Thursday Radioactivity 11 2 17
Welcome. I’m Rob Lorei. Why did the Democratic Party lose so many races last year? —From governor’s races to Senate to the House to the presidency—the Democrats were trounced. This morning in Washington DC Action for a Progressive Future and the Progressive Democrats of America are issuing an “autopsy” (https://democraticautopsy.org/) of where they think the party has gone wrong. We’re going to talk about the autopsy and the future of the Democratic Party with Richard Eskow.
Eskow is senior advisor, for health and economic justice, for Social Security Works and is the host of The Zero Hour on Free Speech TV. He recently wrote the piece “Why ‘Centrists’ Will Sink the Democrats, If They Haven’t Already” at OurFuture.org.
Eskow has also written about a new study which suggests that Democratic voters- especially young Democrats want the party to move in a more progressive direction:
https://ourfuture.org/20171030/poll-dems-want-to-ditch-their-leaders-and-move-left-theyre-right?utm_source=progressive_breakfast&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pbreak
In a new article in the Nation Ma”What Killed the Democratic Party?” in The Nation, William Greider writes: “The Democratic Party lost just about everything in 2016, but so far it has offered only evasive regrets and mild apologies. Instead of acknowledging gross failure and astounding errors, the party’s leaders and campaign professionals wallowed in self-pity and righteous indignation. The true villains, they insisted, were the wily Russians and the odious Donald Trump, who together intruded on the sanctity of American democracy and tampered with the election results. Official investigations are now under way.
“While the country awaits the verdict, a new and quite provocative critique has emerged from a group of left-leaning activists: They blame the Democratic Party itself for its epic defeat. Their 34-page ‘Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis’ reads more like a cold-eyed indictment than a postmortem report. It’s an unemotional dissection of why the Democrats failed so miserably, and it warns that the party must change profoundly or else remain a loser.”
