The Main Goals of Sanders' Plan
When progressive "guns" finally come to bear on the billionaires' GOP scam.
[This post follows MeanMesa's previous article on this subject: A Sanders Post-Nomination Reader]
MeanMesa would like to summarize a few "high points" from what the article mentions about Sanders' post nomination political strategy. American citizens need to be thinking in these terms as we brace ourselves for the inevitable, relentless GOP attacks on President Hillary. If anyone thinks that the racist obstructionism on display during the Obama terms is somehow exceptional, just wait until the billionaires who own the Republican Party begin to scream for the assault on the next President.
Even the red states will be looking like third world junk yards after another four paralyzing years of a petulant, sold out Republican majority in the US House of Representatives. The GOP's "big picture" strategy is simple: "Anyone without a lobbyist will bleed." Amazingly, large numbers of mindless American GOP base voters have been propagandized to the point that they believe this is in the best interest of the country -- if they actually ever even bother to ponder such a question.
6 Points in Sanders Proposal
We've listened to plenty of right wing talk about "taking back our country."
Show them this plan and enjoy the silence.
1. Rehabilitate voter interest and voter turn out in order to elect a Democratic Congress [House AND Senate] in 2018 and beyond.
To "rehabilitate" low voter turn out, a statistic which has been inflicting lethal damage on the conduct of the democracy annually since the Reagan era, involves a couple of really dicey tasks.
First, the apathy based on a very general disgust with the failed operation of the government must be shaken with an injection of newly energizing hope. The development of this crippling apathy and disgust was not coincidental. Millions or billions of dollars were eagerly invested in the process of creating it, primarily in the media but also in other mechanisms of the modern culture.
Second, the "information background" operating in citizen voters must also be "rehabilitated." The understandably disgusted and apathetic American lacks access to the fundamental model which describes the process of remedying the failures which have grown so visibly apparent. As we enter into the 2016 election we find most American citizens shockingly uneducated as to their opportunities to alter the present state.
Those strongly supportive of the rudimentary goals of the Democratic Party represent an unquestioned majority of the electorate, yet the government structure of the country is now firmly under the control of the minority. [MeanMesa -2013 US Democracy Braces for a Decade of Minority Rule Don't just groan. If the elected Democrats in office after the 2020 census are like the ones there now, we'll have another ten years of gerrymandering and billionaires in control. If someone thinks the democracy can withstand that, he is a starkly out of touch optimist.]
In 2010 the GOP began, in earnest, its effort to not only elect a controlling majority in Washington, but also to make such a take over much more permanent than the last one which rode into power on Obama's election, that is, a Democratic Congressional majority lasting decades or longer. Sanders sees this as a time frame for the Democratic Party's similar aspirations.
Is it just wishful thinking? No, the political atmosphere in the country is now ready -- if not eager -- for a much longer period of functional government than has been the case in recent times. History delivers a strong message about this. The only times in recent memory that government has been considered even grudgingly functional, it has been under Democratic control for a significant number of election cycles.
2. Consolidate Democratic candidates platforms and policy proposals into a stable, nationwide, united Party identity.
Is it just wishful thinking? No, the political atmosphere in the country is now ready -- if not eager -- for a much longer period of functional government than has been the case in recent times. History delivers a strong message about this. The only times in recent memory that government has been considered even grudgingly functional, it has been under Democratic control for a significant number of election cycles.
Although it is becoming more and more difficult for Congressional Republicans to sustain this contradiction, the unexamined meme remains well established -- even when it is not justified by observable facts -- in the minds of the GOP's base.
 |
| A wounded animal with billionaires ...for brains? [cartoon] |
This attack was made even more effective as the Democrats gradually lost access to the increasingly right wing media. Today, not only Rupert Murdoch's FOX but also the remainder of the corporate domestic media is firmly under the control of the oligarchs and their operatives. These interests have continuously degraded what had previously been wide spread support for Democratic Party ideals.
The Democrats elected to office in this period seem to have failed to notice that their party brand was gradually disappearing from view in this heavily controlled, domestic media. They became an "invisible party" without a widely acknowledged political identity.
[The Democratic Party's identity is the body of general knowledge and expectations of a unified Democratic policy map. When two Democratic voters refer to the Democratic Party, they more or less agree that these positions represent the Democratic Party's policies and goals -- the Party's identity.]
One part of this was due to the hypnotic "beltway echo chamber" in which the Party's credentials seemed -- at least to the Democrats currently in office during such times -- to be healthy, functional, in tact and public while none was actually the case. The other part was the fairly clear decision within Democrat strategy to "cozy up" to the corporate interests for funding as the Republicans consistently castrated labor unions, the Party's traditional funding base. This was inherently counter to the Party's "brand."
Sanders' plan is to once more solidify the Democratic Party's fundamentals into a consolidated "identity" accessible to voters. The attractiveness of this "identity" has never been successfully contradicted by the reactionaries, but it has become so confused that it has grown cloudy -- far too cloudy to allow Democratic voters to spontaneously refer to general, overall Democratic Party ideals. The "identity" has been successfully sectioned and separated -- by the opposition's awkward obsession with preventing Obama from ever receiving credit for any accomplishment --into a plethora of smaller, isolated, individual elements, each one small enough to fall as an easy victim to the right wing's wall to wall media control.
Just as is the case with these fragmented issues, individual Democratic candidates across the country have likewise been tactically isolated from one another, leaving specific races subject to political attacks not directed at Democratic Party credentials, but instead, at individual candidates. This is been the "playing field" of the always eager billionaires. A million dollars worth of billionaire money not directed to support some sold out Republican candidate but rather to target a less well funded Democrat has become the best bargain in town with respect to winning elections.
The Republicans, thanks largely to this maneuver, now control 31 of the states in the country. Within the propaganda field this fact alone "validates" Republican propaganda claims, although there is usually no mention of the dire economic conditions in those states.
The Republicans, thanks largely to this maneuver, now control 31 of the states in the country. Within the propaganda field this fact alone "validates" Republican propaganda claims, although there is usually no mention of the dire economic conditions in those states.
Sanders' plan places a very high priority on spreading an awareness of Democratic Party leadership successes. As this information continued to reinforce itself following a series of elections and a longer period of prosperity and policy successes, Democratic Party ideas would once again begin to resonate politically because the outcomes for average citizens would be so much better. We are talking about a Democratic form of propaganda here, but it would be an educational, information based form rather than in the incendiary, purely ideological, Republican think tank style.
3. Attract progressive Democratic Party Candidates
Both Parties have demonstrated an inclination to select "known commodities" from the political past because such choices are considered more secure to a voter population with an astonishingly low "trust level." The burden of whatever political baggage may accompany such candidates is acceptably balanced by the mere fact that such candidates have a track record. Even in the currently common cases when the "track records" are far from positively persuasive or otherwise attractive, this raging lack of voter trust still makes such selections seem to be the safest choices.
 |
| What an impressive pile of...uh...wisdom! The system makes them quite secure. Just think of where YOU were 30 years ago and how the government has performed since then. [data source] |
It is not surprising that this political "habit" has resulted in a government which is an almost perfect reflection of unpopular past governments. We see the electorate attempting to break away from this endless repetition of the past with candidates such as Sanders and Trump. Unhappily, the impulse has generated almost no effect in the immediate time frame. Although this particular election began with the first glimpse of "new light," the old style political hacks, no matter how soiled by their own reputations, remain in control -- on both sides.
Additionally, the carefully manufactured disgust penetrating the electorate now has, predictably, migrated to infect potential candidates. Over the previous three decades since the ossified division of the population became the highest tactically priority for the oligarchs' think tanks, the position of being an elected public servant has truly lost all of its excitement and glitter. This adds yet another obstacle to the task of attracting competent, determined candidates into the political realm. But still accomplishing precisely this goal remains a central, albeit difficult, element of the Sanders' plan for transforming the nation's politics.
These new candidates won't simply be "fresh faces," though even that much would be refreshing. These candidates must have the competence, commitment, stability and integrity to sustain the Party's platform in Congressional and Senate races all across the electoral map. The people who can become these future Democratic Party candidates are all around us -- waiting for a political party which can offer them a path to making real changes, one with ideas which are strong enough to save the democracy and one which no longer automatically suffocates every sincere patriotic ambition into a still born orphan.
Campaign financing in another critical area where Democratic Party candidates find themselves essentially isolated -- especially when compared to the small, ambitious clutch of big GOP donors who typically finance Republican candidates and well funded think tank super PACs always eager to attack opposing candidates. After mortally "soiling" itself with its recent habits the Democratic National Committee can no longer expect "grass roots" campaign contributions from large numbers of Americans.
However, after all the media mouth junk experts repeatedly announced that the Sanders campaign would never raise enough "grass roots" money to get "off the starting block," even the ossified Washington hacks in the DNC joined in with the experts in with the same mesmerizing amazement at the amount of cash rushing into Bernie's war chest. Perhaps even more unsettling for these hacks and experts was that this rush of money not only continued, but grew as the campaign moved ahead.
The "inconvenient truth" in this case was that this scale of fund raising actually not only became possible but largely spontaneous when these millions of citizens were shown a candidate and a platform which they could support on some basis beyond "the lesser of two evils."
Importantly, this represented an existential shift in the environment of domestic politics. Friends of MeanMesa who previously dispatched every candidate along with any expectation that domestic politics might, somehow, ever become relevant again, not only contributed to the Sanders campaign, but also participated in canvassing and phone banks. This development was a nightmare to the perpetual inhabitants of the DNC "dog food factory."
Sanders "influence" plan calls for this to become the norm in Democratic political campaigns -- and not in the whimsical fantasy of some distant future scenario. Sanders wants this sea change to become a "fact of life" by the 2018 mid term elections.
5. Democrats Re-Enter as a Domestic Media Presence; Re-Appear as a Political Party
 |
| When political persuasion becomes exclusively a question of racial bigotry, fear and terror, there is little need to discuss policy. [cartoon] |
No doubt still reeling from what the Sanders campaign accomplished -- even in the face of being almost entirely disregarded by the domestic media, Congressional Democrats have -- finally -- begun to take a few early, timid, "baby steps" at actually competing with the FOX network and the other thinly disguised domestic propaganda machines masquerading as media "news" suppliers.
6. Penetrate Right Wing Propaganda Isolation For Republican Voters
If there were some sort of empirical process which could recover an entire list of things that GOP voters currently accept as true, the nation would experience a depressing bout of dangerous laughter before even the first half had been considered. We can blame Murdoch for much of this, but the other domestic corporate networks have been willing co-conspirators.
It is important to realize that the rise of the current wave of reactionary political primitivism was not a coincidence. Millions of dollars worth of billable hours applied to the oligarchs' think tanks accomplished this. Well practiced psychologists methodically sought out every available reservoir of fear, mistrust, racism and other confusions, carefully analyzing their discoveries for vulnerabilities. With this in hand these think tanks began a systematic, well funded "cultivation process" to prepare the final "playing field."
Naturally, such a treasonous, despicable strategy required an endless supply of direly exploitable, low information voters. We can see the Congress doing everything possible to inhibit the expansion of Internet services to their "captive audiences" in the red, fly over states. So long as the "news" and "opinion" available in such places can be entirely limited to the drivel broadcast by the cable corporations, these pockets of unflinching. mindlessly ideological voters will remain safely sequestered -- never encountering any alternate narrative.
One of the most useful and necessary of the popular fantasies promoted by this thought controlled media is that a vast percentage of Americans are spontaneously reactionary conservatives. Another is that being informed or being educated are strictly useless distractions.
Well, once the "echo chamber" has been put into place, no one in daily life ever contradicts these types as they bumble around the rural red states and rust belt. The fantasies which have been carefully embedded in them as "facts," are never contested or contradicted with "actual facts." Add the incendiary campaign rhetoric of right wing politicians eager to "harvest" this forlorn demographic, and a new phenomenon emerges.
Being politically uninformed, lacking any comprehension of the actual situation surrounding one and enjoying only the most callously twisted, rudimentary understanding of the details of the US system of government, becomes entirely acceptable. Anyone seeking an actual education, understanding or awareness of the reality at hand becomes quite suspicious.
This really has to end. Half the population of the country currently suffers under this carefully manufactured deception.
Sanders plan includes relieving this hypnotic thrall in order to reach those currently voting lock step for exclusively reactionary candidates, making them at least available for a re-entry into the democratic process.
No comments:
Post a Comment