May 6, 2016 by Joseph Skulan
I do not believe that Donald Trump is insane, except in sharing the socipathology of all people who thrive in the current political world. I also don’t really want to see the country crash and burn as a prelude to something better, although I do think that we are headed in that direction, and that die may already have been cast. Our last real chance of averting it was squandered in 1992.
But there is something else to consider, which is the fate of the Democratic Party.
Understanding the role of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) in reshaping the party along explicitly neoliberal, anti-regulatory lines in the 1980s and ’90s is essential to understanding the deep antipathy many of us have toward the Clintons. There is a lot written on that topic and I won’t go into it here, except to say that under the DLC the Democrats became enablers, if not outright supporters, of the worst Republican policies, and that Hillary Clinton is the ideological heir of the DLC – which is now the Clinton Foundation.
It is not true that the Democrats are the same as the Republicans. Democrats have preserved some progressive stands on social issues, at least on social issues (like women’s rights) where progressive stands are widely popular and don’t involve much political risk. What is true is that over the past 35 years Democrats have ceased to be an effective opposition party to the Republicans. The reasons for this, again, are beyond my scope here, but the truth of it is plain.
If Republicans are the fire in the house, the Democrats are the fire extinguishers that don’t work. And they don’t work because under the scandal-ridden DLC/Clinton leadership Democrats have not maintained them. Democrats didn’t start the fire, but they can’t put it out as long as they continue to follow the policies that allowed the fire to grow so large in the first place.
Defeating Republicans requires defeating the Clinton faction of the Democratic party. Losing a presidential election is not too high a price to pay for that.
If Hillary Clinton wins the election, the Clinton faction will control the Democratic party for another generation, and the house will burn to the ground. If she loses, and if the Clinton faction is overthrown, the Democrats might have a chance of reversing the country’s descent into fascism. Even out of power and as a minority in Congress, the Democratic party could accomplish more than it ever could, or would, under its current management under the best conditions.
Wisconsin Citizens Media Cooperative 
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