Prominent Black Lives Matter activist, journalist and former Dailykos front-pager Shaun King has announced he is leaving the Democratic party after the general elections. He does so in one of the most powerful indictments of the Democratic Party, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Secretary Clinton that I have seen published to date. Definitely worth reading in its entirety, whatever your preferred candidate (King is a known Sanders endorser, although a latecomer).
Along with briefly summing, this diary preemptively defends Mr. King’s character and record from the inevitable assassination attempts certain to ensue in the abyss comment section below, for two reasons. First, King’s character and principles are remarkable and worth highlighting, and second, It is well worth looking at the history and evolution of King’s writings over the course of this campaign, and their evolving reception here on this site, all of which reveal a person of unmovable character who has become diametrically opposed to the dominant mindset of this site and of his party, simply because he refused to abandon his principles. Shaun King leaving the Democratic party is no isolated, small, or insignificant event, and should not be dismissed as such for any here who have hopes of achieving victory in November. If out of party loyalty you can no longer accept him as a moral compass after this potent work, please, at least look to him as a weathervane.
In his piece, titled Here’s why I’m leaving the Democratic Party after this presidential election and you should too, King tells us of his working class roots and love of the poor and working classes, between which his family oscillated. King’s mother taught him that the Democratic Party represented their interests, and he grew up believing as much. His passion for the party peaked with the Obama campaign in 2008, a man who King relates to on many levels. So what has caused him to leave the Democratic party? King is very clear from the beginning of the piece:
Right now, the Democratic Party, which I have called home my entire life, is deeply in love with money. Consequently, its leaders have supported and advanced all kinds of evil, big and small, in devotion to this love affair.
He notes that President Obama impressed him upon election by banning lobbyists from his transition team as well as from serving in his administration if they had been lobbyists within the past 12 months. He then makes a deeply disturbing point:
Did you know that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was a co-chair of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign against Obama, and is now the chair of the DNC, earlier this year did away with all of the restrictions on lobbyists that President Obama put in place?
According to the Washington Post,
"The DNC's recent, more sweeping reversal of the previous ban on donations from lobbyists and political action committees was confirmed by three Democratic lobbyists who said they have already received solicitations from the committee. The lobbyists requested anonymity to speak freely about the committee's decision, which has been otherwise kept quiet."
Unless you are a political insider, it would be hard to know that such a thing had ever happened. No doubt, that was their goal. Why? Are they ashamed? It certainly appears so. …
"For the most part, they (the lobbyists) said, the DNC has returned to business as usual, pre-2008. The DNC has even named a finance director specifically for PAC donations who has recently emailed prospective donors to let them know that they can now contribute again, according to an email that was reviewed by The Washington Post."
King’s analysis is scathing.
This is a disgusting and unnecessary reversion, but it gives us a real clue into how the Democratic Party sincerely sees money in politics. They love it. They certainly didn't do this for Bernie Sanders. His campaign does not accept donations from SuperPACs or lobbyists and he's won 21 primaries and caucuses without it. The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, is awash in this type of money.
He goes on to explain how the DNC’s new policy is directly lining the coffers of the Clinton campaign, precisely as Bernie Sanders’ campaign charged on the day before the New York primary.
Two weeks later, though, Politico released an amazing investigative report which found that out of the $61 million the Clinton campaign was raising for state parties, the parties were only allowed to keep 1% of it. You read that correctly. I'll spell it out so that you know a digit wasn't missing. They got to keep one percent of the funds she claimed she raised for them.
It appears to be a money laundering scheme. Do you remember when George Clooney said that Bernie Sanders and his supporters were right to be disgusted by the fact that some seats at the fundraiser cost $353,400 per couple, but that he could live with it because the money was mainly going to help smaller candidates win local elections?
He was wrong.
It’s at this point that King pivots to making his case for building a third party. He cites the outrage of Obama official Van Jones at Wasserman Schultz’ impartiality, Michelle Alexander’s refusal to endorse Sanders explicitly for the simple reason that he is running as a Democrat, and Robert Reich’s recent statement that Sanders’ millions of supporters should consider forming a 3rd party:
Reich said, “Never, ever give up fighting against the increasing concentration of wealth and power at the top, which is undermining our democracy and distorting our economy. That means, if Hillary Clinton is elected, I urge you to turn Bernie's campaign into a movement — even a third party — to influence elections at the state level in 2018 and the presidency in 2020. No movement to change the allocation of power succeeds easily or quickly. We are in this for the long haul.”
I conclude that this is a very serious person making a very drastic argument with evidence, and that it represents a sea change in this party’s history. At a moment when Bernie Sanders has already collected one of the most extensive and impressive lists of victories, popular vote counts and endorsements for a New Deal Democrat in the contemporary political history of this country, it means something when one of the leading voices of probably the most urgent, vital movements of young people of color in this country is leaving the party that has been the traditional home to people of color. Note that this is AFTER the general elections in November. Still significant. I for one agree that it is time to build a 3rd party. It will require enough wins at the congressional district level to make federal election voters believe that a vote for that party is not wasted, and it would have to replace the Democratic Party, not sit alongside it, short of a change to the constitution creating some form of proportional representation, which is another possible strategy. All this according to Duverger’s Law, which I believe to be mainly true. But if ever there was a time, or a way, it’s now.
Normally I would end the diary here and we would have a nice discussion in the comments about what this all means, etc. It is worth noting that King did not start out as a Bernie supporter, and wrote extremely critically of him on the front page of Dailykos after the fallout involving Sanders’ his speech being interrupted by Black Lives Matter protestors. He hawkeyed Sanders’ campaign’s apology for not reaching out sooner than it did. He and his then-supporters got thoroughly flagged in the comment thread by Sanders supporters. There was a lot of bad blood afterwards between the two camps. Then King wrote his second to last Dailykos diary, this time praising Sanders’ response to a question about BLM in the first debate. His reason?
Sanders absolutely nailed this answer without even a hint of hesitation. What's particularly powerful about his answer is that I know he didn't get there on his own.
Bernie was interrupted at rallies and events, confronted online, and eventually met with several groups of activists to discuss the very issues—including the arrest and death of Sandra Bland—that produced his beautifully informed answer. Not only that, but it wasn't canned or rehearsed. Bernie meant what he said.
At some point, Breitbart was spreading Trumpesque smears about King that he was white and lying about his race. It is worth noting that a particular front pager who has been known to argue more recently that Sanders’ supporters should be given no concessions for their support of Clinton, had these kind words for King:
If Shaun King were white, he'd be one awesome white man. He'd be the kind of man that goes to Morehouse. He'd be the kind of man who understands racism actually, not academically. …
He'd be a leader. He'd get respect. He'd certainly get a great deal more resources for his cause. And of course, his race wouldn't be an issue.Its too bad a guy like Shaun King isnt a white man. We could use a lot more like him.
I stand with Shaun King diaries abounded! In January of 2016, King formally endorsed Bernie for president. Soon after, he broke two important stories, one showing that Congressman Jon Lewis never actually met with Bill Clinton during the civil rights movement as Lewis had claimed, and the other unearthing actual video footage of Sanders getting arrested at a civil rights protest as a student activist in Chicago, something the Clinton camp was desperate to cast doubts on. He even wrote a dissenting Op ed to the influential Hillary endorsement in the New York Daily News. King had gone from a skeptical progressive to a full on Bernie supporter as he got to know Bernie. That’s when the knives came out here on Dailykos.
Some accused him of fear mongering because he could read the polls on Hillary’s unfavorable ratings compared to Bernie’s. Others here accused him of getting the reporting wrong on the Correct the Record paid shills, which I was also temporarily banned for doing. Guess what, they’re paid. They’re shills. They’re infiltrating sites like this one and I still have not seen a single one self-identify. That accusation diary, btw, got 180 recs. SMH. This one got 63 recs, accusing him of being a “crazy hack” for tweeting that Sanders supporters at the tier 2 convention in Nevada had just effectively won the state for Sanders (since confirmed to have been accurate at the time, the unlikely reversal at tier 3 notwithstanding).
In the end, I am with people like Shaun King. I side with the powerless, and I caucus with the 99 percent. The fact that this space has turned from a space where a Shaun King could be a front pager to a place where he is so marginalized that he, and people who share his ideals, feel the need to find another party should give SIGNIFICANT pause to those Hillary supporters making claims like “Bernie Sanders supporters should get nothing” at the convention when the platform is drawn up, for example.
UPDATE: Thanks for getting this on the rec list. As I stated in a comment below (the horror!), when a serious activist like Shaun King does something drastic like leave the Democratic Party, you pay attention. Glad that truism is shared by so many of you. There are some great activists on this site. Don’t forget that. If you’re upset about all the BS in the comments and in the typical FP diaries smearing Bernie and his supporters, the best way to get back at them is to donate to Bernie! I just did, and the BNR is closing in on 100K, all from Kossacks!! Donate through them here, or through Bernie’s site. I gotta take a nap. secure.actblue.com/...