Ship of Fools: What Trump Teaches

As I write, the pressing question for many is whom to name as the next DNC Chair: Howard Dean or Keith Ellison. Who the hell cares? If our idea of organizing is to reform the Democratic Party--get the right guy or gal in charge--we will have learned nothing. The Democratic Party is a counter-revolutionary center-right capitalist party, and the DNC Chair is an employee of the donors. The problems we are facing, and the solutions we need to fight for, are way more radical than anything the Democratic Party will ever consider. If we haven't learned this, we've learned nothing.

Even just considering electoral politics in the most basic democratic terms, we need to fight for the elimination of the electoral college, a transparent and trustworthy voting system, some form of Instant Runoff Voting, an end to voter caging and suppression, public financing, and access of third parties to debates, the media, and ballots in all states. Is the Democratic Party going to fight for any of that?

Did nobody notice that Trump, for whom only 27% of the eligible electorate voted, actually lost the popular vote by more than 500,000 , and maybe more than two million , votes? By the only salient democratic measure of the people's will, Hillary Clinton won the election. So how is the country all racist and/or sexist? If the Electoral College didn't exist, would any of Hillary's supporters be excoriating the 2016 voting electorate for its racism and misogyny, or would they be congratulating that electorate--the very same electorate with the very same result--for its embrace of diversity? White Supremacy didn't defeat Hillary; the Electoral College did.

Wouldn't it make more sense for Hillary supporters, instead of complaining about the imputed racist and/or misogynist attitudes of those who didn't vote for her, to champion the cause of the majority who did, and focus on agitating for the reforms that are needed to make our electoral system actually democratic?

This is not revolutionary, but simple democratic, politics, but it implies the need for a difficult fight for serious changes. Does anyone think the Democratic Party, which so worships the system that it respectfully accepted having a couple of presidential elections stolen from it, is up for even that?

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