Whose Party?

First off, the article in the last issue, “Politics Among The Billionaires,” was wrongfully attributed to me.  It was written by Ward Carson.

As we approach the end of the 2016 primary season, we find the likely candidates of both parties to have the highest unfavorability ratings since such polls have been taken.  Trump at 57% and Clinton at 55% top the charts.  For Trump, the unfavorability clearly stems from the fact that he is a loose cannon who appeals to our fears and worst instincts.  He is, nevertheless, popular because he isn’t part of the political establishment.  Clinton’s unfavorability stems largely from the fact that she is perceived to be untrustworthy.  This derives from the fact that she is the epitome of establishment politics, which is the core of voter resentment this year.  Why does the electorate distrust establishment politics?
In the early 1990’s, smarting from their third defeat by the Republicans, the Democratic Party leadership set up the Democratic Leadership Council which made an executive decision to bring the Democratic Party more to the center, to make it more corporate, so as to be able to compete with the corporate-friendly Republicans.  Bill Clinton was the beneficiary of that strategy.  Because party leaders paid more attention to the elite interests than the rank and file Democrats, government policies gravitated more and more to the benefit of the 1%.  Quickened by the 2008 recession and the subsequent Wall Street bailout, voter anger has built to the point that a popular uprising is occurring.  Yet both parties (and the Democrats, at least, should know better) continue to cater to their elite patrons.  The people of this country feel, and the statistics corroborate it, that they no longer have any influence in the formation of government policy.  

Distrust of the ability of the masses to rule themselves has always been with us.  In a democracy, where the people rule, public opinion tends to be manipulated by “manufacturing consent” for elite policies.  In a recent article by Andrew Gavin Marshall, he argues that this practice has a long and illustrious history going back to the buildup to World War I.  “The development of psychology, psychoanalysis, and other disciplines increasingly portrayed the ‘public’ and the population as irrational beings incapable of making their own decisions. The premise was simple: if the population was driven by dangerous, irrational emotions, they needed to be kept out of power and ruled over by those who were driven by reason and rationality, naturally, those who were already in power.”  As long as democracy has existed, the elite interests have tried to control society.  Marshall explains that, as literacy, education, and technology have fed the awareness of the public, the elites have had to be more sophisticated in their control techniques.

The protagonists of this crusade have been at the center of power and influence for the last one hundred years. The term I mentioned earlier, “manufacturing consent” was coined by Walter Lippman, one of the foremost journalists and social commentators of the early 20th century.  Another luminary was Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud and considered the father of public relations and advertising.  Bernays was a consultant for every president from 1924 to 1961.  “Bernays kicked off his “torches of freedom” campaign for the American Tobacco Company in 1929 by hiring women to pose as suffragists in the Easter Sunday Parade and light up on cue.”  In 1954, he hired out to the United Fruit Company setting up local media in Guatamala so as to make our manufactured coup there more acceptable to the public.  Nice, huh?

The Democratic Party leadership has never been a stranger to this practice but its tactics have been more extreme of late.  So accepted is this strategy that the party leadership is largely unconscious of the ethical connotations of their behavior.  Because of the greedy overreach of the powerful and the improved communication of the internet, too many people are now aware that they have been getting screwed.  Since they now see the “emperor’s new clothes,” every attempt by the Democratic Party leadership to “manufacture consent” for corporate policy only makes us angrier and makes the Clinton candidacy more unpopular.  

The overriding question of democracy has always been whether the people can in fact rule themselves.  The popularity of the Trump candidacy, an irrational and emotional lashing out against the 1%, argues against the legitimacy of the popular will.  On the other hand, the general uprising that Sanders volunteered to lead puts forward a cogent and rational set of policies that a majority of people, including Clinton and Trump supporters, largely support.

The Democratic Party leadership has a wonderful opportunity to recognize and lead this popular reform of our political system, yet they seem bent on derailing it.  They want to offer watered-down reforms that are acceptable to the corporate interests even though it is the hegemonic power of those interests that is the problem.  Since the Sanders campaign has shown us that we need not depend on the wealthy for campaign cash, we can declare our independence now!  The Democratic Party leadership needs to wake up and accept the fact that they must take their cues from their rank and file rather than dictating to us.  If they ignore us and refuse to give both Sanders and Clinton voters the respect they deserve, they will find that there will be very little enthusiasm to come to their “party” in November.   

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terry@vashonloop.com