What Not To Do

“The Left,” to the extent such a thing exists in America, seems extremely energized by Donald Trump’s victory. They/ we are ready to fight back! What’s the plan? How about... more of the same?

The Democratic party just managed to lose what appeared to be the most gimme election in decades. Clearly, America is mad. Clearly, this was a rejection of the existing order. Clearly, the idea of the Democratic establishment as an adequate proxy for progessivism is dead, failed, ready to be buried or just dumped unceremoniously into the sea. What we need now is actual change, actual new ideas, progressive politics that actually help the poor and protect the middle class and shake up the country violently enough to put us on a different path, away from widening inequality and increasing alienation between the well-off and the left-behind.

New ideas. New actions. New groups. Right?

Right. And it will take a lot of money and resources to do this. And so the rich liberals, the big donors who aren’t Republicans, become all the more vital at this moment in time. They are now presented with a chance to finance an entirely new and actually progressive path upwards from the wreckage of the failed neoliberal Democratic party. So, who are these wealthy lefties—the checkbooks for a new national movement—talking to now?

Clinton confidante David Brock.

Politico reports:

Hillary Clinton’s attack dog David Brock is launching his own Koch-brothers-like donor network to finance attacks on President-elect Donald Trump and to rebuild the political left after Trump’s stunning victory over Clinton last week.

Brock on Thursday night emailed more than 200 of the biggest donors on the left — including finance titans George Soros, Tom Steyer and Donald Sussman — inviting them to a retreat in Palm Beach over inauguration weekend to assess what Democrats did wrong in 2016, figure out how to correct it and raise cash for those initiatives.

Ah yes, precisely what our divided nation has been calling for: a Palm Beach conclave of financiers. Easier to hurl spears at them when they’re all standing together like that.

Please, god, lord Jesus, Allah and Yahweh and He Who Cannot Be Understood, I pray in the name of all of you: Please reach out to tiny number of rich people who support liberal causes and tell them NOT TO GIVE ALL THEIR MONEY TO THE SAME EXACT SHIT THAT THEY GAVE IT TO BEFORE. The majority of this country that did not vote for Donald Trump and has fears about what is to come has an enormous opportunity right now to build a set of groups and institutions that are outside the Democratic establishment. That is the way forward. Throwing more money at the strategies that just lost is not the way forward. If the response of the rich to a populist anti-establishment backlash is to double down on funding the establishment, that will qualify as a missed opportunity. There are certainly some worthwhile groups among those currently being funded by the liberal donor class, but viewing them as the entire universe of possibility now would be a grave mistake. I am very sorry to do this but you have forced me to trot out this opportune cliche: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Stay away from the Clinton machine. And stay the fuck away from Palm Beach. For fuck’s sake.