A Progressive Alamedan

Various writings from a resident of Alameda regarding the political scene. The local perspective of local, state and national politics and a few other odds and ends of local concern. May not be particularly interesting to people outside of the Alameda area.

Friday, January 20, 2017

Countdown clocks considered harmful

Today I read that a countdown clock of how long we have to put up with President Trump has gotten very popular for people to put on their websites, share on social media, etc.

PLEASE NO.

I remember this kind of thing when George W. Bush was in his first term.  Everybody was so looking forward to the end of Bush's term and his replacement with somebody better that I would see bumper stickers, signs, and digital media heralding either Election Day 2004 or Inauguration Day 2005.

And then, Bush stayed for another term.



So please, let's not make any assumptions that Trump will be easy to topple in four years. No matter how much we want him gone, there are plenty of voters, corporations, 1%ers, and electoral college members who will be more than happy to sign him up for even more.  Especially once our new UnPrecident continues to "game" the system that got him elected in the first place.

In order to beat Trump, the Democrats have to do something very different from what they did in the 2015-2016 campaign.

Albert Einstein is generally credited with defining insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

And yet, there are forces — powerful forces, the predominant forces — in the Democratic Party who are hoping to do just that.  Just keep on with the game they have been playing, sucking up to big donors (the 1%, big pharma, big oil, etc.) and while they talk a good talk, there are so many voters who see through all the phoniness and choose the wise-cracking "Tony Stark" maverick they somehow identify with.

Imagine 2020, the Democratic Party proffering another candidate, a corporate-sponsored individual who speaks platitudes that sound great, while unashamedly behaving almost like a Republican at the same time; somebody as universally unpopular as Hillary Clinton was.  He or she wouldn't have a chance.

That's what is going to happen if the Democratic Party keeps telling itself lies about who it is.  From the leadership in the national (DNC) and state (like California Democratic Party) levels on down to the regional (like our county central committees) and grassroots activists like you and me.


Part of the change that we at the bottom can perform is to insist that the leadership in the Democratic Party be replaced in a big way.

At the national level, Keith Ellison is running for chair of the DNC. He's the candidate who will get rid of the system that has been failing us for years — even while we had a Democrat in the White House, the rest of the country went red in a big way.  How about checking out Keith?

In California, we delegates have the ability to choose the leader of our state's party. The front-runner is the old-model, big-money style candidate that we can't afford to keep having. Eric Bauman worked hard to defeat Proposition 61, which would have slashed prescription drug prices, after receiving $12,500 per month from Big Pharma.  That's why I'm strongly supporting Kimberly Ellis for the state chair. She's all about turning that upside-down.

We can keep going the way things have always been done in the Democratic Party, or we can choose to get active and change the paradigm.

The time until Trump leaves office depends on what we do about it. There is no countdown.

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