Bernie's And Busted: When idealistic young people, most of them utterly unprepared, are pushed into the thrusting, beating and grinding behemoth that is the Democratic Party machine, and told to disrupt it, how shocked the party's critics claim to be, how dismayed, when the machine chews them up and spits them out. As if the Old Left had no idea that, to paraphrase Boromir in Lord of the Rings: “One does not simply walk into the Democratic National Convention.”
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR writes for the American on-line magazine Counterpunch. To read his excoriating
critique of the Democratic National Convention is to feel the intense
frustration and rage of the progressive American Left.
A sample: “Hillary has already out-Thatchered the Iron Lady
and she hasn’t been elected yet. She’s made the complete metamorphosis from a
Goldwater girl to a McGovern woman to a Reagan granny.”
That same frustration and rage was evident in the
“Bernie-or-Bust” dead-enders’ attempts to disrupt the Convention. Their
petulant bewilderment at being stiff-armed by the event’s organisers and
security staff proof of just what a children’s crusade the Bernie Sanders
candidacy had become in some US states – California in particular.
The Democratic Party is a machine: huge and unforgiving. St.
Clair and his fellow critics on the Left know this. It is why they seem to
enjoy nothing more than taking their readers into the heart of the mechanism.
They point to its massive pistons pumping, its huge gears grinding, the
controlled explosions in its vast cylinders, and they profess to be shocked.
And when idealistic young people, most of them utterly
unprepared, are pushed into this thrusting, beating and grinding behemoth and
told to disrupt it, how shocked the critics claim to be, how dismayed, when the
machine chews them up and spits them out. As if the Old Left had no idea that,
to paraphrase Boromir in Lord of the
Rings: “One does not simply walk into the Democratic National Convention.”
Unacknowledged amid all this shock and dismay is the simple
fact that without the brute force of the Democratic Party’s political machine: without
the Wall Street donors, the SuperPACs, the media manipulation and the cheap
parliamentary tricks designed to keep nay-sayers off the platform and away from
the cameras; progressive politics in the United States would make no headway
whatsoever.
Sanders grasped this simple fact. That’s why, to the boos of
his supporters, he urged them to get in behind Hillary Clinton. Even if his
followers failed to grasp it, the most important truth about the Democratic
Party machine isn’t how it works, but in which direction it is steered.
Listening to Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech all Jeffrey
St. Clair heard was compromise, betrayal and “proto-fascism”. A less jaundiced
observer would have heard something much more encouraging. Amid all the
patriotic flourishes and the merciless deconstruction of the hollow,
clay-footed god that is Donald Trump, a sensitive ear would have detected the
crunch and groan of the Democratic Party changing course.
Not enough to silence the Bernie-or-Bust dead-enders; and
nowhere near enough to mute the criticism of Jeffrey St. Clair; but more than
enough to send a shiver down the spine of New Zealand’s Ambassador to the
United States, the former Trade Minister, Tim Groser. Barack Obama would like
to end his presidency with the congressional ratification of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, but Hillary Clinton is pledged to take the Oath of Office over TPP’s
unratified corpse.
It was another female US Secretary of State, Madeleine
Albright, who described the United States of America as “the indispensable
nation”. When all other nations are stepping back, it is the United States that
must step forward. In doing so, the United States reveals itself as not only
the world’s indispensable nation, but also as its essential leader and guide.
This is the geopolitical reality that makes the presidential
election of 2016 so critical. If Donald Trump wins, and puts “America First”,
then the United States will have signalled its intention to step back and away
from its leadership role. But if Hillary wins, as I believe she will, then the
United States will begin the long, slow process of leading the world away from
the self-destructive shibboleths of neoliberalism.
Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Convention did
not swing the wheel of American politics as hard to port as Jeffrey St. Clair
and the Bernie-or-Bust dead-enders so obviously desired. But, on a long
journey, even a small course correction can alter a vessel’s ultimate
destination to a surprising degree.
In his glorious anthem, Democracy,
Leonard Cohen urges on the USA, that indispensable vessel of the world’s hope:
Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of
Greed
Through the Squalls of
Hate.
Sail on, sail on, sail
on.
Such is the political course dictated to Hillary Clinton,
not only by what Bernie Sanders calls “the most progressive platform in the
history of the Democratic Party”, but by the necessity of repairing an economic
system that serves only obscene wealth. Redistributing that wealth isn’t just
an ethical imperative, it is a sociological necessity. Inequality is the
supreme solvent of human solidarity and social justice.
The choice before the American electorate has become existentially
clear: sail on, or sink.
This essay was
originally published in The Press of
Tuesday, 2 August 2016.
