AUTOPSY - THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN CRISIS

READ THE AUTOPSY HERE

The 2016 election was a disaster for the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton lost the presidency to Donald Trump when all official polls predicted her success.

The Republicans took both the House and the Senate. A record number of registered Democrats didn't even turn up to vote.

What happened?

Many mainstream voices in the media and the Democratic Party have tried to blame external forces alone for this defeat. Yet there is a need for introspection on the part of the Democratic Party to understand a complete picture of what went wrong. After the failure of 2016, the Democratic Party declined to do an Autopsy looking into this matter.

So an Autopsy was put together independently.

The task force of political organizers and research analysts who conducted this Autopsy was coordinated by longtime Democratic activist Karen Bernal, who chairs one of the largest caucuses in the California Democratic Party, the Progressive Caucus, and by RootsAction.org co-founder Norman Solomon, a Democratic National Convention delegate in 2008 and 2016 who was the national coordinator of the independent Bernie Delegates Network.

Rather than addressing topics beyond the control of the Democratic Party (FBI Director Comey, Russia, misogyny of some voters, etc.), this Autopsy focuses on key factors that have been significantly under the party’s control. This report does not claim to offer all the answers, but it focuses on some of the Democratic party’s most crucial flaws, fissures and opportunities.

Some of the findings from the report are the following:

• The campaign priorities of the Democratic Party undermined the priorities of their voters.

• The Democratic Party failed to appeal to people of color, and lost ground with its most reliable bloc, African-American women.

• The Democratic Party lost the support of young voters.

• The DNC has refused to renounce, or commit to end, its undemocratic practices during the 2016 primary campaign that caused so much discord and distrust from many party activists and voters among core constituencies.

• The Democratic Party’s claims of fighting for “working families” have been undermined by its refusal to directly challenge corporate power.

• After a decade and a half of nonstop warfare, research data from voting patterns suggest that the Clinton campaign’s hawkish stance was a political detriment in working-class communities hard-hit by American casualties from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

RELATED WEBSITES

The California Progressive Caucus

Roots Action

AUTOPSY AUTHORS

KarenBernal.com     Karen Bernal Twitter

NormanSolomon.com     Norman Solomon Facebook    Norman Solomon Twitter

VIDEOS

The Democratic Party in Crisis: News Conference 11-02-2017