Truthdig
Blaming Russia Helps Democratic Party's Anti-Bernie Elites Maintain Power
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/blaming_russia_helps_democratic_partys_a
nti-bernie_elites_20170420/
Posted on Apr 20, 2017
By Norman Solomon
Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez, left, and Vermont Sen.
Bernie Sanders in a joint interview on MSNBC. (MSNBC
(http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/sanders-i-don-t-consider-myself-a-democra
t-924041283893) )
After Hillary Clinton's devastating loss nearly six months ago, her most
powerful Democratic allies feared losing control of the party. Efforts to
lip-sync economic populism while remaining closely tied to Wall Street had
led to a catastrophic defeat. In the aftermath, the party's progressive
base-personified by Bernie Sanders-was in position to start flipping over
the corporate game board.
Aligned with Clinton, the elites of the Democratic Party needed to change
the subject. Clear assessments of the national ticket's failures were
hazardous to the status quo within the party. So were the groundswells of
opposition to unfair economic privilege. So were the grass-roots pressures
for the party to become a genuine force for challenging big banks, Wall
Street and overall corporate power.
In short, the Democratic Party's anti-Bernie establishment needed to
reframe the discourse in a hurry. And-in tandem with mass media-it did.
The reframing could be summed up in two words: Blame Russia.
By early winter, the public discourse was going sideways-much to the
benefit of party elites. The meme of blaming Russia and Vladimir Putin for
the election of Donald Trump effectively functioned to let the Wall
Street-friendly leadership of the national Democratic Party off the hook.
Meanwhile, serious attempts to focus on the ways that wounds to democracy in
the United States have been self-inflicted-whether via the campaign finance
system or the purging of minorities from voter rolls or any number of other
systemic injustices-were largely set aside.
LISTEN: The Russians Aren't Coming-the Deep State Is
(http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/robert_scheer_the_russians_arent_comin
g_--_the_deep_state_is_audio_20170403)
Fading from scrutiny was the establishment that continued to dominate the
Democratic Party's superstructure. At the same time, its devotion to
economic elites was undiminished. As Bernie told a reporter
(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/magazine/democratic-party-election-trump
.html) on the last day of February: "Certainly there are some people in the
Democratic Party who want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go
down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats."
Amid great luxury and looming catastrophe, the party's current hierarchy has
invested enormous political capital in depicting Vladimir Putin as an
unmitigated archvillain. Relevant history was irrelevant
(https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2017-03-10/russi
a-trump-and-new-d-tente) , to be ignored or denied.
With dutiful conformity from most Democrats in Congress, the party elites
doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on the emphatic claim that Moscow is
the capital of, by any other name, an evil empire. Rather than just calling
for what's needed-a truly independent investigation into allegations that
the Russian government interfered with the U.S. election-the party line
became hyperbolic and unmoored
(https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/31/blaming-russia-for-everything/) from
the available evidence.
Given their vehement political investment in demonizing the Russian
president, Democratic leaders are oriented to seeing the potential of
detente with Russia as counterproductive in terms of their electoral
strategy for 2018 and 2020. It's a calculus that boosts the risks of nuclear
annihilation, given the very real dangers (http://thebulletin.org/timeline)
of escalating tensions between Washington and Moscow.
Along the way, top party officials seem bent on returning to a kind of
pre-Bernie-campaign doldrums. The new chair of the Democratic National
Committee, Tom Perez, can't bring himself to say that the power of Wall
Street is antithetical to the interests of working people. That reality came
to painful light this week during a live appearance on national television.
During a 10-minute joint interview
(https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/04/19/under-perez-dnc-still-resistin
g-call-name-enemy) along with Bernie Sanders on Tuesday night, Perez was a
font of exactly the kind of trite empty slogans and worn-out platitudes that
oiled the engines of the dismal Clinton campaign.
While Sanders was forthright, Perez was evasive. While Sanders talked about
systemic injustice, Perez fixated on Trump. While Sanders pointed to a way
forward for realistic and far-reaching progressive change, Perez hung onto a
rhetorical formula that expressed support for victims of the economic order
without acknowledging the existence of victimizers.
In an incisive article published by The Nation
(https://www.thenation.com/article/democrats-shouldnt-be-trying-to-banish-tu
lsi-gabbard/) magazine, Robert Borosage wrote last week: "For all the
urgent pleas for unity in the face of Trump, the party establishment has
always made it clear that they mean unity under their banner. That's why
they mobilized to keep the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus,
Representative Keith Ellison, from becoming head of the DNC. It's why the
knives are still out for Sanders and those who supported him."
While Bernie is hardly a reliable opponent of U.S. war policies, he is
significantly more critical of military intervention than the Democratic
Party leaders who often champion it. Borosage noted that the party
establishment is locked into militaristic orthodoxies that favor continuing
to inflict the kind of disasters that the United States has brought to Iraq,
Libya and other countries: "Democrats are in the midst of a major struggle
to decide what they stand for and who they represent. Part of that is the
debate over a bipartisan interventionist foreign policy that has so abjectly
failed."
For the Democratic Party's most hawkish wing-dominant from the top down and
allied with Clinton's de facto neocon approach to foreign policy-the U.S.
government's April 6 cruise missile attack on a Syrian airfield was an
indication of real leverage for more war. That attack on a close ally of
Russia showed that incessant Russia-baiting of Trump
(https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/16/what-russia-gate-has-wrought/) can
get gratifying military results for the Democratic elites who are undaunted
in their advocacy of regime change in Syria and elsewhere.
The politically motivated missile attack
(https://www.thenation.com/article/six-thoughts-on-the-us-bombing-of-syria/)
on Syria showed just how dangerous it is to keep Russia-baiting Trump,
giving him political incentive to prove how tough he is on Russia after all.
What's at stake includes the imperative of preventing a military clash
between the world's two nuclear superpowers. But the corporate hawks at the
top of the national Democratic Party have other priorities.
Norman Solomon is coordinator of the online activist group RootsAction.org
(http://rootsaction.org/) and executive director of the Institute for
Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books, including "War Made
Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."
The Cost of Russiagate
After 2016's Losses, Elizabeth Warren Tells Democrats: 'Shame On Us'
Government Monitoring: You Have the Right to Be Watched (Audio)
How to Lose the Next War in the Middle East
Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
C 2017 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
Signup for Truthdig's newsletter
gumgum-verify
Sponsored Content
Get DIRECTV.
Your every TV wish. Granted. []
Learn More
ExelateData
