Wasserman writes: "A revived Democratic party that can effectively oppose Trump demands an exciting collective vision that's worth fighting for."
Alan Dershowitz at a hotel in Kiev, Ukraine, in 2011. (photo: Sergei Chuzavkov/AP)
57 Unpatriotic Ways the Corp/Dems Have Enthroned Trumputin
04 July 18
s we celebrate our nation’s birth, and organize to once again overthrow an illegitimate tyrant, we might pity Trump’s classic liberal enabler, Al Dershowitz.
The pitiful self-promoting professor is being horribly snubbed by his fellow liberal neighbors on Martha’s Vineyard because he now supports Trump.
The ordeal must be every bit as painful as being separated from one’s children at the Mexican border.
But all whining aside, it should be clear that The Donald’s primary enablers (alongside his mob boss, Vladimir Putin) have been self-proclaimed “liberals” far more important than Dershowitz – namely Nancy Pelosi and her Corporate Democrats.
Their corruption and incompetence got him into the White House in the first place. And he can’t continue to rule without them.
Let’s count a mere 57 of the ways:
1) Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the Corporate Democrats are nearly all multi-millionaires, locked into the corporate oligarchy;
2) Hillary Clinton lumped all us social democrats into that “basket of deplorables”;
3) While banning young, charismatic, progressive blood from the party, Pelosi (78) is clearly more concerned with her personal retirement than overcoming Trump’s fascist putsch;
4) Like Dershowitz, the Corp/Dem elite is far more comfortable with Trump in the White House than with Bernie Sanders, whose millions of energized social-democratic activists held the key to winning the 2016 election, had Hillary Clinton not trashed them;
5) The Corp/Dem cabal offers no alternative vision (can anyone tell us exactly what the Democratic Party stands for?) pumping out endless fundraising emails complaining about Trump, but providing zero leadership toward a just, diverse, eco-Solartopian world that might sustain a focused, longterm grass-roots movement;
6) As demonstrated by Matt Taibbi and others, the Corp/Dem Party has become a hollow fundraising scam, choosing candidates based on their cash flow, relying on fear of Trump to rake in the dough while failing to effectively oppose him;
7) When Trump attacked Rep. Maxine Waters with racist anti-feminist bigotry, Pelosi said little;
8) But when Maxine promised to fight back, Pelosi attacked HER for being “uncivil”;
9) The Corp/Dems have issued no major public statements of matching intensity denouncing the death threats being leveled at Maxine as they are being encouraged by Trump (“Be careful what you wish for, Max”);
Regarding Putin:
10) Trump’s multiple bankruptcies reflect an infamous lack of business ability, managerial competence, and moral stature;
11) Trump’s core financial base has depended since the 1980s on his money-laundering cash for the Russian mob, as amply documented by Republican investigator David Cay Johnston among others;
12) But the Corp/Dems and mainstream media have almost completely ignored Trump’s mob roots, even as they extend through his New York upbringing and into his ruble-based cash flow;
13) This includes Trump’s being raised by his overtly racist slumlord father Fred, a proud KKK supporter who was memorialized as a vicious bigot by the legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie;
14) As a New York slumlord and shady builder, according to Johnston, Fred Trump was enmeshed with at least two major mob families, without whom he could not have poured concrete or built his hell-hole tenements, a reality studiously ignored by the Corp/Dems;
15) Corp/Dems have ignored the fact that Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement was hastened by his son’s job as a rare American banker still willing to do business with the perennially bankrupt Donald;
Stolen Elections:
16) While Corp/Dems endlessly obsess on likely collusion between the Trump campaign and Putin, and desperately hang on every snippet from Mueller, they ignore Trump’s Russian mob connections dating back to the 1980s, through which Putin owned him FINANCIALLY, even aside from any blackmail videos or the details of their 2016 mega-fraud;
17) While failing to raise that reality, the Corp/Dems also ignore the fact that no matter what role the Russians may have played in it, the 2016 election was, in fact, stolen by homegrown GOP operatives, cycling back most importantly to 2000 and 2004;
17) Al Gore won the 2000 election by more than 500,000 popular votes nationwide, but has never publicly confronted the fact that he actually “lost” the presidency to Florida Governor Jeb Bush, brother of the candidate Shrub, setting a devastating precedent for Corp/Dem acquiescence to domestically stolen elections;
18) Gov. Jeb used a computer program called ChoicePoint (as revealed by Greg Palast) to strip Florida registration rolls of more than 90,000 citizens, nearly all of them black and Hispanic, in an election allegedly decided by 537 votes;
19) Gore has never publicly faced this massive Jim Crow disenfranchisement, or campaigned to protect the voter rolls in ensuing elections (like the one upcoming in 2018);
20) John Kerry has never publicly faced the stripping of some 300,000 citizens from voter rolls in Ohio, 2004 (where Bush allegedly won by 118,775);
21) Hillary Clinton has never publicly contested the 2016 vote theft perpetrated by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, using a CrossCheck program that stripped a million or more voters from the key Electoral College states that put Trump in the White House;
22) In 2000, 2004 and 2016, easily hackable electronic voting machines (as revealed by Bev Harris) helped flip votes from Gore and Kerry to Bush in Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, and elsewhere – and from Clinton to Trump in Wisconsin and Michigan 2016, etc. – with zero protest from the Corp/Dems;
23) These stripped voter rolls and rigged voting machines flipped as many as six US Senate seats in 2014 and 2016, giving Republicans control of the Senate, Supreme Court, etc., with no word from the Corp/Dems;
24) These same machines helped flip a thousand federal, state, and local elections to the GOP during the eight years of the Obama presidency, without a peep from the Corp/Dems;
24) In Florida 2000, Gore filed a limited recount demand when a full-state recount might have made the difference;
25) After Ohio 2004, Kerry’s Corp/Dems did nothing to help a successful federal court filing by Attorney Bob Fitrakis and others for a full state-wide recount (I was a plaintiff in this case);
26) When confronted with a federal court settlement demanding all ballot records from the Ohio 2004 presidential election, 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties claimed their records were (illegally) missing, with no protest from the Corp/Dems (and no criminal prosecution of any kind);
27) When Green candidate Jill Stein won a court decision green-lighting a recount for Michigan 2016, where Trump allegedly won by 10,000 votes, but more than 70,000 came in with no presidential preference (primarily in Detroit and Flint), Hillary Clinton’s lawyers killed that recount, and let Trump walk away with that state’s electoral votes;
28) When Green attorneys, including Fitrakis, found massive irregularities in Wisconsin 2016, including an illegal refusal to make public the source coding for electronic voting machines, Clinton and her Corp/Dems ignored the proceedings and again let Trump walk away with that state’s electoral votes;
29) In addition to Michigan and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida’s electoral votes could have denied Trump the presidency, but Clinton’s Corp/Dems refused to support any meaningful investigations or legal actions where voter registrations were stripped and electronic ballot flipping was rampant;
30) When the Congressional Black Caucus united in January 2001 in Constitutional opposition to seating Florida’s Electoral College delegation, then-Vice President Al Gore blocked the challenge and strong-armed the Senate into killing any meaningful investigation of how Florida’s electoral votes – and thus the presidency – were stolen;
31) In the 18 years since his winning the popular vote in 2000, Gore has never helped organize, launch or fund (he is a multi-multi-millionaire) an effective public campaign to abolish the Electoral College;
32) Some 200,000 Democrats voted for Bush in Florida 2000, and Gore lost New Hampshire and his home state of Tennessee (either could have given him the presidency) but the Corp/Dems still rant at consumer advocate Ralph Nader for daring to run;
33) Gore repeatedly refused Nader’s invitations to meet during the 2000 campaign;
34) As a US senator, Gore had voted to approve Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court, for which Thomas “repaid” him by deciding the infamous 5-4 Bush v. Gore suit that stopped the Florida 2000 recount;
35) Using Dark Money from the Koch Brothers, GOP activists outfoxed the Corp/Dems during 2010’s redistricting process and gerrymandered a structural margin in the Congress and statehouses that the Corp/Dems still may be unable to overcome;
36) In 2018, along with the Corp/Dems’ lack of leadership and vision, the Republicans still have the tools to steal most federal, state and local elections, essentially unopposed;
37) Thanks in part to Gore’s inaction, the Corp/Dems have failed to eliminate the Electoral College, which could guarantee Trumputin’s return to office in 2020;
And at the economic roots:
38) In the mid-1980s, as Trump began laundering Russian mob money, Bill and Hillary Clinton sold the Democratic Party to Goldman Sachs and Wall Street;
38) The Clintons’ “New Democrats” escalated the Drug War, trashed the poor, gutted Wall Street regulations, perpetrated NAFTA, expanded the death penalty, launched a racist attack against rapper Sister Soulja, imposed “three strikes and you’re out,” bombed Yugoslavia over the objections of local nonviolent activists, and more;
39) The Clintons inherited two of history’s hugest financial windfalls – the end of the Cold War and the computer revolution – but rather than pursue social justice, they accelerated the shift of wealth from the general population to the super-rich, whose ranks they soon joined;
40) Through eight years in office, the Clintons failed to enact a single lasting program to benefit America’s working/middle class, helping set the stage for Trump’s fake populism (they did, however, spark a national debate on oral sex);
41) Nearly all Congressional Dems supported George W. Bush’s repressive Patriot Act and his destabilizing attack on Iraq;
42) Despite two full terms in office, except for Obamacare, Barack Obama enacted no major lasting programs to benefit America’s working/middle class, thus accelerating the gap between rich and the rest of us, and further setting the stage for Trump’s fake populism;
43) BY CONTRAST: Facing a massive bank-based financial crisis in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt confronted the banks, won meaningful reforms, and enacted New Deal social programs that built a grassroots Democratic Party base that lasted a generation;
44) Facing a massive bank-based financial crisis in 2009, Barack Obama handed the bankers (who, thanks to the Clintons, now owned the Democratic Party) a fake money bailout in the range of $7,000,000,000,000, demanded no meaningful reforms, massively accelerated the gap between the rich and the rest of us, and enacted (except for Obamacare) no significant programs to aid the American working/middle class, thus prompting the formation of the Tea Party, and paving the way for Trump’s fake populism;
45) While kinda/sorta withdrawing from Iraq, Obama prolonged our worthless war in Afghanistan’s “Graveyard of Empires,” killing thousands and wasting trillions, helping to pave the way for Trump’s fake populism;
46) Primarily to protect the petro-dollar, Obama and Secretary of State Clinton assaulted Libya, slaughtered its Prime Minister, and further destabilized North Africa and the Middle East across to Afghanistan, pushing millions into a mass migration that’s now destabilized much of Europe;
47) As America’s first African-American president, Obama did little for communities of color, heightening economic tensions and paving the way for Trump’s manipulative bigotry;
48) While establishing the Dreamer Program, Obama perpetrated mass deportations, paving the way for Trump’s own horrific assault on the Hispanic community;
49) Constitutional lawyer Obama’s illegal attacks on whistleblowers paved the way for Trump’s repressive apparatus today;
50) Despite his green rhetoric, Obama’s “all of the above” energy policies slowed the transition to a 100% renewable-based Solartopian energy supply that could have provided jobs for millions more Americans while accelerating the fight against climate change;
51) Despite gargantuan losses sustained by the nuke power industry, and its role as a major source for global warming, Obama’s frail support for renewables, and his $8.3 billion guaranteed federal loan to America’s last reactor project – at Vogtle, Georgia – set the foundation for Trump’s “I love coal and nukes” bailouts to come;
52) Obama eventually opposed the Dakota Pipeline, but his sluggish response to the green anti-fossil/nuke resistance slowed the movement against global warming;
53) Obama and Hillary’s support for fracking has made it easy for Trump to do the same;
54) Support for massive nuke bailouts by Corp/Dems like New York governor Andrew Cuomo and Ohio representatives Marcia Fudge, Marcy Kaptur, and Tim Ryan continue to let dying, obsolete, money-losing nuke reactors pollute the planet, warm the atmosphere, and cripple economic growth and job production;
In 2018:
55) Despite continued bitterness over how Bernie Sanders and the millions of (mostly young) social democrats who rallied behind him got shafted, the Corp/Dems continue to resist meaningful reform of the party and nation;
56) Victorious young progressives like New York’s Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez offer hope for a revived Democratic Party run by energetic young social democrats with a blue-green vision and the legs to get there;
57) But nothing real can happen until the corrupt, comatose Clinton-Gore-Kerry-Pelosi-Schumer-Cuomo Corp/Dems wake up or move over.
There is of course much more.
But above all, a revived Democratic party that can effectively oppose Trump demands an exciting collective vision that’s worth fighting for.
In this new century, the Corp/Dems have lost the presidency they legitimately won three times and thrown away a thousand other elected offices. They still have done nothing to confront the stripping of the voter rolls, flipping of electronic voting machines, machinations of the Electoral College. They perform poorly in office and offer zero real vision that might excite an electorate desperate to remove Trump, but lacking a real opposition party with which to do it.
In a world dominated by millionaires and billionaires, where elections have devolved to “One Dollar, One Vote,” the Corp/Dems offer no hope.
So now it’s up to a grassroots movement of rising green social democrats.
To overthrow Trump we must first overcome the old Corp/Dem hacks.
Let’s DO IT!!!
Harvey Wasserman hosts the California Solartopia Show on KPFK-Pacifica Los Angeles 90.7FM and the Green Power & Wellness Show on prn.fm. His America at the Brink of Rebirth: The Life & Death Spiral of US History, from Deganawidah to The Donald is at www.solartopia.org, along with Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth.
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