Retrieval 1: Put the Blame on Mame

The Promise - And Broken Promises - of America

Blame On Mame November 22, 2024

“Put the blame on Mame boys, put the blame on Mame” Margarita Carmen Cancino aka Rita Hayworth, Gilda, 1946

What Harris said: I’m going to work for you starting day one, he’s going to start out with tax cuts for billionaires and a revenge list for all his petty grievances…And that of course is exactly what’s happening - and please don’t say she didn’t talk policy - I think more to the point it is clear that enough of us simply weren’t listening - or willing to listen to her. Although, many of us were and it is worth having recounts across the nation - please see Election Truth Alliance.

I have had a long delay in editing and posting what I originally thought was going to be my first Substack once I joined - this piece, along with a number of others, got stuck in my old computer and so it is only now, 7 months on, that I’ve been able to retrieve it in it’s rough from - meaning that now, this is an only minimally edited version. What is interesting though, in re-reading it, is to see, from what I was describing only just a few weeks post-election, just how much of what I have down here is now staring each one of us in the face now -only to a much more explicitly detailed, disturbing and overwhelming level than any of us could have ever fully grasped the extent of at that time.

I’d like to dedicate what really should have been my first Substack to the Harris/Walz Campaign and the historic three month marathon they ran for none other than each one of us. And why did they do it? Watching and listening to them, it seems at least one answer: to continue a trajectory of renewed efforts, to pick up where Presidents Obama and Biden’s work had led us all to: the continued protect of OUR Constitutional Democracy and to keep working to fulfill, as she so rightfully called it, The Promise of America - moving our nation forward, towards the more fair, equal, wide ranging prosperous, safer, healthier nation it could be for ALL of us, or, in the words of our Constitution,“to form a more perfect Union. “

Instead though, what we now all get to live through and try to deal with is what could very well end up being not only the fastest obliteration of just about every step of social progress Americans have worked so hard to achieve over the past 125 years but really, the entire collapse of all remaining global democracies - to effectively coincide with the collapse of almost all critical ecosystems as this administration and all their international cohorts begin executing their plans. Citizens, civil and human rights activists, writers, educators, union and non-union workers, public servants, social workers, journalists, environmentalists, artists, athletes, doctors, immigrants, juries, lawyers, judges, and many politicians, have collectively worked towards and built some of the most fundamental components of the success of our country from the start of the 20th century that we continue to rely on but that now sounds more like a wish list versus enacted legislation: the Fair Labor Standards Act, The 19th Amendment, The Works Progress Administration, The Equal Rights Amendment, The GI Bill, Social Security, Medicare, The Civil Rights Act, The Voting Rights Act, The Anti-Discrimination Act, Affirmative-Action, The Respect for Marriage Act, The Equal Pay Act, The Federal Women’s Program, Roe v Wade and Women’s Healthcare, The Americans With Disabilities Act, The Immigration and Nationality Act, The Family and Medical Leave Act, The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, USAID, The Whistleblower Protection Act, DACA, The Environmental Protection Agency, The Endangered Species Act, The Clean Water Act, The Clean Air Act, The Department of Education, a national public school, library and park system, The Postal Service Reform Act, The Build Back Better Act and I could continue on with thousands more.

This is a truly mind boggling list of accomplishments by Americans for Americans along with all the millions of people working so hard to become citizens here, the people, that our nation, for centuries, promised safe harbor - until now. Each one of those listed, in it’s own right, represent a notch on on our arrow’s long arc of justice. Such integral components of our nation’s most essential functionality - and how that psychologically impacts each one of us - that eliminating even one, causes ripple effects through the entire framework of such long-fought, hard won progress. But what each of them together really show all of us is that America - which is to say Americans and those becoming Americans, have been working independently as a collective, so hard towards something and for such a long time now. Again what the “unqualified” former lawyer, former San Francisco Attorney General, former California State Senator, former Vice President of the United States and former cyber-hacked election “candidate” reminded us of repeatedly, The Promise of America.

With the exception of Theodore Roosevelt’s National Monuments which led to the National Park System, and George Bush Sr. signing the Americans with Disabilities Act, each of those I just listed above were signed and passed into law under Democratic leadership - Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry “S” Truman, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, James Earl Carter, William Jefferson Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama, Joseph Robinette Biden. And of course, we were just on the cusp of adding Kamala D. Harris and all the signature programs her administration would have implement - STARTING ON DAY ONE. But looking at even just partial list of our collective advancement and achievement as a nation, it doesn’t really strike as coincidental that as this second term administration is now on the verge of taking their axes to probably each one of them, that so much media - and from across the political spectrum - has been hellbent on continually perpetuating the “idea” aka propaganda that Democrats have “lost their way”, are “out of touch elitists” and more specifically to VP Harris, as was repeated over and over, with no “concern” with the working class” - meaning white men ranging in their 20s - 60s.* Reality check: the Harris/Walz campaign was clearly working right in step in the trajectory of prior Democratic administrations and had unambiguously presented ALL OF US - including white men - with a platform that was dedicated to at least helping address some of the many, deep societal problems the working class has been contending with for well over a century now.*

We can see how, coinciding with all of that progress listed above, unsurprisingly, the simultaneous, relentless hacking away at the working class and our wages, how that traces so far back, as I said, well over 100 years - but most explicitly it seems, these much more concerted, legislatively organized attacks so over the past 45 years - back to the Reagan era when he actually referred to the signature deprivations and economic injustice that characterize - and to an overwhelming extent define - class warfare, he donned it another name: “trickle down economics” - which at least was, in some sense anyway, honest labeling - a trickle indeed. And the timing there makes perfect sense - because the overall Republican project, long before Project 2025, had, as it’s long-term aim - the goal of essentially obliterating the culmination of all of that enormous progress we collectively built together across time, brick by brick - namely, a fairer, more equal, more inclusive America “with liberty and justice for all”.

I’ll spare rehashing Republican “polices” that have steadily continued to decimate anything of collective social progress, not the last of which being our public works - schools, transportation, libraries, infrastructure, environmental protections -and I’d say the United States Postal Service except they have NEVER run on tax dollars - no matter how much Republicans have tried to knee-cap and bankrupt one of the most vital of all our public infractructure - suffice to say, we are now in, what at least appears to be, the culminating phase of all of those “policies”, a “Late Republic” stage.

And so, also not surprisingly, and also running across these past 45 years, another key feature is that our two main political parties appear to have become increasingly gendered and theological. Through so much media and political punditry, it seems as if a concerted effort has been made to fuse social identity, cultural “norms”, “standards” “ethics” and “morality” into either a “godly” masculine political camp, or an “anti-Christ” feminine/effeminate political camp. Through continual denigration of The Democratic Party, one doesn’t have to go far to find how the party itself has been depicted as, and projected onto, time and again, as the weak, economically unstable, untrustworthy, manipulative, lying, cheating “DemoNcrat Party” as they love to call us, while the other, “healthy” choice is full-blooded masculine/strong, economically sound/fiscally responsible, trustworthy, women-controlling, child-protecting, football “good”, Christian/Fatherland Party. And with much help of enough media over the past 50 years especially, much of the public has essentially become locked into a certain mode of binary/oppositional, static “thinking” - and reactivity - think Steve Bannon, better yet, don’t. The Democratic Party = a satanic woman, or, more lately as they’re describing it, Satan “disguised” as a woman is out to Destroy the Very Fabric of America. The Republican Party: a strong, ethical but “pissed Daddy” (remember Tucker Carlson’s speech anyone?) about to right the wrongs of all the devils’s spawn - and most especially at the daughters, who, when “dad comes home” are going to - get ready for it - get “a vigorous spanking” . Democrats, the whore mothers destroying our liberties, Republicans, “protective” fathers “saving” all (some) of us.

All of this to say, 5+ decades - and counting - has had more explicit attacks against the vast majority of working class Americans and tax payers, but also against Democrats and, most to the point here, Democracy itself. Today, income inequality, entirely reflective of long periods of truly shameful tax cuts (among many other attacks against Americans), has only continued to increase out of these corrupt antecedents. And now, today, what is this “new” “administration” promising? More tax cuts for the super rich once again of course and, once again, at the direct expense of working class Americans (Social Security, Medicare, social programs, public services and on and on) - but even beyond that, at the expense of the wholesale obliteration of our Constitution, of our government By The People, For The People, and all/any pesky remaining governmental structures and entities - oh yes, can’t forget, an increase in mass surveillance to the likes that science-“fiction” warned all of us about time and again.

But what is almost as upsetting, if not more upsetting than this continual right-wing attack, how Democrats are against the working class, but the fact that this same line of attack coming from centrist, “mainsteam” media is coming from progressives and the left as well. Yes, certainly there are many valid and disturbing enough facts and details for those in the more progressive caucus to attack Democrats over - but at this time in our history? Running against this particular set of fascist, kleptocratic technocrats - really?

Here for example, is Bernie Sanders, who I deeply admire but, to an extent, disagree with him on in this instance, in an interview on The Daily’s podcast, after Harris “lost” the cyber-rigged election, explaining why she “lost” - they didn’t discuss even one of the many issues of election interference that surfaced during the campaign, it was spoken about as if she’d lost “definitively”, fair and square - but that very much remains to be determined. Either way, in explaining this “loss” and why Democrats keep “losing” in general (though we in fact don’t), he said the reason was because “There was no appreciation - no appreciation - of the struggling and suffering of millions of working-class people. And unless you recognize that realty, and have a vision of how you get out of that, I think you’re not going to go very far as a political party.”

Ok. So apparently not Biden's Build Back Better Framework, which on it’s website landing page cites right at the start how “for too long, the economy has worked great for those at the top, while working families get squeezed.” In addition, BBB was paid for by America’s “very largest corporations and wealthiest Americans.” This plan which has pumped BILLIONS of dollars (which, don’t kid yourself, are going to be stripped from all of us any time now) into good paying jobs, including union jobs, created in just these first 4 years alone, a phenomenal attempt at overhauling our massively deteriorating infrastructure, bringing new industry to our country including The Chips Act, many of the production plants for which are not even built yet, are still in the pipeline, set to be built and completed during this next “administration” which it will of course try to take all credit for - not to mention all those 1000s upon 1000s of excellent paying, government backed construction work with those large white signs with “Your Tax Dollars At Work” printed on the bottom of them - workers you’re now see in virtually every part of the country as you drive along (though rarely seen on national news programming of course, trust me it’s everywhere, I’ve travelled to some of those places and seen it myself) - but apparently, at least according to Sanders and so many others, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with the relationship between The Democratic Party and the working class.

With these types of broad brushstroke anti-Democratic Party attacks, it is important to note that those making such claims, like Sanders himself, didn’t provide any details and specifics of the past 4 years that came from the Democratic Party - except for problems at the border, that topic Fox hammered away on 24/7 - because we were “under attack!” Mexicans and anyone else south of the border, with their sacks of clothes and maybe a few tools carried with them, were now suddenly “enemy combatants”. For all of Fox’s propaganda hysteria, it’s important to note that yes, former pre-Biden Democratic presidents didn’t fix the problem (although you would have thought Obama’s highest in deportation numbers in history would have pleased Fox enough for at least a mention, but no - wrong man), but Felon’s first term didn’t help solve the century long problem either, despite thousands of campaign promises to do just that - how many times did we hear “We’re going to build a wall and whose gonna pay for it? Everyone!: Mexico’s going to pay for it!!!”. Likewise, Fox of course wasn’t presenting what at the time VP Harris/Walz were actually presenting us with during the campaign. But facts and details matter.

To claim that the 2024 Democratic Party and Harris/Walz campaign had “no appreciation - no appreciation - of the struggling and suffering of millions of working-class people”, well, myself and millions upon millions of other working Americans entirely heard that we were very much being considered by the both of them at every single one of their packed arena rallies in every state they could get to (while contending with the beyond challenging three month timeline, and, by virtue of that, all the extra demand of campaigning “battleground” states given how our broken electoral system “works”). But MOST of us very much heard, felt and well understood that they were directly speaking to and about us - as did millions from the increasingly descending middle class - as did even many of the financially well off, who voted for their ticket and who also happen care about ALL Americans and ALL trying to gain citizenship here - not only caring for themselves, their families, their friends, their interests but for the great and beautiful fabric of humanity that guiding principle intrinsic to the The United States itself - All are created equal, not just rich, white men.

Another point I’d like to make. Women’s Health Care happens to be a major concern for working class men just as much as it is for working class women. Attacks on women’s health are just as much attacks on the working class and working poor in general as they are attacks against women - most especially women of lesser economic means and opportunities to travel. Yet in that same interview, Sanders didn’t once mention women’s health care or our most fundamental health rights - not just as human beings but as free citizens in this presumably still free country. So when claiming Democrats “show no appreciation” of working class struggles, those struggles need to be specifically named, because women’s health rights, which the Democratic Party has long championed -that is just one, of many, demonstrations of concern fro the working class. Likewise, there should be breakdown of the man different demographics that comprise the working class - because each one has their own unique needs and concerns - we’re not a monolith. Yet again, broad generalizing brushstroke are what the vast majority of so much anti-Democratic Party propaganda used - before, during and after this election. But those don’t cut it - these ongoing, highly reductive simplifications do not do any of us any good and don’t help identify the real problems at hand that we all face individually and as a collective, let alone potential solutions. But massive, unexamined generalizations are a well-worn tactic of the right: simplicity and bombast = “truth” “social” - but those of us on whatever spectrum of the left we find ourselves, we should be very careful risking falling into these same types of rhetorical simplifications.

But if you still don’t agree the Harris/Walz campaign was explicitly concerned with the lives of American workers, don’t take my word for it - take it from what VP Harris/Walz were actually offering to us out loud when, for example, she literally out loud promised, time and again, she made an explicit promise to us from the stages of her rallies and interviews - to be a president for ALL Americans.

Here is what anyone who showed up at a Harris/Walz rally - no interpreters or podcast sessions needed - it was straight up clear. And for those of us who couldn’t attend a rally, we simply turned on television or watched online - we didn’t need special attention to hear their plans and ideas, though some groups of young white men mostly it seemed, complained on certain very popular podcasts that they didn’t get any proper, deserved attention from her. Well, many of us didn’t even expect that in the first place - most especially from someone having to run a campaign in less than 100 days. But it wasn’t as if she was being unclear about the ideas she was presenting us with - it was pretty easy to follow and gain a decent enough sense of, certainly well beyond statements such as “Well, I have a concept of a plan.”

No, nothing was perfect during that the intensely paced, most expensive presidential election in history thanks to our “Supreme” Court’s 2010 decision and all the dark money funding it that we can never hope to track, nothing was perfect during that very limited 3 month window they had to run in, not to mention how hard they each worked near every minute of those months. But Harris was saying it plain - all that was required was a willingness to listen, think, to, as our 7th grade teachers taught us, to compare and contrast.

Each proposal she and Walz presented to us were directly geared towards recognizing and drastically improving the lives, dignity, health, families and futures of all working Americans and their families - and of course, those in more economically protected rankings as well. And just to be clear here, there were no proposals offered anywhere near close to these that any of us could find or even interpret out of the many meandering threads of “The Weave” as they called it - remember that one? So given the unfathomably grave stakes before us at that time in our history, for many who claimed to be “still deciding”, I just don’t think, of all election in our lifetimes, that this was the one to chose to nitpick the Democratic Party for all it’s ostensible “failures” and “short comings” - and anyone who didn’t recognize the fundamental reality of that, well, it’s really more than difficult to understand….

A few cases in point:

*Harris: “We’re going to tax billionaires and big corporations - it’s time FOR THEM TO PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE - it’s time.” This would have included reversing Trump’s prior tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans - we can now all see where we are with all that now…. * Not raising taxes on Americans earning 400k or less. * Expansion of The Affordable Care Act as in: * Paid Sick Leave * Paid Family & Medical Leave * Continuing expanding caps on medications ie insulin * Protecting Medicare * Protecting and Expanding Social Security (without raising the retirement age) * PROUDLY Protecting and Expanding Women’s Health Care & PROTECTING OUR HUMAN RIGHT TO OUR OWN BODIES, TO OUR OWN DECISIONS ABOUT OUR LIVES AND OUR FAMILIES, AND OUR RIGHT - AS FREE AMERICAN CITIZENS - FROM THIS “NEW” THREAT OF DAILY STATE SANCTIONED SURVEILLANCE, TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS, PUNISHMENT AND DEATH - AS KEEPS HAPPENING IN TRUMP’S ABORTION BAN STATES *At-Home-Care for Seniors as a new component of Medicare * Universal Child Care * Universal Pre-K * Expanded Child Care Credit * Protecting Medicare * Development of multiple Green Energy Projects in formerly “Blue Wall” states * PROUDLY PRO-Union * $25k In Assistance to First-Time Home Buyers * Student Debt Relief * The Entrepreneurs & Innovators Policy Plan + Growing Local, Small Businesses * Protecting voting rights and our election infrasture

Think about any working class person you know who is living on say, 25k - 150k per year. Just how many many of these proposals do you think would be transformative to that person? 1? 5? No, every single one of them - directly and/or indirectly.

There haven’t been many campaigns in my lifetime presenting near as comprehensive and immediately beneficial proposals to working-class Americans as this one did. So very counter to what the media keeps spewing about all the Democratic Party’s feckless indecisiveness and all Harris/Walz’s ostensible shortcomings, this election season now stands as one of the most devastating losses to the working-class and poor we’ve ever experienced in any major party campaign election year - but also, I’ll say, very much to the middle class as well now.

And while that list I just offered is incomplete, all those claims about VP Harris and Democrats “not caring”, “not” speaking to so many of our main concerns is just one more block to add in that long litany of attacks against our party for so long now - but that ramped up intensively as Biden’s aging came into question and talk of a Harris presidency began to look like a real prospect - remember all the Republican attacks right at the outset? About how it was “illegal” for her to run and on and on it went. To my mind, all these non-stop broad brushed attacks against VP Harris and The Democratic Party writ large suggest that something quite apart from any genuine concern for working-class Americans is lurking beneath all the blame, hysteria and vitriol. Yes, the Democratic Party has it’s flaws, yes, global corporatism is everywhere and cannot be wished away unfortunately - but all the more so especially when your opponent is a long time climbing Republican Party that pushed for and that is built on Citizens United and all the many other tricks in the books they’ve been deploying for decades now: gerrymandering, 100s and 100s of voter restriction laws passed every year now, more and more bizarre identification demands and document requirements including birth certificates!, installing people like Dejoy to entirely sabotage our USPS, our mail delivery system and mail-in ballots, the loads of money coming into local elections that isn’t even including all the dark money, the increasingly difficult stakes in running for local offices, and of course, and those most blatantly illegal ones - intimidating voters, stalking and threatening election workers, fake electors to present the votes for Pence to certify, January 6th, “Hang Pence!”, burning ballot boxes - I could go on and on - all kinds of tactics, many of which we don’t even know about - and I wrote that before we found out that Musk’s tech boys came in and hacked about our electoral system with a program one of them built that they themselves named “Ballotproof”.

2024 was simply and very clearly not the election year to hold to one’s most lofty ideals, expecting perfection and when close enough to it appears, not realizing - or not caring enough - about the the true scope of exactly all that was hanging in the balance, all that was very much at stake. Harris was speaking to all of us about us and about our democracy - one of the few remaining in the world and one which we are now all going to have to try each of our absolute hardest to save - once again - except this time under far more dire conditions than any of us have ever known.🇺🇸🗽

**When I state “working class” it is to connote a range of demographics, some of whom are included in what is more typically in America called the middle class, as well as many who are literally a paycheck or two away from falling into poverty. But it should noted that it is almost exclusively progressives who use the term working-class. Democrats seem to prefer to talk about the middle class, and then Republicans won’t say working class but will do their best on the campaign trail to shore up their “solidarity” with “the working man” as they call him, they just delete the “white” part.