In normal times, the Republican disarray in Washington would have people talking about a Democratic sweep at the midterms in 2018. You saw it with George W Bush’s second midterm election in 2006, where a Republican party riven with corruption and weighed down with the Iraq albatross was decisively defeated by a Democratic party on the ascendancy.

But these are not normal times. And in a Democratic party that is seeing their centrist and incoherent governing philosophy being ground into powder, the last thing that they seem ready for is taking power.

One more example of this occurred last week in Broward County, Florida. There, a group of party progressives gathered to hear Sally Boynton Brown, the newly-minted president – a position akin to the executive director position in other state parties – of the state party discuss the Florida Democratic party’s future with them. It, um, did not go well:

“This is not going to be popular, but this is my belief of the time and place we’re in now: I believe that we’re in a place where it’s very hard to get voters excited about ‘issues,’ the type of voters that are not voting.”

According to the Miami New Times, Brown later stated that Democrats should focus on pushing out “identity messages” that connect with “emotional beings” who can “change their lives” with “the power of democracy”. She also stated that the funding of elections is not important, saying: “It’s not so much about the money controlling the conversation; it’s about the people controlling the conversation.”

Breathtaking, right? Well, that is until you consider what the communications director for the Clinton campaign told Meet The Press’s Chuck Todd when she visited the show back in February. In that interview, which occurred in the wake of massive protests against Trump’s incoming administration, Jennifer Palmieri stated:



“I think that a lot of this energy … you are wrong to look at these crowds and think that means everyone wants $15 an hour (minimum wage). Don’t assume that the answer to big crowds is moving policies to the left. I think the answer to big crowds is engaging as much as you can to be as supportive as you can and understanding … what these people want, they are desperate, it’s all about identity on our side now.”

If it is all about “identity on our side now”, then we should check in with those identities to figure out what they want out of their government.

On the issue of single-payer health care – an issue, remember, that the last Democratic nominee for president said would “never, ever come to pass” – 85% of black voters and 84% of Latino voters said that they favor placing the government in charge of managing the health care system in the United States.



The top issues for voters of color in the run up to the last election all revolved around issues of economy and education. Black voters have stated their preference for socialism over capitalism by a margin of 55% to 36% in a 2011 Gallup poll. And while there is no polling on the amount of support from people of color on the $15 minimum wage, it is clear from all accounts that the fight is being led by those communities across the country.

Perhaps that’s why you have seen Black Lives Matter release the most comprehensive platform for racial justice since the days of the Freedom Budget. Within that budget, released last August, economic issues play a prominent role, with calls for a $15 minimum wage, worker cooperatives and collective bargaining as a fundamental right guaranteed to all workers. This is unsurprising, as black people are more likely to see themselves as “working class” than “middle class” or “wealthy”, as are Latinos.

Yet it is the Democratic party who continues to assume that power shall simply be given to it by dint of their being “not Trump”. It is why Nancy Pelosi suddenly cares little about reproductive justice. It is why the poor are being caricatured by party grandees as “emotional beings” who do not care about the policies that are having such an impact on their lives. And it is why, on the floor of the California Democratic Convention this past weekend, state party chairman John Burton told protesters who were rallying for single-payer health care to “shut the fuck up and go outside”.

Those protesters? They are union nurses, people who are integral cogs in our fractured health care system and are working in a field that is becoming more racially diverse.



While the American working class clamors for more dramatic policies to alleviate their plight, Democrats are busy getting advice from guys who close over 50 schools – in mostly black and Latino areas – and attempt to cover up the killing of an unarmed black teenager by his city’s police. It seems that they will not learn the lessons of 2016 until they see the Republicans retain their perch in 2018 and, even more ghastly, 2020.

The true price of such miseducation will be paid by us all.