"Theres Not Very Much Time": Robert Reichs Plan to Fix the Democratic Party

[portlander23]

“There’s Not Very Much Time”: Robert Reich’s Plan to Fix the Democratic Party
JOEL BLEIFUSS
In These Times

What are the most important lessons from the 2016 Democratic presidential primary?

The question is whether the Democratic Party is ready to reinvent itself entirely.

The primary showed that the real enthusiasm and energy in the Democratic Party is in what might be called democratic—small “D”—populism: a determination to make the economy and our democracy work for a vast majority instead of a privileged few. The torch of democratic populism was carried by Bernie Sanders. This is a first cousin to the authoritarian populism that dominates the Republican Party and is exemplified by Donald Trump. Democratic populism is the logical alternative to Trump’s xenophobia and hatefulness. If the Democratic Party has any sense at all, that’s what it will aim toward in the future.

The party is not currently a force for fundamental progressive change. It should be confronting Donald Trump and his hatefulness directly. It should be taking advantage of the enormous energy that was revealed in the Sanders campaign and is now even more broadly based because so many people are determined not to allow Trump to erode what has been accomplished over the past 50 years. But that can’t happen with politics as usual. That means an entirely different kind of organization. It should be an activist organization, a grassroots system for mobilizing and energizing voters between elections.

There’s not very much time. If progressives are going to have the kind of candidates we need going into the primaries for the midterms of 2018, we’ve got to get started.

[LexVegas]

1. The real enthusiasm in the NFL is with the Cleveland Browns. nt

[Orsino]

2. When we can run a rock-star Dem of vast experience...

...and be edged out by a solipsistic neophyte of no discernible talent, time is very short, indeed.

[Yurovsky]

4. I think there were too many people...

Last edited Wed Jan 4, 2017, 10:53 AM - Edit history (1)

who just poo-poohed the notion that the SRO crowds at Bernie & Trump events mattered. If people are willing to deal with the hassle associated with attending a rally (traffic, security, time off work/ school, etc) you can bet your ass they'll be out to vote, and probably drag along some friends or family as well.

You need a candidate people can get excited about with a message that excites people. Just being against somebody else (IMHO, the primary message of Team Clinton) usually isn't enough. We need to turn the anger & frustration we feel now into positive energy behind a candidate who will be able to engage Trump or congressional/state/local opponents with vigor, wit, and above all, solutions to problems average voters face.

[Fast Walker 52]

5. the media did not like Bernie... and frankly I think the game was rigged for Trump

[Yurovsky]

10. I don't think the GOP primaries were rigged...

I just think you had 16 flavors but were essentially all vanilla, and one flavor that was mostly nuts and BS that voters slowly moved to in great enough numbers that he was able to pick the other 16 off one by one. Before you knew it the field was down to Trump, Cruz, and Kasich, and the GOP voters displayed their love of nuts... Trump won & Cruz finished 2nd. Pretty sad when Kasich gets beat by 2 whackadoos, as he was the only reasonably sane candidate remaining for the GOP. Apparently sanity is not high on the list of requirements for GOP nominees...

The GE? It may well have been shaped in part by corrupt forces, but the GOP primaries were just an example of GOP craziness, IMHO.

[Fast Walker 52]

11. yeah, fair enough... though who knows how depe this goes

[Bayard]

3. He's right

Put Bernie and Elizabeth Warren in charge of planning and implementation. They are already making a start. The question is whether the rest of the party will get behind them, or go down in flames again.

[musette_sf]

7. When did Sen Sanders

join the Democratic Party?

[Demsrule86]

13. No thanks...I want to win...

We need someone who can put this party together not someone from on side or the other. There are not enough progressives in this country to elect one...I say this sadly as a progressive.

[Fast Walker 52]

6. "make the economy and our democracy work for a vast majority instead of a privileged few"

Hasn't this ALWAYS been the Democratic message?

When have they ever not been about this?

[triron]

8. Oh bs

Nothing that significantly wrong in the first place. What we need to 'fix' is our elections but first throw Trump in jail for treason of violation of the Logan act.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. there is another side we need to address, and that is the left-libertarian trend of the electorate.

We have a voting populace that is increasingly in favor of things like marijuana legalization, that doesn't want government micro-managing their lives and personal choices- that doesn't like Theocracy but also doesn't like censorship whether it comes from the right OR "left", campus speech bans and laws against "oversized" sodas.

Unfortunately, the public face of the Democratic Party and DNC chair decided, in the middle of an election that saw unprecedented support for cannabis, to go to the NY Times and quack about how important it is for the government to be able to keep putting pot smokers in prison.

We need to become (again) the party of personal freedom. To stand up for the 1st Amendment and the right of consenting adults to make their own decisions about their own bodies. That includes reproductive freedom, to be sure, it also includes the right of terminally ill people to choose a dignified exit on their own terms. It ALSO includes the right of people in pain to have adequate pain management, which flies directly in the face of hyperbolic drug war hysteria over the "prescription drug crisis", which is pretty clearly a thinly veiled excuse for the DEA to find a new mandate as they lose their pot-fighting gravy train.

(Yes, there are problems with opiates and prescription drugs, but "crackdowns" and authoritarianism only drive more people to the black market. This has been shown time and again. It is time for us to approach these matters from a new perspective, one that isn't obsessively focused on keeping people from obtaining an unauthorized buzz or putting "forbidden" substances into what are, after all, their own fucking bodies)

Yes, we need a consistent and strong economic message, but that is only half of the equation. Once in power, the GOP will likely knee-jerk towards authoritarianism. We need to be seen as the party that supports the right of citizens to run their own damn lives.

[former9thward]

14. The problem with allowing people to put any substance into "their own fucking bodies"

is that society has to pay for the aftermath. Society has to pay for destroyed bodies and minds --- and for decades until they die. Society has to pay for destroyed families and fucked up children that result. People love to moan about the the problem of the homeless "What kind of society are we?" but ignore the fact that most homeless are the result of drug abuse. I favor so-called left libertarianism of allowing people to take whatever shit they want but left libertarianism also says society has no obligation to clean up the mess afterwards.

[Demsrule86]

12. Yeah...what a great idea...run someone who is sure to lose.

The Democratic Party does not need 'fixing'.

[Jakes Progress]

15. Reich used to be a hero of mine.

But his own actions during the primary helped trump. And his preoccupation with the myth that there is are vast uber-progressive masses in America yearning to throw off the proletarian yoke will give Democrats decades of losses.

Some are products of their own circles of the Washington belt-way. Reich is a victim of the Berkeley teachers lounge and coffee shop circuit. We know how much like middle America that is. Another kind of out-of-touch.