I Don’t Care If The Democratic Party Never Holds Office Again
And if you think about it, you probably don’t either.
Hillary Clinton visits the Iowa State Capitol, 2015; (Photo: Barbara Kinney, CC2.0)
The last decade of Democratic politics across the national landscape have been grim. We have seen a working class party which was supposed to fight for our needs lose those battles, again and again sacrificing their constituents in pursuit of short-term interests and personal gain. We have realized that our leaders are plundering our pockets, growing fat on our tax dollars while their outgrown influence continues to swell their wealth far beyond what their average constituent can hope to see in a lifetime; watching them sell our homes, lands, and lives to the highest bidder as corporations-turned-voter inject their poisonous war chests into our movies, TikToks, podcasts, and newsfeeds.
And now, following the outrageous bowing-out of contention when it came to Gaza and the plight of Palestinians, the abhorrent willful ignorance to categorical genocide of an enslaved nation, the Democrats have sacrificed the United States people wholesale to the wills of the adderous demagogues of the fascist conservatives. When the only thing the Party has managed to do, have truly mobilized themselves for in the last decade, is take away TikTok, it becomes difficult to see them as anything other than the cronies they are. For me, the fact of the matter is this: there is no longer a “Democratic” party in the United States, nominally or effectively.
The TikTok ban, a unilateral attack on almost 2 million small businesses (both physical and digital) and a tearing away of some $10b in revenue for the coming year, would be a travesty in “normal” times. Doing so today, is something else entirely, something malicious and cruel.
It is undeniable that our economy has tightened, that we are astride a violin string which is being pulled ever more taut beneath our ragged feet. We watch as far away the pegs turn, hear as the cords beneath us creak and groan in protest to the burden of our weight and the insistent yanking from beyond. Around us the people fall, crashing freely into the void below, the safety net we long ago built now so full of holes as to be nonexistent.
And our party watches, does not see, nor hear, nor act in the favor of those they claim to represent; turning away from the very people who trusted them to honor and guard their futures, going with outstretched hands to the maniacal bastards still tightening the strings. Why not after all, when they were more than happy to cede ground to ideological reactionaries, bend the knee and capitulate to those who would throw you into the mines or deport you for the color of your skin, how you present, or who you love.
And it is no real question, the inflation of their bank accounts and the square-footage of their homes displaying freely that the dirty profits of Big Business and stock manipulation is a game which provides clear, easy winners for members willing to play. When you are the party who is supposed to represent the people, the ones who have been entrusted to regulate the worst harms of our capitalist society, this can be seen as nothing less than outright corruption and bribery of the highest order.
The leadership of the Party, have spent the last months harping about the dangers of data-security and threats to national security while offering no solutions other than to ban your favorite communication tool, have overnight decided they need an extension. Now, as they recognize the damage they have done by snatching at the profits and coattails of the Republican Party and forcing through what will now forever be remembered as the Biden TikTok Ban, they are begging forgiveness just as their final bell tolls.
Ignoring the fact that in this ridiculous farce the Democrats have handed Trump a day-one victory if he decides to extend a stay-of-execution to TikTok, Biden’s final act to hand that W to Trump in the first place was another unforced error. Why did he not simply expand the deadline himself by 90-days through executive order and throw the ban back in the court of their supposed enemies? Force the Trump-led Congress, Courts, and Administration into civil war over whether to save face or force their ideological will on an already agitated populace.
It doesn’t matter the legality or longitudinality of the measure, its entire purpose is - aptly for the party of Kente cloths but not racial justice - performative and, in Biden’s case specifically, inconsequential. To be my realpolitik, cynical self, this ban, and all of your lives which are attached, is a political football which they have been happy to play with since Trump initially tried to ban the app outright during his first administration. So why spike the ball when a “Trump Tiktok Ban” was back on the table as a bargaining chip (or at least a political humiliation)? Why did Democrats sacrifice the game if that is all this is at the end of the day?
As the title says, I don’t care if this Party never wins an election again. If they have decided to not only forego an image of representing and fighting for the working people - me and you - but have chosen to not even play the damn game, I am not showing up.
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