Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) bent the knee, officially endorsing Joe Biden for president. Now Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have followed suit. Thus marks the end of all possible opposition to the Swamp in the Democratic Party for 2020; the DNC rules the roost. Its accomplishment in service to the political establishment is indeed remarkable. These Swamp apparatchiks managed to successfully navigate their way through an overcrowded presidential primary season conducted amid a party grassroots clamoring for change. By fanning the flames of a succession of Doomsday scenarios involving President Trump – Russia election manipulation, Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and the impeachment imbroglio over the Ukraine chief among them – Dem bigwigs actually got the myriad voices in their rank and file crying for a new direction to coalesce around an aged politician who epitomizes the entrenched D.C. royalty.
Captured Rebels on Parade
With Trump having led an outsider hijacking of a moribund Republican Party, the ascension of Joe Biden as presumptive nominee now decidedly labels the Democrats as the party of the status quo. Without a doubt there is still many a RINO clamoring around the Capitol pastures, but these ossified incumbents fully realize that they are not the driving force in their party today. In contrast, Democrat establishment figures have retained firm control over their tribe, persuasively flexing their power by foisting one of the most flawed and mediocre presidential candidates in modern American history upon their own hapless voting bloc.
“I’ve got news for the Republican establishment. I’ve got news for the Democratic establishment. They can’t stop us,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) tweeted as recently as Feb. 21. “The way the Democratic Party has been run for decades has not worked. We need a total transformation,” an even more feisty Sanders insisted in 2017 after Trump entered the White House.
“We need to open up the party to working people, to young people and make it crystal clear that the Democratic Party is going to take on Wall Street, it’s going to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, it’s going to take on corporate America that is shutting down plants in this country and moving our jobs abroad,” Sanders sternly vowed at the time.
“Our Democratic Party, unfortunately is not the party that is of, by and for the people,” a belligerent Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) asserted at the Dem debate in Atlanta in November. “I want to rebuild our Democratic Party, take it out of the hands of the foreign policy establishment in Washington, and truly put it in the hands of the people of this country.”
Neither of these supposedly determined revolutionaries overthrew the blue monarchy. What’s worse, they refused to stand by their guns to at least leave themselves capable of saying they fought the good fight. Not long after Rep. Gabbard ended her campaign, she did a complete 180 and endorsed Biden. As Liberty Nation’s Kelli Ballard recently reported, so did Sen. Sanders. The message was clear: To oppose the DNC dynamo that both had loudly painted as being inimical to the nation is not only unfeasible, but career-shattering.
“Today, I am asking all Americans, I’m asking every Democrat, I’m asking every Independent, I’m asking a lot of Republicans, to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse – to make certain that we defeat somebody who I believe – and I’m speaking just for myself now – is the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country,” Sanders weakly warbled at a livestream hosted by Biden.
The same dark specter of a Trump re-election that was used to crush Bernie after he rose to the top in early primary voting was now being offered up by the self-declared democratic socialist himself as justification for getting behind a DC careerist who represents everything about the old style of politics that he vowed to destroy.
“I’m confident that [Biden] will lead our country guided by the spirit of aloha — respect and compassion — and thus help heal the divisiveness that has been tearing our country apart,” a thoroughly cowed Gabbard proclaimed in backing the former vice president. She went from painting the Dem establishment as warmongers with blood on their hands to loving hearts wreathed in flowers without blinking an eye. How can she ever hope to be trusted by any portion of the American people moving forward?
Playing an Old Game
And so the question must be asked. All that blue outsider noise, did it ever amount to anything? It’s interesting to wonder whether there were well-connected Dems who realized all along that the answer was no.
It’s apparent now that the DNC adopted a strategy of using the long preliminary Dem presidential primary process more as a ventilator of progressive anti-establishment feeling rather than an accumulator. Radicals posing as journalists such as Jorge Ramos, Rachel Maddow, and Don Lemon were trotted out as debate moderators to safely channel any true opposition to the Old Guard into the emotional ether. There it could rise and then dissipate.
For while it is true that the party today is more leftist than ever, those who rule over it remain committed to the corporate-donor Uniparty model that dominated American politics from 1988-2016. A core feature of that model was paying lip service to red-meat issues for the base, then turning to insider baseball as usual upon being elected and assuming office. Americans of all political persuasions have had their fill of this and then some. It quite simply should not be a workable game plan in 2020. Yet establishment Dems apparently counted on being able to steer the volatile emotions of the party’s voting base their way by playing on a bigger fear than the politics of graft and stagnation. Sadly, they have been proven right.
In their fever to rid themselves of the Trump phantasm, Democrat voters have chosen to vote for a man and a ruling establishment that 30+ years of bitter experience has shown with crystal clarity care not a whit for them. Why? Simply to make themselves feel emotionally pleased for “resisting” their great caricature of evil. It’s the kind of patent Swamp manipulation that Republican voters had hoped they’d vanquished forever in 2016. Unfortunately for the country at large, the Dem base has breathed fresh life into this squalid old monster as we head toward November.
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Read more from Joe Schaeffer.
For home study students and young people, Liberty Nation recommends…
All About Democrats
High School: The Democratic Party: From Jefferson to Today
Middle School: The Democratic Party: Origins, Policies, and People
Elementary School: The Democratic Party: What Is It?
All About Primaries
High School: The Primary and Caucus Process Explained
Middle School: The Primary and Caucus Process
Elementary School: Primaries and Caucuses: How Do They Work?
