The WAWG Blog

The BREXIT surprise resulted from a broken political system burdened by an austerity driven, neoliberal, economic system under the EU that drove angry voters to the polls.

Is this a precursor for a surprise in the US presidential election? Aren’t American voters likewise burdened with a broken, dysfunctional, political system that can’t fix the injustices caused by extreme economic, social, racial, and environmental inequality? Aren’t they being subjected to the same austerity driven, neoliberal, economic solutions pushed by the same corporate leaders who drive the EU economic system and the trade agreements like TPP and TTIP? Won’t we have angry voters on the right who select a property magnate for their presidential candidate and angry voters on the left who refuse to vote for an establishment candidate?

Based on two different graphics about voter preferences, one for party and one for progressive vs conservative, Dems will win only if they inspire the progressive base and progressive independents to vote.

According to results of the above Gallup poll, if only the Democratic base voted, Dem candidates would get no more than 29% of the nation’s votes. If only the Republican base voted, then Rep candidates would get no more than 26% of the nation’s votes.

In other words, both parties need the independent voters, who represent 45% of the nation’s voters, to win any elections and/or for their opponents supporters to stay home on election day. Some of those independents are truly independent and vote for a third-party, but most will lean either Repub or Dem/conservative or progressive.

Assuming negligible votes for third parties, then Dems need at least 22% of these independents to win. That gives Dems 51% and Reps 49%. That leaves 23% of the independents for the Repugs/conservatives and they need 25% of independents to win.

Now take a look at the New American Majority pie chart above to see what that winning 51% for Dems is composed of – progressive whites and progressive people of color. This chart is from Steve Phillips’ book titled Brown Is The New White, in which he and his team analyzed the Citizen Voting Age Population (CVAP) data from the Census bureau and a detailed CNN exit poll data from the 2012 national election which included voting numbers by race and many other demographic factors. (Appendix A of the book goes into detail on how this chart was determined.)

In this chart, independents are split between the shrinking conservative-leaning and the growing, mostly, progressive-leaning voter, especially the Millennials.

To win that 51% of existing 2012 progressive voters, Democratic candidates must publicly and repeatedly address the concerns of this progressive voting majority: economic, social, racial, and environmental injustice. In other words, what will Dems do to minimize the, what are now extreme, inequalities born out of these injustices?

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Note in the Phillips’ pie chart, the 49% of whites and people of color who vote Republican/Conservative, including right-leaning independents. Also note, that John Dean, in Conservatives Without Conscience, identified the radical right, which helped elect the Tea Party to Congress, as 20 to 25% of the US population. If you add to this 25% an additional 3% of conservatives who seldom vote unless enabled by a leader like Trump, then that leaves 21% (49-28) for the right-leaning independents based on the first graphic above.
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Even though the odds are now in favor of progressives taking back our government from corporate control, Trump can still win if Democratic candidates don’t inspire the left-leaning independents and their base to vote by speaking about progressive values – assuming that voter suppression and election fraud equally impact both parties.

Now that the party primaries are over, it appears that the profit centric MSM has guided the voters quite convincingly. We ended up with the candidates which both media’s profit masters most approve of and which voters have the lowest approval of.

Our democracy is just an illusion as long as a minority of voters select our leaders. The last two Texas governors were elected by less than 21% of all registered voters and the primaries represent an even smaller minority.

There is no conspiracy to select these candidates, just a decades old plan for a corporate coup which this minority of voters is either blind or obedient to. And with the Dem Party minority turnout even smaller than the minority Repug turnout, the profit masters may have one of their own as POTUS.

The Powell Memo of 1971 laid out the plan for this coup and everything seems to be going as planned.

What will the November election bring us?

Professor Altemeyer, was referenced extensively in John Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience and in this blog. He has written a summary on authoritarians and related articles.

If the New American Majority, discussed by Steve Phillips in Brown Is The New White, don’t participate in the political process, these authoritarian followers will make Trump our next president.

RE: Brown Is The New White by Steve Phillips (This is my kind of book. Filled with quantitative and qualitative details, and progressive policies for the mind, and, more importantly, backed up and supported by progressive values for the soul.)

Hope your Memorial Day weekend included remembering a loved one who served our country.

Phillips’ new book, in addition to quantifying NAM, also includes two chapters on planning and policy. I thought it would be worth sharing highlights from the policy chapter and a couple of related figures.

Policy Priorities for the New American Majority:

Chapter 7 of Phillips’ new book, referenced above, recommends ideas for reaching out to the New American Majority. Here are some excerpts on the economic injustices of America and recommended policies to rectify them:

“Today’s racial wealth gap is a modern-day manifestation of the fact that America was built on land stolen from Native Americans and Mexicans, and developed by the backbreaking labor of African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans.”

“Economic inequality is the defining issue of our time.

“Beyond the morality of the matter as motivation to act, there are also significant strategic reasons to pursue an economic agenda.

“Accepting the premise that Whites are in a privileged position because they have been favored as a group throughout our history while others have been held back as a group is the first step toward thinking about sweeping public policy solutions to address our racial wealth gap.

“I don’t expect these things ‘returning of land and reparations’ to happen anytime soon, but if they sound outrageous, then by comparison, other policy proposals to correct injustice:

• making massive investments in education,
• enacting comprehensive immigration reform,
• establishing universal voter registration,
• ending mass incarceration,
• adopting “Polluter Pays” taxes nationwide, and
• imposing a wealth tax on the richest 1 percent should seem modest

Phillips then details each of these policy proposals, which I won’t go into here, and closes with “the way to win.”

“A bold social just agenda is the key to bringing forward and bringing out the best in progressive Whites. Progressive people are not simply motivated by material self-interest; there is a value and benefit to living in a more just and equal society and having a sense of meaning and purpose in one’s life. Given this moment in time, a strong social justice agenda could help progressive Whites who often find themselves asking “What is justice?” to answer the question with decisive, nondefensive, bold action.

“Championing economic justice is more than moral and just. It’s also the way to win elections.

“People of color vote in lower numbers because many of them feel that most of the U.S. public policy agenda has little relevance to their lives.

“The political power of fighting for economic justice and its potential became clear in Obama’s 2008 campaign when he specifically addressed ‘the wealth and income gap in his campaign speeches, grabbing the attention of voters everywhere.

“Attacking and forcibly removing Native Americans from America’s fertile fields, enslaving and economically exploiting Africans in America, launching a war against Mexico so Texas could continue to practice slavery, encouraging Chinese immigration to build an economically valuable railroad but then explicitly excluding Chinese from becoming citizens, and racially restricting access to mortgage loans in economically expanding neighborhoods were not unfortunate aberrations carried out by a few rogue officials and bad actors, the likes of which we don’t see any more. These were official policies of the Unites States of America.

“Although justice has long been delayed, those who bore the brunt of those attacks now have the numbers to serve as the cornerstone of a New American Majority. With those numbers, with that majority, we have the opportunity – indeed the obligation – to make new public policies. Policies rooted in justice and dedicated to the proposition that all people are indeed created equal.”

In chapter 8, Phillips warns us that Republicans also know the demographic change is coming and they have been working on their outreach programs since 2012. Just look back at the mix of candidates they had during the debates. The book was completed before Trump won all the primaries, but Phillips did mention Trump as a complicating factor.

Another example of information you won’t get from profit centric MSM that must keep its profit master happy by entertaining the masses:

Steven Hill has written Raw Deal. Using companies like Uber and AirBnB, Hill discusses the next move in cheapening the wellbeing of the worker.

Employment used to include a living wage, a pension plan, a health plan, sometimes even paid overtime, vacation time, sick leave, 401K with a company match, etc. And these were all mostly paid for by the employer.

Then came the move to contract workers, where you got a living wage and much reduce benefits.

Now, with Uber, under the guise of being your own CEO, you depend on others to pay you, you then pay a percentage of your income to Uber to use their system for finding customers, and you take on all the expenses and liabilities of doing business. You have no benefits except “being in charge.” You must provide all the tools for the job, like your car. You have to figure out how to pay for the increased costs of driving and how you will replace your car sooner than you expect. You have to pay higher car insurance fees for all the extra driving you do and risk you take. You not only have to pay your share of Social Security and Medicare taxes, you have to pay the employers share as self-employed business owner.

And all the money you send to Uber is almost pure profit – for them.

Welcome to the #ShareTheCrumbsEconomy / #GigEconomy

“A 2014 study commissioned by the Freelancers Union found that more than one in three workers — 53 million Americans — are now freelancing. Other estimates predict that within 10 years nearly a majority of the 145 million employed Americans — 65–70 million workers — will be so-called independent workers. Sharing economy companies like Uber, Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Postmates and Homejoy claim they are liberating workers to become independent — “their own CEOs” — in reality, workers are forced to take ever-smaller jobs (gigs and micro-gigs) and wages while the companies profit handsomely. Indeed, some workers have multiple employers in a single day. Even many full-time, professional jobs and occupations are experiencing this shift toward precarity. Business consultancy MBO Partners has estimated that the number of freelance workers is projected to outpace full-time workers by 2020.”

How much of the following would you either agree with or can offer a more accurate/corrected summary?

– Is incremental, slow, change no longer acceptable?
– Is working from within the rigged system not worth the effort to re-rig it?
– Are you feeling disenchanted and is this disenchantment driven by the massive inequality of economic neoliberalism and the pro-war, neocon-driven, foreign policy?
– Would this disenchantment drive you to vote for Trump if Bernie is not the Democratic nominee?
– Will you continue the #PoliticalRevolution even if Sanders is not nominated?

Here is a detailed reply from Mark.

It is a natural result of many factors including, but not limited to:

– Decades of repeating that “government IS the problem” and predatory privatization of our government

– Decades of disempowering the people’s government while empowering
the excessively wealthy with even more power by both:

– Giving them excessive reductions in citizenship dues
to help starve the government, and
– Allowing corporations to divert savings from productivity
increases from millions of productive profit makers to a
very few, non-value added, profit takers at the top, who
put those savings in tax shelters further starving govt.

– Enabling a communication network of profit centric media,
via changes in our telecommunications laws, who’s profit is:

– Required by a very few empowered profit takers, and
– Maximized by entertaining citizens, who are told
shopping, not voting, is patriotic

Who will save us from a Trump Presidency?

The Powell Memo of 1971 formalized our path to this point in our corporatocracy. Since the corporate plan laid out in this memo has: been funded by the likes of Koch, Coors, Olin, Bradley, Scaife, and others; has constructed a massive pro-corporate infrastructure of think tanks and lobbyists; and has had several pro-corporate rulings by SCOTUS, our REAL national problem is that it’s owned by Wall $treet, hedge fund managers, and Realestate tycoons.

In addition, these profit hoarders have fostered both foreign and domestic wars to transfer more wealth from the poor and middle class to the ONE%, or to distract and divide us. The foreign relations ideology of the neocons has been promoting the American Empire for decades through regime change in SA, ME, and Eastern Europe. The economic neoliberals have enabled economic wars on citizens through free market fundamentalism and privatization of public institutions like prisons. Then there is the war on drugs, women’s health, and the poor.

So, my biggest concerns are America’s corporatocracy and it’s profit driven pro-war mania. Stopping these acts of greed is a must. We need a massive and united #PoliticalRevolution.

How is the revolution maximized and what are our most likely options?

The maximum possibility is achieved with:
– An independent president, Bernie Sanders, with the largest separation from the ONE% and Wall $treet and significant campaign funds from millions of individuals – not from corporations or PACs
– A massive turn-over in Congress with a 2/3s majority in both houses.

The first less than optimum possibility is:
– A Democratic president, Hillary Clinton, with ties to pro-war neocons and Wall $treet, but who may continue with a more progressive agenda than President Obama
– A massive turn-over in Congress with a 2/3s majority in both houses to keep a Democratic president more in line with progressive desires of those who elected them.

Next less than optimum possibility is:
– A Democratic president, Hillary Clinton with ties to pro-war neocons and Wall $treet, but who may continue with a more progressive agenda than President Obama
– A less than massive turn-over in Congress to push a progressive agenda

Next option:
– A third-party candidate. This will only improve the chances for a Republican president. Now if Bernie broke away to run as a third-party, this could be a real close race depending on whether Trump is the opponent? Trump can’t get more than about 30% of America’s vote. That may leave 40% to split between Hillary and Bernie. Doesn’t sound like a good option until voter turnout gets to 80%.

The key to the first maximum impact option is a unified and massive vote by whites, blacks, Hispanics, and millennials. However, the black vote for Sanders is a potential problem, which could be partially off-set by the enthusiasm of the millennials. This is also best for changes to SCOTUS and will promote values that best support “us.” #NotMeUs

The second option is just not likely. Hillary has inspired more fund-raisers than high turnout voter rallies. Millennials see her as part of the problem and will not change their historical non-participation in politics for her. Blacks like her and they are 13% of the US population.

The third option is likely with Hillary as the Dem nominee and that means at least 4 more years like the last eight. Since Republican bigotry is matched by Republican misogyny, Hillary will be resisted as strongly as Obama. This does not bode well for SCOTUS appointees that would support values of “we the people.”

I participated in a recent poll by MoveOn.org and they sent me a follow-up survey to understand why I chose Bernie Sanders for MoveOn to endorse. Here is part of my survey feedback:

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I’m a leader in the Texas Democratic Party who sees America following in the missteps of Texas on the road to oligarchy and single party rule. Free market fundamentalists have been pandering to billionaires and CEOs for too long. Their cancer of excessive greed was born out of the 1971 Powell Memo and has resulted in ALEC, SPN, AFP, lots of conservative think tanks, Liberty University, purchasing control of universities, profit-centric media that can’t afford to air any news that speaks ill of their wealthy puppet masters, predatory privatization, excessive tax cuts for the wealthy, trade agreements that ship good jobs overseas and lowers wages to the lowest common denominator, Congressional districts that select their voters, deteriorating public infrastructure, bloated military budget to go with their war-mongering, regime change, foreign policy, and voter suppression.

Apathetic voters are a root cause of Texas and America’s current deterioration, but they have been mislead by free market fundamentalists and their profit-centric media to think that citizenship is defined by how much they shop. In addition, their freedom to participate in the democratic process has been limited by decades of stolen wages and increasing, high-cost, debt which force them to work multiple jobs. There is either no interest or no time for voting by two-thirds of eligible American voters.

Then there is voter intimidation created by new Voter ID laws to scare voters into staying home.

It’s past time for a broad-based political revolution to reverse decades of damage to America.