"Democrats Still Using Russia-Gate As Excuse For Losing!"
The Jimmy Dore Show (December 6, 2021)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZI8zKoLAA8

[6:50] Jimmy Dore reads from The Daily Poster: "They [the Democrats] have the power to enact a law protecting a woman's right to choose – and if they still refuse to do that in the face of Texas insanity, then they are complicit in the Gilead-ifcation of America."

"Do you know what that means, Max?"

Max Blumenthal: It's the Republic of Gilead which is Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, [which] conjurs up a science fiction future dystopia where the country is run along the lines of Christian Dominionism, or Christian Reconstructionism where the Biblical Law is implemented. It's sort of like if the Christian right were in charge in the future and a corrupt elite meanwhile behind the walls of their compounds practices bizarre sex acts. It's kind of like what we have today in so many respects."

[7:51] Jimmy Dore: "Yes."

. . .

[11:00] Max Blumenthal: “… it’s about disciplining all of us so that we never again think of supporting a third-party progressive candidate, a real leftist candidate who reflects our values and we just be cowed into submission. That’s why they’re doing this. That’s why they’re exploiting the issue of abortion in order to just intimidate people into staying with the Democrats as the Democrats consistently shift to the right.”

[11:24] Jimmy Dore: “Right. They could have, again … if this … they’re doing exactly what you said. They’re exploiting this issue because they know they can’t use real, economic issues to get you to vote for Democrats anymore. It’s all identity politics and it’s all culture wars. And that’s what this is, so they could codify this and take this issue off the table right now. But, of course, they’re not doing that because that’s all they have left to get you to vote for them. So they’re going to let this happen. They’re going to let the Supreme Court do this and take away you’re abortion rights so they can run on it. And never do anything about it.”

[11:40] Max Blumenthal: “… let’s lose a woman’s right to choose and maybe we’ll win a few votes and survive in a few swing districts.”

[12:08] Max Blumenthal: “This is the only way they can mobilize people ahead of the mid-terms when it’s pretty clear they’re going to get slaughtered.”

[12:14] Jimmy Dore: “It’s pretty clear they’re going to get slaughtered. Because, again, they’re not doing anything for anybody. [reads from USNews article: “Democrats Hope Threat to Abortion Rights Will Rouse Voters.”]

. . .

[20: 34] Face the Nation host asks John Podesta: “If the Russians knew to focus on Wisconsin, how come you guys didn’t know?”

[20:39] Jimmy Dore [shows screenshot of Senator Chuck Schumer: “Here’s the whole problem that the shit-libs do not want to listen to. None of my former friends in Hollywood want to hear this. But this is the case: the Democrats became the Republican Party. And my friends in Hollywood are OK with that because now they’re all successful and rich. And they don’t have any problems that they need government to solve.”

me: [yes they do: How to get even more money and power than they already have]

“And here’s the problem. Here’s Chuck Schumer admitting that the Democratic Party is abandoning Democratic principles and the Democratic base, which are workers. He’s going to tell you that right now.

Senator Schumer: “For every blue-collar democrat we will lose in western PA we will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And you can repeat that Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

[21:39] Jimmy Dore: “That didn’t happen. They lost. So he is admitting: “Our campaign strategy is to turn our backs on blue-collar workers, our base, and go after Republican voters. Literal, self-identified Republicans.” That’s who they were going after. They weren’t trying to make their case to workers and the hundred million people who don’t vote. They weren’t doing that. And they lost. Because they are now the Republican Party. . . ."

. . .

[26:48] Max Blumenthal: “I want to go back a little bit. In 1988 Mike Dukakis gets slaughtered. And the Democrats drastically change. Michael Dukakis was pigeonholed as a Massachusetts liberal, considered pro-abortion, and the Democrats decide that they’re going to go right. They look for a southern governor; find him in Bill Clinton. They develop the Democratic Leadership Committee which leverages corporate money into a rightward shift of the party. They abandon the union base. They abandon the Civil Rights movement. That’s what inspired Bill Clinton Sister Solja moment. They kick their constituents to the curb and decide they’re going to go for the soccer moms. That’s the constituency they want. They want moderate Republicans. And they think that they will establish a permanent democratic majority because they can take all their old constituents for granted, and, in a way, kind of kill them. Because this is what made NAFTA possible. If you abandon unions as your constituents, find new constituents in the suburbs and exurbs then you can outsource all their jobs in places like Michigan, which helped lead to Trump’s victory there, because they said ‘Hillary this to us.’ And you start to move right. You erode all of the economic appeal that you had to blue-collar workers across the Rust Belt. And you’re only left with these social issues: Gay Marriage, Abortion.”

[28:27] “And then we have the 2004 election. John Kerry, a Massachusetts brahman, sort of in the mold of Mike Dukakis, married to a wealthy heiress who’s totally unrelatable, turns his back on his anti-war tradition and loses to the War President George W. Bush in the middle of a war. And the narrative on election day was that so-called value voters had powered George W. Bush to victory. And so I went here in Washington to a conference of this kind of like Potemkin village operation called the Campaign for America's Future, supposed to be sort of the face of the progressive wing of the democratic party. And Howard Dean was the big star there. Remember him when he was considered progressive?

[29:18] Max Blumenthal: "And Nancy Pelosi brings this guy in as one of the keynote speakers whom the democrats had become fascinated with and they were dumping tons of donated money into the pockets of this previously little-known academic named George Lakoff. And George Lakoff's job was to teach the democrats to use language so that they don't get attacked by Republicans. They have to use "framing" the way George W. Bush used framing to talk about the clean skies initiative that allowed him to emit more carbon and reduce regulations on coal plants. And the Democrats needed to do the same. And he gave this big talk. The room was packed. And his main framing point was to never use the word "abortion" or to talk about abortion again. Because that's what killed [John Kerry] in 2004. And so it was Pelosi who made the decision to bring in this guy to instruct all of her people to marginalize the issue of abortion."

So, that was a factor. It was already kind of in the mix. The Democrats didn't want to actually succeed on this issue. And they'll use it when convenient as a kind of culture war wedge issue. Then you have someone who, I think, really deserves blame here who is not Susan Sarandon who has been elevated to the role of secular saint in the Democratic Party and among many of the liberal feminists who attack Susan Sarandon. And that's Ruth Bader Ginsburg. . . .

[30:57]