No More Nipple and Other Thoughts
It is time to play hardball with the Democratic Party
It was Franklin D. Roosevelt who as president shifted the Democratic Party left, a repositioning that made the Dems the party of labor and working folk, as well as European immigrants. FDR’s shift was a response to growing socialist and anarchist movements, but it was solid, if not sincere.
Thirty-years later, President John F. Kennedy started to expand the base of the party by championing Black American civil rights. Granted, JFK’s relationship with the Civil Rights Movement was halting and complex, but it was a relationship and the sowing of some seeds of change.
After JFK’s assassination, new President Lyndon B. Johnson took a strong stand for civil rights, pushing through the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and starting the Great Society, a campaign of social programs aimed at uplifting America’s most marginalized. LBJ’s actions helped increase the party’s base to include Latino Americans and women. Increased attention paid to the needs and wants of People of Color and women led to other out groups – LGBTQ people, Native Americans, Asian Americans, the disabled, youth - looking at the Democratic Party as home.
The party’s status as champion of the under-served and underrepresented was never firm, despite what its critics maintain. LBJ’s adoption of civil rights as an issue alienated Southern Democrats, who first formed a splinter group of Dixiecrats within the party and later abandoned the Dems for the GOP, decrying the Democrats in terms analogous to “politically correct” and “woke.”
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, conservative Democratic rebellion against the party’s rising left led to two historic election defeats by Richard Nixon. As one of the party’s biggest financial backers, labor unions, many now cozy with the bosses, refused to support the Democratic left’s agenda including any worker-oriented measures that would threaten their relationship with management. And on the War on Southeast Asia, the unions tended to be hawks.
Also troubling to conservative and establishment Democrats was the rise of women and People of Color within the party and the growing strength of Robert Kennedy, Sr. (who was soon assassinated). After the defection of the Dixiecrats, resistance to great inclusion in the party was gussied up with “concerns” about leadership style, radicalism, ability, maturity, experience, pace of change, and the old bugaboo, alienating the mainstream. Still, the out groups flocked to the party, expanding their power and representation within.
Into the mid-Seventies: The out groups were making numerical gains as Democrats, increasing their presence in the party and getting elected to public office as Democrats. Still, conservative party members had a firm hold on leadership and a solid relationship with party financiers, including the unions. The establishment – largely through the Democratic old guard and big city political machines – dictated public party priorities, which shifted election to election and throughout an election season. It is a pattern party-watchers are very familiar with:
Welcome to primary time where nearly every Democratic candidate for whatever office is pro-civil rights, pro-women’s rights, pro-labor, anti-war, pro-safety net, pro-human rights, and willingness to back Gay Rights, environmentalism, and so on. From leftist Dems such as Bella Abzug and Ronald Dellums to mainstream middle-of-the-roaders to rise to the top of the party electorally means pleasing the party’s base, thus the championing of people-oriented policies. Problem is only two camps are sincere about where they stand: The Democratic left and conservative Dems who are outspoken in their rejection of the left.
The primaries happen and, while Berkeley and Cambridge elect lefty Dems and Mississippi and Florida see conservative Dem wins, the bulk of Dem primary victories go to the murky middle. Once in the general election many in the murk abandon their public support for “left issues” and wrench themselves right…and if they win, they stay right.
Come next election, the Democratic Party and its candidates point to their positions of power and tell us, “To help you, we must maintain if not increase our numbers. To do that, we need both your votes and your money. Please give them to us now!” – this regardless of how much progress they’ve made on the issues that they initially ran on (and will run on again in the next primary season).
Now, I am not a cynic. I know that despite the Democratic Party’s reluctance to fully champion policy that helps most people, many elected Democrats have been successful advancing things like women’s and gay rights, aid to the poor, environmental protections, and strengthening the social safety net. That’s great, but these successes were not initiated by the party establishment. They came about thanks to heavy pressure from outside the party – from the people – and actions by receptive elected Democrats, mostly from the left.
Seeing this success and the popularity of these successes, the party establishment carefully embraces the fruits of activism, while conservative Democrats work with Republicans to moderate our successes if not roll them back. Big money from corporate backers who, as a rule, play both sides, is a powerful counter to the voting numbers that support the left Democratic agenda. This is what helps get us conservative Democrats like Bill Clinton, a Democratic Party remaking itself as GOP-lite, and the last forty-some years of conservative to centrist Democratic rule.
You’d think that lefties and left Dems experiencing betrayal after betrayal would bolt the party, but for what? Fringe parties like Peace & Freedom? Embarrassing failures like the Greens? Quixotic campaigns by Ralph Nader and Cornell West? No, they stick with the party knowing that in a tightly controlled two-party system, the Democrats are the only viable option, something independent socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders knows to be true.
And Bernie is right. Though corrupt and compromised, the Democratic Party is the only path we have for electoral and legislative success, at least within the White House, state houses, city halls, and our legislatures. Despite heavy corporate influence, left Dems still maintain impressive and consequential numbers within the party. Our issues and the urgency behind them are far more popular with the general public than the safe, go-it-slow, half-measures of party moderates. Very often, we are the margin that make electoral victories happen, especially in the primaries, but that’s not all…
The Democratic Party relies on small donors, people like you and me who give at least $200 to individual candidates. Many of these donors are people from the left who are far more likely to send Democrats money (and votes) than casual voters and independent centrists that the establishment constantly elevates. In 2020, Democratic candidates for Senate got 40% of their money from small donors. While Democratic House candidates took in only 19% of their money from small donors, Joe Biden received 39% from the grassroots. See Open Secrets for a more current, detailed breakdown.
(Note that thanks to Trump and the MAGA movement, Republicans are doing very well with small right-wing donors, people who didn’t feel completely at home with the GOP until the Trump take over. In 2020, GOP House candidates and Donald Trump did better small donor numbers than Democrats.)
Even at twenty-percent, those Democratic small donor dollars are not insignificant, and that is especially true of the 40%. Seriously, subtract 40% of your income and tell me where you stand? Perhaps literally outside in the cold. Take a 20% hit and I bet that doesn’t feel much better. And even when you halve those numbers – assuming that half comes from unaffiliated lefties and left Dems – the money still matters.
“Money is the mother milk of politics” might be a cliché but it is true. Our system, court decisions, and our campaign finance laws (or lack thereof) make money a central part of the electoral system. It is why elected officials of both parties are constantly fundraising. It is why you and I get endless emails and texts from the Democratic Party and nationally-know Democrats begging us for money. These aren’t casual requests: As compromised by billionaire and corporate money as the party is, Democrats need our cash. That need gives us leverage. That need gives us power.
Given the near lack of an organized political response by Democrats to the Trump administration, especially Elon Musk’s asinine tantrum of destruction, it is time to say No More Nipple to the Democratic Party and most Democrats, especially those following Dem has-been James Carville’s absurdly dangerous advice that Dem do nothing in response to Trump (seriously, do nothing while Trump, Musk, and the billionaires not only destroy Social Security but steal what we’ve put into the system for themselves?).
I don’t care if Democrats are “shell shocked.” Time to wake the fuck up. I don’t want to hear that they are concerned about blow back when what we are seeing Trump et al doing is the ultimate blow back to everything we gained from FDR to LBJ. I don’t accept that they are frightened of MAGA. We elect them to face opposition without folding to fear. And, while I think that all those things apply to Democrats, given their official response and unofficial protests (save Rep. Al Green’s), I think that the people they are most frightened of are the billionaires.
For sure, when it comes to money, the billionaires are powerful. They can and have flooded the electoral system with cash, cash that has many strings attached to it. Right now, Elon Musk, through several PACs, has put at least $5 million behind right-wing candidates for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. He will spend more. Yes, Musk’s money will buy some votes, but that does not make him all-powerful. As corrupt as our system is, elections are still decided by votes and each voter gets one vote. When we combine our votes, we have an edge over the billionaires, who in 2023 numbered 735 (there are also 22 millionaires in the US). Back our numerical voting power with the 40% of our money that sits in Democratic coffers and our importance increases.
Rarely have we leveraged our power over the Democratic Party. Rather, we are in the habit of standing by while we get played to and then betrayed. We “hold our noses” and vote for the “lesser of two evils” because – rightly so, as we see with Trump – the alternative is far worse than Democratic compromise.
Unfortunately, right now we are not in a “lesser of two evils” moment. We are in a place where we – including Democrats – must stand up and fight, get a lot of dirt on us, and beat these bastards back. Trump, Musk, etc. are treating the United States as a hedge fund does a new acquisition. They are gutting it and will soon try to sell off as much as they can. The dividends from this tear down will be theirs’ only, given to them through massive tax cuts. None of this is a secret. They are doing this out in the open. The “lesser of two evils” here is doing nothing and doing nothing means we are screwed big time and for a long, long time.
Framed this way: Withholding financial support for a Democratic Party and Dem elected officials who are “standing silently by” or engaging in the feeblest “acts of resistance” hurts no one. They aren’t using our money to fight for us, so they should not be given our money…and they must be told why. The proper reply to a fund-raising appeal is:
“Sorry, no more money until you take an active political stand against Trump and Musk and start playing serious hardball. Yes, I understand that Democrats are fighting Trump and Musk in the courts, but that isn’t enough, especially since both men have long proven that they don’t care what the courts or the law says. You need to do more. You need to take some uncomfortable risks. Do so and you will get our votes and our money. Refusal to do so and, well, we will know that we cannot rely on you and will deal with the disaster you are ushering in with your inaction.”
In other words: No More Nipple.