[The GOP’s off-the-wall positions should make it easy for the
Dems to defeat the out-of-touch Republicans. But not when the party is
dialing for the same corporate campaign cash as the GOP.]
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POLITICAL MONOCULTURES WEAKEN RESISTANCE TO THE GOP AND BIG BUSINESS
 
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Ralph Nader
July 23, 2023
Common Dreams
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_ The GOP’s off-the-wall positions should make it easy for the Dems
to defeat the out-of-touch Republicans. But not when the party is
dialing for the same corporate campaign cash as the GOP. _

U.S. President Joe Biden greets Jaime Harrison, chair of the
Democratic National Committee, during the DNC's summer meeting at the
Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor,
Maryland. on September 8, 2022, Alex Wong/Getty Images

 

In nature, monocultures are not so resilient to predators or other
ravages that exploit their inherent vulnerabilities. Farmers have
known this characteristic of monocultures forever. (Agribusiness
doesn’t care as much, given its short-term profit outlook.)

Democratic voters are at risk from the increasing political
monocultures that are weakening resistance to the GOP and Big Business
demands.

There are four such groups that are exhibiting similar monoculture
symptoms of deteriorating power.

1. The Democratic Party itself is led by pathetic sinecurists
controlling its formal national, state, and local party structures. At
the top is the PAC-greased Democratic National Committee (DNC) whose
chief strategists, over decades, have steadily written off half of the
nation (the Red states), and abandoned their parties there down the
line. When, for example, the party gave up on five mountain states in
the West that used to send Democrats to Congress, it started out with
a deficit of 10 in the Senate. It is hard to recover from such an
abdication. The party will spend far more on a Pennsylvania Senate
race than on Senate races in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and the
Dakotas combined. There are no local Democratic committees in 30 of 32
counties in Wyoming.

Today, the party raises record amounts of money and finds ways to set
records in blowing it. Sen. Chuck Schumer directed the spending of
over $200 million in two big-time losing Senate races against Mitch
McConnell (Ky.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.). The loser in South Carolina
was promoted to head the DNC where he has declared himself to be part
of the Democratic Party machine—a mere functionary instead of a
galvanizer.

The Democratic Party doesn’t have the energy possessed by the GOP
and right-wing groups that fight each other, but have managed to win
many national and statewide elections that they should have lost
badly. This is due to lassitude and blunders by the Dems in the
gerrymandering struggle and indenturing itself to corporate campaign
money that has blocked its former New Deal agenda of standing, in all
the states, for working families while the GOP banded with Wall
Street.

After avoidable election losses, the Dems don’t force the
responsible officials out and clean house with more vigorous people.
Recall the historic blunder in New York state in 2022—dominated by
the Democratic Party—that gave away four winnable congressional
seats, and failed to defeat the media-exposed charlatan George Santos
(R-N.Y.). Despite this dismal performance, the Democratic Party
retained its state chairperson.

A monoculture is resistant to outside criticism and advice, no matter
how credible and pragmatic (See: winningamerica.net
[[link removed]]). Its officials on Capitol Hill and
within the party apparatus rarely return calls if they don’t involve
campaign donors. Ruled at the top nationally by half a dozen control
freaks, it demands sycophancy from its leading organized allies, thus
turning them into monocultures.

2. The AFL-CIO and national labor unions unconditionally endorse
Democratic candidates long before Election Day. They make no action
demands, such as card checks, championing a $15 national minimum wage
(from the present $7.25 per hour), breaking statutory chains on
organizing unions, or getting serious about workplace health, safety,
and one-sided limitations on contractual workers’ rights.

The main headquarters of the AFL-CIO looks out at the White House, and
the AFL-CIO leadership gives Democratic presidents a blank check. A
GOP president has little to fear from organized labor that is
hamstrung by suffocating labor laws and global corporate
extortionists. It has been decades since vigorous and feisty labor
leaders were national figures.

3. The trial lawyers—an automatic honeypot for Democrats—who have
lost for years in their efforts to preserve the law of wrongful
injuries due to “tort law deform”—can’t even muster the will
to repeal any of the handcuffs that block injured people from full
access to the courts. They give the Dems a blank check and it responds
by not even making the insurance industry’s atrocity a major
campaign issue. The result is our constitutional right to have our day
in court and trial by jury continues to be undermined and obstructed.

The long-time head of the national trial lawyer association works hard
not to make news and declines to give visibility to the American
Museum of Tort Law (AMTL), which we founded, to educate people about
the legitimate use of tort law for the vast majority of wrongfully
injured people left by the wayside. ATML’s exhibits help mobilize
citizens and educate lawmakers about the importance of tort law, a
pillar of our democracy. (See: tortmuseum.org
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4. Then there are some national citizen groups that used to challenge
in court sweetheart settlements by plaintiffs’ attorneys, used to
take Democratic politicians to task publicly, and used to expose some
labor union corruption, which resulted in reforms. No more. Many
national groups are willing to accommodate the corporate-infested
Democratic Party and few are willing to challenge the smug,
scapegoating of progressive Third Parties that historically were first
to champion fundamental reforms in our country.

The Democratic Party should be landsliding the most corrupt, vicious,
bigoted, chronically lying, voter suppressing, anti-labor,
anti-consumer, and anti-environment GOP since its creation in 1854.
The GOP’s off-the-wall positions against children’s well-being,
women’s rights, and the willful aiding of massive tax evasions by
the corporate super-rich and by starving the IRS’ enforcement budget
should make it easy for the Dems to defeat the out-of-touch
Republicans. But not when the party is dialing for the same corporate
campaign cash as the GOP.

Unfortunately, mutually reinforcing monocultures produce an inability
to expand serious action agendas to wage peace over military empire,
to support communities over avaricious corporations, and climate
protection over Chevron, ExxonMobil
[[link removed]], et al. Further, the
Democratic Party stubbornly refuses to look itself in the mirror to
renew and reinvent itself in the light of the visible onrushing
omnicides confronting the nation and the world.

Instead, in 2022, it celebrated its big losses to the mad dog
Republicans because those losses were less than some polls predicted.

It is not enough that the Democratic Party tells its duopoly-encircled
critics to shut up and get in line saying, “Don’t you realize how
terrible the Republicans are?” Now Democratic Party leaders want no
primary debates by Democratic presidential candidates. They want to
leave the stage in the exclusive possession of President Joe Biden.
The contentious GOP must be laughing about the ways the Dems suppress
their own vote by spearheading a dull, scripted coronation.

Loyal critics of your immolating Democratic Party, emerge from your
lairs and speak up. You have nothing to lose but more election defeats
on the horizon in 2024.

_RALPH NADER is a consumer advocate and the author of "The Seventeen
Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future" (2012). His new book
is, "Wrecking America: How Trump's Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All"
(2020, co-authored with Mark Green)._

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