By Robert Parry<\/p>\n
The national Democratic Party and many liberals have bet heavily on the Russia-gate investigation as a way to oust President Trump from office and to catapult Democrats to victories this year and in 2018, but the gamble appears not to be paying off.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nA sign at the Women\u2019s March on Washington points out that the demonstration attracted a larger crowd than Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration. Jan. 21, 2017. (Photo: Chelsea Gilmour)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The Democrats\u2019 disappointing loss in a special election to fill a congressional seat in an affluent Atlanta suburb is just the latest indication that the strategy of demonizing Trump and blaming Russia for Hillary Clinton\u2019s 2016 defeat may not be the golden ticket that some Democrats had hoped.<\/p>\n
Though it\u2019s still early to draw conclusive lessons from Karen Handel\u2019s victory over Jon Ossoff \u2013 despite his raising $25 million \u2013 one lesson may be that a Middle America backlash is forming against the over-the-top quality of the Trump-accusations and the Russia-bashing, with Republicans rallying against the image of Official Washington\u2019s \u201cdeep state\u201d collaborating with Democrats and the mainstream news media to reverse a presidential election.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the Democrats may be digging a deeper hole for themselves in terms of reaching out to white working-class voters who abandoned the party in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to put Trump over the top in the Electoral College even though Clinton\u2019s landslide win in California gave her almost three million more votes nationwide.<\/p>\n
Clinton\u2019s popular-vote plurality and the #Resistance, which manifested itself in massive protests against Trump\u2019s presidency, gave hope to the Democrats that they didn\u2019t need to undertake a serious self-examination into why the party is in decline across the nation\u2019s heartland. Instead, they decided to stoke the hysteria over alleged Russian \u201cmeddling\u201d in the election as the short-cut to bring down Trump and his populist movement.<\/p>\n
A Party of Snobs?<\/strong><\/p>\n From conversations that I\u2019ve had with some Trump voters in recent weeks, I was struck by how they viewed the Democratic Party as snobbish, elitist and looking down its nose at \u201caverage Americans.\u201d And in conversations with some Clinton voters, I found confirmation for that view in the open disdain that the Clinton backers expressed toward the stupidity of anyone who voted for Trump. In other words, the Trump voters were not wrong to feel \u201cdissed.\u201d<\/p>\n Hillary Clinton at the Code 2017 conference on May 31, 2017.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It seems the Republicans \u2013 and Trump in particular \u2013 have done a better job in presenting themselves to these Middle Americans as respecting their opinions and representing their fears, even though the policies being pushed by Trump and the GOP still favor the rich and will do little good \u2013 and significant harm \u2013 to the middle and working classes.<\/p>\n By contrast, many of Hillary Clinton\u2019s domestic proposals might well have benefited average Americans but she alienated many of them by telling a group of her supporters that half of Trump\u2019s backers belonged in a \u201cbasket of deplorables.\u201d Although she later reduced the percentage, she had committed a cardinal political sin: she had put the liberal disdain for millions of Americans into words \u2013 and easily remembered words at that.<\/p>\n By insisting that Hillary Clinton be the Democratic nominee \u2013 after leftist populist Bernie Sanders was pushed aside \u2013 the party also ignored the fact that many Americans, including many Democrats, viewed Clinton as the perfectly imperfect candidate for an anti-Establishment year with many Americans still fuming over the Wall Street bailouts and amid the growing sense that the system was rigged for the well-connected and against the average guy or gal.<\/p>\n In the face of those sentiments, the Democrats nominated a candidate who personified how a relatively small number of lucky Americans can play the system and make tons of money while the masses have seen their dreams crushed and their bank accounts drained. And Clinton apparently still hasn\u2019t learned that lesson.<\/p>\n Citing Women\u2019s Rights<\/strong><\/p>\n Last month, when asked why she accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking to Goldman Sachs, Clinton rationalized her greed<\/a> as a women\u2019s rights issue, saying: \u201cyou know, men got paid for the speeches they made. I got paid for the speeches I made.\u201d<\/p>\n The Wall Street bull statue by Arturo Di Modica<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Her excuse captured much of what has gone wrong with the Democratic Party as it moved from its working-class roots and New Deal traditions to becoming a party that places \u201cidentity politics\u201d ahead of a duty to fight for the common men and women of America.<\/p>\n Demonstrating her political cluelessness, Clinton used the serious issue of women not getting fair treatment in the workplace to justify taking her turn at the Wall Street money trough, gobbling up in one half-hour speech what it would take many American families a decade to earn.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s a bit unfair to personalize the Democratic Party\u2019s problems, Hillary and Bill Clinton have come to represent how the party is viewed by many Americans. Instead of the FDR Democrats, we have the Davos Democrats, the Wall Street Democrats, the Hollywood Democrats, the Silicon Valley Democrats, and now increasingly the Military-Industrial Complex Democrats.<\/p>\n To many Americans struggling to make ends meet, the national Democrats seem committed to the interests of the worldwide elites: global trade, financialization of the economy, robotization of the workplace, and endless war against endless enemies.<\/p>\n Now, the national Democrats are clambering onto the bandwagon for a costly and dangerous New Cold War with nuclear-armed Russia. Indeed, it is hard to distinguish their foreign policy from that of neoconservatives, although these Democrats view themselves as liberal interventionists citing humanitarian impulses to justify the endless slaughter.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, a Washington Post\/ABC News poll found only 28 percent of Americans saying that the Democrats were \u201cin touch with the concerns of most people\u201d \u2013 an astounding result given the Democrats\u2019 long tradition as the party of the American working class and the party\u2019s post-Vietnam War reputation as favoring butter over guns.<\/p>\n Yet rather than rethink the recent policies, the Democrats prefer to fantasize about impeaching President Trump and continuing a blame-game about who \u2013 other than Hillary Clinton, her campaign and the Democratic National Committee \u2013 is responsible for Trump\u2019s election. Of course, it\u2019s the Russians, Russians, Russians!<\/p>\n A Problem\u2019s Deep Roots<\/strong><\/p>\n Without doubt, some of the party\u2019s problems have deep roots that correspond to the shrinking of the labor movement since the 1970s and the growing reliance on big-money donors to finance expensive television-ad-driven campaigns. Over the years, the Democrats also got pounded for being \u201cweak\u201d on national security.<\/p>\n President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea parade down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 1997. (White House photo)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Further, faced with Republican \u201cweaponization\u201d of attack ads in the 1980s, many old-time Democrats lost out to the Reagan Revolution, clearing the way for a new breed of Democrats who realized that they could compete for a slice of the big money by cultivating the emerging coastal elites: Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood and even elements of the National Security State.<\/p>\n By the 1990s, President Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council defined this New Democrat, politicians who reflected the interests of well-heeled coastal elites, especially on free trade; streamlined financial regulations; commitment to technology; and an activist foreign policy built around spreading \u201cliberal values\u201d across the globe.<\/p>\n Mixed in was a commitment to the rights of various identity groups, a worthy goal although this tolerance paradoxically contributed to a new form of prejudice among some liberals who came to view many white working-class people as fat, stupid and bigoted, society\u2019s \u201closers.\u201d<\/p>\n So, while President Clinton hobnobbed with the modern economy\u2019s \u201cwinners\u201d \u2013 with sleepovers in the Lincoln bedroom and parties in the Hamptons \u2013 much of Middle America felt neglected if not disdained. The \u201closers\u201d were left to rot in \u201cflyover America\u201d with towns and cities that had lost their manufacturing base and, with it, their vitality and even their purpose for existing.<\/p>\n Republican Fraud<\/strong><\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t as if the Republicans were offering anything better. True, they were more comfortable talking to these \u201cforgotten Americans\u201d \u2013 advocating \u201cgun rights\u201d and \u201ctraditional values\u201d and playing on white resentments over racial integration and civil rights \u2013 but, in office, the Republicans aggressively favored the interests of the rich, cutting their taxes and slashing regulations even more than the Democrats.<\/p>\n The run-down PIX Theatre sign reads \u201cVote Trump\u201d on Main Street in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. July 15, 2016. (Photo by Tony Webster Flickr)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Republicans paid lip service to the struggling blue-collar workers but control of GOP policies was left in the hands of corporations and their lobbyists.<\/p>\n Though the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American president, raised hopes that the nation might finally bind its deep racial wounds, it turned out to have a nearly opposite effect. Tea Party Republicans rallied many white working-class Americans to resist Obama and the hip urban future that he represented. They found an unlikely champion in real-estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump, who sensed how to tap into their fears and anger with his demagogic appeals and false populism.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the national Democrats were falling in love with data predicting that demographics would magically turn Republican red states blue. So the party blithely ignored the warning signs of a cataclysmic break with the Democrats\u2019 old-time base.<\/p>\n Despite all the data on opioid addiction and declining life expectancy among the white working class, Hillary Clinton was politically tone-deaf to the rumbles of discontent echoing across the Rust Belt. She assumed the traditionally Democratic white working-class precincts would stick with her and she tried to appeal to the \u201csecurity moms\u201d in typically Republican suburbs by touting her neoconservative foreign policy thinking. And she ran a relentlessly negative campaign against Trump while offering voters few positive reasons to vote for her.<\/p>\n Ignoring Reality<\/strong><\/p>\n When her stunning loss became clear on Election Night \u2013 as the crude and unqualified Trump pocketed the electoral votes of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin \u2013 the Democrats refused to recognize what the elections results were telling them, that they had lost touch with a still important voting bloc, working-class whites.<\/p>\n The crowd at President Trump\u2019s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Rather than face these facts, the national Democrats \u2013 led by President Obama and his intelligence chiefs \u2013 decided on a different approach, to seek to reverse the election by blaming the result on the Russians. Obama, his intelligence chiefs and a collaborative mainstream media insisted without presenting any real evidence that the Russians had hacked into Democratic emails and released them to the devastating advantage of Trump, as if the minor controversies from leaked emails of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton\u2019s campaign chairman John Podesta explained Trump\u2019s surprising victory.<\/p>\n As part of this strategy, any Trump link to Russia \u2013 no matter how inconsequential, whether from his businesses or through his advisers \u2013 became the focus of Woodward-and-Bernstein\/Watergate-style investigations. The obvious goal was to impeach Trump and ride the wave of Trump-hating enthusiasm to a Democratic political revival.<\/p>\n In other words, there was no reason to look in the mirror and rethink how the Democratic Party might begin rebuilding its relationships with the white working-class, just hold hearings featuring Obama\u2019s intelligence chieftains and leak damaging Russia-gate stuff to the media.<\/p>\n But the result of this strategy has been to deepen the Democratic Party\u2019s reliance on the elites, particularly the self-reverential mavens of the mainstream media and the denizens of the so-called \u201cdeep state.\u201d From my conversations with Trump voters, they \u201cget\u201d what\u2019s going on, how the powers-that-be are trying to negate the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump by reversing a presidential election carried out under the U.S. constitutional process.<\/p>\n A Letter from \u2018Deplorable\u2019 Land<\/strong><\/p>\n Some Trump supporters are even making this point publicly. Earlier this month, a \u201cproud deplorable\u201d named Kenton Woodhead from Brunswick, Ohio, wrote to The New York Times informing the \u201cnewspaper of record\u201d that he and other \u201cdeplorables\u201d were onto the scheme.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n