{"id":279106,"date":"2016-11-14T19:25:03","date_gmt":"2016-11-14T18:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=279106"},"modified":"2016-12-06T02:20:08","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T01:20:08","slug":"democrats-caused-president-trump-caused-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/democrats-caused-president-trump-caused-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Caused President Trump; They Caused His Victory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">Eric Zuesse, originally posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.strategic-culture.org\/news\/2016\/11\/14\/democrats-caused-president-trump-they-caused-his-victory.html\"><span class=\"s2\">strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s2\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Fk8DDFE8v3I\">Here\u2019s a video where Carey Wedler explains in her own thoroughly truthful way in just four minutes<\/a><\/span><span class=\"s1\">, how and why Democratic Party voters for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party primaries did more than perhaps any other single political group of Americans to help make Donald Trump become America\u2019s President. But here, in my own equally truthful way, <i>which you can easily verify for yourself by simply clicking onto a link anywhere that you question a statement\u2019s veracity<\/i> (which, of course, can\u2019t be done with any video), I\u2019ll explain it, very differently:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Democratic voters during the Presidential primaries were given <i>a clear choice<\/i>, and blew it badly; they chose the by-far-weaker of the two candidates (Clinton instead of Sanders), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realclearpolitics.com\/epolls\/2016\/president\/2016_presidential_race.html\"><span class=\"s2\">weaker not only in all of the many polled head-to-head matchups against each and every one of the possible Republican candidates (and he led specifically against Trump by 10.4%)<\/span><\/a>, but weaker in the progressive ideology that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had brought to the Party and which had made the FDR-era (1932-1980) Democratic Party the engine of progressive change in America. Bill Clinton killed it, and Hillary Clinton\u2019s election would have prevented the progressive Democratic Party from ever being resurrected again; and here\u2019s how that happened:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Bill Clinton had come into office as the new anti-FDR, pro-unrestrained-capitalism, virtual founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, which repudiated not only the anti-Wall-Street tradition of FDR but all of FDR\u2019s approaches and programs to achieve increased equality of economic opportunity in America. Not only did he do this by passing the Republican <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement\"><span class=\"s2\">George Herbert Walker Bush\u2019s NAFTA<\/span><\/a> into law and by passing the Republicans\u2019 deregulation (especially ending FDR\u2019s Glass-Stegall regulation) of Wall Street into law, but Clinton and the DLC rebuilt the Democratic Party as being instead merely a less extreme version of the post-Richard-Nixon Republican Party: Republican-lite, running against Republican-extreme (which <i>was<\/i> the existing Republican Party). By doing this \u2014 moving the Democratic Party <i>to the right<\/i> \u2014 they moved <i>the American political center<\/i> substantially toward the right, because now, in Bill Clinton\u2019s wake, any Republican incumbent who fails to move toward the right was being challenged in Republican Party primaries by \u2018Tea Party Republicans\u2019 who accused any such incumbent of being a Republican In Name Only, or <i>RINO<\/i>. Consequently: Congress and other political bodies <i>did<\/i> become more right-wing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Voters for Hillary Clinton in the primaries were pushing that rightward movement of America\u2019s political center even further. In fact, on many issues (such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.strategic-culture.org\/news\/2016\/10\/12\/whether-war-against-russia-top-issue-us-presidential-race.html\"><span class=\"s2\">her three policies for war to defeat Russia and its allies such as Syria<\/span><\/a>) she was far to the right of Donald Trump \u2014 and she even had the nerve to criticise Trump for his opposition to her on that, calling him <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2016\/10\/19\/politics\/clinton-puppet-vladimir-putin-trump\/\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cPutin\u2019s puppet\u201d<\/span><\/a>. She was resurrecting, but now in the new post-1992 conservative Democratic Party, the hatred and lies from the Republican Party\u2019s Cold War anti-communist Joseph R. McCarthy \u2014 and communism and the USSR and its Warsaw Pact had ended long before, in 1991! Hillary was in many respects <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\"><span class=\"s2\">the super-Republican<\/span><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2016\/02\/29\/neoconservatives-declare-war-on-donald-trump\/\"><span class=\"s2\">the leading neoconservative<\/span><\/a>, and so <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/2016\/02\/hillary-clinton-backed-major-republican-donors.html\"><span class=\"s2\">Republican mega-donors flocked to her<\/span><\/a> more than they did to Trump. (Of course, she swamped Trump even more among the Democratic Party\u2019s billionaires, but Hillary broke all fundraising records for support among Republican mega-donors backing a Democratic Party candidate; she was The Establishment\u2019s \u2014 the American aristocracy\u2019s \u2014 candidate to an extent that none before her had ever been.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Like Russ Belville headlined at Huffington Post on 29 February 2016,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/russ-belville\/the-problem-with-hillary-clinton_b_9349590.html\"><span class=\"s3\">&#8220;The Problem With\u00a0Hillary, Chez, Is I\u00a0Don\u2019t Vote\u00a0Republican\u201d<\/span><\/a>. He listed there 25 major stands of the Republican Party that Hillary stood for, and that Bernie stood against, and he concluded:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s4\"><i>\u201c<\/i><\/span><span class=\"s1\"><i>Those are 25 pretty good reasons why we Democrats don\u2019t vote for Republicans, don\u2019t you think?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>So why would we vote for Hillary Clinton, the Rockefeller Republican who exemplifies every one of those 25 statements?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>If Donald Trump wins the presidency over Hillary Clinton, it\u2019s not the fault of people like me who won\u2019t vote for Republicans. It\u2019s the fault of the Democratic Party for nominating a Republican. For me, the horror of a four-year Trump term is less frightening than cementing in the Far Right \/ Center Right corporate duopoly in American politics created since Hillary\u2019s husband sold out Democratic principles on\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/1997\/03\/the-worst-thing-bill-clinton-has-done\/376797\/\"><span class=\"s5\"><i>welfare<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>,\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/msnbc\/clinton-admits-his-crime-bill-made-mass-incarceration-worse\"><span class=\"s5\"><i>crime, race<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>,\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cfr.org\/trade\/naftas-economic-impact\/p15790\"><span class=\"s5\"><i>labor, trade<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>,\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mapinc.org\/newscfdp\/v01\/n087\/a05.html?6793\"><span class=\"s5\"><i>drugs<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>, and\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/transition.fcc.gov\/telecom.html\"><span class=\"s5\"><i>media<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/span><span class=\"s4\"><i>&#8220;<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">He expressed my views perfectly. And he expressed the views of many other progressives (including Carey Wedler) who avoided voting for such a candidate: we either voted for Jill Stein, or for Donald Trump (who was actually <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/im-bernie-sanders-voter-heres-ill-vote-trump\/\"><span class=\"s2\">far more progressive on many issues than Hillary was or than any of the other Republicans were<\/span><\/a> \u2014 such as his constant <i>repudiation<\/i> of the Bush-Clintons\u2019 NAFTA), or else we left a blank on the Presidential part of the ballot November 8th, or we just stayed home altogether. Turnout was the key, and the Republican-lite Hillary Clinton wasn\u2019t able to match the turnout of the Trump-supporters in the battleground states. Trump got trounced like was expected in the heavily Democratic states, which are always Democratic in Presidential elections, but the Electoral College is won or lost in the battleground states, which is where the lack of passion for Hillary decided the election\u2019s outcome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">By contrast, Trump generated real passion in the Republican base, and so they came out in droves on Election Day. And Trump\u2019s focus on winning the votes of many disaffected Democrats who recognized that the Clinton-Obama mega-corporate politics are part of the reason why America is declining, also brought to the polls on Election Day millions of people who had never voted before for a Republican \u2014 including myself (for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/im-bernie-sanders-voter-heres-ill-vote-trump\/\"><span class=\"s3\">reasons that I have explained<\/span><\/a>). Furthermore, because of the far higher intensity of support by Trump\u2019s supporters than by Hillary\u2019s, Trump brought into the voting-places far more Republicans than Hillary brought into the voting-places Democrats, and this depressed turnout by Democrats at the polls caused both a Republican Senate and a Republican House, and it also greatly boosted the numbers of Republican candidates who won local and state races. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Liberal voters (the pro-Hillary Democrats) have destoyed the Democratic Party; progressive voters (the pro-Bernie Democrats), the ones such as Bernie who want to restore the FDR Democratic Party, are the only people who can ever bring back progressive governance to the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I won\u2019t return to the Democratic Party until the Bernie-Sanders, Elizabeth-Warren, Sherrod-Brown, FDR, wing of the Party is back in control, as it was from 1932 to 1980. If one of those three individuals \u2014 people who have been <i>consistent opponents<\/i> of Obama\u2019s \u2018trade\u2019 deals (which were actually <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/2015\/06\/the-two-contending-visions-of-world-government.html\"><span class=\"s2\">proposed transfers of democratic national sovereignty over to international-corporate dictatorship, a higher world government by the world\u2019s largest international corporations<\/span><\/a>) \u2014 takes over the Party in 2020, then I shall again be a Democrat; but, otherwise, one of those three should create a new \u201cProgressive Party\u201d on the ballot in all fifty states with that person\u2019s name on it as being the Presidential candidate, and that will be the end of the Democratic Party, just like Abraham Lincoln\u2019s quitting the Whig Party and virtually starting the progressive Republican Party in 1860 (which lasted until he was assassinated in 1865, after which the northern aristocracy took control of it and turned it quickly conservative) ended the once-dominant Whigs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Not only have the Clintons and Obama destroyed the Democratic Party by making it Republican-lite, but Hillary Clinton was actually <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/47-voted-war-russia\/\"><span class=\"s2\">the most dangerous major-Party Presidential nominee in American history \u2014 the only one whose policies were aimed straight at producing a nuclear war<\/span><\/a> \u2014 and that can\u2019t be forgiven, and won\u2019t be forgotten.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Either the Clinton-Obama, pro-aristocracy, Democratic Party ends, or the Democratic Party itself will end.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Every nation that has a Presidential instead of a parliamentary political system alternates rule between a pro-aristocracy party and an anti-aristocracy party; and we can\u2019t have <i>two<\/i> major parties both of which are pro-aristocracy. One of the two, in any authentic democracy, is <i>pro<\/i>-democracy. America needs to become an <i>authentic<\/i> democracy again. (We\u2019re now ruled by the aristocracy, an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/eric-zuesse\/jimmy-carter-is-correct-t_b_7922788.html\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201coligarchy\u201d<\/span><\/a>.) If it doesn\u2019t happen in 2020, then maybe it never will. But if Hillary had won, then the Democratic Party would surely soon thereafter be ended. Only by the dint of Donald Trump and lots of good luck will the Democratic Party be granted a reprieve: either to transform back to the FDR ideological model, or else to die. Her election would have meant certain death. (And not <i>only<\/i> for the Democratic Party.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Maybe yet again, there will be a Democratic Presidential nominee whose final ad before Election Day can be as progressive as was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vST61W4bGm8\"><span class=\"s2\">that of the Republican Presidential nominee, Donald Trump, the 2-minute ad that was released on November 6th<\/span><\/a>. If President Trump lives up to the values and vision with which he there closed his campaign, he will restore to the White House the legacy that was established by FDR \u2014 Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And what then will be left for the Democratic Party to do, after its having abandoned that legacy since at least 1992? If Trump lives up to that ad, then only a Presidential nominee who is even more progressive than that would stand any chance of winning. Perhaps it will be possible, but that ad looks remarkably like the best ones of Bernie Sanders, except with Donald Trump being shown in it and saying at its end \u201c\u2026 and I approved this message.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s certainly not a campaign ad that Hillary Clinton could have done. No way. But \u2018Democrats\u2019 voted for her. That will be a deep scar on the history of the Democratic Party, from which to recover will take decades \u2014 if ever \u2014 or else the Party itself will simply have to be replaced, like <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Whig_Party_(United_States)\"><span class=\"s2\">the Whigs<\/span><\/a> were when ending slavery was the country\u2019s main issue. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s6\">Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Theyre-Not-Even-Close-Democratic\/dp\/1880026090\/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1339027537&amp;sr=8-9\"><span class=\"s7\"><i>They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>,<\/i> and of<\/span><span class=\"s8\"> <i>\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B007Q1H4EG\"><span class=\"s7\"><i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org Here\u2019s a video where Carey Wedler explains in her own thoroughly truthful way in just four minutes, how and why Democratic Party voters for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party primaries did more than perhaps any other single political group of Americans to help make Donald Trump become America\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":279092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[115,30,96,698,59,1023,804,524,754,92,6257,523,49,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-279106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cover-up","11":"tag-hillary-clinton","12":"tag-military","13":"tag-nuclear","14":"tag-politics-2","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-syria","17":"tag-terrorism","18":"tag-trump","19":"tag-ukraine","20":"tag-usa-news","21":"tag-warfare","22":"tag-white-house","23":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}