Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder discuss the corporate wing of the Democratic Party and where they stand with the endorsements of Keith Ellison as the new DNC chair.
Transcription of the above video:
Sam:
We were talking obviously about the state of this, the republican transition and we can talk a little bit more about that. I mean, Donald Trump is actually literally requesting Barack Obama to tutor him. I want to get your take on that in a bit, but I want to continue our conversation about where the democrats are now. We have seen Keith Ellison come out earlier this week with endorsements from about 40 elected officials, first from Bernie Sanders, and I think there’s been literally hundreds of thousands of signatures in support of him via Bernie Sanders, the Bernie Sanders machine, if you will.
Pap:
Mm hmm.
Sam:
So much so that it forced, in my opinion it forced, Chuck Schumer to also offer an endorsement, which came after Elizabeth Warren giving an endorsement to Keith Ellison last week.
Pap:
Yeah. Sam, I got to tell you something. Talking about Chuck Schumer nauseates me most of time and this is another example. Chuck Schumer always … He has this ability. Do you understand? If you ask most democrats, “Tell me where Chuck Schumer falls?” and they’re going to tell you, “Well, he’s a liberal.” Well, he’s not a liberal. He is a Wall Street hack, so this thing that he’s doing with Keith, I mean, what he’s saying and what he’s actually doing behind the curtain, that’s the way he operates. Chuck Schumer will say the damnedest thing right to the American public and then the next thing you know, you hear bits and pieces of the story that he did when he stepped off the stage. That’s what he’s doing with Keith Ellison.
At this point, you have to say, what is the character of the Democratic Party? Do they have any character left? When you have Chuck Schumer now, who’s going to be the minority leader, after they’ve taken this trouncing, because the typical American doesn’t believe that they have anything in common with this Wall Street bubble democrat, this Wall Street bubble democrat that in Washington, D.C., they have no concept of what middle America is actually thinking. So the only hope is that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren use their leadership positions to help push the democrats further to the left or they keep these corporate democrats from further alienating the working class.
Chuck Schumer has nothing, nothing, nothing in common with America’s working class, just like Hillary Clinton did. She had nothing in common, just like Bill Clinton had nothing in common, just like Obama. Sometimes you wonder, “Okay, what is this disconnect? What is it you’re not seeing? Why have you become this party of elitists?” Until the democrats can put on their big boy breeches and say, “This is the problem we have,” I don’t have much hope.
Sam:
Well, you know, I guess I just look at it a little bit differently and so far is this, is that I don’t think there’s ever going to be a time where the democrats put on their big boy breeches, as you say. I think what’s going to happen is that there’s going to be a fight within the party and one side is going to win and one side is going to lose. The way that the side that I think you and I, or I know you and I want to win … Well, the way that they win is by getting resources, by building infrastructure, by becoming a powerful force, and so when I see Keith Ellison, it’s not just a question of him being the head of the RNC. This is not just a question of messaging. It means that that guy, who is the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, he’s going to have an office. It’s going to be staffed with people. He’s going to be able to go out into the country and develop an infrastructure. This is a great thing … an apparatus for a progressive to have control over.
Pap:
Yeah, it is.
Sam:
Look, those resources are available to Chuck Schumer in the Senate and that stinks.
Pap:
Yeah, Chuck Schumer is going to be spending all of his time on Wall Street.
Sam:
I wanted Bernie Sanders … Of course.
Pap:
He’s not going out to middle America.
Sam:
Of course.
Pap:
They don’t even … can’t even relate to the guy.
Sam:
But if all goes well, what he won’t have is he won’t have an ideological ally at the RNC, so he’s going to have to be fighting. This is the way that you take over a party. This is the way that it happens. When the head of the RNC helps people, Congress people in 2018, or helps governors in 2018, democrats win in states across the country, they’re going to be looking to Keith Ellison as opposed to Chuck Schumer. One of the ways that we help take over this party is when new people come in, we make sure that they feel like they’re enabled by the progressive wing of this party.
I mean, in many respects that’s how we got on Elizabeth Warren. You had progressive groups out there that early on showed her that she could win with a populous message and they have been there and backing her up. Each one of these victories are small, but we have to use them as leverage. We have to build on these things, and so in the event that Keith Ellison ends up being in the RNC … Look, this is going to be a dog fight. You’ve got guys like Alan Dershowitz going out there claiming that Keith Ellison is more anti-Semitic than Bannon. The guy is not anti-Semitic at all. They’re going to smear him in any way they can.
Pap:
Yeah.
Sam:
They’re going to up with this idea that …
Pap:
He’s a Muslim, yeah.
Sam:
… we need … Suddenly, even though Debbie Wasserman Schultz, they had to literally pry her out of that office, right? How much damage could she do before they even contemplated showing her the door? You’re going to claim that a sitting Congress person, they can’t do the job because they need to spend full time on it. These are going to be fights that progressives have to engage in and have to do so …
Pap:
Yeah, we will. I can tell you that. We will hear. We will hear.
Sam:
Like I say, Keith Ellison, is he perfect? No, but who’s better? I don’t know anybody.
Pap:
One thing Ellison is already talking about early on is 50-State Strategy that we’ve talked about so many times here. Howard Dean told the democrats to do it, but no, the democrats, they had everybody focused on marvelous Bill Clinton was going to pull everything through Washington, D.C. and nothing was a bigger train wreck. Now we’re going to be moving into another cycle where there’s going to be redistricting, where the republicans probably, certainly on a national level, are going to still be in charge, but the question then becomes, what about states? How do we rid the house of the Vermont there, and you don’t do that without redistricting.
Sam:
I think we got to above two dozen governors who are … Governor races come in this off-year election in 2018. Those are the governors who are going to be able to either veto or sign off on redistricting in 2020, and so that is a huge firewall for the democrats and there is no time to waste. The democrats should be mobilizing right now in all of these states. They should be looking for candidates who are going to reflect what we know has more salience. I think if there’s anything that has been shown is that not only have the voters, it seems to me, at least in a determinate fashion, and particularly in these Rust Belt states, rejected this idea of neo-liberalism, what I think is even more important, because some people argue, “Well, no, you can’t interpret it this way” … what is even more important is that people from that part of the party have shown that it inhibits their ability to get people out to vote.
Pap:
Yeah, yeah.
Sam:
Barack Obama was a once in a lifetime candidate and you only get those once in lifetime.
