Thank You For Giving Me the Strength, Conviction, and Abject Lucidity

The Democratic Party plays an indispensable role in America's political machinery.  It wields the dominant "narrative shaping" power in America in terms of controlling the state and setting policy. without the More importantly, without the existence of the Democratic Party, the US could no longer maintain the pretense that it's a "democracy." 

If the Democratic Party disintegrates, the US will be revealed for what it really is -- a one-party state ruled by a narrow alliance of business interests. Thus, the party's "narrative shaping" power is revealed as largely theatrical. 

The Democratic Party doesn't exist to fight for change, but only to pose as a force which one fine distant day might possibly bestir itself to fight for change. The essential service it renders to the US power structure -- lies not in what it does, but in its mere existence: by existing, and doing nothing, it pretends to be something it's not; and this is enough to relieve despair to let the system portray itself as a "democracy." 

 As long as the Democratic Party exists, suggestible Americans will believe they have a "democracy" and a "choice" in how they are ruled. They will not despair, and will not revolt.  

So long as they have this hope for "change from within the system." 

From the system's point of view, this mechanism serves as the ultimate safety valve.  The Democratic Party narrative insures that a despairing but still suggestible populace, will never coalesce into rebellion. It guarantees that no serious change to the system will be mounted. The modern Democratic Party wasn't designed to play that role..

The Democratic Party is not the "lesser evil;" it is an auxiliary subdivision of the same evil. To understand the American political system, one must step back and regard its operation as an integrated whole. 

The system can't be properly understood if one's study of it begins with an uncritical acceptance of the 2-party system, and the conventional characterizations of the two parties. (Indeed, the fact that society encourages one to view it in this way, is a warning that this perspective should not be trusted.)

If one focuses on the efforts of the few outspoken dissenters, it's easy to feel that the Democratic Party is somewhat less evil than the GOP. But in the larger picture, the Democratic Party invariably submits to what its bosses promulgate and the entire range of permissible thought and public discourse shifts to the right. 

The overall function of the Democratic Party is not to fight, it is to shape and to drive the ever-rightward-moving process. Just as the Harlem Globetrotters need their Washington Generals to make their basketball games properly entertaining, Republicans need the Democratic Party for effective staging of the political show.

The Democratic Party is permitted to exist because its vague hint of eventual progressive change keeps large numbers of people from bolting the political system altogether. If the Democratic Party ever actually threatened any sort of serious change, it would be disbanded. The fact that it is fully accepted by the corporations and political establishment tells us at once that its ultimate function must be wholly in line with the interests of those ruling .elites.

For the Democratic Party to even begin to serve as a vehicle for opposing the absolute rule of capital, it would at a minimum have to be capable of acknowledging the conflict that exists between the interests of capital and the rest of the people; and of expressing a principled determination to take the side of the people in this conflict.

A party whose controlling elements are billionaires, lobbyists, fund-raisers, careerist apparatchiks, consultants, and corporate lawyers; that has stood by prostrate and helpless (when not actively collaborating) in the face of stolen elections, illegal wars, torture, CIA concentration camps, lies as state policy, and one assault on the Bill of Rights after the next, is not likely to take that position.

CommonDreams |   Former President Barack Obama reportedly told advisers behind closed doors earlier this year that he would actively oppose Sen. Bernie Sanders if the progressive senator from Vermont opened up a big lead in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race.

"Publicly, [Obama] has been clear that he won't intervene in the primary for or against a candidate," Politico reported Tuesday. "There is one potential exception: Back when Sanders seemed like more of a threat than he does now, Obama said privately that if Bernie were running away with the nomination, Obama would speak up to stop him."