Truest statement of the week

Fact is, the structural reality of Democrat political campaigns does not allow for any more political education than that. The aim of political campaigns and their affiliated non-partisan voter registration and education projects is to get that big base vote out, and to let people go home to be spectators again after the election. Democratic party honchos allow, even encourage activists to make promises about ongoing mobilizations after election day to enforce “accountability” to the grassroots, promises which Democrat higher-ups know perfectly well will not be kept. The activists have no organizational resources to fund ongoing grassroots mobilizations, and the Democratic party has no machinery whatsoever to translate the wishes of its base voters or the grassroots activists who mobilize them into policy.
Tens of thousands of grassroots activists stumped for Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008 hoping they’d see single payer health care enacted. The campaign’s official body, Obama For America was to hold a series of electronically linked local meetings across the country following the new president’s inauguration. But when many of the OFA meetings trended toward demanding Medicare For All, subsequent meetings were called off, and OFA was mothballed. Democrat activists pushing for single payer, for reining in the energy companies, for justice at home and peace abroad were locked out till their pimps needed them for the next election in 2012. That’s a big part of why Democrat turnout was down in 2010 and Democrats lost both houses of Congress.


-- Bruce A. Dixon, "Democrats Prepare to Pimp the Left in 2018 and 2020" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).