Friday 22nd of November 2024
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Harris — the warrioness of the warmongering democrat.....

The Biden White House and the Democratic Party machine trying to advance Kamala Harris from No. 2 in the regime to No. 1 gets more interesting by the week, I have to say. 

The Harris campaign has at last, two months after the party’s elites and financiers railroaded her candidacy past any semblance of a democratic process, published a platform it calls A New Way Forward, and I will get to this in due course.

 

By Patrick Lawrence
ScheerPost 

 

I am less interested now in words posted on a website than in two recent developments we ought to consider together even if no one has yet thought to do so. 

Slowly and very surely, it becomes clear by way of these weekly turns how a new Democratic regime, should Harris win on Nov. 5, proposes to manage the imperium’s business. 

And however many foolish voters may be illusioned otherwise, if Harris takes the White House her business will be neither more nor less than managing the imperium —the wars, the provocations, the illegal sanctions and other collective punishments, the terrorist clients in Israel, the neo–Nazis in Kiev. 

Last Wednesday, Sept. 4, Liz Cheney surprised Washington and, I suppose, most of the rest of us when she announced she would support Harris’s run for the presidency.

The onetime Wyoming congresswoman, a coup-cultivating warmonger who remains among the hawkiest of right-wing foreign-policy hawks, was not the first Republican to jump across the aisle this political season, and she was also not the last: Two days later, Liz’s pop did the same. Dick Cheney, of course, needs no introduction. 

Instantly, the Harris campaign declared its delight in having the support of these courageous patriots, as the organization called them in its official statements. 

A week after all this high-caliber politicking, President Joe Biden convened in the Oval Office with Keir Starmer, the new British prime minister, to consider Ukraine’s proposal to fire Western-supplied missiles at targets well inside Russian territory. 

The Brits are ready to oblige the Kiev regime, as are the French, but everyone — London, Paris, Kiev — needs Biden’s permission to widen the war in this fashion. 

At the moment, Biden and Secretary of State Blinken are in their “Well, maybe” phase, and we are meant to be on the edges of our seats wondering whether they will assent to these plans. But haven’t we seen this movie before and don’t we know how it ends? Wasn’t it, “Maybe we will send HIMARS rocket systems,” “Maybe M–1 tanks,” “Maybe Patriot missiles,” “Maybe F–16s”?

Even before the Biden–Starmer encounter last week, Blinken and David Lammy, the British foreign secretary, during a visit to Kiev for talks with Volodymyr Zelensky, were already dropping heavy hints that Biden will once again acquiesce to the plans the Ukrainian president and the British PM were choreographed to present to him.

The stipulation Biden and Blinken now purport to insist upon is that they will not assent to letting Kiev use weapons provided by the U.S. —  which seems to be different from weapons made by the U.S. — against targets in the Russian interior. This is no more than one of those hair-splits in which the Biden White House trades when it wants to look thoughtful and cautious but is neither. 

Will someone tell me what damn difference it will make to Russia if Moscow takes a hit from a missile sent from Britain, France or the United States? 

These people are convening to plan the Western powers’ reckless escalation of a proxy war they have no way of winning and know they have no way of winning. Desperation is as desperation does: This is my simple read of these deliberations.

Between the war-planning and the shifting political loyalties, what have we witnessed over these past couple of weeks? This is our question. 

Cheneys in the Hive

When the Cheneys, père et fille, enlisted in the Harris campaign’s ranks, Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign’s chairwoman, lauded the former for his courage and the latter for her patriotism.

Elsewhere in the Harris “hive,” as I gather we are calling it, liberal commentators stopped just short of gushing over Liz and Dick Cheney’s political migration, ignoring the fact it appears to be mere opportunism.  

James Carden had a pithy piece on this, “Cheneymania Seizes the Democrats,” in the Sept. 12 edition of The American Conservative. 

“The wild applause that met Liz’s announcement … is indicative of where liberals now place their priorities,” the longtime Washington commentator wrote, “and goes a long way toward explaining why they cannot be trusted on matters of national security.”  

There is a lot of politics in the Democrats’ exuberant greeting of the Cheneys, of course. Harris’ people want to make the most of divisions among Republicans, and, in the case of Liz Cheney, to exploit the animus that has arisen between her and Donald Trump. 

But we must look more closely than this fully to understand this political ballet. Liz Cheney once had a public spat with Rand Paul over who was “Trumpier.” Dick Cheney is guilty of more war crimes, crimes against humanity and war-profiteering than Donald Trump could dream of in his sweetest dreams.

No mention of this as we think about these two political defections? I have read or heard of none from within the Harris hive. 

Stephen Cohen used to joke, except that he wasn’t joking, that there is one party in Washington and it is rightly called the War Party. We have just had a reminder of the late and eminent Russianist’s prescience.

There is no intent among the people telling Kamala Harris what to profess to question this nation’s numerous aggressions and illegalities, or even to reconsider the Biden regime’s disastrously miscalculated foreign policies, which are indistinguishable from the neoconservative agenda Democrats, once upon a time, pretended to oppose.  

Read A New Way Forward, a 13–page document. The one and a half pages given to national security and foreign affairs amount to a screed dedicated to  Russophobia, Sinophobia, NATOphilia and “the most lethal fighting force in the world,” which seems to be Harris’ idea of a diplomatic corps.

This is how Steve Cohen’s War Party thinks and what it sounds like. As a statement of intent, the Harris–Walz platform is entirely accommodating of the Biden White House’s very likely decision to escalate the Ukraine conflict to the point of risking the World War III Biden pretends not to want. 

Putin’s Analysis

The clearest, most sobering analysis of the Biden–Blinken thinking —is this my word? — about authorizing Kiev to attack targets deep inside Russia with Western-supplied missiles came from Vladimir Putin. 

The Russian president spoke last Thursday, the day before Starmer’s talks with Biden, in response to a reporter’s question. His statement is worth reading in full, given the obvious gravity he attaches to the West’s deliberations:

“What we are seeing is an attempt to substitute notions. Because this is not a question of whether the Kiev regime is allowed or not allowed to strike targets on Russian territory. It is already carrying out strikes using unmanned aerial vehicles and other means. But using Western-made long-range precision weapons is a completely different story.

The fact is that — I have mentioned this, and any expert, both in our country and in the West, will confirm this — the Ukrainian army is not capable of using cutting-edge, high-precision, long-range systems supplied by the West. They cannot do that. These weapons are impossible to employ without intelligence data from satellites, which Ukraine does not have. This can only be done using the European Union’s satellites, or U.S. satellites — in general, NATO satellites. This is the first point.

The second point — perhaps the most important, the key point even — is that only NATO military personnel can assign flight missions to these missile systems. Ukrainian servicemen cannot do this. Therefore, it is not a question of allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not. It is about deciding whether NATO countries become directly involved in the military conflict or not.

If this decision is made, it will mean nothing short of direct involvement — it will mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries are parties to the war in Ukraine. This will mean their direct involvement in the conflict, and it will clearly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict dramatically.

This will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”

There are clearly people of sound mind within the Washington policy cliques who can read this statement for what it is and understand the risk the Biden regime contemplates as it inches toward an official decision on the missiles question. 

But these wiser heads do not appear in the ascendant. The prevailing view seems to lie with people such as William Burns, the C.I.A. director, who thinks Putin is bluffing and, nonsensically enough, are willing to find out if they are right by calling said bluff. 

 

Here is part of a letter 17 former ambassadors and generals sent to the Biden administration last week, as quoted in The New York Times. As you read these sentences, think about why the signatories of this letter wrote it and how it is they are as confident of their judgment as they profess:  

“Easing the restrictions on Western weapons will not cause Moscow to escalate. We know this because Ukraine is already striking territory Russia considers its own—including Crimea and Kursk — with these weapons and Moscow’s response remains unchanged.”

Now think about whether those who wrote and signed this letter, and by extension those running Ukraine policy, are sane or insane.

Among the Biden regime’s purported concerns as it considers authorizing Ukraine to widen the war is what difference attacks on the Russian interior would make. The White House and the Pentagon want to see a plan, it has been reported. 

It is a good question, asking about the point of this kind of escalation, but I am not sure an answer matters much to those who sit at the table in the White House cabinet room. As I have argued severally in this space, the Biden regime has foolishly cast this war as one between democracy and autocracy. 

Accordingly, it can afford to risk all manner of precipitous escalations, but it cannot afford to lose.  

Entering stage right, possibly on cue, Volodymyr Zelensky now says he wants to show Biden, and subsequently Harris and Trump, his “plan for victory over Russia.”

The Washington Post reported last Friday this will consist of very few parts. “All the points depend on the decision of Biden,” the Ukrainian president said at a recent forum in Kiev.

As the Post noted, Zelensky is to date shy of revealing these points, but there are reports, well short of confirmed, that there are three of them. 

The first is the missile authorization, the second is an assurance that NATO will deploy air-defense systems to protect western Ukraine, and the third — get a load of this — is a guarantee that NATO will dispatch ground troops to rear areas of the conflict so that the Armed Forces of Ukraine can deploy more of its own troops to the front. 

These proposals, if confirmed as Zelensky makes his next trip to Washington, all align in one direction: The Kiev regime’s running theme remains dragging the West further into the war rather as the Netanyahu regime in Israel is forever trying to do the same in West Asia. Zelensky, the Israeli prime minister, Biden: The world’s problem right now, or one of them, is that none of these people can afford to lose the wars their hubris led them to start. 

The Anglos and the Americans are likely to make an official announcement about the use of long-range missiles against Russia after the U.N. General Assembly concludes its business on Sept. 28. 

Starmer has recently indicated as much. In the best outcome we will find that Putin has rattled Washington and London such that they will step back from this latest plan to escalate. It is possible. But the U.S. and the other NATO powers have not done much stepping back to date, we are well to remind ourselves. 

M.K. Bhadrakumar, the former Indian diplomat who publishes the consistently thoughtful Indian Punchline newsletter, put out a piece Monday, Sept. 16, arguing that the Anglo–American powers are turning the proxy war in Ukraine into Russian roulette. 

Here is part of Bhadrakumar’s reasoning. Storm Shadows are the missiles Starmer would allow Kiev to fire into Russia if the Biden regime approves of the plan:

“Moscow anticipates that the U.S.–U.K. ploy may be to test the waters by first (openly) using Britain’s Storm Shadow long-range air-launched cruise missile, which has already been supplied to Ukraine. On Friday, Russia expelled six British diplomats assigned to the Moscow embassy in a clear warning that U.K.–Russia ties will be affected. Russia has already warned the U.K. of severe consequences if the Storm Shadow were to be used to hit Russian territory. 

What makes the developing situation extremely dangerous is that the cat-and-mouse game so far about NATO’s covert involvement in the Ukraine war is giving way to a game of Russian roulette that follows the laws of Probability Theory.”

Bhadrakumar has this exactly right, in my view, but with one minor flaw in his argument. The Americans and the Brits can be said to be playing, unserious as they are, but the Russians are not. 

 

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored. 

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This article is from ScheerPost.

 

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/09/20/patrick-lawrence-the-war-party-makes-its-plans/

dogofwar.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OTbiXCMgzE

INTERVIEW: Oprah and ‘the craziest interview of my life’: Nick Cruse

 

‘We will advocate for war, anyone who advocates for peace will be locked up.’ Nick Cruse on the US war on free speech and cardboard cutout revolutionaries

 

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IOUs....

 

Mistaking Militarism for Statecraft, Empire for Democracy and Debt for Prosperity

    by 

 

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. All things fall apart. The center cannot hold.”  —  W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming

As of May 2024, the United States has committed over $175 (borrowed) billion to escalating the proxy war against Russia, and, as in the case of the Iraq and Afghan wars, with little regard for accountability pertaining to tracking military hardware,  equipment, funding, or  fraud prevention.

One of the most grotesque moments in this bloody global Punch and Judy show preliminary to nuclear war, was the recent arrival of Vladimir Zelenskyy, former president of Ukraine, making a campaign stop at an ammunition factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where some of the three million 155mm artillery shells the US has given Ukraine are produced.   

Alongside Zelenskyy, in an incitement-op photo promising further escalation of war, the Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania autographed one of the high-velocity artillery shells which will be aimed at Russia. Pennsylvania, which is home to the City of Brotherly Love, was unwitting re-Christened by its top official, with a cursive flair, as the state of brotherly hate.  

The fervor of warmongering, fueled by machismo and high bravado illustrates the failure of leadership and a fatal ignorance of the diplomatic process. We should be exercising the science of human relations, not propelling a hubristic  and ego-driven brinkmanship which accelerates the dialectic of war. 

For decades I have led opposition to war and advocated for the transformation of America’s prevailing policy of “Peace through Strength” to a forward-looking  policy of “Strength through Peace.” 

I challenged the Bush II Administration’s foreign policies, and introduced Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush  and Vice President Dick Cheney over Iraq and the lies which led us into war. Illegal and unnecessary, the Iraq war (debt-funded and authorized by both Democrats and Republicans) has cost our nation over $3 trillion, and the loss of 5,000 of our brave men and women who serve and injuries to countless more troops.

The war caused the deaths of over one million Iraqis.  Let that sink in. One million Iraqis perished in a war based on lies. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The war further damaged America’s global reputation and set us upon a path where, since 9/11, America has borrowed $8 trillion to keep the war machine in tune as our own nation’s pressing domestic needs for housing, health care, education, child care, and retirement security have been set aside.

When I heard Vice President Harris brag about former Vice President Dick Cheney endorsing her candidacy, that put the exclamation point on the fact that the leaders of the Democratic party are for war.  I am not.    

Why else would Vice President Harris become the front person for such virulent bravado, invoking lethality abroad?

A paradox of this campaign is that the much-villainized former President Trump, (representing a party that has also taken us into unnecessary wars) is the one who speaks to the need to negotiate and to talk directly with potential foes in order to avoid war, or to end it.   

I ran for President twice, in 2004 and 2008, to bring a halt to endless wars,  to stop the hemorrhaging of our nation’s wealth and to redirect our attention to our needs at home. During the Obama Administration, I fought against his expansion of war, against attacks on Libya, and Syria. That Administration’s surveillance and state-sponsored black-ops reached new heights, drawing America  further into the depths of a murky military abyss. 

All believers in the Judeo-Christian ethic are taught the equivalency of thought, word and deed. . A sin is a sin is a sin. Words create worlds and actions, and, well, they also create reactions. 

Whether a missile arrives in Russia is separate from the fact that the news of the Pennsylvania governor signing a warhead reached the Kremlin instantaneously.  Congratulations Governor, you just made your state a target. 

It is a faulty military strategy which is based upon baiting one’s targets to have an excuse to attack preemptively. This type of thinking isn’t about taking care of and protecting our allies. I would call it lunacy but it happens far more frequently than once every full moon!  We need level-headed leadership, not political actors mindlessly playing in the flash of WWIII, pandering for votes or for cash from the military industrial complex.

The U.S. government’s endless quest to instigate, fulminate or otherwise set our nation on a path of either participating in or of funding endless war has become an inconscient force which is now sweeping up nations in its maw and, if left unchecked, with soon draw in American troops and inevitably a world war will come home in ways that no one in the continental United States has ever experienced, far exceeding the horrors of 9/11.

W.B. Yeats’ poem, written over one hundred years ago, also pertains to the present moment, the breakdown of international law, the slaughter of innocents, open genocide, mocking humanity for its primal human instincts and instead preferring a descent into the maelstrom of kill or be killed, of “do unto others before they do unto you.”  Our nation’s leaders have lost their capacity for diplomacy.  And we have lost many chances for peace.

Ronan Farrow, in his brilliant book “War on Peace, the End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence,”  traced the catastrophe of substituting militarism for statecraft.

So we arrive at a point where we fully fund war in the Middle East, and, astonishingly stand helpless, vainly begging the recipients of our billions of dollars, our weapons, “intelligence,” and of our strategic advice – not to expand the war we are paying for, not to visit death upon innocents.  

We call for cease fire, to come to terms, to end the conflict, while the bodies pile up, and tensions escalate with all nations. Our collective voice is muted.  We confess futility to effect events which we have set in motion, as a Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and when tidal forces break loose, no thought is given to an end game which could lead not only to the destruction of our closest allies but to the undoing of our own nation.

Like pre-programmed robots from a 1950s B-movie, blind to our own extinction drive, immune to the signs of failing empire, and with notions of exceptionalism justifying colonization, Democratic bosses proudly  escalate war against Russia, the country with 5,580 nuclear warheads, about 1/3 of which are “launch ready.”  

Two years ago, the US, with the back door machinations of Britain’s Boris Johnson, rejected a peace agreement which would have kept Ukraine neutral, restored the peace and spared the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians. 

Instead, we now trot out muddle-headed EU politicians and our NATO sock puppets to support advancing the war deeper and deeper into Russia, sending missiles with more and more destructive power, hyping the fantasy of capsizing the government of a country which remembers losing nearly 30,000,000 people in World War II, during which Russia was on our side.  

To create an enemy is to provoke fear everywhere.  To misjudge an “enemy” is to court disaster and destruction.  As we give freedom and fortune to the egocentric war mongers, the military industrial complex and those naive enough to think that war equals peace for Ukraine – – life and liberty are ebbing at home.

We help our “friends” aggress, and cynically celebrate their victimhood, actively preventing diplomatic resolution, putting our avowed friends at great risk of destruction. 

Do you remember how back in October 2022, thirty Members of the U.S. Congress’ Democratic Progressive Caucus signed a letter calling for President Biden to consider diplomacy, and then in a matter of hours were pressured to retract the letter? The Members were reprimanded by the Administration and the Democratic leadership for their advocacy of peace.

In that withdrawn, forbidden letter, the Progressive Members stated,

 “The risk of nuclear weapons being used has been estimated to be higher now than at any time since the height of the Cold War. Given the catastrophic possibilities of nuclear escalation and miscalculation, which only increase the longer this war continues, we agree with your goal of avoiding direct military conflict as an overriding national-security priority. Given the destruction created by this war for Ukraine and the world, as well as the risk of catastrophic escalation, we also believe it is in the interests of Ukraine, the United States, and the world to avoid a prolonged conflict. For this reason, we urge you to pair the military and economic support the United States has provided to Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire.”

Later in April 2023, nineteen Conservative Republicans, including now VP candidate Senator J.D. Vance, similarly communicated to the Administration the perils of escalating the war without diplomatic strategy, stating in their letter: 

“Our military assistance goes beyond tangible assets to include military training and intelligence support. The extent of our aid makes it increasingly difficult to deny Russian accusations of U.S. complicity in a proxy war. Vladimir Putin’s advisors are already framing the conflict as “a military confrontation between Russia and NATO, and above all the United States and Britain.” Russian tolerance for fighting a proxy war with NATO could run out at any point. The decision to invade Ukraine should be evidence enough of Putin’s willingness to use military force and should give us pause in continuing to push the limits at the risk of catastrophe.”

Ukraine is a pawn, politicized for Democratic presidential electoral gain, blood for ballots. Ukraine should have been free to choose its own destiny, its own government, protect its own agriculture and precious resources, free to live without fear of an invasion and control from Russia or any other country. Instead, denied the promise of true sovereignty, it has been forced to sacrificed the flower of its youth to war.

While the people of the US are being played by politicians who are giddy with the notion of stuffing the November ballot box with bombs rockets, missiles, artillery shells and national debt, our government is also being played by the equally unstable and craven leaders of foreign countries.

And so, the U.S. forks over endless rivers of U.S. taxpayers’ cash for endless wars, without any thought of how this all ends, or how or who ultimately pays. Red or blue, there are no winners in a war devouring our lives, our blood and our national wealth.

There is madness to all of this.  Our so-called leaders are whistling merry tunes through the graveyard of history, mocking the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because it happened to THEM, not us. Because something like that could never happen to us. Because we are smarter and stronger and have God on our side.

It is time to wake up, America. It is time to stop this madness which presents as legitimate governance, and to think, to speak and to stand for peace, diplomacy and the continuation of life on our small planet.

 

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/mistaking-militarism-for-statecraft-empire-for-democracy-and-debt-for-prosperity/

 

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hypocrite dems.....

I Raised Millions for Democrats. At the DNC, I Realized They're the Party of the Rich | Opinion

 

By Evan Barker

former Democratic campaign operative, campaign finance reform advocate, and podcaster. Follow her on X @evanwch

 

Over the past six years, I've raised tens of millions of dollars for the Democrats. I've given thousands of hours of my mind, heart, and soul to get Democrats elected, as a Democratic fundraising consultant for federal Senate and House candidates and Left-leaning national organizations.But my work with Democrats started in high school, when I was an alternate-delegate for Hillary Clinton. Later, I interned on Barack Obama's campaign. Most recently, I volunteered at last month's Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Initially, I was thrilled to attend this rite of passage for every political operative. But once there, wandering amidst the glitz and glam, imbibing the gloss and schmaltz of it all, I couldn't escape a sinking feeling. I felt submersed in a hollow chamber whose mottos were "Brat summer" and "Joy"—totally out of touch with regular, every-day Americans and their pressing needs; instead, the most elite people in the world chanted in unison that "We're not going back!"

I found myself feeling disenchanted, lost, sad, and alone.

As someone who has given her life to Democratic politics, it was devastating. But if I'm being honest, it wasn't totally surprising.

I grew up a long ways away from the glitz, glamor, and ostentatious wealth I'd become accustomed to seeing in and around Democratic politics. I'm from the Heartland, near Kansas City. My family floated between working poor and middle class. My parents were divorced, and neither has a college degree. As is the case with many American families far from the Acela corridor, my mom's yearly income determined if I would live in a house, apartment, or mobile home, if I would attend decent schools or the worst in town. On top of that, I was born with a rare genetic lung disease that made me chronically ill my whole life. As a child, I experienced firsthand health insurance denials, putting intense pressure on my family's finances.

My family background is messy. But there was one constant: Many of my family members are proud construction workers and lifelong union members. I grew up believing that the Democrats were our party.

Fast forward to today, and many of those same family members are no longer Democrats. They feel the party has changed, left them behind.

At the DNC, I couldn't help but think about my family. Every time the elites chanted "We're not going back," what I heard was, "We're not going back to the party your union family members used to vote for."

Looking back now, I realize that my dissatisfaction grew slowly, bubbling just beneath the surface for a long time. In 2017, I started raising money for campaigns, working fancy fundraisers hosted by wealthy financiers, billionaire heiresses, and corporate CEOs, many of whom gave to Democrats and Republicans equally. I led candidates through hours a day of soullessly dialing up rich people and begging them for money. Not only do candidates spend most of their time talking to the rich, but the only path to elected office is to be rich, or to know lots of rich people.

Here's the thing about donors: They have niche policy issues they care about that seldom reflect the needs of people back home. Democrats love to decry money in politics when it comes to the Koch brothers or Elon Musk, but the billionaires who support Democrats are given a total pass and have a huge influence over policy.

At first, I naively thought the system was broken. But now I realize, it isn't broken; it's doing what it was designed to do, which is to keep working class people from true representation. That is the point, a feature, not a bug.

Of course, this occurs in the Republican Party, too. But Democrats are bigger hypocrites about it.

These realizations pushed me from moderate Democrats to progressive candidates who rejected corporate PAC money, embraced a higher minimum wage, endorsed universal health care, and criticized the Party's corporate wing. But when you're working with progressives, you get a front-row seat to how the establishment beats and batters candidates out of step with the party line.

So my progressives lost. A lot. And it was always to the same old, tired playbook of dark money from super PACs pouring in, or major Democratic arms like the DCCC and DSCC putting their thumb on the scale, endorsing the anointed candidate early instead of letting the people choose. This is how they blocked Bernie.

But even the progressives are part of the problem now. They were once focused on policies that improved people's lives, promising to be unbought and uncompromisable. But after the summer of 2020, that rhetoric all but faded away. They've become compromised by the social justice language and divisive identity politics that now dominates the entire Democratic ecosystem.

Perhaps the most shocking of all is how the Democrats have embraced Bush-era foreign policy to become the party of war. Instead of rebuilding the working class communities that have been hit hardest by their neoliberal trade policies, they've spent $175 billion funding the war in Ukraine.

It was the cherry on the cake that Vice President Kamala Harris has been proudly touting an endorsement from Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney!

Here's the sad truth: The Democratic Party has lost its way entirely. They mostly speak to the college educated, the urban and affluent, in their language. Their tone is condescending and paternalistic. They peddle giveaways to the college-educated like student loan forgiveness plans that disproportionately help their base, snubbing the majority of the country without a four-year degree, and then offer no tangible plans for true reform.

I moved to San Francisco from Kansas City a few years ago, and the attitudes I have since encountered have further cemented my beliefs. I've literally had people laugh in my face as they called my home state "dumb-f**k-istan."

When I went to the DNC last month, I was truly hoping to be re-inspired, to feel the same love for the party I felt as a teenager when I pounded the pavement for Barack Obama. I can still recall the immense joy I felt after he won, running into the street with hundreds of other people to dance to "Thriller."

But instead of giving me back that feeling, the DNC was where it finally hit me: It's impossible to unsee what I've seen. I can only go forward.

I'm not going back.

 

Evan Barker is a former Democratic campaign operative, campaign finance reform advocate, and podcaster. You can follow her on X @evanwch.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

https://www.newsweek.com/i-raised-millions-democrats-dnc-i-realized-theyre-party-rich-opinion-1955377

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.