Democratic Party Taking You for Granted? Maybe it’s Time to See Someone New

When the grocery store puts something on sale for a crazy low price just to get you in the door, that’s called a loss leader—they entice you with something you want, then they’re counting on you to buy some other stuff while you’re there. Maybe even a lot of stuff.

Unless you’re really paying attention and don’t get carried away, this works out better for the store than for you.

Political parties do the same thing—they get your attention with a few hot issues and then plan to keep you there. For the Democratic party, it’s LGBTQ and pro-choice issues—and for the most part, the party is indeed genuine on these.

But that’s about all they’ve got left anymore.

Gay rights and pro-choice are the Democratic party’s loss-leaders.

The party’s courting you with these two issues, and then, while you’re there, they lump all their other policies in with the things that got you voting Democrat in the first place.

I would have added workers’ rights, anti-war policies, helping the poor, and issues like those, but the party has long-since abandoned all that bleeding heart stuff to juicier returns from their corporate sugar daddies. They’re hoping you won’t notice that.

Which is the problem.

At one time, the Democratic party was the worker’s party, the social justice party, the anti-war party, the human rights for the little guy party, the justice for everyone in the world party, the help the poor party, the peace on earth party…

But it’s none of that anymore. It’s Reagan Republicanism, at best, which isn’t all that great. And which works fine and dandy for the very conservative sort who has a gay relative, maybe.

It doesn’t work so well for people who’re still hanging on to all that peace on earth stuff, and who believe that money ought to have zero, zilch, nada, nothing to do with politics, or who’re still hanging onto hope that public school in the U.S. will someday be valued instead of de-funded and privatized to its death, that workers ought to have the right to protect themselves against greedy-ass CEOs and corporate owners, and still clinging to the crazy notion that people in the U.S. deserve health care, just like the rest of the civilized world.

The Democratic party is no longer most Democrats assume it is.

Enter the class-action lawsuit you shouldn’t be nosing around about.

So there’s a class-action lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee. It was filed in June of 2016 by residents of 45 states (45 states—oh, the irony!), and in spite of the DNC hoping the lawsuit would just go away, it didn’t go away.

In fact, it’s gaining strength.

The DNC is being sued for misusing our money, playing fast and loose with the party nomination, and then giving us the finger. Only they don’t say it that way in the official papers.

These are the people the lawsuit represents:

1. Those who donated to the Democratic party
2. Those who donated to the Bernie Sanders campaign
3. And—get this—all registered Democrats

This lawsuit isn’t just about Bernie Sanders—it’s about the DNC giving the finger to all registered Democrats.

Chances are about 99% that you didn’t hear much about this lawsuit when it was filed in 2016, and never did hear much about it.

And that’s because the mainstream media is really, really not into biting the hand that feeds it.

When asked about the lawsuit, the DNC responds with Oh phooey to it all that silly finger-pointing, and insists their charter doesn’t have to actually be fair, that it’s all just a strong suggestion and not a promise. Seriously, this is their story.

They’ve also said, and this is an actual quote from their lawyer, not my mouthy paraphrased version, “We could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to, and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way.”

So.

Unless the Democratic party has a serious come-to-Jesus meeting, or a Scrooge-y ghost-of-the-future sort of visit and turns over a new leaf like yesterday, it’s time to start seeing other people.

See, the lawsuit accuses the DNC of not honoring our pre-nup. They cheated on us, they ran off with our money, they lost the Senate and the Congress for us, and lost most races all over the land this past November.

And of course there was that one catastrophic loss.

People didn’t get what they paid for. Literally.

Whatever the DNC is doing is obviously not working.

Let me correct myself: the corporate sugar daddies got what they paid for. And whatever the DNC is doing is most certainly working for said sugar daddies.

The party has proven itself more committed to shooting at its own feet than winning elections

At least the Republican party is a little more upfront about obliging its sugar daddies. Not that that’s endearing or anything, but we know to expect. It’s just that the Democratic party is the same way, but says it’s not.

Just remember what I’ve told you before, though—follow the money, and you’ll see the separated-at-birth similarities between our two major parties.

The parties are two sides of the same coin, shiny friends.

Would you like your shit sandwich on a red plate or would you like your shit panini on a blue plate?

There were signs that our dearly loved party was betraying us—things that didn’t add up, such as:

• All the right words but actions that said otherwise (President Obama with his organic garden out back and his Monsanto and Exxon cabinet members up front).
• Ultra-rich liberals getting ultra-richer while everyone else gets poorer (John Kerry and Billary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, et-fucking-cetera).
• The party’s increasingly embarrassing compulsion to suck up to the 1%.
• Capitalism wayyy out of control, even when Democrats had the wheel. (Inflation + no cost of living increase = capitalism out of control.)
• A democracy that’s pretty much in-name-only at this point. (The six Wal-Mart heirs have more money than 40% of the country does? Translation: six people have more money than 133,000,000 people. What fresh hell is this?)
• More war instead of less war, even when Democrats had the House, the Senate, and the Presidency.
• Those pesky drone strikes at the hand of a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
• And most telling, all those suspicious policies we went along with because we liked our president so much (DADT, DOMA, and NAFTA—hello, Bill Clinton. And the TPP, the Wall Street bailout, and the “Monsanto Protection Act“—hello you handsome devil, Obama, you! Enjoy your retirement!)

The whole embarrassing love-fest we had with the Democratic party would be merely humiliating if it weren’t so damned important to examine seriously.

Thank goodness, I guess, for revelation upon revelation during the Democratic primary, because that’s when many of us realized we’ve been enabling our abuser. I know I did.

But even when we found them out, the scathing evidence against the party so many of us loved and devoted ourselves to just keeps coming, and the lawsuit against the DNC isn’t going away.

So here’s what I want you to do:

I want you to realize that, while there are miraculously some good and decent human beings in the Democratic party—and you may be one of them, the party as an entity is as narcissistic as our new president. As evidence, said party refuses to admit its own role in the aforementioned catastrophic election results, and instead just keeps on selling us the same ol’ shit sandwich.

I want you to start looking around for other candidates.

Gone are the days of voting a straight Democratic ticket and assuming the ‘D’ on the ballot stood for the good things you yourself stand for.

I want you to know that now and then you’re going to need to not only look at, gasp, a Republican here or there, but also candidates from various parties you may or may not have heard of.

I know it’s damned inconvenient, but you need to find your own way in this instead of turning to the manipulative corporate media to help you out. They’re scaring you on purpose so you think you have no choice but the crap they’re telling you.

Yes, we Americans like our convenience and our comforts and don’t want to be bothered with working too hard to figure this shit out. I understand this. We’re fucking tired. And we’d like to be able to count on something or someone.

But if we don’t start being about 95% suspicious of our televisions and magazines and newspapers and internet things that claim they’re real and not “fake,” this country is not going to make it.

My last post was about how to stop relying on mainstream media.

The TV is not helping you. It’s just pissing you off and scaring you. I beg you to turn it off.

Take that whippersnapper Rachel Maddow and MSNBC, CNN, and all the other networks with a fucking boulder of salt, shiny friends. They’re egging you on.

All of mainstream media is egging us on.

It’s all meant to freak us out, enrage us, and frustrate us to the point of throwing our hands up in exhaustion, so that we feel we have no choices.

But we do. We do have choices.

So check out some of these Democratic party alternatives. No doubt there are more.

It’s okay to shop around for your politics nowadays—I’m thinking you didn’t sign anything saying you’d mate for life with the Democratic party.

January 2021 update: I still loathe the Democratic party, probably more than I ever have, in fact. The Dem party squandered my loyalty and my money. They’re dead to me.

I also have zero desire to align myself with any party at all. I’m not joining nuthin’ no more! (Yep, double negatives and more right there.)

But I’m leaving all this here for you and anyone who wants to take a look—they’re still legitimate parties that you and I and others may very well agree with on quite a few issues. 

Green Party

Admirable folks with a solid and progressive platform. They’re on most state’s ballots each election period, and have yet to reach the umpteenmillion signatures that some states require in order to get on the ballot there. (I’m talking to you for one, North Carolina.)

Democratic Socialist Party

This is the party Bernie Sanders brought to our attention in the 2016 Democratic primary. They’re all about a humane international society.

And here’s an article in Rolling Stone about the party’s rising popularity.

Working Families Party

These folks are “fighting for an economy that works for all of us.” This is a pretty active party, running candidates in local races in a dozen states so far.

Socialist Alternative Party

This party originated in Seattle and is solidly dedicated to social justice.

There’s a line in their platform that says it all—it’s basically the Golden Rule, just worded a little differently: “An injury to one is an injury to all.”

Progressive Independent Party

The “PIP” party was founded in March 2016 in response to the political revolution Bernie Sanders talked about, and is dedicated to supporting progressives in office and passing progressive legislation.

A special shout-out to the the PIP party for urging you to make a mainstream media detox pledge.

I like that. #MSMdetox

Communist Party

Hey, don’t knock it till you check it out. Most of what we know and fear about communism has been instilled in us from an early age. One might call it indoctrination. So see for yourself.

Question everything.

In other words, don’t count on your American upbringing and education, or the media, to educate you on everything—some things, sure, but not everything. Educate yourself on this one.

Vermin Supreme He was probably my favorite 2020 presidential candidate outside of Sanders. He talks a lot about a “pony-based economy.” Just for fun click on the link to look at his Instagram account.

Okay, so that’s it for now.

Resist the urge to sit back watching the goshdamned television news, always listen to your gut, and always follow the money, ’cause somebody’s making a killing from that crap, and spoiler: it’s not you and me.

Peace out, shiny friends.

As always, MWAH.

 

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