I’ve been a lifelong Democrat. My mother, pictured above as proof (because I feel proof will be required) was the founder of the Democratic Women of Greater Aliquippa, the Pennsylvania steel town where I was born. My political heroes growing up were the Kennedys and Muhammad Ali. I’m an ex-steelworker and a former member of Local 1211 of the United Steelworkers of America. 

Back then, the perspective of people like my mother, which of course was passed down to me, was that the Democratic Party was the party of the people, just like the working-class men and women in our town. The Republican Party (cover your mouth when you say it) was the party of the rich. End of story. A lifelong Democratic I have been. So far.

But now I’m thinking that maybe I’ve just lived too long. 

Because at some point in the last 50 or so years, the Democratic Party, meaning the top-down functioning political organization that emanates from high offices in corridors of great power, has ceased to actually function as the party of the people.

I hope I’m not moving too fast for anyone here but with what we once thought of as the party of the people having long ago trapped those people in a never-ending hall of mirrors, I believe we’re running out of time to speak our truths. I’m worried about the future of, not just free speech, but specifically political speech. We all know how treacherous it has become to speak freely about the many touchy subjects that have taken over our politics. But I believe the window is rapidly closing on anyone’s ability to give honest input on most any of the political realities we face without being crushed for it. So before it’s too late, I’m going to shout out to the world what I consider to be an inarguable truth: The Democratic Party has abandoned the people of this country.  

It’s an argument many of us could make in our sleep. The political party so many of us have faithfully placed our hopes in for our entire lives certainly doesn’t care about the things that most Americans care about. The party doesn’t care about working class Democratic voters. After Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in 2016, the New York Times ran a story on how the Democrats were holding high level meetings discussing whether the party of the people should finally just abandon the working class altogether. 

So we know the Democratic Party can’t possibly care about the American people at large. I don’t believe the party cares about progress, not true progress anyway, the kind of progress that could improve the lives of the working-class Americans who used to form the party’s base. 

But we all know the American political system is broken, that it no longer functions on behalf of the citizens of this country. We know the whole system is in the hands of elites with no real interest or connection to the average citizen. So many of us have known all this for decades. But to understand why this is and what it means, you have to dissect and study the many pieces of that system, at least briefly, then put it all back together again and take it in as a whole. And there is no one more qualified to come to a true and accurate understanding of our broken political system than disappointed and angry lifelong Democrats. 

Because it’s all right there in front of us now. From the fixed primary in 2020 to the defeat of a party hack in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race. Everything we need to know is out in plain sight. The party has revealed itself. We can blame, or thank, Donald Trump for some of it. But, mostly, by way of its own blatant hypocrisy and lies, right now as never before, our own Democratic Party stands naked before us. And if we dare not look away now, we might actually find ourselves more unified than ever and thus more able to actually do something about it. 

I’m a believer that the world can be changed and that people like us, me, even, can still change it. If you’ve read my other pieces on this Substack site, you should understand why. But I’m not a professional journalist and I’m not someone working within the political system of this country. What I am is a lifelong Democratic voter. I’m a voice on the other end of the spectrum of all that is done by my party and government. And I want to speak because I know that none of it is being done on my behalf.

I think it’s painfully clear by now that we the people are going to have to figure this out for ourselves. The political class is not going to help us. They’re actually the ones who are perpetrating all this upon us. We’re going to have to come to a better understanding of what has happened to our government and, more specifically, as disgruntled Democratic voters, what has happened to our party.  

First let’s talk about what someone somewhere cleverly dubbed the Political Industrial Complex. He probably wasn’t the first, but credit where credit is due, a contributing editor to the New York Times, Elliot Ackerman, wrote a piece on the political industrial complex in September of 2020. Ackerman maybe too succinctly describes the PIC as including “Not only legions of campaign staffers, pollsters, consultants and other party functionaries, but also media.”

Apologies to Mr. Ackerman but I think there’s a lot more to this story so I’m going to flesh things out a little. I promise your patience will be rewarded. 

The PIC also includes the think tanks, lobbying firms, the non-profit non-government do-gooder organizations (NGOs), the foreign policy specialists, the national security and military consultants, the economic councils, private foundations, etc.

And add to it, of course, the revolving door that exists between all of that mostly off the public payroll political infrastructure and the actual elected officials in our government and their staffs, as well as the unelected bureaucratic millions in the Executive Branch’s multitude of federal agencies and departments. 

And let us never forget the money behind it all: the corporations and mega-rich individuals, Wall St., the banks, the big donors and their foundations. People cycle from working for these entities into government work all the time and bring with them to their jobs in our government whatever the political perspectives and goals are of those who employed them in the private sector. 

And then there’s the revolving door between all of that and the news media. People work for a candidate, or a party, make a name for themselves, then move on to work for a political consulting firm, and then find themselves on television and their stars rise from there. They sign with the right Hollywood talent agency and then it’s book deals, breakfast speaking engagements, and maybe even their own show on one of the cable networks.

Then, finally, arriving late and underdressed, we come to the actual parties themselves. It is not an overstatement to say that our two major political parties are among the most powerful organizations ever. The relationships higher ups in the party must cultivate with huge donors requires them to seamlessly fit in with some of the wealthiest, privileged, eccentric and out-of-touch individuals in the world.

The political parties and their many ancillary organizations are complete industries. To be a person so favored in life as to work high up in one of the two major American political parties, to walk the corridors of power in Washington and then, as needed, be able to seamlessly move into positions within the vast NGO ecosystems or the news media, is to enjoy an active fulfilling career with all the social and professional rewards needed to ensure a lifetime of privilege. 

To suggest that there would be a disconnect between this culture of political power in Washington, in all of its dazzling forms, and regular Americans and their real-world problems out in flyover country, is the most tragic of understatements. Our political system is largely controlled by the political system itself and those thriving within it and feeding upon it.

Once again, knowledge of any of this is not new. I don’t know of anyone who saw it more clearly or described it more perfectly than Joan Didion when she was hired by the New York Review of Books to cover the 1988 presidential election campaign between the Republican, George H.W. Bush, and the Democrat, Michael Dukakis. 

There was this thing that the Dukakis camp did that went like this. The candidate would get on the tarmac at whatever airport they were at and toss a baseball with a young staffer. They thought it made the candidate look relatable and genuine. The Washington press corps ate it up. Joan Didion, however, did not. And she also didn’t see the press that passed along these cloying pre-packaged moments to the public as being genuine either.

The piece she wrote about all this, Insider Baseball, is legendary. Not nearly as well known or talked about, however, as it should be. I don’t wonder why. Here is an excerpt. Remember, this was written over 30 years ago. 

When we talk about the process, then, we are talking, increasingly, not about “the democratic process,” or the general mechanism affording the citizens of a state a voice in its affairs, but the reverse: a mechanism seen as so specialized that access to it is correctly limited to its own professionals, to those who manage policy and those who report on it, to those who run the polls and those who quote them, to those who ask and those who answer the questions on the Sunday shows, to the media consultants, to the columnists, to the issues advisers, to those who give the off-the-record breakfasts and to those who attend them; to that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life.

The moment that finally broke me, what once and for all killed what little faith I had left in the modern Democratic Party, was Super Tuesday. Let me give you my perspective on Super Tuesday 2020, not as a professional political analyst or pundit, one of the handful of insiders Didion mentions above, but just as what I am, a lifelong Democratic voter. 

Goes like this. The two leading candidates to that point in the primary, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, two candidates with progressive ideas that brought hope and excitement to people like me that we might finally land someone in the White House who spoke to the needs and concerns of regular working and middle-class Americans, were leapfrogged over by literally the weakest and certainly the most uninspiring candidate in the field, the lifelong political trainwreck that is Joe Biden. It was accomplished by way of a back-room deal orchestrated by the very behind-the-scenes Democratic Party players I’m referring to in this piece. This skullduggery saw most of the other top candidates drop out of the race over the weekend prior to Super Tuesday and throw their support to the former vice-president. This was done in return for future political favors like the one that would see a small city Indiana mayor awarded the cabinet level federal government position of Secretary of Transportation in the Biden administration. 

And then, in the Democratic Party’s version of John McCain picking the achingly unqualified Sarah Palin to be his running mate in 2008, the doddering Biden would select possibly the weakest big-name candidate in the entire 2020 Democratic primary field. Senator Kamala Harris of California, who despite the backing of some of the most powerful interests in Democratic party politics, was someone who was exposed over and over again during her short and painful primary season run for the top job as the walking, rambling, inappropriately laughing personification of an empty pants suit. 

But then somehow, with a truly ancient candidate now sitting at the top of the ticket, the Democratic Party deciders would select Harris as his running mate and choose her to sit one very elderly heartbeat away from the presidency.  

Let’s just say Super Tuesday finished it for me. It instantly became apparent to me that the Democratic Party was more interested in preserving the status quo within its own ranks and protecting itself from the internal upheaval a President Bernie Sanders might create in the cloistered, neoliberal bubble that is the Democratic Party, than it was ever interested in doing anything of substance for the American people. 

At first, I struggled for a way to explain all this to myself and to others. I came up with the following. 

My Mostly Democratic Party Hospital Analogy.

Let’s use some other kind of pair of ‘competing’ organizations: hospitals. And let’s pick someplace far away. The lovely Monte Carlo, in the Principality of Monaco. Aren’t we all ready to be there? Let’s go.

Two hospitals and I’m just going to make up some names. Democratic Hospital of Monte Carlo and the Republican Hospital of Monaco. DEMs and REPUBs. So easy to remember..

Let’s say that these two hospitals long ago dropped any pretense of being health care systems available to the general population of resort and service workers of this fabulously wealthy Riviera enclave. Both hospitals are incredibly well funded by the affluent of Monaco and cater to that class of patients and access by regular folks to the top-notch healthcare they both provide is minimal.

Let’s also pretend that every four years there are internal elections that determine who the executives are at the top of each organization. But, as things always turn out, long established regimes hang onto power no matter the results of any particular election.

What that looks like is that the names are always familiar at the top of the system and all the support personnel stays the same, all the way down to the office staff. Everyone is well paid and happy and that’s just the way things have always been.

Then, one day, at the Democratic Hospital of Monte Carlo, a hospital that was, incidentally, founded by and for the workers of Monaco, a faction starts to take hold that wants to bring the focus of the hospital, at least to some degree, back to its original mission of providing more and better health care to the working classes of Monaco.

And so they run their candidates for c-suite positions from other offices in the hospital system. Their platform is basically to speak out, and rightly so, about the influence big money donors have in determining who receives the first-class healthcare that their hospital provides and to promise change.

Now here is the point. 

Everyone knows that should this new faction actually win the election at DEMs that its leaders would oust all those who currently hold power and positions there and replace the old guard with like-minded types who feel as they do that the mission of the hospital should be to provide care of equal quality to everyone who needs it.

This is a threat, of course, to more than just the current team of execs and support staff at DEMs. It’s a threat to the power and influence of the donors. After all, they’re paying for the hospital as it’s currently structured. But this is also a threat even to the status quo at the other hospital, the Republican Hospital of Monaco. Because if a more egalitarian faction should take over at DEMs it might pressure REPUBs to enact similar changes.

So I have a question. Who and what do you think the executives at DEMs would be more focused on: a) Making sure that the internal election threat to their hold on power and their well-paid positions at their own hospital is defeated? Or b) Do you think that while facing this internal challenge they would be more concerned with the everyday year-in-and-year-out business as usual of trying to out-compete their cross-town rival REPUBs?

That’s my analogy of what is and has been going on in the Democratic Party these last few election cycles. I’ve said they don’t really care as much about winning elections as they do about holding onto the reins of power in their own party and pushing back against whomever threatens their iron grip on the party itself. And just like in my hospital analogy, let’s not forget the role of the powerful donors, who are and have been paying for and getting exactly the political party they want. 

If you really think about this on a human level, and our entire political system is made up of real humans who really like where they are and what they do, you can understand how much more committed anyone so involved with the Democratic Party would be to hanging onto this massively powerful political machine—funded by corporations and defense contractors and Hollywood and Wall St and with all the accompanying perks of power—than they ever would be concerned about losing to a Republican candidate in some little presidential election cycle.

The Democratic Party is one of the most powerful organizations the world has ever known. At any one time it controls roughly half of the government of the most powerful country on the planet. It dictates domestic and foreign policy according to the whims of its donors. So much of what constitutes this one political party is unelected, sitting just slightly outside of the elective offices and thus beyond the control of the American people. Maybe on the government payroll, maybe just off of it. Sitting in between the elected officials and the donors who pay for them. This part of it, the DNC, the party infrastructure including all the friendly above mentioned extra-governmental pro-Dem groups, is one giant powerful incestuous and corrupt political monster. 

Now think of the reach of that power. Down into the state and local governments around the country. State houses and governors’ mansions. It’s very difficult to win an election as a Democrat without the party behind you. Everything that has a ‘D’ after its name ultimately bows to powers that exist far above it. 

Think of all the familiar names associated with the Democratic Party, the Obama administration, and to a waning degree, the Clinton people. Think of how powerful their voices are as enforcers of their brand of neo-liberal politics. You know who I’m talking about. Everyone from former White House chiefs of staff to the Pod Saves America crowd. 

It’s a political machine. That’s what we used to call it. Back in Beaver County, PA where I’m from, local politics was controlled by a powerful Democratic machine. My mother was a part of it. Last time I checked, you could find the many familiar names still there running the county. Grandchildren of those who were in power back in the 1960s. This is American politics.

If the Democrats would have lost the 2020 presidential election, they would just tango on. All of their infrastructure would have still been in place. Nothing is likely to unseat this level of entrenched power. The only possibility is a takeover from inside the party that’s carried on the wave of a populist voter uprising, similar to what Trump did to the Republican Party. Everything else will amount to nothing. Business as usual. Nothing will ever really change except incrementally and never truly delivering change for the American people who exist far outside the elite-run political process.

Nothing demonstrates any of this more clearly than what happened in the 2020 Democratic primary. The party orchestrated the leapfrogging of the two weakest candidates to the top of the ticket. Joe Biden is demented. The party didn’t care. Kamala Harris’s mercifully brief primary run was one of the most humiliating examples of an empty vessel politician being exposed as such under the glare and scrutiny of a national election process as I’ve ever seen. But the Democratic Party didn’t care. 

The Democrats certainly preferred that this ticket win the presidential election, but it wasn’t essential. Their primary goal was stopping either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren from ascending to leadership positions in their party. Sanders and Warren, certainly to varying degrees, were the only truly existential threat as far as the Democratic Party elite was concerned. Defeating this threat from within was the most pressing matter for the party and it would have been under great pressure from all of its major donors, Wall St., defense contractors, big pharma and energy, to do precisely that, first and foremost.

Losing control of the Democratic Party to a crowd that actually wanted to focus on helping the people while having it simultaneously pulled away from the control and influence of its mega-rich benefactors? That was simply never an option. So the Democratic Party decision makers orchestrated their Super Tuesday primary coup. 

Here’s the deal. When people have been abandoned, they know it, and they know it first, before anyone else. They know it first because they live it and feel it in real time. The Democratic Party and the affluent elites who control its platforms and emphasis over the last many decades have abandoned, region by region, demographic by demographic, the working people of this country. And the working people of this country know it.

They have been abandoned by the only political party that could possibly represent their economic interests. And they’ve been humiliated and scorned by those working within that party on their way out the door. The words that have become the standard to describe what we used to call regular Americans includes everything from Hillary’s ‘deplorables’ comment to the much more inflammatory language we see on Twitter every day. These people are never going to forget any of it or get over it and then happily agree or like or vote with those who have said these things about them.

All of this destruction, what has become a dangerously toxic political chasm in America, is because of what the Democratic Party has become.

As true Democrats, we need to understand and acknowledge that our own side has been taken over by a predatory class of political professionals whose sole purpose is to protect its own power and status. Right now, as it is, the people of this country have no political party representing their needs and desires in government.

I’ll say it again. I’ve been a Democrat my entire life. I’m a real McCoy. The Republicans are the Hatfields. They are what they are, and I’ve always opposed them. But what I want and need now is what most Americans have desperately needed for decades. We need a political party of our own that actually works on behalf of the people. We need a Democratic Party that cares about us. And as difficult as it may be, we need to admit to ourselves that, right now, that Democratic Party simply doesn’t exist.