Progressives and the Long Story of the DNC's Long-Awaited Reckoning:

The Corporate Wing of the Democratic Party Has Failed to Achieve the Electoral Success It Once Promised with Bill Clinton & The DLC. 2024 Shows That.

Feel free to check the entire blog archives from “Political Pulse” & “Salzillo Report” on the 2024 primary cycle, rural outreach, redistricting litigation, base dynamics, campaign organization, the current media landscape, the issues at stake, Project 2025, Build Back Better, the progressive movement, the true story about former 2024 VP contender Gina Raimondo, and much more.

Via skepchick.org “Goldwater Girl” Hillary Clinton. Barry Goldwater, by the way, was the 1964 Republican presidential candidate who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and who LBJ beat on the fear that Goldwater could start a nuclear war.

As we head into the next year, I recommend readers here to check out some of the smaller media outlets that are looking into special interests across the country and especially in Washington DC, like American Prospect, The Intercept, The Nation, The Lever, Dropsite News, and Sludge Magazine. I also will give credit to Eric Boehm at Reason magazine and the New York Post for some of their work looking into semiconductor grants provided by the Commerce Department under Secretary Raimondo, and following up on the investigations of several state pension systems, including in Rhode Island.

Alas, it feels like Groundhog Day post-election. When Democrats lose, it is “the far left” that is blamed for the party losses. When the Democrats win, it is supposedly because the Democrats “moved to the center” in spite of progressive demands. In 2024, it is the former and it frankly is absurd nonsense at this point to play this game once again.

The Democratic Party needs to face a real reality check, particularly the corporate establishment wing led today and in the past by the Clintons (both Bill & Hillary), Michael Bloomberg, Terry McAuliffe, Andrew Cuomo, Rahm Emanuel, and Gina Raimondo. Because the truth is the corporate wing of the Democratic Party has dominated party politics for the last 30 years, which has led us all to defeat after defeat at the ballot box. Which is how we got to 2016 and 2024 in the first places, where Corporate Democrats have essentially destroyed the working class credibility of the Democratic Party as a whole.

The Democratic Party that most voters cherished has disappeared, particularly at the behest of Clinton Democrats. There was a time when the Democratic Party was the working class party, having earned its credentials from the Great Depression economic recovery spurred by the New Deal, and the legislative programs afterwards promoting those ideals that culminated with the pinnacle period of the Great Society.

1980 was the turning point with high inflation and instability abroad. Ronald Reagan was handily elected President in 1980, and won in 1984 in a landslide. In 1988, his preferred successor George H. W. Bush won comfortably over Michael Dukakis (partly through the infamous, though relatively tame, Willie Horton ads), even as Democrats still dominated Congress for that decade and into the first half of the next one.

But some Democrats viewed the 1980s Electoral College landslides as a reason to move the party closer “to the center” (whatever the hell that means). That led to the creation of the Democratic Leadership Council, which essentially taught younger Democrats running for office that in order to win, you have to govern like Republicans on fiscal issues and rhetorically appease demographics through lip service, and eventually, politically correct language. In some ways, this model was the classic formula for triangulation designed to please all sides, as was tried out in 1996. They also emphasized the need to tailor their message to white-collar voters, and neglecting blue-collar concerns by focusing on social issues over and above economic ones.

One of those young Democrats who intended to carry that “moderate/centrist” mantra was a young Arkansas Governor named Bill Clinton.

There is no question Governor Clinton was a well-educated and intelligent person. In 1992, he clicked naturally with Americans on how they were struggling in the economy of that time, in what was in sync with true Democratic Party values and progressive values. The progressive populist pitch worked. But then came the turn desired by the corporate wing connected to Wall Street, Big Business, Corporate America executive boards, K Street, and later on, Silicon Valley.

Corporate centrism, often known as Clintonian politics or neoliberalism, seeped deep into the Clinton Administration. Outside of Labor Secretary Robert Reich, many of the Clinton Democrats were fundraising machines who made their names off of Wall Street connections to private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds, among them McAuliffe, Emanuel, and Josh Gottheimer (now a Congressman from New Jersey who formed the infamous Gang of Nine to obstruct Build Back Better back in 2021). Others also had the DC special interests in mind, like Cuomo, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Erskine Bowles, and John Podesta.

From this administration which was centered around the corporate wing of the party, and over the objections of many Congressional Democrats, Clinton Democrats legitimized the conservative economic agenda outside of the Republican Party, with consequential free trade deals like NAFTA and PNTR that threw organized labor under the bus, and gutted agricultural programs budget after budget. Then there was welfare reform, austerity cuts, and privatization efforts that lifted support systems right out from under low-income communities, especially rural communities, African Americans, and Hispanics & Latinos. Then there was the Glass-Steagall repeal and financial deregulation alongside bankruptcy reform legislation for credit card companies leading to the 2008 Great Recession. And then there was the infamous 1994 Crime Bill egged on by Hillary’s “super-predators” speech, support for private sector-oriented charter schools, and considerable fossil fuel industry expansion.

Obama spoke genuinely to a needed policy doctrine change back in 2008. He won because of it, but outside of the major Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank, and a few other notable successes, he failed to bring the bold change Americans had desired, even with a 60-40 Senate, and a 257-178 House. Because of pro-Wall Street advisors like Timothy Geitner, Obama’s Administration never held the 2008 recession instigators in the mortgage sector accountable for their criminal actions. The administration also backed the Trans-Pacific Partnership after decades of seeing the results of bad corporate handwritten trade agreements (including CAFTA). Major campaign pledges on agriculture were often ignored, as has been brought up commonly in The Daily Yonder since 2016, often at the behest of agribusiness-friendly politicians like former North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp. The best climate policies were often more incremental than was clearly needed considering where we are now. Even as Wall Street was bailed out and Big Pharma blocked other big reforms, millions of Americans were suffering and dying as a result of the flow of opioids and fentanyl into the country.

This is the policy formula President Clinton and the corporate wing embraced wholeheartedly up until this point. Instead of rejecting Reaganomics, they embraced it to a great extent. It is also at the center of the rise in income inequality, racial inequities, the contraction of organized labor, the decline in family farms, the loss of manufacturing and agricultural jobs, the rising costs of healthcare, education, and climate inaction that foreshadowed the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Poor People’s Campaign, the Tea Party, and eventually, the rise of Donald Trump.

That was, and is why, many millions of Americans regard Donald Trump as the change candidate and the champion of the working class, even as a coastal elite and some kind of millionaire himself (depending on what the tax returns show).

To his credit, which I truly believe will make history kinder to him over time, President Joe Biden has tried to address many of these issues alongside the Vice President in Build Back Better, with the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, the PACT Act, the CHIPS & Science Act, the Postal Service Reform Act, bipartisan gun safety legislation, the Violence Against Women Act authorization, the Respect For Marriage Act, the appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, the Electoral Count Act, the Conservation Climate Corps, student loan forgiveness, the COVID-19 vaccination push, and even the full legislative package that never became law, like community college, childcare/eldercare sector support, a full child tax credit restoration, rewriting a fairer tax code, universal dental, hearing aid, and eyeglass coverage, George Floyd policing legislation, and several voting rights bills.

4 good years is a start, though it will take much more to undo 40+ years of collateral damage.

The tragedy about Vice President Kamala Harris is not that she was a terrible candidate, unlike Hillary Clinton. Rather, the campaign team around her was poorly run, disorganized, off-message, and influenced by Clinton/Obama/Wall Street-friendly confidantes.

Originally, the Harris-Walz campaign was incorporating a purely progressive populist message with a bold vision for the country based on the results of the Biden-Harris Administration (price gouging bans, corporate landlord rules, small businesses, middle class tax cuts, all the rest). That enthusiasm lasted to the successful Chicago convention in August.

However, the corporate wing donor class that ultimately got Biden out of the race—and wanted Harris out initially for that matter—started to demand the Vice President appease business CEOs. They sought the firing of FTC Chair Lina Khan because of her groundbreaking antitrust work. They wanted VP Harris to be more receptive to the cryptocurrency industry, along with including more voices from Silicon Valley like LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman. They even pushed successfully to roll back some of the campaign’s fair taxation policies. As a reward, they had CNBC’s Mark Cuban (a staunch Raimondo ally) as a major campaign surrogate.

Finally, it has been learned that the Vice President’s brother-in-law was one of the biggest figures who sought to make the campaign more “moderate” and business-oriented, which naturally included running away from many of the popular achievements of the Biden Presidency. But it was not just him. Clinton and Obama advisors who subsequently joined the presidential ticket campaign, like Donna Brazile, said Harris and Walz had to “move to the center,” and be vague on policy, never mind Hillary being a campaign advisor behind the scenes (worth noting no one tells Trump to move to the center).

That “move to the center” might have pleased Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, which is quite telling because they think taking a stand against codifying reproductive rights, supporting the carried interest loophole, encouraging price-gouging on Mylan Epi-Pens, rolling back clean energy provisions, and preserving the Jim Crow filibuster is somehow “moderate.”

In that sense though, the “centrist” strategy meant Harris had to be vague on policy substance on the stump, neglecting previous priorities like the public option, vocational training, the PRO Act, a bold climate agenda, housing solutions, and campaign finance reform. Fortunately, Governor Tim Walz never fully followed suit, but his lower-profile position sidelined him from reaching more voters, especially as advisors initially insulated Harris & Walz from the press early on.

There will be more takes on what happened in the Harris-Walz campaign, but here is the big takeaway. Whenever someone says the progressives are to blame, like Philippe Reines, remember that the party actively opposed the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in 2016 and 2020.

And remember that for the past 30 years, the so-called “moderates” have dictated the policy planks of the entire Democratic Party platform, which led us to failure in 1994, in 1996, in 2000, in 2004, in 2010, in 2016, and in 2024. Outside of 1992-1994, 2006-2010, and 2020-2022, Republicans were the ones who had control of Congress. That is a damning indictment of the failure of Clintonian politics, which is exactly why the Clintons should now once and for all ride off into the sunset.

It is very telling when many in the New Democrat Coalition itself, and even some Blue Dogs, are embracing a number of the approaches and policies from the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Populist Caucuses that existed in the past, recognizing its policy benefits and its vast political rewards, like in 2022.

It also is hard to ignore when someone like Reince Preibus says someone in the mold of Bernie Sanders could have won the many Midwestern counties alongside the Mississippi River, which he said just this past Tuesday on ABC.

That is why the success of the Democratic Party will only come when a new vision takes the place of the Clinton Catastrophe and its progenies like Terry McAuliffe, Rahm Emanuel, Michael Bloomberg, and Gina Raimondo. That ultimately requires progressives/populists in the mold of Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown to reclaim the Democratic Party of FDR, LBJ, and Joe Biden, to sideline the corporate wing for good. Our party needs a left-wing and less radical Tea Party moment focused on the grievances of those living paycheck to paycheck and on the traditional Democratic solutions to those problems.

And there is the true reality check to the 2024 election cycle blame game.