Truest statement of the week

Moore’s response is superficial and sidesteps the central questions. He takes note of the obvious shift to the right by the Democratic Party hierarchy. Proceeding farther along this “left” path, he suggests that the Trump presidency has been “decades in the making” and points to the right-wing records of both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. He argues that Trump “outflanked” Hillary Clinton to the left on various social issues and war during the 2016 presidential campaign, but observes that, in any event, nonvoters, 100 million of them, were the single biggest bloc on Election Day.
Moore’s voiceover continues: “As the Democrats became more like the Republicans, so did the entire liberal establishment, led by the paper of record [the New York Times ]: catering to Big Business, minimizing social movements like Occupy Wall Street and cheerleading every war we got into, while also trying to dictate elections.”
Fahrenheit 11/9 gives far too much credit to the individual figures of Bill Clinton and Obama, whose administrations not only pushed the Democratic Party to the right but reflected the shift of the entire political establishment. The source of the reactionary turn by both big-business parties lies in the objective crisis of American and global capitalism. The Republicans and Democrats have tactical differences and divergent political styles, but the American ruling class is united in its determination to impose the consequences of the intractable crisis on both its economic rivals and “allies” abroad and the working population at home.
The implication of Moore’s viewpoint is that the Democratic Party’s decades-long repudiation of its reformist–New Deal past is a mere policy choice carried out by misguided individuals that can be corrected by pressure exerted from below. This is a reactionary and utopian fantasy.
In his voiceover, Moore argues that Obama “paved the way” for Trump and offers a partial list of the Obama Administration’s “accomplishments”: the locking up of whistle-blowers, the murderous drone program, the deportation of a record number of immigrants, enhanced surveillance, endless wars, etc. Why doesn’t the filmmaker call a halt right there? Why should any worker or anyone with a conscience support a party capable of such filthy acts? But Moore, like the entire liberal-left, can stomach anything by now.



-- David Walsh, "Fahrenheit 11/9—Filmmaker Michael Moore clings to the Democratic Party" (WSWS).