One Thing for the Little People

by paradox

With a mounting sense of dismay I see from Bob Johnson and BrooklynBadBoy on the rec list at Daily Kos that the Hillary Intelligentsia is apparently meeting right now in DC to decide the political agenda for the 2016 Presidential campaign. Many elements of this evolution do not bode well for the little people.

Without a primary or statement to the press or even a message to the base Hillary Clinton is now the Democratic Party nominee for 2016. Without even a whiff of democratic process—for many legitimate political reasons of history and timing—Hillary is our Lady, wrung and weaned out of a total 2016 DC insider environment, at this moment elitist cretins like Larry Summers whispering furtive fears of little people populism and domestic spending.

I can damn well be forgiven an enormous contempt and fear for what DC insider thinking can produce here, it was not that long ago that we had a relatively popular Democratic President finishing his second term in what I call The Big Handoff, can he in fact transition his exit with another Democratic President to follow? Last time the President was left out of the campaign and Joe Lieberman was made VP. How did that work out?

Not only that, after eight years of contempt and triangulation to the Democratic Party base a whack charismatic liberal appeared and crashed the election with a total fracture of the Democratic Party. Oh my god, yes, we all do know how that worked out and what conventional DC thinking can produce.

To my manifest disgust and anger many of the precise elements of Democratic Party base abuse, neglect and triangulation do in fact exist today as they did in 2000, but we as a Party and people have not forgotten and have learned, and there is no liberal leader today stupid enough again to be a spoiler, Bernie Sanders has already flatly said he won’t do it. Thankfully Hillary Clinton will be a clean nominee with no third Party candidate in 2016.

Given the history of the last two Democratic Party Presidents I can very easily be forgiven a vast apprehension at the sick, twisted DC politics it produces, for the last two Democratic Presidents won their general elections and then horribly flopped in the congressional midterms in both sets, the gig is up and nobody is fooled anymore, sure the Great Hillary Team might win a general for 2016 but where’s the Congressional strategy for the campaign?

Is that somehow going to be absent again, how is Hillary going to run on a national agenda run by herself without at least a Democratic Senate or House to back her up? We may fail with big parts of the Hillary agenda in the early first term, it’s perfectly understandable, but what political forces and tactics will be put in place so 2018 isn’t another Republican rout?

As Bob Johnson says there seems to be a vast, easy consensus among political geeks that Hillary can easily crush the 2016 Republican nominee, many facets of observation in which I heartily agree, yet it’s the 2014 Democratic Party base performance that gives me pause. Once again the Republicans came out in full gleeful force while our politicians and their tactics produced a disaster of sickening indifference, hardly anyone showed up.

So after that Hillary can muster the base with enthusiasm and vigor for a robust 2016 run? Then some ridiculous DC campaign basically fails the base again after 2016 and they desert her for 2018? I’m not watching that movie again, I swear I’m not, and far too many of the Democratic Party base won’t either, they’ve lived the con twice and it simply won’t work, enough of our strength and coalition would easily be lost to indifference and contempt to these utterly predicable cycles of failure.

I do think total commitment and campaigning for one little people liberal goal that never wavers can produce vast political dividends, for liberal policies actually work and help the little people, as strange as the concept is to DC. It’s all I ask, one truly liberal goal for the 2016 agenda that’s tangible in its deliverable and not faked in its pursuit.

Strengthen Social Security, an incredibly painful disaster awaits us without a fix. Make solar power the holy grail of federal implementation, our Earth is the only home we have. For the love of baby Jesus raise the minimum wage to $15 and do everything possible to strengthen unions. Single payer, Medicare at 50, perhaps.

Run an insider DC campaign of fake platitudes and risk total disaster, Secretary Clinton, the base and the little people will easily see through it and very well may not show up again. At least one thing must be concretely delivered to the little people, it’s politically ludicrous to think we can be always left out.