Message received: Establishment Dems fret over angry, active base

By Tyrone L. Heppard

This is a message to all my fellow liberals and left-wingers, activists and anti-fascists, protesters and progressives; to the members of the grassroots, peaceful resistance and to all my brothers and sisters in solidarity. I have a very important message for all of you: keep it up. It’s working.

Before I continue, I feel it’s necessary to state the obvious: we are nowhere near finished; there is more work to do. We’ve got to stay on our grind.

However, we’re already starting to see progress and even though we’ve only been active for a few months, the moves we’ve been making have prompted members of the Democratic Party establishment to take notice.

The “Democrats” in Congress who failed to listen to us and the rest of their base are now paying attention, and what they hear makes them very uncomfortable.

To quote the immortal words of Reading Rainbow’s LaVar Burton, “you don’t have to take my word for it.” Here are a couple of examples.

Exhibit A: Sen. Claire McCaskill.

The long-time Democratic senator from Missouri vehemently supported Hillary Clinton during the primaries, during which she smeared Bernie Sanders an “extreme” socialist who was, “too liberal to win.”

Anyway, she was on The Mark Reardon Show on recently where she announced her plans to run for re-election in 2018, but added she straight-up said she expects a challenge from the left.

“I’m for sure going to run,” McCaskill said. “And I may have a primary because there is, in our party now, some of the same kind of enthusiasm at the base that the Republican Party had with the Tea Party.”

I despise it when people call us the “Tea Party of the left”(but that’s another story I’ll get into in a future post) and it’s largely because of things like what McCaskill says next.

“Many of those people are very impatient with me because they don’t think I’m pure,” she said. “For example, they think I should be voting against all of Trump’s nominees and of course I’m judging each nominee on its own merit.”

What is this, Obvious Day at Camp Stupid?

Of course you should vote down all Trump’s nominees! Last I checked, there was a “D” after your name. His picks represent the exact opposite of the values of the party you’re in. Plus, some of his picks are just downright terrible people and/or unqualified and pose a direct a threat to your constituency.

So McCaskill and many other democrats in power will get held accountable. They will need to answer to why they have failed to represent our interests and they will get primaried. I don’t know how that will work out for her or the others, but the writing’s on the wall and if one establishment dem knows it, you can bet a lot more do, too. In fact…

Exhibit B: “Make ’em stop, Bernie! Make ’em stop!”

McCaskill and others may be expecting a tough primary, but some Democrats are straight up scared to come home after their base’s perceived acquiescence and lack of resistance to the swamp being pumped into the halls of power on Capitol Hill.

So much so that they are openly pleading for former democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to tell his supporters and like-minded liberals to calm down ahead of returning to their districts during their break from Congress.

On Feb. 14, the Washington Post reported on this, citing comments from Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) gave when he was asked about a meeting he attended which included Sanders, his fellow aggressive progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren; as well as other “moderate” senators like Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-Ny.).

“They basically explained to Bernie, it looks like you could be the person that could calm down and make sure their energy and all this enthusiasm is directed in all the right proper channels,” Manchin said. “Bernie has a voice, and if [protesters] want to be active, then direct them to where the problem may be or where they anticipate a problem.”

Let’s put this in perspective: During the primaries, the establishment dismiss Sanders and smear the constituents who support him and those who openly reject republicans and their policies.

Today, the establishment demands Sanders tell those same constituents not to yell at them because they didn’t fight against the republicans who have pledged to introduce the same polices we’ve all been rejecting from day one. Brilliant.

Now, these are just two examples, but they are huge because they illustrate just how much average citizens can achieve when we mobilize and we all scream, “Enough,” and demand some goddamn change.

Again, we got some work to do. As of the completion of this article, former labor secretary Tom Perez was elected head of the Democratic National Committee. The struggle, for sure, continues.

However, we’ve got the ideas, the policies, the determination and the numbers. Despite what anyone says the ball’s in our court. Let’s not drop it.

So as the protests and marches continue, and we keep turning out to hold our elected officials accountable, I think it’s important to remember that while progress is slow and often intangible in the moment, it works. After all, this is what democracy looks like.