June
21, 2017
Exclusive:
The national Democrats saw Russia-gate and the drive to impeach President Trump
as their golden ticket back to power, but so far the ticket seems to be made of
fool’s gold, writes Robert Parry.
By
Robert Parry
The
national Democratic Party and many liberals have bet heavily on the Russia-gate
investigation as a way to oust President Trump from office and to catapult
Democrats to victories this year and in 2018, but the gamble appears not to be
paying off.
The
Democrats’ disappointing loss in a special election to fill a congressional
seat in an affluent Atlanta suburb is just the latest indication that the
strategy of demonizing Trump and blaming Russia for Hillary Clinton’s 2016
defeat may not be the golden ticket that some Democrats had hoped.
Though
it’s still early to draw conclusive lessons from Karen Handel’s victory over
Jon Ossoff – despite his raising $25 million – one lesson may be that a Middle
America backlash is forming against the over-the-top quality of the
Trump-accusations and the Russia-bashing, with Republicans rallying against the
image of Official Washington’s “deep state” collaborating with Democrats and
the mainstream news media to reverse a presidential election.
Indeed,
the Democrats may be digging a deeper hole for themselves in terms of reaching
out to white working-class voters who abandoned the party in Pennsylvania,
Michigan and Wisconsin to put Trump over the top in the Electoral College even
though Clinton’s landslide win in California gave her almost three million more
votes nationwide.
Clinton’s
popular-vote plurality and the #Resistance, which manifested itself in massive
protests against Trump’s presidency, gave hope to the Democrats that they
didn’t need to undertake a serious self-examination into why the party is in
decline across the nation’s heartland. Instead, they decided to stoke the
hysteria over alleged Russian “meddling” in the election as the short-cut to
bring down Trump and his populist movement.
A
Party of Snobs?
From
conversations that I’ve had with some Trump voters in recent weeks, I was
struck by how they viewed the Democratic Party as snobbish, elitist and looking
down its nose at “average Americans.” And in conversations with some Clinton
voters, I found confirmation for that view in the open disdain that the Clinton
backers expressed toward the stupidity of anyone who voted for Trump. In other
words, the Trump voters were not wrong to feel “dissed.”
It
seems the Republicans – and Trump in particular – have done a better job in
presenting themselves to these Middle Americans as respecting their opinions and
representing their fears, even though the policies being pushed by Trump and
the GOP still favor the rich and will do little good – and significant harm –
to the middle and working classes.
By
contrast, many of Hillary Clinton’s domestic proposals might well have
benefited average Americans but she alienated many of them by telling a group
of her supporters that half of Trump’s backers belonged in a “basket of
deplorables.” Although she later reduced the percentage, she had committed a
cardinal political sin: she had put the liberal disdain for millions of
Americans into words – and easily remembered words at that.
By
insisting that Hillary Clinton be the Democratic nominee – after leftist
populist Bernie Sanders was pushed aside – the party also ignored the fact that
many Americans, including many Democrats, viewed Clinton as the perfectly
imperfect candidate for an anti-Establishment year with many Americans still
fuming over the Wall Street bailouts and amid the growing sense that the system
was rigged for the well-connected and against the average guy or gal.
In
the face of those sentiments, the Democrats nominated a candidate who
personified how a relatively small number of lucky Americans can play the
system and make tons of money while the masses have seen their dreams crushed
and their bank accounts drained. And Clinton apparently still hasn’t learned
that lesson.
Citing
Women’s Rights
Last
month, when asked why she accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars for
speaking to Goldman Sachs, Clinton rationalized
her greed as a women’s rights issue, saying: “you know, men got paid for
the speeches they made. I got paid for the speeches I made.”
Her
excuse captured much of what has gone wrong with the Democratic Party as it
moved from its working-class roots and New Deal traditions to becoming a party
that places “identity politics” ahead of a duty to fight for the common men and
women of America.
Demonstrating
her political cluelessness, Clinton used the serious issue of women not getting
fair treatment in the workplace to justify taking her turn at the Wall Street
money trough, gobbling up in one half-hour speech what it would take many
American families a decade to earn.
While
it’s a bit unfair to personalize the Democratic Party’s problems, Hillary and
Bill Clinton have come to represent how the party is viewed by many Americans.
Instead of the FDR Democrats, we have the Davos Democrats, the Wall Street
Democrats, the Hollywood Democrats, the Silicon Valley Democrats, and now
increasingly the Military-Industrial Complex Democrats.
To
many Americans struggling to make ends meet, the national Democrats seem
committed to the interests of the worldwide elites: global trade,
financialization of the economy, robotization of the workplace, and endless war
against endless enemies.
Now,
the national Democrats are clambering onto the bandwagon for a costly and
dangerous New Cold War with nuclear-armed Russia. Indeed, it is hard to
distinguish their foreign policy from that of neoconservatives, although these
Democrats view themselves as liberal interventionists citing humanitarian
impulses to justify the endless slaughter.
Earlier
this year, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found only 28 percent of Americans
saying that the Democrats were “in touch with the concerns of most people” – an
astounding result given the Democrats’ long tradition as the party of the
American working class and the party’s post-Vietnam War reputation as favoring
butter over guns.
Yet
rather than rethink the recent policies, the Democrats prefer to fantasize
about impeaching President Trump and continuing a blame-game about who – other
than Hillary Clinton, her campaign and the Democratic National Committee – is
responsible for Trump’s election. Of course, it’s the Russians, Russians,
Russians!
A
Problem’s Deep Roots
Without
doubt, some of the party’s problems have deep roots that correspond to the
shrinking of the labor movement since the 1970s and the growing reliance on
big-money donors to finance expensive television-ad-driven campaigns. Over the
years, the Democrats also got pounded for being “weak” on national security.
Further,
faced with Republican “weaponization” of attack ads in the 1980s, many old-time
Democrats lost out to the Reagan Revolution, clearing the way for a new breed
of Democrats who realized that they could compete for a slice of the big money
by cultivating the emerging coastal elites: Wall Street, Silicon Valley,
Hollywood and even elements of the National Security State.
By
the 1990s, President Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council defined
this New Democrat, politicians who reflected the interests of well-heeled
coastal elites, especially on free trade; streamlined financial regulations;
commitment to technology; and an activist foreign policy built around spreading
“liberal values” across the globe.
Mixed
in was a commitment to the rights of various identity groups, a worthy goal
although this tolerance paradoxically contributed to a new form of prejudice
among some liberals who came to view many white working-class people as fat,
stupid and bigoted, society’s “losers.”
So,
while President Clinton hobnobbed with the modern economy’s “winners” – with
sleepovers in the Lincoln bedroom and parties in the Hamptons – much of Middle
America felt neglected if not disdained. The “losers” were left to rot in
“flyover America” with towns and cities that had lost their manufacturing base
and, with it, their vitality and even their purpose for existing.
Republican
Fraud
It
wasn’t as if the Republicans were offering anything better. True, they were
more comfortable talking to these “forgotten Americans” – advocating “gun
rights” and “traditional values” and playing on white resentments over racial
integration and civil rights – but, in office, the Republicans aggressively
favored the interests of the rich, cutting their taxes and slashing regulations
even more than the Democrats.
The
Republicans paid lip service to the struggling blue-collar workers but control
of GOP policies was left in the hands of corporations and their lobbyists.
Though
the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American president, raised
hopes that the nation might finally bind its deep racial wounds, it turned out
to have a nearly opposite effect. Tea Party Republicans rallied many white
working-class Americans to resist Obama and the hip urban future that he
represented. They found an unlikely champion in real-estate mogul and reality
TV star Donald Trump, who sensed how to tap into their fears and anger with his
demagogic appeals and false populism.
Meanwhile,
the national Democrats were falling in love with data predicting that
demographics would magically turn Republican red states blue. So the party
blithely ignored the warning signs of a cataclysmic break with the Democrats’
old-time base.
Despite
all the data on opioid addiction and declining life expectancy among the white
working class, Hillary Clinton was politically tone-deaf to the rumbles of
discontent echoing across the Rust Belt. She assumed the traditionally
Democratic white working-class precincts would stick with her and she tried to
appeal to the “security moms” in typically Republican suburbs by touting her
neoconservative foreign policy thinking. And she ran a relentlessly negative
campaign against Trump while offering voters few positive reasons to vote for
her.
Ignoring
Reality
When
her stunning loss became clear on Election Night – as the crude and unqualified
Trump pocketed the electoral votes of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin –
the Democrats refused to recognize what the elections results were telling
them, that they had lost touch with a still important voting bloc, working-class
whites.
Rather
than face these facts, the national Democrats – led by President Obama and his
intelligence chiefs – decided on a different approach, to seek to reverse the
election by blaming the result on the Russians. Obama, his intelligence chiefs
and a collaborative mainstream media insisted without presenting any real
evidence that the Russians had hacked into Democratic emails and released them
to the devastating advantage of Trump, as if the minor controversies from
leaked emails of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign
chairman John Podesta explained Trump’s surprising victory.
As
part of this strategy, any Trump link to Russia – no matter how
inconsequential, whether from his businesses or through his advisers – became
the focus of Woodward-and-Bernstein/Watergate-style investigations. The obvious
goal was to impeach Trump and ride the wave of Trump-hating enthusiasm to a
Democratic political revival.
In
other words, there was no reason to look in the mirror and rethink how the
Democratic Party might begin rebuilding its relationships with the white
working-class, just hold hearings featuring Obama’s intelligence chieftains and
leak damaging Russia-gate stuff to the media.
But
the result of this strategy has been to deepen the Democratic Party’s reliance
on the elites, particularly the self-reverential mavens of the mainstream media
and the denizens of the so-called “deep state.” From my conversations with
Trump voters, they “get” what’s going on, how the powers-that-be are trying to
negate the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump by reversing a presidential
election carried out under the U.S. constitutional process.
A
Letter from ‘Deplorable’ Land
Some
Trump supporters are even making this point publicly. Earlier this month, a
“proud deplorable” named Kenton Woodhead from Brunswick, Ohio, wrote to The New
York Times informing the “newspaper of record” that he and other “deplorables”
were onto the scheme.
“I
wanted to provide you with an unsophisticated synopsis of The New York Times
and the media’s quest for the implosion of Donald Trump’s presidency from out
here in the real world, in ‘deplorable’ country. … Every time you and your
brethren at other news organizations dream up a new scheme to get Mr. Trump, we
out here in deplorable land increase our support for him. …
“Regardless
of what you dream up every day, we refuse to be sucked into your narrative. And
even more humorously, there isn’t anything you can do about it! And I love it
that you are having the exact opposite effect on those of us you are trying to
persuade to think otherwise.
“I
mean it is seriously an enjoyable part of my day knowing you are failing. And
badly! I haven’t had this much fun watching the media stumble, bumble and
fumble in years. I wonder what will happen on the day you wake up and realize
how disconnected you’ve become.”
So,
despite Trump’s narcissism and incompetence – and despite how his policies will
surely hurt many of his working-class supporters – the national Democrats are
further driving a wedge between themselves and this crucial voting bloc. By
whipping up a New Cold War with Russia and hurling McCarthistic slurs at people
who won’t join in the Russia-bashing, the Democratic Party’s tactics also are
alienating many peace voters who view both the Republicans and Democrats as
warmongers of almost equal measures of guilt.
While
it’s certainly not my job to give advice to the Democrats – or any other
political group – I can’t help but thinking that this Russia-gate “scandal” is
not only lacking in logic and evidence, but it doesn’t even make any long-term
political sense.
