Tony Brasunas

Beyond the media spin, the four reasons for this defeat.

As the aphorism goes, if we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. While the corporate media continues to peddle hysteria, the most important thing right now is to rationally understand why Clinton and the Democrats lost this eminently winnable 2016 race for the White House.

Having taken some time to look back over the past six months, I list below what I believe are the four main underlying reasons for this defeat. As it turns out, none of the reasons is particularly complicated, but each will require consideration and systemic change by the party over the next two years.

1. The DNC subverted democracy. This was an anti-establishment year in politics, and there was an anti-establishment candidate running in both major parties. Trump was (barely) allowed to win the primary on the Republican side. On the Democratic side, despite Bernie’s obvious strength and the clear preference of the grassroots, the primary was rigged to put the less popular, establishment candidate forward. It was a colossal risk to take, but the party (more…)

Democracy is not an exact science. There are countless things one might wish to say with a vote, but a single vote for one candidate or another communicates with little precision. In 2016, this wild presidential election, given everything we’ve seen from leaks to gropes to voting purges to visiting Popes, examining what the candidates have done and what they verbally stand for is about all we can do in determining what our one vote will say.

To many voters, given the chicanery and the poor choices, the election is an illegitimate exercise at this point. More on that in a minute.

For now, since by all accounts the election will go forward on Tuesday, let’s consider what a vote for each candidate says to the ruling establishment and our representatives. Since there isn’t a perfect candidate for most of us, our vote says in essence what we’re OK with, what we can tolerate:

• A vote for Donald Trump says: I’m OK with racism, homophobia, and religious scapegoating, with bullying, sexism, and mocking the political system, with global corporate rule, and ignoring climate change, and with voting for a candidate who doesn’t have elective political experience, so long as the candidate has a strong chance of winning, isn’t Hillary Clinton, and is from the nominally conservative major party.

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Ralph Nader helped Al Gore win.

Calling progressives ‘spoilers’ not only gets history wrong but hampers future progressive campaigns.

Ralph Nader ran as the Green Party nominee in the 2000 presidential election, and while some claim that he hurt the campaign of Democrat Al Gore, an honest analysis shows that Nader’s campaign was in fact a primary reason that Gore won that election.

Here in 2016, with a wild and wildly consequential election winding to a close, it’s important to understand accurately the role Nader played in 2000 as well as to comprehend the role progressive candidates in general play in national elections.

To begin, Gore won the popular election in 2000. This isn’t contested. He received nearly a million more votes nationwide than did George W. Bush. It was clear that while the election was close, Gore was the nation’s popular choice for president.

No candidate since the 1800s has won the popular vote without also winning the electoral college, and Gore was winning the electoral college count, too.

But then, as thousands of Democrat-leaning votes were slowly being counted in Florida, the Supreme Court intervened and issued a bizarre and unconstitutional order — the least defensible decision in Supreme Court history, according to many legal scholars — to halt the vote count. This abortion of democracy took Florida’s electoral votes from Gore and made George W. Bush the next president.

Why the Democratic Party didn’t mount a more serious legal challenge to this fiasco in Florida is a true scandal, and movies have been made about it. But for whatever reason, they didn’t. They let the election slip away. It’s now history. (more…)