The Myths of the Democrats as a labor party and how people protect a morally bankrupt party

((There's been a myth for a while now in regards to the Democratic Party. As someone wanting to get into a deeper conversation, I have to first break the myth that the Democrats are a Party of Labor))

For a while now, there's been a fight going on in progressive circles in regards to how you fight neoliberalism. To make it very simple, the question is if we fight neoliberalism from inside the party or outside. Dem Invade or Dem Exit. Bernie Sanders or Henry Wallace?

This has only gotten worse as the tactics are becoming more messy as time moves on. This all has to do with the functions of the party and how the Democratic Party is seen as the vessel of labor. Let's be clear. It's a myth. This was propagated because of LBJ's Great Society Reforms, but there were a number of movements pushing even that.

When you get into FDR, his reforms were pushed by groups like the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who were unionized because of the Wagner Act within while the New Deal also solidified Jim Crow due to Dixiecrat influence. FDR didn't want to take on Dixiecrats, white racists, who Malcolm X pointed out was supportive of Republicans in his famous speech "The Ballot or the Bullet."

To really understand party politics, you have to look at how we get our coalitions. In "Undoing the New Deal: African-Americans, Racism and the FDR/Johnson Reforms (Pt5) (7:33)" Gerald Horne explains that this configuration of the party began from 1865 with the Republicans having Abraham Lincoln, the party of abolition, the party of black male voters and white elite forces in the North. The Democratic Party was the party of white workers in the South and white workers in the North. With 1932, you see a major defection driven by the Great Depression and Hoover's policies. So from 1932-1936, you see friction between workers which creates Dixiecrats.

This isn't the only time that strange coalitions within parties creates strange politics.

Anyone looking at LBJ and his Civil Rights Act can see a similar reformation with black voters staying with the Democratic Party for being the party for Civil Rights and FDR when before, the party of abolition had their vote.

For the 2016 sham of an election, Glen Ford points out the same thing:

Without overwhelming Black support, especially in the South, Hillary Clinton could not have achieved her insurmountable lead over the Democratic challenger from her left, Bernie Sanders. Although Blacks are the most left-leaning ethnic bloc in the United States – the most pro-peace constituency and the group that most closely resembles Sander’s beloved “Scandinavian Social Democrats” on economic issues – the bulk of Black voters have aligned themselves with the right wing of the Democratic Party, leading corporate pundits and pollsters to categorize Blacks as a “moderate” constituency within the Democratic sector of the duopoly electoral structure. Based on national voting behavior, the “left” side of the Democratic Party spectrum is now dominated by younger whites, who are locked in a struggle with their elders, Blacks and, to a lesser degree, Hispanics, for the “soul” of the Party.

Of course, the Democratic Party has no soul; it is a rich man’s machinery controlled by Hillary Clinton’s patrons on Wall Street – a fact that most Black voters understand quite well. They are fully aware that Clinton is deeply connected to the “fat cats” with the resources to mount a billion-dollar-plus campaign against the Republican/White Man’s Party, in November. The likelihood that the GOP candidate will be the unapologetically racist Donald Trump lends urgency to their allegiance with Clinton, the cackling war criminal and former “Goldwater girl” who co-championed all of her husband’s mass Black incarceration and poor Black family-crushing initiatives the last time they were in the White House.

The point here is that the leaders abuse the black vote. Just as they do every other constituency they terrorize. What has occurred is an abusive relationship where people's votes are abused with a party that doesn't represent them.

Everyone knew that Hillary Clinton didn't represent them. Likewise, the Democratic Party did their job in ensuring a progressive didn't get into the White House.

But did the Democratic Party ever represent the interests of labor? Again, the answer is no. FDR, JFK, and LBJ were under intense pressure from movements to do far more for the public than they ever would have done. Even MLK saw pressure from SNCC to be far more of a social democrat than what he'd done before. It caused a rift between he and LBJ which allowed for MLK to be assassinated.

Now why do I tell you all this history of the Democratic Party? Without understanding the history, we're doomed to repeat it. The Democratic Party was always a slaveholder/financial party representing Wall Street and War. In 1999, the Democratic Party was taken over by the Clintons and they've done everything they can to keep control of the party. The ones closest to progressives has been the Democratic Party and the majority of people that had the knives thrust into their backsides and fronts, has been... You guessed it, the Democratic Party.