Years from now, at a great price in human life and suffering, the corona pandemic will have marked a potential decisive shift in the country because tens of millions of people will have seen that the country’s system and leadership have failed, over many decades, to protect the people.
Progressives have a golden opportunity to speak to the 30 to 50 million people who are now unemployed or under-employed and would be open to intensive, on-the-ground work to paint the picture of the failed system.
But, this moment will be missed, in its full opportunity, because of the weakness of a segment of the progressive movement, especially those of us who have defined ourselves as part of the movement behind Bernie Sanders.
Week after week since the pandemic erupted, while tens of thousands of people have been dying and millions are getting sick, and, now, tens of millions of people have lost (as of July 31st) enhanced unemployment benefits, thousands upon thousands of valuable organizing hours and energy were wasted on irrelevant party politics surrounding the Democratic Party convention.
Quick: without searching the Internet, what was in the 2016 Democratic Party platform? What were the headings or the main resolutions? No one can usually answer that question because party platforms are irrelevant. I was at the 2016 platform committee debate. I can remember a few main issues—especially, TPP because I was involved in the national opposition to defeat the odious TPP—but, as for the rest of the platform I, and I would wager 95 percent of the people who were actually delegates, could not tell you what was in it.
As for the rules tussling, I note that in 2016, when he was trailing in elected delegates near the end of the primary season, Bernie Sanders essentially said, “the superdelegates will have to decide who is the stronger candidate against Trump”. So, if we are being honest, let’s acknowledge that how one feels about superdelegates might have to do with one’s relative strength and power at any given moment among delegates elected in primaries and caucuses, not necessarily a high-minded opposition to “super delegates”.
Far more important: Millions of people, who could be drawn into the movement, don’t give a damn about party platforms, or rules fights, or conventions—all of which is of interest to a microscopic sliver of political activists. Millions of people are trying to keep the lights on or a roof over their heads, and, yet, a majority of Bernie Democratic Party delegates are focused on entirely meaningless platform committee meetings.
By playing the platform game, and the related fight over party rules, progressives have played right into the hands of the very “establishment” so many rage against—this is their arena and they have the votes. The bigger point: No president—no president—ever made a decision based on a party platform.
The platform debate, and debate over rules, is the purview of what I call “the meal ticket” activists—people who are angling for jobs, foundation money, some sort of illusory cult-like influence, who desperately want to be on the task forces or party committees, all entities that will have virtually no lasting influence—or people who simply want to rage about how unfairly they are being treated.
The Medicare For All platform debacle is just one example in a long list of missed opportunities and a lesson in the lack of strategic thinking inside the elite progressive movement. As I wrote recently in this piece, what a colossal waste of energy!!! It was obvious the votes were overwhelmingly against M4All…so, was the exercise simply to make headlines or feel superior, knowing you would not win?
Because…progressives could have chosen a much better, politically advantageous path that sidesteps the insider game in favor of a nationwide appeal to a desperate country. A bi-cameral COVID-19 pandemic bill has been introduced called the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act; it is sponsored by a significant group of House members, including rumored vice-presidential contender Karen Bass, and in the Senate, lo and behold, Bernie Sanders.
If passed, the bill would enroll millions of Americans into Medicare—any of the roughly 35 million unemployed who will lose their employer-based health care and have no other health coverage alternative, as well even currently insured people. The coverage would last until the “Secretary of Health and Human Services certifies that an FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccination is widely available to the public.”
Think about that: With one step, a huge percentage of the people would benefit for the first time from Medicare coverage. They would see great savings to their ravaged pocketbooks and experience ease-of-use in getting care. That experience could, then, turn into an almost unstoppable political force for implementing the program across the nation—maybe not tomorrow but within a very short time.
Politically, organizing to push the bill—community by community, rather than inside an opaque party process—is a winner. Joe Biden’s wing of the party would be in a much more difficult position arguing against a short-term, pandemic-tied, Medicare For All option: he, and the party, have made Donald Trump’s abject failure at managing the COVID-19 crisis a central part of the election campaign—a failure underscored by the threat to the health of the people, many of whom died or became unnecessarily significantly ill from the coronavirus because they could not afford to go to a doctor.
Even if the bill fails to pass given the certain opposition from Mitch McConnell, and a lack of support to date from Nancy Pelosi, progressives leading such a national campaign would leave in place a far more robust, long-lasting imprint among people about the benefits of Medicare For All.
A large share of the blame of this debacle sits with a consistent cadre of entrenched organizations and a small circle of folks who curry favor with donors and send out fundraising emails, which fan the anger of grassroots activists by hyping the fight against “the establishment”—even though their organizational track record is woeful, littered with ineptitude and empty sloganeering.
We only win when we fight based on organizing and mobilization. Does anyone think a single BLM activist asked whether s/he should mass in the streets based on the party platform or what Joe Biden thinks about BLM? You think a single person who was marching in the exciting uprising underway even knows what the party platform says, either on BLM, racial justice or anything? The answer is no.
And a side note: The BLM leaders are mostly unknown to most of the “meal-ticket” activists, virtually none of whom, including from the Sanders movement, were positioned to be a leader in the anti-racism uprisings because they were had no visibility among BLM and were too pre-occupied with party machinations while the streets were erupting in protest. That’s a verifiable fact.
If you hear a progressive leader say roughly, “we can do all this”, you can know one thing for sure: that person has no clue about strategy (look at his/her track record, not cultish devotion) nor the real struggles of people.
Most people today are struggling on multiple fronts: trying to keep themselves and their families safe and healthy, looking for a job and navigating an entirely different home life (especially, for those with kids)—leaving no more than a smidgen of time for activism. Only the “meal-ticket” activists see a world where people somehow can juggle the insanity of today and devote more energy to activism.
So, ignore the Democratic Party convention. Let it happen. Cast your votes virtually if you are a delegate (as I am) and, if you want, tune in on-line.
Then, organize, up to, and including, a general strike for:
The Beat The Pandemic and Aid The People $6.5 Trillion Stimulus Act: the only way to control the pandemic is to shut down the country for at least a month and order people into their homes (with heavy fines levied against those who think that their selfish needs are more important than the future of their community). We can do so by making sure people staying at home earn a paycheck, pay the bills and, then, come out at the other end without crushing debt.
Here are the specifics I’ve proposed—an outline which will highlight how inadequate and timid the Democratic Party has been:
- The Jayapal/Sanders House/Senate bills to pay every person up to $90,000/year until the unemployment rate drops below 7 percent for 3 consecutive months (one year cost: $1.3 trillion);
- Support State and Local governments: No public service job cuts. We lost 5 million government jobs in two months, with another 3 million on the chopping block in the coming year. Plus, any governor or legislature cutting public sector jobs is bolstering economic racism: a third of public employees are Black and Hispanic. (cost: $715 billion);
- Top up all public employee pension systems. Economic vitality depends on retired people—those retiring now or soon—having enough money to pay bills. (cost: $500 billion);
- “Pandemic Medicare For All”: millions have lost their employer-provided health care when they lost their jobs. Cover everyone under Medicare for the same period the Jayapal/Sanders paycheck support lasts (cost for one year: $600 billion);
- Cancel Student Debt (cost: $1.6 trillion);
- Rent/Mortgage Cancellation (cost: $200 billion);
- Infrastructure projects with climate change goals to create unionized public works jobs (cost: $1 trillion);
- Business loans—including a 20 percent cut in CEO total compensation packages for any company receiving loans (cost: $500 billion);
- Testing/Contact tracing (cost: $150 billion);
- Postal Service (cost: $25 billion)
The above confronts the Democratic Party’s insufficient proposals, including the most recent $3 trillion House package, which did not include the Jayapal proposal.
Free Vaccines For All: What better public position to champion on behalf of tens of millions of people than “Free COVID19 Vaccines” for all? It’s a populist issue: drug companies, having taken billions of dollars in government support to research COVID19 vaccines (not to mention the underwriting with $900 billion of public money for research for many drugs since the 1930s), must provide the drug for free and patent-free.
Safety and health of workers: we are confronting the worst safety and health crisis for workers in generations. Thousands of workers are getting sick and dying because the government just doesn’t care enough about their welfare. We should have a national stop-work demand until every worker, in every industry, can go off to a job and know that corporations have been forced to put aside the blind drive for profits in favor of creating as safe a workplace as possible. General strike!
Will we win the above? It’s a hard hill to climb—but BLM activists were not deterred by confronting centuries-old racism head-on in the streets and, overnight, that activist courage and energy has advanced concrete, real anti-racist efforts in a few weeks (e.g., cuts in police budgets, removal of racist symbols and a deep awakening) far more than the years of progressive carping and whining about the unfair “establishment”.
We would already be building what will be an obvious need to have a progressive counter to a Biden Administration’s actual policies (not the ones hinted at in a party platform or those promised in press releases or carefully rehearsed talking points).
It will actually enhance the ability to defeat, as Bernie Sanders as correctly said ever since he began his 2020 campaign, the most dangerous president in our lifetimes, and make the Republican party a rump presence—and, then, we can turn to shaping the Democratic Party.
Let’s act like organizers responding to peoples’ real needs.
