By Norman Solomon / The Hill

Halfway through 2025, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is the embodiment of the kind of leader that his party’s base clearly does not want.

A new Reuters-Ipsos poll found that 62 percent of self-identified Democrats agreed that “the leadership of the Democratic Party should be replaced with new people.” And key findings from that survey indicate that Schumer is the party’s most out-of-step leader.

The poll showed that a large majority of Democrats want elected officials to reduce “corporate influence,” while a whopping 86 percent “said changing the federal tax code so wealthy Americans and large corporations pay more in taxes should be a priority.”

But Schumer’s record is the epitome of corporate influence. For decades, he has given priority to protecting the financial interests of the wealthy and of large corporations.

Schumer vowed not to step aside after he infuriated the vast bulk of congressional Democrats with his vote for President Trump’s spending bill in March. That vote also incensed grassroots Democrats across the country, to the point that he felt compelled to abruptly call off an imminent, long-planned publicity tour for his new book that month.

In effect, Schumer has become persona non grata among his party’s voters in many blue states. More than three months after his “postponed” book tour, it has not been rescheduled — the Senate’s top Democrat is evidently wary of photo ops of protests against him by Democrats around the country. He remains the top Democrat in the Senate at a time when he is deeply unpopular among voters eager for leadership to put up a fight against the Trump administration.

If Senate Democrats are serious about reversing their party’s tailspin and improving its public image, they should insist on ending Schumer’s stint as minority leader. It is time for Democratic colleagues to put their foot down instead of deferring to New York’s senior senator.

[Click here to real full article on The Hill website.]

By Norman Solomon

Whatever the outcomes of Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House on Monday and the latest scenario for a ceasefire in Gaza, a bilateral policy of genocide has united the Israeli and U.S. governments in a pact of literally breath-taking cruelty. That pact and its horrific consequences for Palestinian people either continue to shock Americans or gradually normalize indifference toward ongoing atrocities on a massive scale.

Recent news reporting that President Trump has pushed for a ceasefire in Gaza is an echo of a familiar refrain about peace-seeking efforts from the Biden and Trump administrations. The spin remained in sync with the killing – not only with American bombs and bullets but also with Israel’s refusal to allow more than a pittance of food and other essentials into Gaza.

Last year began with a United Nations statement that “Gazans now make up 80 per cent of all people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, marking an unparalleled humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s continued bombardment and siege.” The UN quoted experts who said: “Currently every single person in Gaza is hungry, a quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water, and famine is imminent.”

In late February 2024, President Biden talked to journalists about prospects for a “ceasefire” (which did not take place) while holding a vanilla ice cream cone. “My national security adviser tells me that we’re close, we’re close, we’re not done yet,” Biden said, before sauntering off. He spoke during a photo op at an ice cream parlor in Manhattan, while the UN was sounding an alarm that “very little humanitarian aid has entered besieged Gaza this month.”

During the 16 months since then, variants of facile verbiage from top U.S. government officials have repeated endlessly, while normalizing genocide with a steep race to the ethical bottom, so that – in Orwellian terms, much like “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength” – genocide is not genocide.

Refusal to acknowledge the complicity and impunity is most of all maintained by avoidance and silence. The process makes a terrible truth inadmissible rather than admittable.

All the doublethink and newspeak must detour around the reality that the U.S.-supported Israeli siege of Gaza is genocide, which the international Genocide Convention defines as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” – with such actions as “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Israel’s actions in Gaza clearly meet that definition, as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have unequivocally concluded with exhaustive reports.

But under the cloaks of the Israeli and American flags, the official stories insist that the unconscionable should be invisible.

Liberal Zionist groups in the United States are part of the process. Here’s what I wrote in an article for The Nation early this year after examining public statements by the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group J Street:

“Routinely, while calling for the release of the Israeli hostages, the organization also expressed concern about the deaths and suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. But none of J Street’s 132 news releases between October 7 and the start of the [temporary] ceasefire in late January 2025 called for an end to shipments of the U.S. bombs and weapons that were killing those civilians while enforcing Israel’s policy of using starvation as a weapon of war – a glaring omission for a group that declares itself to be ‘pro-peace.’ It was as if J Street thought that vague humanistic pleas could paper over these gaping cracks in its stance.

“However, J Street felt comfortable taking a firm line on the question of whether Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Here, it aligned itself completely with the position of the U.S. and Israeli governments. In mid-January 2024, when oral arguments ended at the International Court of Justice in the case brought by South Africa that charged the Israeli government with violating the Genocide Convention in Gaza, a news release declared that ‘J Street rejects the allegation of genocide against the State of Israel.’ Four months later, on May 24, J Street responded quickly when the ICJ ordered Israel to ‘immediately halt its military offensive’ in Rafah. ‘J Street continues to reject the allegation of genocide in this case,’ a news release said.”

Likewise, with rare exceptions, U.S. news media and members of Congress dodge the reality of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Meanwhile, the events in Gaza and the evasions in the United States have been enormously instructive, shattering illusions along the way. Many Americans, especially young people, know much more about their country and its government than they did just two years ago.

What has come to light includes mass murder of certain other human beings as de facto policy and functional ideology.

     Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine," includes an afterword about the Gaza war.

By Norman Solomon

The Supreme Court’s first chief justice, John Jay, would have empathized with the billionaires who’ve been freaking out ever since Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York last Tuesday. “Those who own the country ought to govern it,” Jay insisted. But now, oligarchs accustomed to such governance are furious that the nation’s capital of capitalism is in danger of serving people instead of megaprofits.

Meanwhile, among progressives, euphoria is especially fitting because the Mamdani campaign’s win was truly a people-powered victory, thanks to active efforts of 40,000 volunteers. In a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans six-to-one, the Democratic nomination would ordinarily be a virtual guarantee of winning the general election. But the forces of oligarchy now mobilizing could disprove a claim that “Mamdani’s widespread appeal represents the total collapse of a Democratic Party establishment.”

Such a collapse is very far from certain.

On the surface, Andrew Cuomo’s decision to stay on the fall ballot as an “independent,” while incumbent Mayor Eric Adams does likewise, seems to foreshadow splitting the anti-Mamdani vote. But Cuomo still has a substantial electoral following. And the corrupt Adams – who cut a deal with President Trump to viciously betray immigrants and got his criminal indictment thrown out by Trump’s Justice Department – has no better ethics than the disgraced former governor Cuomo. Bankrolled by wealthy donors, the pair might make some kind of pact, with one of them telling his followers to unify behind the other before voting begins this fall.

In any case, a key context of the upcoming election battle is that hell hath no fury like corporate power scorned.

A social-media screed by hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman (net worth: upward of $9 billion) was damn near apoplectic that activists and voters had so terribly transgressed. Ackman described himself as “a supporter of President Trump” while expressing a fervent desire “to save the Democratic Party from itself.” Mamdani’s policies, Ackman wrote late Wednesday night, “would be disastrous for NYC. Socialism has no place in the economic capital of our country.”

But Ackman held out hope that those owning the city of New York could continue to govern it: “Importantly, there are hundreds of million of dollars of capital available to back a competitor to Mamdani that can be put together overnight … so that a great alternative candidate won’t spend any time raising funds. So, if the right candidate would raise his or her hand tomorrow, the funds will pour in. I am sure that Mike Bloomberg will share his how-to-win-the-mayoralty IP [intellectual property] and deliver his entire election apparatus and system to the aspiring candidate so that the candidate can focus all of his or her energy on the campaign.”

Another aggrieved hedge-fund multibillionaire, Daniel Loeb, opted to be concise: “It’s officially hot commie summer.” Many other moguls have also sounded alarms. But beneath all the froth and bombast, extremely wealthy individuals are busy gauging how to prevail against the threat of democracy and social justice.

In the Empire State, there are many ways for the empire to strike back. The constellation of forces now regrouping with a vengeance includes titans of Wall Street, enormous real estate interests, pro-Israel groups, corporate media, the anti-progressive rich and assorted smear artists.

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By Norman Solomon

Twenty years ago, one day in June 2005, I talked with an Iranian man who was selling underwear at the Tehran Grand Bazaar. People all over the world want peace, he said, but governments won’t let them have it.

I thought of that conversation on Saturday night after the U.S. government attacked nuclear sites in Iran. For many days before that, polling clearly showed that most Americans did not want the United States to attack Iran. “Only 16 percent of Americans think the U.S. military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran,” YouGov pollsters reported, while “60 percent say it should not and 24 percent are not sure.”

But as a practical matter, democracy has nothing to do with the chokehold that the warfare state has on the body politic. That reality has everything to do with why the United States can’t kick the war habit. And that’s why the profound quests for peace and genuine democracy are so tightly intertwined.

On Saturday evening, President Trump delivered a speech exuding might-makes-right thuggery on a global scale: “There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.”

More than ever, the United States and Israel are overt partners in what the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 called “the supreme international crime” – “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression.”

Naturally, the perpetrators of the supreme international crime are eager to festoon themselves in mutual praise. As Trump put it in his speech, “I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before.” And Trump added: “I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done.”

A grisly and nefarious truth is that, in effect, the Israeli military functions as part of the overall U.S. military machine. The armed forces of each country have different command structures and sometimes have tactical disagreements. But in the Middle East, from Gaza and Iran to Lebanon and Syria, “cooperation” does not begin to describe how closely and with common purpose they work together.

More than 20 months into Israel’s U.S.-armed siege of Gaza, the genocide there continues as a joint American-Israeli project. It is a project that would have been literally impossible to sustain without the weapons and bombs that the U.S. government has continued to provide to the Orwellian-named Israel Defense Forces.

The same U.S.-Israel alliance that has been committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has also enabled the escalation of KKK-like terrorizing and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people in the West Bank. The ethnocentric arrogance and racism involved in U.S. support for these crimes have been longstanding, and worsening along with the terrible events.

The same alliance is now also terrorizing Iranian society from the air.

As we have seen yet again in recent hours, the political and media culture of the United States is heavily inclined toward glorifying the use of the USA’s second-to-none destructive air power. As if above it all. The conceit of American exceptionalism assumes that “we” have the sanctified moral ground to proceed in the world with a basic de facto message powered by military might: Do as we say, not as we do.

While all this is going on, the word “surreal” is apt to be heard. But a much more fitting word is “real.”

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction,” James Baldwin wrote, “and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” Now, people in the United States have real-time historic opportunities – to do everything we can to take nonviolent action demanding that the U.S. government end its monstrous role in the Middle East.

     Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine," includes an afterword about the Gaza war.

By Norman Solomon

The huge decentralized turnout for No Kings Day has shown that grassroots power can be a major force against the momentum of the Trump regime. The protests were auspicious, with 5 million people participating in 2,100 gatherings nationwide. Activists are doing what the national Democratic Party leadership has failed to do – organize effectively and inspire mass action.

What we don’t need now is for newly activated people to catch a ride on plodding Democratic donkeys. The party’s top leadership and a large majority of its elected officials are just too conformist and traditional to creatively confront the magnitude of the unprecedented Trumpist threat to what remains of democracy in the United States.

Two key realities are contradictions that fully coexist in the real world: The Democratic Party, led by the likes of Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, is in well-earned disrepute, having scant credibility even with most people who detest Trump. And yet, Democratic Party candidates will be the only way possible to end Republican control of Congress via midterm elections next year.

Few congressional Democrats have been able to articulate and fight for a truly progressive populist agenda – to directly challenge the pseudo-populism of MAGA Republicans. Instead, what implicitly comes across is a chorus of calls for a return to the incremental politics of the Biden era.

Awash in corporate cash and milquetoast rhetoric, most Democratic incumbents sound inauthentic while posturing as champions of the working class. For activists to simply cheer them on is hardly the best way to end GOP rule.

With top-ranking Democrats in Washington exuding mediocrity if not hackery, more and more progressive organizers are taking matters into their own creative hands, mindful that vocal reframing of public discourse can go a long way toward transforming public consciousness and the electoral terrain. The Occupy movement did it early in the 2010s. The Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns did it later in the decade. The Black Lives Matter movement did it several years ago.

In contrast, playing follow-the-leader by deferring to the party hierarchy is a trip on a political train to further disaster. The kind of leadership now exemplified by Schumer and Jeffries amounts to the kind of often-devious partisan maneuvering that dragged this country into its current abyss, after protracted mendacity claiming that President Biden was fit to run for re-election.

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By Norman Solomon / TomDispatch

Thirty-five years after the start of the nuclear age with the first explosion of an atomic bomb, I visited the expanse of desert known as the Nevada Test Site, an hour’s drive northwest of Las Vegas. A pair of officials from the Department of Energy took me on a tour. They explained that nuclear tests were absolutely necessary. “Nuclear weapons are like automobiles,” one told me. “Ford doesn’t put a new automobile out on the highway until they’ve gone through a lengthy test process, driving hundreds of thousands of miles.”

By then, in 1980, several hundred underground nuclear blasts had already occurred in Nevada, after the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty required that atomic testing take place below the earth’s surface. Previously, about 100 nuclear warheads had been set off above ground at that test site, sending mushroom clouds aloft and endangering with radiation exposure not just nearby soldiers but downwind civilians as well.

My guides from the Energy Department were upbeat. The only sober words came after one old hand at nuclear testing asked me to turn off my tape recorder. “No head of state in the world has ever seen a nuclear bomb explosion,” he said. “To me, that’s scary. I don’t think anyone who has ever seen a nuclear explosion has ever not asked the question: ‘My God, what have we done?’”

Otherwise, the on-the-record statements I got that day amounted to happy talk about the nuclear arms race. When officials showed me a quarter-mile-wide crater caused by a hydrogen bomb named Sedan, they expressed nothing but pride. “Across the windy desert floor of the Nevada Test Site, the government guides talk enthusiastically about their dominion,” I wrote then for The Nation magazine. “As the wind whips through Yucca Flats, it whispers that, left to their own ‘devices,’ the nuclear-weapons testers will destroy us all. To allow their rationales to dissuade us from opposition is to give them permission to incinerate the world.”

At the time, it never occurred to me that gradual heating, due mostly to carbon emissions sent into the atmosphere, could devastate the world, too. My visit to the Nevada site took place a year before Al Gore, then a member of the House of Representatives, convened the first-ever congressional hearing on global warming in 1981. Bill McKibben’s pathbreaking book on the subject, The End of Nature, appeared in 1989. Since then, the escalating catastrophe of human-caused climate change has become all too clear to those paying attention.

Two Existential Threats — Unrelated or Twins?

“Nearly all major global climate datasets agree that, in 2024, human-caused global warming for the first time pushed Earth’s average surface temperature to more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average for a full calendar year, a level that countries around the world had agreed to do all they could to avoid,” Inside Climate News reported as this year began. Seven years ago, an authoritative scientific study “showed that warming beyond that limit threatens to irreversibly change major parts of the physical and biological systems that sustain life on Earth, including forests, coral reefs and rainforests, as well as oceans and their major currents.” It threatens, in short, to create what might be thought of as a climate-change heat wave on Planet Earth.

Meanwhile, the risks of a nuclear holocaust keep worsening.

A 2022 study estimated that “more than 5 billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia.” Detonating just a small percentage of the world’s nuclear weapons (which are now in the possession of nine countries) would cause “nuclear winter.” Writing in Scientific American last month after nuclear-armed India and Pakistan almost went to war, Rutgers University environmental sciences professors Alan Robock and Lili Xia explained:

“A nuclear war between India and Pakistan would produce smoke from fires in cities and industrial areas. That smoke would rise into the stratosphere, the atmospheric layer above the troposphere where we live, which has no rain to wash out the smoke. Our research has found that the smoke would block out the sun, making it cold, dark and dry at Earth’s surface, choking agriculture for five years or more around the world. The result would be global famine.”

I asked Robock whether he knew of efforts by the climate movement and groups focused on nuclear weapons to work together. “I don’t know of any,” he said. Noting that “nuclear war would produce instant climate change,” Robock added: “Global warming is real and already happening, whereas it has been 80 years since the last nuclear war. And that one produced horrific direct impacts of blast, fire, and radiation, but not climate change. Radioactivity is still the predominant fear from nuclear war… but nuclear winter would affect those far removed from the blast, and there are no direct examples to show people, except for famines produced by other causes.”

Since early in this century, Ted Glick has devoted himself largely to climate activism, with a dedication that has included long fasts. Some groups concentrating on peace or climate have begun to engage in joint efforts, he told me, “but there’s very little specific interactions that I know of when it comes to nuclear weapons, as distinct from a broader peace and anti-war focus, and the climate crisis.”

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By Norman Solomon / The Guardian

People with the power to change the direction of the Democratic party – the executive committee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) – met last Friday for the first time in five months.

They took no action.

The party’s bylaws make the executive committee “responsible for the conduct of the affairs of the Democratic party” between the meetings of the full committee, which isn’t scheduled to gather until late August. But taking responsibility wasn’t on the agenda. Instead, committee members and staff kept praising each other and committee leaders. Many talked about improving the party’s infrastructure and vowed to defeat Republicans. Deliberation, proposals and debate were completely absent. So was a sense of urgency.

After so many months without a meeting, you might think that the executive committee would have a lot to talk about. But it was scheduled to meet for only three hours, which turned out to be more than adequate for what anyone had to say. The committee adjourned after an hour and a half.

If obscurity was a goal for the national meeting, held in Little Rock, Arkansas, it was a success. The DNC’s website didn’t mention the meeting. Media coverage was close to nonexistent.

The committee leadership remains largely within a bubble insulated from the anger and disgust – toward the party – that is widespread among countless Democrats and other Americans. They want the Democratic party to really put up a fight, while its leaders mainly talk about putting up a fight. The Trump regime is setting basic structures of democracy on fire, while Democratic leaders don’t seem to be doing much more than wielding squirt guns.

A week ago, the new chair, Ken Martin, received a petition calling for an emergency meeting of the full 448-member committee. The petition, co-sponsored by Progressive Democrats of America and RootsAction (where I’m national director), includes more than 1,500 individual comments. They’re often filled with anguish and rage.

The California representative Ro Khanna has joined in the call for an emergency committee meeting. “I’ve supported it, I’ve spoken directly to our chair, Ken Martin, about it,” Khanna said last week. “Look, what’s going on is chilling … They’re banning all international students from coming to Harvard. I mean, think about that – all foreign students banned. They could do this in other universities. They have fired, or let go of, seven of the 18 directors at the NIH, totally dismantling future medical research in our country. They have dismantled the FDA, firing people who approve new drugs. They are systematically firing people at the FAA … They’re openly talking about defying United States supreme court orders, [JD] Vance has said just defy the orders. They’re calling universities ‘the enemy’. This is very chilling.”

Khanna then zeroed in on a crucial point that party leaders have so far refused to acknowledge, much less heed: “It’s not enough for us to have individual responses. I’m out there doing my town halls in red districts, Bernie [Sanders] is inspiring the country with his oligarchy tour, but they’re all individual efforts. We need concerted effort, we need a battle plan. And that’s what an emergency DNC meeting would do – it would acknowledge the stakes, and it would say ‘here is our plan’ – to make sure that they’re not degrading and chipping away at every institution of American democracy.”

Refusal to call an emergency meeting is a marker of deeper problems, with Democratic party leadership remaining in a political rut – spouting mildly liberal rhetoric while serving the interests of big donors, high-paid consultants and entrenched power brokers. Along the way, such business as usual is a gift that keeps on giving power to the pseudo-populist messages of Maga Republican politicians, who don’t have to go up against genuine progressive populism at election time. No wonder the Democratic party has lost most of the working-class vote.

[Click here to real full article on The Guardian website.]

By Norman Solomon

Midway through this month, Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries sent out a fundraising text saying that he “recently announced a 10-point plan to take on Trump and the Republicans.” But the plan was no more recent than early February, just two weeks after President Trump’s inauguration. It’s hardly reassuring that the House minority leader cited a 100-day-old memo as his strategy for countering the administration’s countless moves since then to dismantle entire government agencies, destroy life-saving programs and assault a wide range of civil liberties.

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is so unpopular with the Democratic base that a speaking tour for his new book – abruptly “postponed” just before it was set to begin more than two months ago – still hasn’t been rescheduled. The eruption of anger at his support for Trump’s spending bill in mid-March made Schumer realize that being confronted by irate Democrats in deep-blue states wouldn’t make for good photo ops.

Last month, a Gallup poll measured public confidence in the Democratic congressional leadership at just 25 percent, a steep drop of nine points since 2023 and now at an all-time low. Much of the disaffection comes from habitual Democratic voters who see the party’s leaders as slow-moving and timid while the Trump administration continues with its rampage against democratic structures.

Away from the Capitol, the party’s governing body – the Democratic National Committee – is far from dynamic or nimble. Maintaining its twice-a-year timetable, the 448-member DNC isn’t scheduled to meet until late August.

In the meantime, the DNC’s executive committee is set to gather in Little Rock, Arkansas on Friday for its first meeting since December. That meeting is scheduled to last three hours.

The DNC’s bylaws say that the executive committee “shall be responsible for the conduct of the affairs of the Democratic Party in the interim between the meetings of the full (Democratic National) Committee.” But the pace of being “responsible” is unhurried to the point of political malpractice.

The extraordinary national crisis is made even more severe to the extent that top Democrats do not acknowledge its magnitude. Four months into his job as the DNC’s chair, Ken Martin has yet to show that the DNC is truly operating in real time while the country faces an unprecedented threat to what’s left of democracy. His power to call an emergency meeting of the full DNC remains unused.

This week, Martin received a petition co-sponsored by Progressive Democrats of America and RootsAction, urging the DNC to “convene an emergency meeting of all its members – fully open to the public – as soon as possible.” The petition adds that “the predatory, extreme and dictatorial actions of the Trump administration call for an all-out commensurate response, which so far has been terribly lacking from the Democratic Party.” Among the 7,000 signers were more than 1,500 people who wrote individual comments (often angrily) imploring the DNC to finally swing into suitable action.

As several dozen top DNC officials fly into Little Rock’s Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport, they will bring with them the power to begin shifting the direction of the Democratic Party, but the chances of a positive course correction look meager. The DNC’s current executive committee is a bastion of the party establishment, unlikely to signal to grassroots Democrats and the general public that the party is no longer locked into automatic pilot.

The pattern is a sort of repetition compulsion, afflicting Democratic movers and shakers along with the party as an institution. While many journalists focus on the ages of congressional leaders, the lopsided power held by Democrats in their 70s and 80s is merely a marker for a deeper problem. Their approaches are rooted in the past and are now withering on the political vine.

Even with the rare meeting of the DNC’s executive committee just a couple of days away, the official Democratic Party website was still offering no information about it. The apparent preference is to keep us in the dark.

But anyone can sign up to watch livestream coverage from Progressive Hub, during a four-hour feed that will begin at 12:30 pm Eastern time on Friday. Along with excerpts from the executive committee meeting as it happens, the coverage will include analysis from my RootsAction colleagues Sam Rosenthal, who’ll be inside the meeting room in Little Rock, and former Democratic nominee for Buffalo mayor India Walton. The livestream will also feature an interview with Congressman Ro Khanna, who has endorsed the call for an emergency meeting of the full DNC.

Right now, the Democratic Party appears to be stuck between Little Rock and a hard place. The only real possibilities for major improvement will come from progressives who make demands and organize to back them up with grassroots power.

     Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine," includes an afterword about the Gaza war.

By Richard Eskow and Norman Solomon

RICHARD ESKOW: In a recent column you asked, “What’s preventing a united front against the Trump regime?” You say, “America desperately needs a united front to restrain the wrecking ball of the Trump regime.” I get the “wrecking ball,” but why do we need a united front? What’s wrong with a multi-pronged approach from various groups and actors?

NORMAN SOLOMON: There’s a serious lack of coordination at the political level. The Democratic Party is a constellation of 50-plus state and other local parties, and there are many organizations which are—or should be—independent of the party.

To the extent there is any governing body, it's the Democratic National Committee. The DNC should provide leadership at times like these. But there’s still no leadership, several months into a second Trump regime that’s much worse than the first. There's energy to oppose, but it’s uncoordinated.

Rethinking the Left and the Party

ESKOW: Here’s a challenge. For too long, the American left looked to the Democratic Party for leadership and guidance instead of considering it an instrument that’s available to movements. I think a lot of people assume that “a united front” against Trump means making the left fall in line yet again behind the institutional party’s corporate, so-called “centrist” politicians.

SOLOMON: It’s dubious, and not very auspicious, to follow “leadership” that isn’t leading. I think your word “instrument” is an excellent one. The left should consider the Democratic Party a tool that not only can be used but, under this electoral system, must be used to stop the right and advance progressive causes. No other party can win federal elections and stop what has become a neo-fascist Republican Party.

Most of the people who serve as administrative or elected Democrats consider social movements subordinate to their electoral work. They see progressives—the grassroots activists, the ones with deep concerns, who do research, who communicate, who organize in local communities, who provide hope—as fuel for them to win elections.

That's backward. Campaigns and candidates should be subordinated to progressive social movements, not the other way around. That's how we win. Change doesn't come from the top. The great advances—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, antiwar, gay rights, civil rights, women's rights, reproductive freedom—came from people who weren’t held into check by the party apparatus. They came from the grassroots, the social movements.

Big Money, Big Problems

ESKOW: Progressives inside the party have told me how complicated it is to work within the party. Each state party has its own rules and its own representatives to the DNC, and there are also other appointed members and other centers of power. They’re up against complex machinery whenever they try to change anything.

Worse, the party allows dark money in its primaries and is heavily reliant on it in general elections. Party operatives—thousands of them, in think tanks and consulting firms and so on—depend on that money for their livelihood.

Kamala Harris raised more money than perhaps any candidate in history. I think that money actually hurt her. It dissuaded her from saying the things she needed to say to win, whether she meant them or not.

How can a popular front incorporate and influence a party that’s dominated by big donors? Isn't that the elephant in the room?

SOLOMON: Well, certainly the money is huge, but we want to be realistic without being defeatists. With the state supreme court election in Wisconsin a few weeks ago, Elon Musk literally tried to buy the election and failed. That was a victory against the tide of big money. But yes, money typically correlates with victory.

I attended the DNC’s so-called Unity Reform Commission meetings in 2017, when the power of the Bernie Sanders forces was at high ebb. The party’s centrists, corporatists, and militarists felt it necessary to give the left some seats on that commission. But they kept a voting majority, which they used to kill some important reforms for transparency and financial accountability.

Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who was then the Clinton-aligned chair, helped defeat those proposals. And what happened to her? She became deputy chief of staff in the Biden White House, then effectively ran Biden’s reelection campaign. And, after Biden belatedly pulled out and left chaos behind, suddenly Jen O’Malley Dillon was running the Harris campaign.

As you said, a lot of money was sloshing around. It’s hard to spend a billion dollars-plus in a few months and not have a lot of pockets being lined. Lots of it goes to consultants who broker deals, hire other consultants, and arrange TV advertising. They love advertising because it's easy and you don't have to relate to people. (Note: Many consultants are also paid a percentage of each ad buy.)

Meanwhile, we heard afterwards that African-American organizers in places like Philadelphia had been asking Where's our help? Where are our resources?—while TV stations in their states were filled with Harris ads.

That’s not to villainize Jen O’Malley Dillon. She's just an example. Certain people will always win. They’ll always make tons of money, no matter what happens on Election Day.

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