Wednesday: People Like Us

There are three must read posts from two of our friends and one satellite sister today.  I’m calling these posts “What they did to us”, “Why they’re doing it” and “How to start fighting back”.

The first, What they did to us, is at PUMAPac and is an update and second teaser for the film, The Audacity of Democracy, The Hillary Flashpoint and Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party.

Darragh is still raising funds to finish the film, scheduled for around inauguration in 2009, though if it’s finished earlier, doesn’t it get counted in the Academy Awards category of documentary?  I dunno.  Anyway, if you contribute now and pre-order your copy of the film now, you will get a DVD of clips from various PUMA events in Denver, including the one where Sheri Tag and MarylandPUMA tag teamed the reprehensible Tommy Christopher, “journalist”.  Not to be missed!

The second post that I call, “Why they’re doing it”, is from our satellite sister, who isn’t a PUMA, Anglachel.  Her post, Where the Shadows Lie, will put a chill up your spine and not merely because the title refers to Tolkien’s Mordor.  It’s because you come away feeling like a Clinton Democrat is one of the most reviled creatures on earth to the Unity Democrats.  We’ve all experienced this irrational hatred towards us.  For example, I can now spot an Obama troll from a mile away by noting the condescension dripping off the page.  They assume that we are just barely literate even though many of us have advanced degrees or no degree but are self-taught BS detectors.  If we’re so stupid, how is it we can trace their IP addresses back to the Humanities departments of so many (formerly) prestigious universities, like Boston University and Columbia?  But I digress.  Here is the money quote from the scary smart Angachel, Clintonista Divine:

To cut to the chase, the push in 2004 for a “Unity Party” has been realized with Howard Dean delivering the Democratic Party into the hands of the High Broderists who value unity for unity’s sake more than any other political cause or virtue. They don’t even want to claim to be part of their party, hoping people will forget and just vote for those nice clean, articulate fellas. This is part of internalizing the Reagan assault on the legitimacy of the Democratic Party as such. Psychologically, to them, the Democratic Party is the remnants of the uneducated, racist, white South and rust-belt north, who vote for Bubbas like Clinton and reject above-partisanship technocrats and idealists like Bill Bradley, John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas and Howard Dean himself. The nerve of them people! And thus, this year, we have the Unity Democrats, non-partisan to the end.

The dark underbelly of this move is the presumption that the people who have been told their interests must wait will always be there for the Democrats because we have nowhere else to go. Specifically, this means African Americans, women voters and GLBT voters.

…

The focus of the Unity Democrats is on the winners of the economic realignment, those who managed to win a place in the white collar upper-middle class. People like my family and my husband’s, who leveraged the affluence of the post-war era to vault from being immigrants and farmers to being professionals in various government bureaucracies, law, finance, and new, white collar industries like high tech and bio-tech. The other part is to minimize the damage the losers of that realignment can inflict, which mostly means refusing to commit to policies and plans that will defend their interests. Or even their lives. Obama’s campaign is not about social goods and resources, but about cultural markers of class inclusion, such as your level of education, where you shop, whether you live in urban or rural environments, etc. He has difficulty addressing the failures of an economic system contiguous with his own class and which is deeply invested in his candidacy, and I don’t just mean the campaign contributions. He is the exemplar of a mode of life that, while not as unreachable as that of Bush’s base, is still out of reach of those who do not have the education, acculturation and business contacts to climb up that economic ladder.

The ultimate shadow of Reagan is that you don’t win by defending losers, only by securing the interests of the winners. That is the dark heart beating in the chest of the Unity Democrats. They are done with the losers.

Yep, we are the LOOOOSSSERRRSSS according to the Chris Bowers types even if we are for the most part indistinguishable from them.  The resentment comes down to people who still require something from government, like equal rights for women, African-Americans, the GLBT community, the elderly.  If you need something from the Unity Democrats, forget it.  You are now being set adrift on your own little ice-floe.  Of course, they still need you to win, as evidenced by the 63 branch offices that the Obama campaign has set up in PA.  But here’s the message that must be delivered to those Pennsylvanians like my mom, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins: The Obama Democrats do not care about you any more than the Bush Republicans did.  Just vote for every woman on the ballot and hope that someday we’ll get to a 30% Solution.

The last post is from our friend, Heidi Li Feldman.  Her post is Want to fix the Democratic Party?  Steps you can take now is full of short term, practical actions that will yield long term results.  Heidi is a cockeyed optimist too.  Never say die.  There are still things you can do to make sure you the party has a core that will survive the massive meltdown it is headed for in November by stupidly putting Obama at the helm.  For example:

• You can donate to the Denver Group and Democrats for Principle before party.  The funds will be used to buy ads in Capital Hill newspapers to let Congress know we’re still out here and there is strength and numbers in the Clinton wing of the party.
• You can contribute to a slate of Democrats who are in unexpectedly tight races this year and whose presence in Congress will shore up that wing of the party.  We recommend Linda Stender, Kay Hagen, Kirsten Gillibrand, Al Franken, for example.  See out ActBlue page for other suggestions.
• You can call your Senator and urge him/her to elect Clinton as Senate Majority Leader.  Heidi tells us that now is the time that the political jockeying for positions is done.  In a week or so, they will be ordering their inaugural ball gowns and putting aside business for the year.  Strike while the Iron is Hot.

Now, a lot of the actions require you to make a donation.  Please take the money you might have sent to the DNC this year and donate to the downticket Dems of your choice, then to the causes that will help you re-establish your party. The Denver Group has a plan, PUMAPac has activities and a movie.  It’s an investment in your future and the future of the country.

And remember, “We are the ones no one expected.”