Ash writes: "The Democratic Party can make it without John Birch, but not while fighting like children amongst themselves."
An Alabama license plate promoting Democrat George Wallace for governor, circa 1968. (photo: Anderson Americana)
The Future Without John Birch
23 June 17
�With resignation, but with resolve, I hereby end forty years of Democratic rule of this House.�� Democratic Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, January 4, 1995
on the Floor of the House of Representatives
hen Alabama governor George Wallace stood on the steps of the Alabama Statehouse and spoke the words that would define him until the day he died, �Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever, he spoke as Democrat, not as a Republican.
As Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, another Alabama native with deep ties to the Confederacy, uses his power as attorney general of the United States to roll back decades of advancements in civil rights law, he is doing so as a Republican, not as a Democrat.
For 100 years after the end of the Civil War, white believers in the Confederacy refused to vote for Republicans. Lincoln, of course, had been a Republican, and that�s all they needed to know. The South voted as a solid, reliable block for the Democratic Party well into the 1960s.
The Democratic party and the U.S. commercial media disarmingly called southern Democrats �Dixiecrats.� All too often they were Klansmen, white supremacists, and segregationists.
When Gephardt handed Gingrich the gavel, major media political pundits called it a �Republican revolution� and a backlash against First Lady Hillary Clinton�s attempts at healthcare reform. In reality it was the embodiment of Richard Nixon�s Southern Strategy. White southern segregationist voters were shifting their allegiance away from the Democratic Party and toward the Republican Party.
Nixon, Goldwater and like-minded Republican conservatives understood two things: the Republican party was and always had been more demographically white, and with the Democratic Party working hard to help Black leaders achieve political power, the Republican Party was a better fit for the segregationists. The passing of the gavel in 1995 was really a passing of the Confederacy from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.
When fingers get pointed on the American political left at the �corporate Democrats� or the �progressives,� the fingers often miss the point. The Confederacy is gone, and with it the historic Democratic Congressional majorities. Tweaking the message won�t fix that. It�s going to take more.
In the 1930s, the Democratic Party was the party of Eleanor Roosevelt; it was also the party of Strom Thurmond. A marriage of political convenience between natural political adversaries. In historical terms, an often disagreeable partnership between slavery defenders and abolitionists, the John Birch/Jim Crow crowd, blacks, and those they referred to as �high-minded white people� (progressives).
Today the Democratic Party, while remarkably diverse, leans in ideological terms mostly on white progressives, along with Labor and African Americans. Those are the two largest and most politically significant blocks in the party.
This leaves the Democratic Party with uphill climb and a weight on their back. The Republican Party today is the party of white voters, by far the largest electoral block in the country. The Democrats need a viable white strategy, an argument, a rationale that white voters can grasp to comprehend the injustice and futility of Republican neo-segregationism.
Which leads us to the core of Democratic Party�s dysfunction. The inability of African Americans and progressives to collaborate. African Americans don�t trust white progressives, even when their political fortunes and often their lives depend upon it. The Sanders/Clinton split put the rift on full display. No fingers pointed.
Sure, the Democratic Party needs to consider whether they can, as Jill Abramson put it, �Turn the party over to the donors� and still have any voters left. They also need to understand that marketing is not ideology. (Note: Jon Ossoff failed to grasp that.)
But the biggest hurdle for the black and white/progressive party base is to accept that their very political survival is absolutely, positively tied to their ability to collaborate and achieve consensus.
The Democratic Party can make it without John Birch, but not while fighting like children amongst themselves.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Granted, best would be to go after the war criminals but it is WE who would have to make that happen.
can "zombie" any man.
Remember the 1962 film
"The Manchurian Candidate." ?
Either that, or you're disappointed that it did not cover every jot and tittle involved in the Israeli nuclear arsenal and that country's constant agitation to bring U.S. and international pressure on Iran, aimed at regime change.
This is a terrific article and neither spares Israel nor fails to put the Iranian nuclear program in perspective.
Those bogus documents, along with "Curveball's" fabrications, were a lynchpin of Cheney's strategy to gather support for the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The U.S. media, led by pernicious sycophants such as Judith Miller and Michael Gordon at the NY Times, gobbled it up, though any well-informed schoolchild could have told them it was complete bullshit. Of the major media, only Knight-Ridder resisted.
I must confess that I had not read that Manning's documents exposed what was in effect a U.S. takeover of the IAEA for propaganda purposes through its stooge, Amano. I had noticed at the time that with his appointment, it became completely ineffectual.
That still doesn't make it any less hypocritical for the modern State of Israel to tell other countries they can't have nuclear weapons when it is well-armed with the same.
The "upside down morality" extends itself to sectors other than the military. However,as we have seen in this debacle against Pvt. Manning, no one in the other sectors that have turned many Americans live irreversibly upside down forever, will ever be prosecuted, despite of reams of evidence against them.
Appalling to think we live in such an immoral century and in a country that is lead by a man whose "infamous dictum only wants to look "forward not backward.""
Finally, many thanks for your insights and straight shooting as an intrepid and incorruptible journalist.
Something huge--something beyond human comprehension-- needs to happen to turn it all around. Hope karma works on a grand scale.
Thank heavens for Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and all the other genuine patriots who have and still are blowing the most beautiful whistles on the monstrous "patriot act" bull poopy of official washington, d. c. and its wall street manipulators.
How can the "Family of Nations" ever trust the US again. One day we may need real help from allies who no longer exist.
Which Leadership skills to admire?
What Poison to assimilate, and make sense of
~
Dear Commanders of Our Armed Forces,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen Martin E. Dempsey.
Major General Jeffery S. Buchanan Convening Authority for Bradley Manning's Court Martial,
The Commander In Chief of our National Defense Forces, President Barack Hussein Obama II, your CIC, has openly stated during Bradley Manning's confinement for trial that he is Guilty.
UCMJ ART. 37. Unlawfully Influencing Action Of Court
Talking to you General Class Commanders these days is a Top Secret America JSOC death sentence for our children too. Been hit hit hit, defenseless and wretchedly sick of it for years thus I've nothing to lose to begin with in our present unlawful state. I am though ruled by principle so in speaking out to you here on this direly urgent matter I am for my part carrying out what I consider my Duty as a Veteran and a natural citizen soldier of our true Constitutional National Defense Force, We the People. What we have here as this Bradley Manning Trial is outrageous, what you do here will define you. Better look in the mirror...
Bobby Baxter HCVeteran & Marihuana Felon
United States Army Security Agency 69-72
Founder Alternative Energy Systems SV.74
~~~*~~~
facebookcom/BobbyBaxterHCVeteranMarihuanaFelon/posts/10151613608857901
But shouldn't we talk about the war crimes? You know, the violent illegal acts that DID destroy thousands of lives? That is the debate we should be having right now.