Elizabeth Warren was asked in a TYT Interviews segment what the Democratic priorities are for the 2018 midterm elections. Her answer was not jobs, housing, a 15 dollar minimum wage and a right to form a union, clean drinking water, raising the corporate tax rate, or anything else we might expect from a “progressive” politician. Rather, the very first thing out of Warren’s mouth was, “The Russia thing!”

Warren spouts off the standard Democratic Party nonsense about Russia “hacking into American systems” to steal the election for Trump. She spends the remainder of the answer talking about why the Democrats are better than the Republicans. No vision or tangible policy position for the working class, the poor, or the marginalized is offered. Warren doesn’t even bother to point out that single-payer, which has a 58% approval rating from the American people, could and should be the alternative to Trumpcare.

Warren’s response falls in line with the behavior displayed by other token ‘progressives’ retained by the Democrats since Trump’s victory. Whether it’s Keith Ellison, Ro Khanna, or Bernie Sanders himself, these cold brew ‘progressives’ do not exist to challenge power. They are nothing but sheep-dogs for the Democratic Party, which has openly admitted to being nothing more than a private corporation .

Progressives and socialists can not continue to support the Democratic Party. As Nancy Pelosi has stated, “We’re capitalists, and that’s just the way it is.” The blatant corporatism and neoliberalism, both of which are rooted in the failing capitalist system propped up by both parties, stand in diametric opposition to everything real Leftists should stand for. Now is most definitely the time to start organizing outside of and against the Democrats.

The Justice Democrats, which seeks to infiltrate the Democratic Party and reboot it as a social democratic ‘alternative’, are already compromised. They are collaborating with the opportunist California Rep. Ro Khanna. In a leaked email to John Podesta, Khanna’s campaign manager described his bid for representative as a way to “maximize support for Hillary Clinton.” The same manager suggested to Podesta that Clinton pay a visit to Khanna’s wedding. Khanna’s father-in-law is a wealthy Republican. In the words of the campaign manager, a visit by Clinton would make a good impression among “a group in Ohio that includes prominent Republicans.”

So the man who is arguably the most high profile candidate the Justice Democrats have signed so far is perfectly fine not only looking for an endorsement and photo-op with Hillary Clinton, but also allowing his campaign to court wealthy conservatives rather than labor or the Left. This does not only display Khanna’s own hypocrisy and opportunism, but the Justice Democrats general weakness and moral inconsistency. As Karl Marx understood in a critique of wealthy liberal “progressives” over 169 years ago:

“The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.”

Warren has engaged in the same effort to suppress a true uprising against the ruling class by the oppressed. She proudly endorsed Hillary Clinton, who lobbied for the violently anti-labor TPP over 40 times and called roughly half of the American working class a “basket of deplorables”, for President in 2016.

Warren impotently scolded Wells Fargo CEO Jon Stumpf for allowing his company to set up fake accounts to leech their clients for extra profit. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Warren’s magnum opus, only fined Wells Fargo $100 million. Stumpf would resign with over $133 million.

One could go on and on about all the establishment rhetoric and action Elizabeth Warren and her fellow ‘progressives’ within the Democratic Party have supported and participated in over the years but this is not the point. The point is that Warren’s response in the TYT interview, the automatic deferral to the absurd and destructive party propaganda when asked the simple question of what the Democrats will actually do or stand for in 2018, is yet another nail in the coffin for the argument that we should try and “push the Democrats Left”.

The Democrats are not a left-wing party which seeks to fundamentally change society for the better and never have been. Ever since the labor movement reached its riotous fever pitch during the Depression, the Democrats have existed only to manage and redirect such dissent. When the Republicans regained control of the country throughout the 80s and 90s, the Democrats helped them build the neoliberal dystopia we currently live in. The Democratic elite aren’t going to nicely give up what they created because a bunch of liberal opportunists, who they essentially control anyway, scream and wag their finger.

Elizabeth Warren and all the other Democratic opportunists are done. No more talk of “holding her feet to the fire” or whatever other meaningless platitude one uses to rationalize preaching revolution and voting for counterrevolution. We must build an organization which is owned and operated by the working class against the interests of the ruling class. If we fail to do so, the psuedo-progs in the Democratic Party will only continue to betray us at the behest of our plutocratic managers.