surmise from the slogan “Make America Great Again,” fundamentally derivative. His vision of the future rests on a rotten nostalgia, and his plans for getting there were drawn from the wreckage of a shameful past.”

The Democratic Party cannot live in the past. It ain’t pretty.