Following the election of Donald Trump and the massive under-performance of the Democratic Party, many people have been asking the question, “how did this happen?” Why have so many people walked away from the Democratic Party, a party which has long presented itself as the representative of and champion for the working class?
In a recent statement, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders lays out his critique of the Democratic Party, arguing that the Party has “abandoned the working class.” He correctly describes how the Democratic Party has presided over decades of working-class people getting shafted, from stagnant wages while productivity skyrockets, to income inequality, to the lack of basic social safety nets such as paid family and medical leave. He correctly points out how the Democratic Party has been complicit in the genocidal violence against the Palestinians.
He concludes his statement with questions:
“Will the big money interest and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.”
What Sanders is pessimistically asking is whether the people who run the Democratic Party will have a wake-up call and learn that they need to actively support the working class. He concludes “probably not.” In reality, the answer to that question is, “of course not!”
The reality that is becoming clearer to people every day is that the Democratic Party is and has always been fundamentally run by the same ruling class that oversees the Republican Party – the banks, the big corporations, the lobbyists, the weapons manufactures and more. Parties cannot serve two masters. They cannot be beholden to the capitalist elite and the working class at the same time.
The real question is, will we have our wake-up call?
It is one thing that nearly 12 million of us walked away from the Democratic Party last week. But will we now use this as a wake-up call to build up our own independent organizations and begin to stand on our own two feet?
