Seven Stories Press just released Ted Ralls new book,Political Suicide: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party.Rall is a graphic novelist, a syndicated columnist and the author of many books of art and prose, including biographies of Edward Snowden, Bernie Sanders and Pope Francis. Youve probably seen his political cartoons, which are often published in urban weeklies.
Political Suicide uses the graphic novel form to trace the history of the Democratic Partys rightward movement over the last few decades, and how its leadership has worked to suppress the partys progressive wing.
Ted & I talked on June 27thfor my podcast, Voice for Nature & Peace.You can listen to the full conversation here. What follows are two extended excerpts, edited for clarity.
Kollibri:Theres often been a discussion about the Democrats: How comethey dont win as much as they should? How come people like Trump are able to win? It often comes down to this argument of, Is it incompetence or is it corruption? And your book comes down pretty solidly on the side of corruption.
Ted:Yes. The question is: Is it a plan? Is it a conspiracy or is it a system? I think its more a system that ends up creating systemic corruption. Thats my conclusion. Obviously, its impossible toknowwithout being a fly on the wall in the room where it happened. But, since were not, you kind of have to draw the conclusion that these are people who know what theyre doing, but they dont know why.
I think they sort of have articles of religious faith within the DNC. For example, the whole centrist/triangulation thing. You know: If you go too far to the left you just cant win. But theres no real data to support that it. It may be true but [they need to] prove it. They havent been winning much with their current approach. This is not a party that sweeps a lot of elections.
There are more registered Democrats than registered Republicans. So by definition, if everybody votes in roughly equal numbers, Democrats should win most of the time. But they dont, so obviously whats happening is that Democrats are less motivated to vote than Republicans. So the question is, Why is that?
Are people who are left of center intrinsically more apathetic of lazier or less likely to vote when its drizzling on a cold day in November? Or, are they just simply less excited about their candidates and feel that less is at stake. We can argue about this, but obviously you know where I come down on this point: I think theyre just less excited.
You know that, for example, if Joe Biden is elected, youre not going to have an exciting new policy agenda thats really going to thrill us. Where, if say, Bernie Sanders or even Elizabeth Warren had been [nominated], youd know there would be a possibility that some exciting policies would be at least proposed and fought for, if not necessarily enacted.
Kollibri:It seems to me that with Biden, this is the toughest case theyve made for themselves in years that theyre the lesser of the two evils.
Ted:Yes. No doubt. Whats funny about this is that Biden is asking, essentially, for a blank check. Its not very likely that hell even be alive in four years. So, we dont even really know who the president will be because itll be the vice president. But we dont know who his vice presidential pick is. Yet were being asked to support this future, unknown president.
Also, the country effectively will be run by the cabinet and a shadow cabinet of DNC power-brokers. And we dont know who any of those people are either. Literally, its, Vote for this unknown cabal. All we can tell you is that theyre not Donald Trump. We will also tell you that on all the key issues that progressives currently care aboutwhether its defunding the police: Biden says hes against that; the Green New Deal: Biden says hes against that too, cant afford it; or Medicare-For-All: Biden says hes against that, too; student-loan forgiveness: on that, Biden has been downright Scrooge-like, which is especially weird. Its like the COVID-19 pandemic hasnt changed his thinking on anything. Youd think that with the economy in the toilet, youd say, Well, its too much to ask for a country with at least 25% unemployment to pay back their student loans. Or maybe its a lot to ask people in the age of COVID to go work for less than $15 an hour. Or maybe Medicare-For-All isnt even as much as we need because people are literally not going to the doctor because people feel like they cant afford it, and the pandemic shows the insanity of that.
But he hasnt changed any of it
I was thinking about framing. The sales pitch for each candidate: we all know it. Hillarys sales pitch was, I have an awesome resume, Im really experienced, Im very qualified. Donald Trumps sales pitch was, America has become a shit-hole country. Our infrastructure is falling apart. The streets of our Midwestern Rust Belt cities are crumbling. I will make this country the way it looked in the 1950s during the post-War expansion, and also, incidentally, white males will be back in charge. It will look like the 1950s again. We understand the sales pitch: Make America great again.
But with Biden, the sales pitch is: A return to normalcy. Quote-end-quote, a return to Obama-era normalcy. The problem with that it is two-fold. One, Obama wasnt that great. Things werent that great under Obama. But I think the bigger problem with the sales pitch is, this isnt really normalcy. It isnt normalcy to have a president who is clearly mentally decomposing before our eyes.
The last two years of Woodrow Wilson, the last two years of Eisenhower, the last years of Ronald Reagan: were all presidents who were mentally impaired in some way. But the thing is, they werent elected that way. Here were being asked to literally vote for a guy who tells us, Im not that sharp. Thats why Im only going to be a one-term president. Theres this implication: Im going to have all these awesome people running the show behind the scenes. Im going to have my own team of best and brightest. Parenthetically, theres no evidence to support that because he wont tell us who they are. I assume theyll just be a bunch of Obama-era hacks because those are the people he knows. They werent great either.
So the sales pitch doesnt work, because weve never been asked to vote for, basically, a president whose already mentally impaired out of the gate, and that everythings going to be run by a shadow government that we dont even know. Thats never been something the American people have been asked to sign up for. Its not really normalcy. Its something else
Kollibri:A lot of your bookto turn to how we got herecovers the recent history (and further back than that) of the Democratic Party, showing the patterns here, and showing how theyve presented themselves as one party but theyve been something else, basically the entire time. I think that a lot of this history is really whats valuable about your book, and what people wouldnt ve have known before.
For example, I was fascinated particularly by the section on Jimmy Carter, because hes presented as such a saint these days, and yet he did have a very checkered history in that office, and he was the beginning of the rightward lurch.
Ted:Yes. Carter is super old and obviously could dieand will die soonand when he does, just watch how hes a lionized as a hero of American liberalism. But thats bullshit. He absolutely was the beginning of the whole Democratic southern strategy which Clinton followed Carter definitely ran as a moderate and governed as a right-wing Democrat. People forget that he brought back draft registration. He funded the Mujahideen, who ultimately morphed into Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan against the Soviets. Afghanistan looks the way it does now because he listened to Brzezinski.
The Reagan defense build-up of the 1980swe call it the Reagan build-upbut it really began in 1978 under Jimmy Carter and just continued under Reagan.
Carter was a hawk. In fact his policy with Iran was hawkish enough to provoke the hostage crisis. It didnt just befall him. It was something he brought on himself by propping up the Shah, and inviting the Shah to come to the United States to seek medical care.
Any progressive historian has to look at Jimmy Carter and say, This guy is the beginning of the end of the Democratic Party as a party that represents working class people.
Kollibri:Then just a few years later, we had Jesse Jackson running in sort of a similar role as Sanders was the last two years, coming from the progressive left. Jackson was the first candidate I supported. 1988 was the year I turned 18 and I was able to caucus for Jesse Jackson where I was going to college that year. I remember looking back at Jesse Jacksons platform a couple years back and being like, Wow, this is almost unrecognizable as being a Democratic Party platform at this point.
Ted:Jesse Jacksons achievement was remarkable. His foreign and domestic policy agenda was far to the left of anything that even Bernie Sanders could contemplate today. He ran twice84 and 8888 was the bigger run. I was 25 in that election and I voted for him too. I think its been forgotten to history because the Democratic Party and their media allies have covered it up.
But he won a lot of primaries. He really well against Dukakis. He absolutely gave the Democratic Party a major run for its money. He did better than anyone expected that he could havepossibly including himself! After that primary run, you have to look back and say, You know, he may not have necessarily been ahead of his time. He may not have realized that it reallywashis time. But then, thats all been swept under the rug ever since and the Democratic Party really didnt want to have anything to do with him.
Kollibri:No. One of the ways his platform really stood out [was] he was actually calling for defense cuts. I recall that the Democrats used to be the party that would call for defense cuts but I believe that stopped with Clinton.
Ted:Yeah, it did. And Clinton definitely helped move the needle to the right. Look, were talking about a party that has not proposed defense cuts in many decades. It also hasnt proposed an anti-poverty program since the 1960s. Literally. I use the word, proposed very carefully. In other words, its not like Obama or Clinton ever put forward a bill and then the Republicansthe big bad Republicanskilled it. No, they never even asked for it. It obviously, clearly was never a concern of the Democratic Party, or the White House, at all. They didnt care. They didnt even want to put themselves on the record as saying, This is something that ought to be something we care about in this country.
Kollibri:Right. So at this point, its basically just a hollow reputation that the Democrats are just coasting on.
Ted:I believe so, yes. It reminds me a lot of how people come from all over the world to the United States, to a country that they think the streets are paved with gold, and Im always like, You know guys, were just coating on our old rep. But it aint true. This country is just not that great. When you come here as an immigrant, its not much fun.
The Democratic Party is very similar. Theyre still coasting on the reputation created by FDR, and to a lesser extent I would say, by LBJ. And thats pretty much it. LBJ was the last president who really made fighting poverty and income inequality any kind of priority.
Kollibri:So now were in this place where: Wheres a progressive supposed to go? And maybe there just isnt any place for a progressive to go within the electoral arena.
Ted:Theres the Green Party. People can say thats not viable. Well, its not viable because people choose to not vote for it. Obviously, both major parties at one time were minor parties and then people donated money to them and voted for them and they became bigger. At some point, people had to be willing to quote-end-quote waste their vote in order to change the existing dynamic, like in say 1832 or 1856 or 1860.
The same thing is true now. If you want a party like the Greens or a new partyIve been advocating for a new progressive partybut if you want that to happen, youre going to have to vote for them and create it. Youre going to have to be willing to quote-end-quote waste your vote.
But I think the truth is that the system is set up to keep third parties from having ballot access. The die is caste. The game is fixed. Its very very difficult to get any traction because the duopoly really controls everything. The one thing they can agree onwell, they can agree on lots of things, unfortunatelyis that they dont want any third party to gain any traction.
Kollibri:They work very hard at that at the state level. Also, the fact that the debates were taken over by the two parties. That made a huge difference too.
Ted:Thats something that went almost unnoticed. It used to befor those of us, like you and me, who are old enough to rememberpresidential debates were always sponsored by the League of Women Voters. Now, its called like the Commission on Presidential Electionsor something like thatand that thing is run by the two major parties.
Its not a coincidence that the last time there was a third party candidatelike say John Anderson in 1980 or Ross Perot in 1992it was under the auspices of the League of Women Voters. But ever since the two parties have run it, theyve managed to keep people like Ralph Nader off the debate stage, but I think that does a tremendous disservice to democracy. We need as many choices as possible.
It shouldnt just be a major third party candidate like Ralph Nader, but Id like to hear from the Socialist Workers. In other countries, the smaller parties are taken a lot more seriously by the media, and are given more of a voice, so quote-end-quote fringe or smaller constituencies have a voice in the system and thats part of the reasonin my view, its the main reasonwhy voter turnout in other countries is so much higher
Kollibri:So it comes back around to that Howard Zinn quote again, about how its not important whos sitting in office, but whos sitting in the streets, and sitting in the lunchrooms and all that.
Ted:Thats right. Theres this famous poster from the May 1968 uprising in Paris of a woman throwing a brick at the viewer and it says, Beauty is in the streets. What that means is that real politics is in the street, its protesting. We see that right now with Black Lives Matter.
Until the pandemic, protesting was something that people didespecially white peopledid on weekends as a getaway to Washington or to their state capitol, and you went and walked around and you chanted and you felt good about yourself and then you went home and got ready for the work week. Now, with one in four voters unemployed because of the pandemicsitting at home, nothing to do, no distractions, no sportsreally theres nothing to do but protest or stay at home. Suddenly were in an era of permanent protest and the power of that is just amazing. We have a long long way to go, but I thought we were never going to get rid of those stupid Confederate statues or those stupid Confederate flags. Suddenly, Oh, we dont need those anymore. And the difference is protest every single day on an ongoing basis. Thats all the difference in the world. Thats what the 60s were like. We havent seen that since the 60s, where protest is everywhere. Its not just a big splash in Washington on May Day and then we all go home. Its every single day and its in Dayton, Ohio, and its in Lansing, Michigan, and its everywhere.
Thats where politics lives: outside in the streets.
Full interview can be found here.
Go here to read the rest:
The Corruption of the Democratic Party: Talking to Ted Rall about his new book - CounterPunch