A few discreet words were dropped to explain the horrifically poor showing in the 2014 midterms. Democrats in the House apparently forgot to stay on the economic justice message. (If you haven't got around to it yet, take the time to read Thomas Ferguson's masterful assessment of the 2014 midterm election, "Americans Are Sick to Death of Both Parties: Why Our Politics Is in Worse Shape Than We Though.") But fear not, good citizen. The Party of Jackson is going to redouble its efforts to protect me and you and make sure that we get some of that wealth that has been vacuumed up to the 1% during the Obama years:
As the Democratic lawmakers gathered here Thursday, their leaders did not shy from admitting that their postelection strategies bore a strong resemblance to the emphasis they placed on issues like wage inequality before they lost 13 seats in November’s election.
“It is the same and critically important message,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland.
Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, said the party did not need to find a new message. Rather, he said, lawmakers and the president need to do a better job focusing that message and motivating turnout of voters next year. “There should have been more unity behind the president’s economic agenda,” Mr. Van Hollen said.
Mr. Obama urged the Democrats in Philadelphia not to be shy in embracing the party’s values, and he promised that he would not relent in pressuring the Republicans.
“We need to stand up and go on offense and not be defensive about what we believe,” Mr. Obama said. “I promise you I’m not going out the last two years sitting on the sidelines. I’m going to be out there making the case every single day.”This is a picture of an organization that is not in touch with reality; that, or its leaders are lying through their teeth. They must take us for a bunch of witless boobs.
An indication where the Democrats are headed at full speed can be detected in an excellent piece that appears on Naked Capitalism. Hope for Greece, and Perhaps Europe Too, by Mathew D. Rose, an independent journalist living Berlin, encapsulates the situation in Europe that led to Syriza's victory this past Sunday. Obeisance to neoliberal austerity and market fundamentalism has hollowed out Europe's socialist parties:
[Europe’s Social Democrats] are clearly on the decline, as they have lost credibility as a party of the people. Their natural replacement, ergo their most menacing opponent, will be the new parties on the left. The once predominant social democratic party in Greece, PASOK, could not even muster five percent of the vote in Sunday’s elections. The PSOE in Spain is plumbing the 20 percent barrier, things look scarcely better for Germany’s Social Democrats; while in France Hollande and his acolytes seem set on immolating their party. Even in Britain, where the Labour Party was hoping to come out of the upcoming elections as the strongest party, it has not only lost one of its heartlands, Scotland, to the Scottish National Party, but is facing a surge in England by the Greens, who are adopting an ever increasing leftist agenda and brazenly showing solidarity with Syriza and its programme.One could add Sinn Féin to this list of authentic leftist parties rising to challenging the corrupt neoliberal hegemony.
As it stands now, I think Scott Walker wins the general election in 2016. And then woe unto us all. To prevent this from happening the Democrats will have to reinvent themselves pronto. And nothing points to this happening.
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