The concatenation of failed politics

Transformative change can never emerge from centralised political dysfunction. It's time to examine the true road to a better tomorrow for hard working Americans

Image - © Ann Kiernan

Read PART TWO

Let me begin today with an apology. Yesterday’s piece was entitled ‘Will November see the rescue of democracy?’ It was unusually clumsy language on my part, on reflection. The best that can happen in the midterms is that we can place a tourniquet on the gaping wound Trump has inflicted on America, with the intention of watching democracy bleed out.

In some respects, I think I have unintentionally lost my way and become buried in the quagmire that is this catastrophic war with Iran; it’s dimmed my passion for writing about the things that are important to me and why I decided to write, so I apologise for that. Today, I have hopefully cast aside mediocrity in the hope of finding my way home to you.

I am not a newcomer to this fight for the preservation of democracy and social justice. Four years ago, I made this short film; it was a message from Democracy to the American people, and it holds true today as it did then. I am often criticised and lose followers and subscribers because I have the audacity to challenge the Democratic Party and be so bold as to suggest that, over the decades, they, too, have seen fit to be selective in defining democracy.

Anyone who suggests that my criticism represents support for the MAGA agenda is either intellectually challenged or belongs to a reverse MAGA cult themselves. One should not be regarded as an enemy of the Democratic Party for challenging their lack of bold ambition for transformative change; in my opinion, it’s a gesture of respect for a family member to take the car keys from grandpa because he can’t be trusted on the road, not to do harm to others.

We are living in dangerous times when the bottom 50% of US earners are scrapping amongst themselves for the crumbs from the rich man’s table, and if it’s wrong that I think this a crime against humanity, then I’m guilty as charged. There is no greater crime in politics than a failure to listen to the people, but the Democrats seem to have turned it into a fine art. At this critical moment in the midterm cycle, they are 22 points underwater, and that has been a relatively consistent number since they lost the election.

If you are looking for a benchmark to measure this against, take a look at the Republican numbers:

After everything Trump has done to this country, the Republican numbers are BETTER than those of the Democrats, but it seems only a few of us are not surprised. This data from realclearpolling.com looks at a wide range of polls and is, I believe, a valid benchmark for the current sentiment of the American public. It’s like the people are bursting their lungs screaming, and the Democratic leadership are at a silent disco with their sound-isolating headphones on, dancing to Abba’s ‘Money Money Money’, while waiting for the return of the gravy train.

We spend a lot of time talking about why nobody in the Republican Party is challenging the tyranny of Trump. Meanwhile, Democrats beat the same old tired drum of vote for us because the other guy is a fascist, and go unchallenged from a base exhausted from trying to tell them change is required. If you think I’m some kind of radical left-wing agitator for screaming STOP IT, I fear we are unlikely to ever see eye to eye, I’m afraid.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth of where we are, but before I begin, I have something very important to say. I fundamentally believe with every fibre of my being that the Democratic base and independent voters are the only people who can save democracy in America. I have absolute faith in their commitment to the cause. The army that is the Democratic activist base has never been more connected to the people who are the victims of this tyrannical regime, but just as Trump has an attitude of ‘we know what’s best’, Democratic leadership seems to have exactly the same attitude towards its own base.

Let me be clear, Democratic leadership stopped listening to the base and the American people a long time ago, because tragically, they chose special interests over the people and their base. Instead, they have embraced Citizens United as much as the Republicans have. No doubt the excuse is that if we don’t accept dark money, the other guys will do it anyway, and we’ll lose. I have a message for you: Democrats outspent Republicans in 2024, and they still lost. It’s a terribly lazy argument to say this is just about money. It’s about absent TRUST.

Ad spending hit a record $11 billion in the 2024 cycle, up $2 billion from 2020. I could spend a whole piece writing about what good you could do with $11 billion, but that’s for another day.

The Harris campaign spent $880 million on the 2024 campaign, which, of course, included fundraising from the Biden campaign prior to him stepping down. In contrast, the Trump campaign spent less than half that amount, $425 million. So if money buys elections, why didn’t Harris win a landslide? I’ll tell you exactly why Democratic strategists placed their noise-cancelling headphones on with ‘I did it my way’ on repeat, while the American people were screaming that they couldn’t afford to feed their kids.

The same old message on repeat that is still playing today, ‘Vote for us because the other guy is a fascist,’ it was the same message at every rally and in every media interview, oh, and they threw in a sprinkling of abortion rights while they chased the middle-class vote, all while throwing the working-class under the bus for Trump to pick up and win the election with. I have all the Harris stump speeches, and not once was the working class ever mentioned; the message was a relentless pitch to middle-class voters, while remaining largely silent on Gaza. All at the expense of the Hispanic vote, black men and far too many young voters.

While Kamala Harris would not have been my choice for president, I think she did an outstanding job in the 100 days she had to work with, and I gave her my full-throated support. If anyone can watch this film and suggest that I wasn’t all in on this fight, then shame on you.

I believe she was fed the wrong strategy and just could not shake off the negative perception that the Trump campaign had managed to sell in what will go down in history as the most deceitful campaign in modern American history. I’m more than aware that many Democrats believe she did win the election, while it can’t be dismissed, we are where we are, and we have to work with the hand we were dealt

I become angry even thinking about how Democrats grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory as a result of the hubris of a good man intoxicated with the need to hold on to the office of the presidency for another term, despite his promise to the contrary. It was a decision made for all the wrong reasons, made all the worse by the revelations of a diagnosis of high-grade, aggressive stage IV prostate cancer with bone metastasis in May 2025. While I have nothing but sympathy for him and his family at such a diagnosis, especially after a lifetime of public service. Unfortunately, it was and remains, in my view, a betrayal of the American people not to reveal the diagnosis until after he stepped down from the race.

Image - Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images

This is not about party politics; it’s about the responsibility a president has to be transparent when it comes to anything that might affect his ability to lead the most powerful nation on earth. A lie of omission is still a lie, and his actions will leave a stain on his legacy, despite his good work. From our partisan corners, the big picture is often obscured by loyalty to the cause, and to some degree I understand that, but it should be a red flag for anyone seeking honest, responsible governance.

Yesterday, I made the very accurate point that the Biden administration delivered the fastest post-pandemic recovery of any developed economy. That’s not a point up for debate; Biden handed over a strong economy with the foundations on which to build high-tech job growth and tap into the global golden economic seam of renewable energy. Experts within the administration understood that manufacturing, as it used to be, would never return to America; it’s simply not viable in a world where China has the most advanced automated manufacturing plants in the world.

It was recognised that while mass reshoring of manufacturing was not the way forward, chip manufacturing and high-tech investments made perfect sense and would provide a launchpad for integrating chip manufacturing into the already dominant tech services industry, which is thriving with the advent of AI. To be fair, Biden also recognised that investment in families and the workforce is a critical part of sustained growth. He knew that when you invest in people, they spend that money in the US economy; they don’t hoard it in offshore tax havens. The strategy of building the economy from the bottom up and middle out benefits not only people but also the broader economy. It’s sound economic policy.

So, where did it go so desperately wrong?

In economic terms, it was as advertised: the fastest post-pandemic recovery of all developed nations, and that was mirrored in the stock market. It’s here, my friends, that political cognitive dissonance took place. While Biden could rightly claim the economy was on fire (which it was), it was only on fire if you belonged to the shareholder class (the top 10%), as is exactly the case right now. Of course, there were marginal gains in the broader population, but they were not enough to influence consumer sentiment. While it did have a broader upside for those holding a 401(k), it represented a downstream benefit, not one for the here and now. Those in the middle and at the bottom were struggling with the basic cost of living due to residual inflation from stimulus money injected into the economy.

If you look at the most important beneficiaries of the stimulus checks, it was rightly the poor and low-income families. Bear with me here, because this is fascinating and highlights how efficient the capitalist system is at transferring wealth. The initial CARES Act distributed $400 billion in two rounds of direct payments to middle and low-income families. Just for context, that’s about 40% of the tax the rich are estimated to have evaded in 2025. The short-term upside is that it lifted 11.7 million Americans out of poverty.

In addition, expanded unemployment insurance added $600 per week in the initial phase to help those who lost their jobs to stay afloat. Studies show that the American Rescue Plan significantly decreased the poverty rate for low-income families and increased their post-tax income by an average of 7.8%. This was where the claims of building from the bottom and the middle out came from. Expanded child tax credits reduced child poverty by 50%, lifting 3.7 million children out of poverty. To the wealthy elite, this was a problem when these workers decided they were now better off than the slave wages being offered post-pandemic. Much to their frustration, this pushed up wages.

Image - Getty Images

I have absolutely no notes on all of the above; it was the perfect response from an administration that recognised the economic pain and suffering of those in the middle and at the bottom who were suffering through no fault of their own. It was the right and proper thing to do. Of this demographic, 60% used the money responsibly to pay down debt and, where possible, saved any excess for a rainy day. It’s exactly what a responsible citizen should do. They did everything right and spent the rest in the domestic economy.

The problem was that corporate predators were waiting in the water to hoover up that spending, and they launched a price-gouging campaign that drove inflation up, raising prices in what was effectively a state-sponsored street mugging by corporate America. It was so bad that it’s estimated 53% of the inflation was manufactured inflation from price gouging, which added millions to re’ profits.

Given all of the above, I can say without fear of contradiction that middle- and lower-income earners definitely did NOT contribute to the deficit in any profligate manner. They used the money to pay debts and bills, acting as responsible citizens should. What happened here is that, for a brief moment, the government lifted them to a position of social sustainability. The problem was, just as fast as they were lifted out of poverty, they were thrown back into the shark-infested waters immediately after the stimulus was withdrawn, because it was getting in the way of providing tax cuts for the rich that the Republicans were lining up to do if they won the election.

By the time the election came, this big demographic could not afford to put food on the table, and no matter how loud they screamed, the Democrats were deaf to their cries. As a result, they offered their votes on a plate to a guy who lied and said he would ‘bring prices down on day one’; the rest is history.

Next time, I want to walk you through the other side of the coin when it comes to the stimulus slush fund that set in motion the unsustainable debt trap the US now finds itself in. You won’t be surprised to note that it has absolutely nothing to do with the provision of a social safety net and everything to do with a calculated, accelerated wealth transfer perpetrated by those at the top of the economic food chain.

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