And So Here We Are

Writes Nate McMurray:

For years, Democrats made excuses for Bill Clinton because he wore the right label. His record was repackaged as “pragmatic,” “third way,” or “electable,” even though it was brutal in practice. Welfare was gutted. Mass incarceration expanded. Financial deregulation was unleashed. He governed like a Republican – and he got away with it precisely because he was branded as a Democrat.

No Democratic Congress would have tolerated a Republican doing what Bill Clinton did. Policies that would have been torched as heartless if proposed by the GOP slid through because they came wrapped in Democratic language – sanitized, defended, normalized.

That bipartisan branding mattered. It trained the country to accept elite cruelty as reasonable, even necessary – as long as it came with the right rhetoric and the right party label.

This critique isn’t new. Listen, Liberal, by Thomas Frank, written nearly 15 years ago, laid this out plainly: a Democratic Party drifting away from working people and toward donors, professionals, and insiders – mistaking managerial competence for moral leadership. That book opened my eyes. It’s still painfully relevant.

Hillary Clinton wasn’t much better. She defended that legacy, defended her husband, and helped discredit the women who accused him. And when a genuine grassroots challenge emerged inside the party – one that threatened donor power – she and the party apparatus moved to crush it.

What happened to Bernie Sanders wasn’t an accident. It was oligarchy protecting itself.

Party insiders didn’t beat him in an open contest of ideas – they tilted the field. Debate access and timing were controlled. Elite endorsements coordinated to manufacture inevitability. Internal party communications later showed open hostility. Media narratives framed him as “unelectable” while downplaying his grassroots support. And when he resisted, fought back for his values, he was accused of being disloyal, even a traitor.

. . . None of this was illegal. That’s the point.

It was procedural power – rules written by insiders, enforced by insiders, for insiders. Democracy wasn’t shattered in one dramatic act; it was managed into submission. And the betrayal didn’t disappear. It metastasized – into distrust, disengagement, and the opening Trump walked through.

When people say “the system failed,” they’re being too kind.

The system worked exactly as designed.

. . . If the founders — or even the ancient Athenians — were dropped into modern America, they would not recognize it as a democracy. They would call it what it is: an oligarchy with elections. Try to run for office outside approved lanes and you’ll learn fast who holds power and who doesn’t. Money decides viability. Parties enforce obedience. Consent is optional.

And this is how we got Trump.

– Nate McMurray
via social media
December 23, 2025

__________________

I appreciate Nate McMurray’s perspective and his willingness to share it. But I have some things to say about it.

McMurray writes: “We need a Democratic Party reformed around working people, honesty, and accountability.” That’s not going to happen. What we need is a genuine independent, people-powered party that is not part of the corporatist/oligarchic duopoly.

The closest we have to such a party in terms of name recognition, a longstanding progressive populist platform, and viability via ballot access is the Green Party of the United States, a party that has long been committed to “working people, honesty, and accountability.” No reform necessary.

I long to see a mass migration of liberals, progressives and leftists (including elected Democrats) away from the Democratic Party to the Green Party. I’m done with the Democratic Party; it’s not a serious party, and certainly not an oppositional party to fascism. As McMurray and others have clearly shown, Democrats helped pave the way to fascism. Also, as more than one commentator has observed, the Democratic Party is the place were progressive movements go to get co-opted and thus die. The party establishment’s treatment of progressive presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Marianne Williamson disgusted me, and so, yes, I’m done with the Democratic Party.

As followers of The Wild Reed would know, after the undemocratic selection and coronation of Kamala Harris by Democratic Party elites, I opted to support the Jill Stein / Butch Ware Green Party ticket in 2024, and I’m currently supporting Dr. Ware’s run for California Governor.

For me, the logical and necessary response to McMurray’s accurate analysis of the Democratic Party is to abandon it completely and support and build the Green Party.



Related Off-site Links:
How Liberals Paved the Way for Trump – Catherine Liu, Rowan Williams, Josh Cohen (The Institute of Art and Ideas, December 16, 2025).
Trump’s Greatest Ally is the Democratic Party – Chris Hedges (The Chris Hedges Report, November 3, 2025).
The Corporate Democrats Delivered Donald Trump – Norman Solomon (Common Dreams, October 21, 2025).
How Elites Destroyed the Democratic Party in the U.S. and Fuelled Populism: An Interview with Joan Williams – Al Jazeera (August 31, 2025).
The Democratic Party Can’t Be Reformed – Black Green Red (August 20, 2025).
The Left Can Only Win If There is a Left – Richard Moser (CounterPunch, August 2, 2024).
The Democrats Actively Expedited Class Dealignment: An Interview with Neal Meyer – Vivek Chibber (Jacobin, May 12, 2025).
Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism – The Humanist Report (March 6, 2025).
Dems Reportedly Angry That Progressives Are Pushing Them to Act Like an Opposition Party – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, February 12, 2025).


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Tony Pentimalli on the Fallacy of the “Safe Political Center”
• Kshama Sawant on the Democrats’ Shutdown Cave
• David Norton: “The Democratic Party Serves Capital, Not You”
• Robert Reich on the “Big Ugly Cave” by Senate Democrats
• Mike Figueredo on the “Political Malpractice” of the Democratic Party
• Ted Rall: Democrats Are Not “the Left”
• Exposing the Dark Money Network Secretly Funding Establishment Democratic Influencers
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• Howie Hawkins: “The Democrats Are Not the Answer to the Trump/Fascism Problem”
• The Longstanding Fault Lines Within the Democratic Party Have Surfaced Again in Minnesota
• Jeff Cohen on How Obama’s “Corporate Liberalism” Led to the Rise of Trump
• Progressive Perspectives on Bernie Sanders’ “Fighting Oligarchy” Tour
• Eric Fernández: Quote of the Day – May 14, 2025
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 26, 2025
• Democrat Talk on the Eve of Trump’s Return
• When Democrats Undermine Democracy
• AOC Falls Into Line
• Marianne Williamson on How Centrist Democrats Abuse Voters with False Promises
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Chris Smalls: We Need to Escape the “Two-Party Plantation”
• Kshama Sawant: Independent Working-class Campaigns Can Succeed
• Butch Ware on “Red & Blue vs Green Politics”
• Butch Ware on His Run for California Governor and the Wider Goal of Disrupting the Duopoly
• “The Moment Is Ripe”: Butch Ware on Building a “True Oppositional Alternative” to the Duopoly

And from the 2016 archives, see:
• Hope, History and Bernie Sanders
• Progressive Perspectives on Presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton
• Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein: Is a “Historic Collaboration” in the Making?
• Cornel West Endorses the Green Party’s Jill Stein for President
• Carrying It On
• Progressive Perspectives on the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
• Progressive Perspectives on the Election of Donald Trump


Image: Donald Trump with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida – January 22, 2005. The occasion was the reception following Trump’s marriage to Melania Knauss. (Photo: Maring Photography / Getty Images)