Norm's 2 columns in the Wave: On Ed Policy, It’s Democrats vs. Democrats Plus RTC on Follies

School Scope: On Ed Policy, It’s Democrats vs. Democrats

By Norm Scott

I’ve been writing in this space on education policy for about a dozen years. About the massive nationwide assault by both political parties on educators, their unions,  the concept of the local community school as a neighborhood hub, the use of high stakes testing as an instrument and charter schools as the spearhead of disruption. Let me restate this point in bold letters – BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES – in case you are now aware, known as the Republicans and the Democrats. While there are some differences – the Dems moderate their positions just enough to keep a carrot in front of the teacher unions so they keep running after each other. But make no mistake about it – both parties deserve the label of “ed deformers.”

As a left leaning Bernie Sanders supporting social democrat, I’ve been particularly harsh on the Dems who should be the natural allies of teachers and their unions and on the surface they seem to be. On the surface. But just witness the new NY State law extending mayoral control by one year but handing another giveback to the charter school lobby.

Jeff Bryant has an interesting article in Common Dreams, How Long Can Big Money Keep Democrats In The Charter School Camp?

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/06/18/how-long-can-big-money-keep-democrats-charter-school-camp

Bryant points to the recent California primary. “While the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ran on populist platforms denouncing “the corrosive role of money in politics” and “condemning the plutocratic consequences of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision,” many Democratic Party candidates down ticket funded their campaigns with big money from two corporate interests. One interest flooding the election with campaign donations is hardly new to the scene. For decades, the petroleum industry has stuffed the coffers of candidates in both parties to ensure legislation continues to favor oil consumption, stall alternative energy sources, and ensure lax environmental regulations. The other source of corporate cash in Democratic politics is much newer: charter schools. ….Many Democratic Party candidates relied on money from the petroleum industry and “education reform” advocates backing charter schools to win their contests over more progressive candidates.”

Obama is a Republican on ed policy

While be see a barrage of criticism from Republicans over anything Obama should happen to do  no matter how insignificant, one thing you will not hear is criticism of anything he has done on education. Hillary will continue most of these policies. Trump? Don’t even think about it. Educators who call themselves Republicans are basically voting to end their life work. Just desserts for these people, especially those on pensions would can watch their hero executing an overt attack on their pensions as being “too expensive” and urging us to take 25 cents on the dollar to “make America great again.”

When it comes to ed policy the charter industry doesn’t even have to worry about the Republicans.

Back to Bryant: “According to a report from the Center for Media and Democracy, an organization calling itself Democrats for Education Reform has been effective in a number of states at getting Democratic candidates to team up with traditionally Republican-leaning financial interests to defeat any attempts to question rapid expansions of unregulated charter schools. According to the CMD study, DEFR is a PAC “co-founded by hedge fund managers” to funnel “dark money” into “expenditures, like mass mailings or ads supporting particular politicians, that were ‘independent’ and not to be coordinated with the candidates’ campaigns.” The organization and its parent entity also have ties to FOX’s Rupert Murdoch and Charles and David Koch.”

With Bernie pretty much done for pro-public education supporters are left with little choice in the election. (Not that Bernie has said very much about education.) We know that the Clintons have been ed deformers since their Arkansas days. Observers of the UFT and AFT, our local and national unions also note that our own unions have been allied with the Clintons on education policy since the alliance built with the Clintons in the 80s by the late Albert Shanker. While if I were the deciding vote I would still vote for Hillary over Trump, as a NY State voter I think I can afford to vote “other” and still not help Trump get elected. I don’t stop at ed policy. We need massive reform at all levels of policy.

I want to continue to make a point that neither of the parties in our 2-party system is satisfactory to me and what is needed is a 3^rd force as we are seeing in Italy where the 7-year old Five Star Movement just elected female mayors of Rome and Turin. I can only hope the Bernie movement goes beyond Bernie. This past weekend a couple of hundred Bernie people met in Chicago to plan future actions which include beginning to get involved in local politics to either change the Democratic Party from the grass roots are start a 3^rd way real reform movement like 5 Star.

Next: Why can’t a so-called progressive Dem who is bringing Rockaway a subsidized ferry at metrocard rates find love in Rockaway?

See Norm fume at ednotesonline.org.

Here is my RTC column
-->

Memo from the RTC: Final Follies Kudos as La Cage Aux Folles is Coming

By Norm Scott

Well, the Follies set is down and La Cage… (opening August 4) is on the way up as the rehearsal schedule begins getting intense. There are so many sets for Tony Homsey and crew to build, there may be scarcely a tree left standing on Rockaway.

I had to miss the final two performances of Follies at the Rockaway Theatre Company this past weekend (and the cast party) because we had tickets to see the legendary Brian Wilson sans the rest of the Beach Boys (except for Al Jardine) at Tanglewood in Massachusetts. I’m still feeling those good vibrations so I want to say a few final words about the show, the cast and the behind scenes people involved in this complex production of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. Many people just don’t like Sondheim music or shows and so there was some resistance even within the RTC family. So the show got mixed reviews. Even one of the lead actors made some comments early in rehearsals about how he was not a fan. Yet by the end of the run he was totally enveloped. I found myself running song after song in my head all day – once in a while I even broke out into song, only to see my cat (and my wife) cover their ears.

The Sunday June 11 matinee had to survive a crisis as the fire on Flatbush Ave closed down the Gil Hodges bridge and delayed 3 performers by an hour and a half. The audience was offered their money back if they couldn’t stay for the delayed performance, which began at 3:30. Most remained and were treated to pie, coffee and ad hoc performances by various members of the cast who came out and sang for them. When the show ended around 6PM there was a palpable love fest between audience and cast.

Director Peggy Page Press threw herself into the project with enormous energy and commitment (12 facebook or more cheerleading and encouraging messages a day) and the cast and production crew came through with flying colors. Peggy’s usual partner, Michael Wotypka, co-directed. There are the usual dedicated suspects who delivered a bang-up job. Music director and sound designer Richard Louis-Pierre and Choreographer Nicole DePierro-Nellen played primary roles and will also be doing the upcoming La Cage…. Costumier Kerry O’Conner, despite being very pregnant, was in charge of what was one of the most complex costuming jobs the RTC has seen. Andrew Woodridge, as always, took care of the increasingly professional lighting.

One of the major jobs on any show is the sound technician who must make 20 remote mics work so the actors can be heard. This job fell to 15-year old Alex Stabiner who Peggy praised as one of the heroes of the production for taking on this complex task with humor and dedication. Also behind the scenes were RTC Young People regulars Mia Melchiorri and Reilly Mangano who were racing around all over the place taking on tasks that needed to get done. I find one of the most impressive things about Peggy is her faith in kids as performers and back-stage people. Our current 20-something crew came up through these ranks over the past dozen years and this 3^rd generation is so hooked on the RTC we know things will be in good hands for a long time to come.

In addition to doing the Wave’s School Scope column, Norm blogs about education and politics at ednotesonline.org.

UPDATED: Does Brexit Shock and Awe Forecast POTUS Election - and UFT Internals too

Will we be shocked to wake up in November to a President Trump?

Trump is in Scotland on the very day of the major shock over Britain's exit. I can see the same kind of surprise in November since many of the same issues in Britain and all over Europe are operating here. One of the themes is that the wealthy/elite/liberals/neoliberals were opposed to Brexit while the working class was for it.

In the primaries, Bernie and Trump seemed to capture some of those same political winds albeit from different directions. Hillary and the Bushes in many ways were more aligned than may seem obvious.

I think this will be going on all over Europe as the right rises. And it will go on here too to some extent -- but the left may be rising too -- so maybe we will end up in another civil war.

Now let me leap to some internal debates that have been taking place and will be taking place in MORE -- a sense of people at elite schools don't feel the same kind of pressure that most of the rest of the UFT members face. I feel a similar yin-yang going on but then again I may be looking too deep.

Anyway - Michael Fiorillo sent this along which touches on some of these issues with this comment:

Worth reading, if only because it takes a far more honest view of class conflict than mainstream, Clintonian "liberalism" does

Why Clinton Lost So Many Democrats

Almost half of her party—and more than two-thirds of its youth—want a different kind of liberalism.

By Jack Ross • June 21, 2016

• 
• 

The decisive factor in Hillary Clinton’s victory over Bernie Sanders was her rock-solid support from upscale liberals voting primarily on culture-war issues. White Democrats, in other words, largely voted along class lines.
This was most starkly illustrated when the New York Times published a map of how every precinct in the five boroughs voted in April, with Hillary completely sweeping Brownstone Brooklyn and all of Manhattan save a few lonely precincts on the Lower East Side. It was first seen as early as March 1 in Massachusetts, when Cambridge and its bedroom satellite Lexington put Clinton over the top by a fraction of a percent. And it ensured her consolidating victories throughout the Northeast and finally in California.
The urgent wake-up call that these facts should present to the Democratic leadership is this: While Hillary won the upscale white liberals and minorities who “look like the Democratic Party”—indeed, she lost among registered Democrats only in Vermont and New Hampshire—she still won only 54 percent of the primary vote, and she lost young voters by nearly three-to-one.
The turbulence of this election is best understood as the end of the era that began with the election of 1968, defined by the numerous domestic consequences of the Vietnam War. Published the following year, The Emerging Republican Majority by Kevin Phillips remains the indispensable chronicle of the historical forces that led up to that election, as well as the most breathtakingly accurate forecast of its long-term aftermath. Phillips bluntly described the diminished Democratic Party that would face the Nixon/Reagan supermajority as “the party of the Establishmentarian Northeast and Negro South.” The generation of progressives shaped by this tumult reached its apotheosis in Hillary Clinton’s present campaign.
The presidential contender who set the tone of American liberalism for the epoch that began in 1968 was not a high-minded representative of Cold War liberalism’s better half such as Eugene McCarthy or George McGovern, but Bobby Kennedy, whose campaign represented an odd alliance of the Democratic establishment with such New Left ideologues as Tom Hayden. The politics of Vietnam have obscured the early history of the New Left, which was deeply invested in the idealism of the Great Society—an idealism that Kennedy most effectively channeled.
In his widely praised book The Agony of the American Left, Christopher Lasch diagnosed the fatally limited imagination of this species of leftism. In discussing the lionization of such early-20th-century anarchists as “Big Bill” Haywood and the IWW, Lasch explained that “Haywood’s militancy, his advocacy of violence and sabotage … and his view of radicalism as a movement based on marginal people, all correspond to the anti-intellectual proclivities of the contemporary student left.” Oddly enough, this proved a comfortable fit for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which was directed at such marginal populations as Appalachian coal miners and the black urban poor, as opposed to the more nationally unifying, and thus naturally more popular, programs of the New Deal.
Whatever one’s opinion of Bernie Sanders’s proposals for single-payer health care, tuition-free public college, and a massive reinvestment in infrastructure, they have reemphasized why the New Deal was popular and the Great Society was not. This is a fundamental break from the pattern of missionary progressivism by what in the 1970s was called “the new class” of affluent professionals, typified by the Great Society and over the following decades increasingly conflated with culture-war priorities.
This is the source of the biggest misunderstanding of the Sanders phenomenon by the generation of liberals formed by 1968 and its aftermath. Even older Sanders supporters, hailing from that milieu themselves, have typically assumed that the campaign is merely the latest in a predictable cycle of generational struggle between youthful “egalitarians” and wizened “politicians” (to borrow from the title of the suspiciously timed new book by Sean Wilentz, who is perfectly representative of this conceit as both an ardent Clintonite and nostalgic son of postwar Greenwich Village).
But Phillips provides a clearer insight into what presently roils American liberalism. Perhaps nothing is more striking to the retrospective reader of The Emerging Republican Majority than how completely marginal, if not irrelevant, was the drama of the New Left to the causes of the realignment that led to the Nixon/Reagan supermajority. Phillips recognized what was lost on the political and media elite of the 1960s and ’70s—that the emergence of this supermajority, not the campaigns of Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy, was the real story of 1968.
Much of the political story of the past few years should be understood as the unfolding consequences of a highly analogous situation among the millennial generation. The privileged student radicals of 1968 became the vanguard of the new class, which, despite its electoral marginality, defined American liberalism for the next five decades. Their children, inheriting their values, advanced their cause both in the prestige media and as the loudest, most aggressive voices on elite campuses. Today, that prosperous elite is ever-more isolated from the social and economic devastation that has gripped most of the country.
The overwhelming preference of millennials for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton—and the not-insignificant showing of millennial support for Donald Trump—has thus been a revolt by that generation’s masses against their appointed representatives in prestige media, who were largely responsible for creating the illusions about the mood of the country that have set the tone and underlying assumptions for the Clinton campaign.
This self-satisfied culture-war extremism might have been tolerated by most millennials had it not become the hallmark of open class contempt. But it is no accident that leading corporate liberal publications, from The Atlantic to Slate to New York, traffic in the most unrestrained identity politics, belligerence, and transgender extremism while their mostly young writers have also been the most supportive of Clinton and critical of Sanders.
It may be extremely sobering that Hillary Clinton’s only challenger for the Democratic nomination was both a lifelong independent and a representative of the aging Jewish cohort that is perhaps the last surviving segment of voters with a serious attachment to the class-solidarity appeal of the New Deal Democrats. But it is at least as revealing that only such a man as Bernie Sanders could have rallied the economically hard-pressed youth of America behind a future they could believe in, just as it is now clear that only a human wrecking ball such as Donald Trump could have finally dislodged and buried the rotting corpse of the historic conservative movement.
Many longstanding assumptions about the future of American politics are likely to be exploded over the next several months. Polls have been showing Clinton and Trump running about evenly among millennials, and Nate Cohn of the New York Times has laid out data undermining the assumption of a declining white electorate. Meanwhile, a millennial supermajority that rejects its politically correct mouthpieces, not unlike the boomer supermajority that rejected the New Left, is coming into view.
To be sure, that majority is firmly committed to social and economic policies that are far closer to those of Bernie Sanders than to those of Ronald Reagan. But it is precisely because the liberal culture-war catechism is so totally losing resonance with them—not to mention the slaying of the Reagan policy paradigm by Trump—that the liberal pundit class is invoking that catechism with increasing hysteria. This election will do much to determine how the millennial majority ultimately takes shape.
If Trump wins, the combination of his likely one-term disaster and the shock of a Clinton loss will likely open the way for a lasting generational transformation of the Democratic Party. Unless Trump loses in a landslide, which looks increasingly unlikely, there is no going back to the old order for the Republicans, in which case they could still thwart the emerging Democratic majority of the past decade. Yet the success of the Sanders campaign has made clear that if, as some have suggested, the coming realignment is between the Bloomberg party and the Trump party, the former cannot long survive.
The legacy of the Bernie Sanders campaign will have been to reveal that for the Democrats, no less than the Republicans, the twin legacies of the 1960s—in both the party establishment and its ideological base—are at long last at death’s door.
Jack Ross is the author of The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History and the forthcoming The Strange Death of American Exceptionalism, on the history of the present political moment inspired by the scholarship of Kevin Phillips.

Here is another point of view from Daily Kos. I don't quite agree since there is a lot more devastation in this ecomony than it admits too and the effects of globalization are a reason in part.

By Laurence Lewis   

You’re going to be reading a lot of stories about the Brexit vote being a warning that Donald Trump can win. Those stories will be wrong.
Brexit apparently has won, and the primary reason is the economic turmoil wrought by the greed and at times open cruelty of British austerity, as imposed by David Cameron and George Osborne. Labour didn’t run against austerity in the last British election, and was punished for it. The British people were punished with more austerity. A brutal economy always feeds extremism, and that is how Britain got Brexit. The irony was that Cameron and Osborne had to fight desperately against the consequences of their own policies. And if you think I’m ignoring Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, that’s because he was almost invisible during the Remain campaign, and his support was tepid if not feigned. Britain has austerity and no credible national leaders. Hence Brexit.
While much of Europe was electing right wing governments that imposed austerity, the United States was electing Barack Obama. The Obama stimulus was a starkly different approach from European austerity. A larger stimulus would have done more to fuel a robust recovery, but the stimulus that was enacted stopped the economic free fall, and got the United States back on the right track. More needs to be done, and will be done, but the difference with Europe and particularly Britain is obvious. The extremism fueling the Trump campaign is neither as broad or deep as the extremism fueling Brexit. Because President Obama and Congressional Democrats ensured that the United States did not end up with the sort of brutal economic program the Republicans would have imposed, and that Cameron and Osborne in Britain did impose.
Simply put, the extremism fueling Brexit does not have the same resonance in the United States. Because our economy is not suffering the way Britain’s economy is suffering. And the economic agenda of Hillary Clinton is very deliberately designed to build on the success of the Obama economic agenda. The United States has alternatives that Britain did not have. And the United States will not follow Britain’s path into extremism because it hasn’t been on a parallel economic path.

Friday June 24: Students, Parents to Walk Out of Historic East Harlem School Demanding Removal of Principal

Community to Demand accountability from District 4 Superintendent

It was a pleasure hanging out with the parents and teachers of Central Park East 1 last night at dinner after the PEP meeting. The Farina assault on this school and the UFT turning its back says it all about what is going on. I will be putting up the videos of their comments, including charges of racism. The District 4 Supt looks to be another criminal supervisor put in power by Farina.

For Immediate Release:

Contact:
Kenya Dilday:

Kaliris Salas Ramirez:

Jennifer Roesch:  

 

More information at www.savecpe1.org

Students, Parents to Walk Out of Historic East Harlem School Demanding Removal of Principal

Community to Demand accountability from District 4 Superintendent

EAST HARLEM—Students will walk out of Central Park East 1 Friday morning to join a protest march calling for an end to the year-long attack on the school’s storied, progressive culture, its long-term teachers, children and families.

The children, from pre-k through fifth grade, will join their families and supporters in a march to the office of District 4 Superintendent Alexandra Estrella. The walk out and march is being organized to directly address Estrella for her role in decimating a school that pioneered progressive education in the city.

In the summer of 2015, Estrella appointed Monika Garg as the principal of CPE1. Garg quickly lost the trust of the majority of CPE1 families by antagonizing long-time teachers; submitting young children to interrogations without informing their parents; advocating for a new version of “separate but equal” by stating that CPE1’s progressive education doesn’t work for students of color or poor children; and bypassing the school’s democratic structures and even the Chancellor’s regulations to push an agenda of changing the historic school.

Garg has been supported by Estrella even as 70% of the parents at CPE1 have called for the principal’s removal. As CPE1 parents take action to demand Garg be removed from CPE1, Estrella has mounted her own campaign against CPE1 families, spreading lies about parent leaders and purposely misinforming the District 4 Community Education Council about the “SAVE CPE1” movement.

Previous public actions by the CPE1 community demanding Garg’s removal include multiple appearances at the Panel on Educational Policy and a 300-person rally at DOE Headquarters last month.

Who: Students and parents from CPE 1

What: Protest to demand removal of school’s principal.

Excellent visuals include young children with protest signs,crowd chanting and marching, delegation delivering petition to Superintendent Estrella.

When: Friday, June 24, 2016; Start time 8:30AM

Where: Starts at 106th Street between Madison and Park,march moves to 120th Street between Lexington and 3rd Avenue.

The website, savecpe1.org, offers an extensive timeline detailing the pattern of administrative mistreatment over time. It also provides testimonials from families about what a Central Park East 1 education has meant for them and their children. It explains Central Park East 1’s unique curriculum and pedagogy as well as its success - as measured by the Department of Education’s own metrics.

###

A Pre-PEP Primer: Who Ya Gonna Call?

Jia Lee:

Jia with fans

I bore witness, at yet another Panel for Educational Policy where the Chancellor and other members, appointed by the mayor, pretended to hear the voices of community members, as they lined up to speak, with incredible courage and conviction. I had to leave midway only to hear later that chaos ensued when the PEP ignored or gave lip service to its constituents. The PEP is not a democratic space. Nothing has changed. I see you Aixa Rodriguez Kathy Cole Alexandra Alves Jen Roesch Lydia Ann Norm Scott Jane Maisel Julie Neusner ‪#‎SaveCPE1‬ ‪#‎justiceforMary‬ ‪#‎PS233‬ 

I returned late last night from the monthly Panel for Education (PEP) meeting which lasted past 9 with my head pounding from Farina's constantly reminding everyone how she never breaks a promise. What a pathetic crew most of the PEPs are -- but not all - kudos to Brooklyn PEP Eric Adams appointee Fred Baptiste.

There is too much to digest though I did enjoy digesting the post-PEP meal at a Vietnamese restaurant with the great crew of parents and teachers from Central Park East 1 - hanging with them makes going to the PEP worth it --- they told Farina they will be back to every PEP until principal Monika Garg, who trained under the racist principal of Pan American HS who is under federal charges, is gone.

But let me not get too far ahead of myself --- the video is processing and best to let you see for yourself when it is done.

In the meantime let me tell you about my day yesterday BEFORE I went to the PEP.

It was a big construction day at the Rockaway Theatre Company as we began major construction for the set of La Cage Aux Folles. In the midst of all that I received 3 phone calls from teachers - phone calls that pumped me up to go to the PEP even though I had to leave Rockaway on a beautiful day.

A MORE member called to talk about what she might do after getting discontinued by a vicious and vindictive principal - and I suggested she come down to the PEP and tell them about it to their faces. She did and she waited all night to talk and she was great. I will put up her video and tell her story in a separate post. She is leaving anyway after getting a scholarship to law school in California - I hope she comes back here in 3 years and makes the DOE lives miserable - we sure could use a young movement lawyer. She is an avid social justice advocate.

Another MORE member called - a chapter leader who beat a Unity slug in the election who happened to be the principal favorite - so our gal has faced onslaughts from both directions. It has not been a fun first year as chapter leader. She came down to the PEP yesterday too but the meeting lasted so long she couldn't stay to talk.

Finally, I received a call from a high school chapter leader who is under assault by a new principal, as is the rest of his staff. He is a MORE supporter who I met when I was stuffing mail boxes -- he even helped me. The UFT district and borough reps are less than useless -- I won't get into details. I also suggested he come to the PEP and he met me there and sat through the entire meeting - his first PEP - and couldn't believe what he was seeing. He also made a great statement.

Jia Lee and I met some teachers from a another school with a vindictive principal. They were also MORE fans and voted for us. There is an epidemic of vindictive power-hungry principals.

Addressing this issue must be a major focus for MORE though I don't know exactly what more MORE could do - other than putting pressure on the UFT- which as usual was absent from the PEP.

Here area few PEP pics.

Army in Mexico Attacks Teachers Protesting Ed Deform - 8 Dead

If the day ever comes that things get so bad for educators in this country and we no longer have a sell-out Unity Caucus leadership licking at the boots of the deformers (wish I were a cartoonist), the Bush/Obama/Clinton/Cuomo/Trump et al admins would send the national guard after teachers too.

Dear Norman,
During the past few days, extreme violence has been used against teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico who were protesting governmental education "reforms." This has resulted in the deaths of at least eight people. The Network for Public Education joins with those condemning this violence and calls for a dialogue to resolve the underlying issues. We support the statement issued by the Civil Society of Oaxaca demanding that the government do the following:

• End the wrongful and disproportionate use of force and repression against the teachers who make use of their legitimate right to free expression and free protest.

• Establish a round table for dialogue with the teachers of Oaxaca.

• Provide medical attention for all persons injured as a result of the violent acts of the State.

• Stop the criminalization of the teachers by cancelling arrest warrants against members of the teachers' union of Oaxaca. Immediately release all teachers who have been arrested in an arbitrary and illegal way.

• Punish all persons responsible for arbitrary detentions, torture and other violations of Human Rights against members of the teachers' union of Oaxaca.

Please personalize the statement above and send it to:

US Ambassador to Mexico, Roberta S. Jacobson
Paseo de la Reforma 305
Colonia Cuauhtemoc

06500 Mexico, D.F.

Or call or fax Ms. Jacobsen at:
Phone: ( 01-55 ) 5080-2000
Fax: ( 01-55 ) 5080-2005

In addition to the above, contact the Mexican Consulate at:

1250 23rd St. NW - Washington DC, 20037
Tel: (202) 736-1000 * Fax: (202) 234-4498
E-mail:consulwas@sre.gob.mx

Thanks for all that you do. Share this link:

http://networkforpubliceducation.org/2016/06/6569/
Carol Burris
Executive Director
The Network for Public Education

Jeff Bryant: How Long Can Big Money Keep Democrats In The Charter School Camp?

How did the charter school industry get mixed up with big oil to gets its way in Democratic Party contests?... Jeff Bryant

Will the Bernie revolt in the Democratic party extend to those Dems being backed by charter money?

Clearly there are enough voters in the Democratic Party base who feel this way to convince some of their party’s candidates and current officials to challenge the wide leeway the charter school industry wants. So maybe more Democratic candidates who’ve tapped charter school money will have some explaining to do... Jeff Bryant

Jeff examines the California primary voting patterns for clues. It is our job to begin to hold Dems supported by charter money accountable.

How Long Can Big Money Keep Democrats In The Charter School Camp?

Published on

Saturday, June 18, 2016

by

Education Opportunity Network

by

Jeff Bryant

How Long Can Big Money Keep Democrats In The Charter School Camp?

Silent Unity Caucus Members, Deserving Scorn, Want Perks But No Accountability

Careful not to show how you really feel.. Attacking the entire Unity caucus is really a show of how unhinged More is becoming at the seams.... Unity Caucus slug commenting on Ed Notes post: Unity-UFT Caucus Members MUST Be Called to Account - In their own schools

I and other bloggers have been posting about that Unity Caucus leaflet attacking MORE for supporting opt out.

• Unity Caucus Attack on Opt Out and MORE - It's Ran...
• Unity-UFT Attack on MORE and Opt-Out Ghost written...

You see, Unity Caucus people want immunity from having to face consequences for their support for their leadership's disastrous decision making on issues such as mayoral control or opt out or common core or supporting a crippling evaluation committee or being silent on abusive principals or ---- fill in the blanks.

Another Unity slug excused their post DA meeting with this:

The meeting after DA was for new convention delegates. While they are UNITY caucus members, the meeting is a UFT meeting, not a caucus meeting.

Causing Michael Fiorillo to comment: Oh, I get it: L'etat c'est moi...

Michael is right - the members of Unity Caucus think they are the UFT. Right. Maybe the caucus meeting to tell them all how to vote will take place another time.

As to my call for Unity Caucus enablers of bad policy to be attacked as being a sign that MORE is becoming unhinged --- well I don't view myself as representing MORE policy. In fact if more people in MORE listened to me, there would not be tame little district rep meetings or Delegate Assemblies or even upcoming executive board meetings. I would declare war on Unity. But I and some other ICEers in MORE, who have a lot of experience with the Unity machine are in a minority.

As an elder statesman in MORE, I have realized the the newer MOREs must go through years of frustration at dealing with Unity leaders who often play word games to misdirect the members from their real policies. Right now many MORE people think they can work with Unity to create change in the union. They are dreaming. I think they should go for the jugular and treat Unity people politically the way Vichy-like collaborators should be treated.

Hey, I like many Unity people too but we have to separate the work some of them do for the union - which can be good work -- and their political support for the bad policies of the caucus. Make each and every Unity caucus member defend mayoral control - and if they tell you they don't agree with the leadership tell them they are full of bullshit until they have the guts to stand up publicly and say so,

I'll leave the final comment to the gutsy Roseanne McCosh, one of the few Unity Caucus member who would not take the bullshit anymore

Anonymous: You're confusing unhinged with unbound. Unbound to Mulgrew/Randi and every other sell out piece of shit in a union leadership position who is promoting Cuomo's agenda. I guess since Cuomo's cronies are busy readying for prison or an indictment someone has to pick up the slack and do the governor's dirty work for him. Andrew Cuomo thanks you and Mulgrew and Randi for your service and commitment to the destruction of public schools and teachers. Roseanne McCosh

Unity-UFT Caucus Members MUST Be Called to Account - In their own schools

MORE urged students to opt out of the state exams as a means of protecting the professional autonomy of educators and fighting against a corporate education system. ... Unity-UFT Caucus leaflet, June 2016

Arthur has a follow-up post today on the Unity Caucus attack against MORE for, as Leonie Haimson put it:

How dare MORE fight for professional autonomy and against a corporate driven agenda! Who do you think you are?
NYC Educator: UFT Unity and Corporate Values

See my previous posts on this issue:

• Unity Caucus Attack on Opt Out and MORE - It's Ran...
• Unity-UFT Attack on MORE and Opt-Out Ghost written...

I've heard people say that they like people they know in Unity -- yet these are the very people who empower the Unity Caucus leadership to take stands antithetical to the interests of UFT members.

By now the entire opt out community is condemning the leaflet but the focus has been Mulgrew when in fact it should be the Randi-Mulgrew enablers who make up Unity Caucus.

Unity Caucus is not just an entity divorced from the 800 people who are going to the AFT convention to vote the way they are told to. Right after the DA the other day, Unity held a meeting - I saw some luscious food platters some people had -- to tell them how to vote.

I like some Unity people too. But isn't it time to hold each and every one of them accountable for the positions of the caucus they choose to join? I told a union official recently that not all of them are slugs -- I view only the nasty ones that way. They seem to feel insulted when I refer to them as slugs. Well, maybe someone can come up with a better word for what I estimate to be around 1500 Unity Caucus members, many retirees, many still based in schools, who sign on to a caucus that says it is wrong for MORE to fight against corporate deform and professional autonomy.
I wrote the other day:

If you know people in Unity Caucus show them the leaflet and ask them to pledge allegiance to what it says - and if they won't, ask them to make a public statement denouncing it -- and watch them cower in fear - all 800 of them - or more. That makes them a slug in  my book.

If you are a MORE or an independent chapter leader and attend the monthly district rep chapter leader meetings, which are often packed with Unity acolytes, isn't it time to stand up and say,

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

And for my friends in Unity - isn't it time for you to get some legs on your slug body and stand up and join us.

Unity Caucus Attack on Opt Out and MORE - It's Randi Not Mulgrew, Stupid

If you know people in Unity Caucus show them the leaflet and ask them to pledge allegiance to what it says - and if they won't, ask them to make a public statement denouncing it -- and watch them cower in fear - all 800 of them - or more. That makes them a slug in  my book.

By now Ed Notes readers should know about the Unity-UFT leaflet handed out at Wednesday's DA - if you don't, read this first:

Unity-UFT Attack on MORE and Opt-Out Ghost written by Cuomo, John King, Bill Gates

The social media reactions like this from opt out leader Jeannette Deuterman, let Randi off the hook.

Oh Michael, Michael, Michael. Now you went and did it. You stayed in the closet for four long years, pretending that you were respectful of the work of 250,000 parents and educators to save your profession and protect public schools. Out of fear of your regime beginning to crumble, you have decided to come out and proclaim in all your glory that you despise the opt out movement and all it represents. Let me be the first to let out a sigh of relief that the pretense is over. Now you can come at us with fists flying in typical Mulgrew fashion. Thank you for being you.

~Jeanette Brunelle Deutermann, Opt-out parent activist

... is that the focus is on Mulgrew, not Randi Weingarten who is the brains behind the outfit. Mulgrew is just her spear carrier and if he leaves as UFT president -- if Hillary - whose views on opt out totally match Randi's -- whatever slug replaces him will be no different.

Frankly, I prefer Mulgrew's approach -- he can't manage to be slick like Randi. Randi is much more dangerous.

If slick Randi were in charge, heads would roll for putting out that Unity leaflet attacking MORE and by association the parents and teachers who support opt out. But Mulgrew doesn't pay attention to the fineries of misleading people by talking out of 12 sides of her mouth, often at the same time.

Looking forward to going to the AFT convention with Arthur Goldstein and other MOREs, Gloria Brandman, Lisa North and Jia Lee in July where we can track the movements of the Unity slugs.

Jia's comment:

I was at the UFT Delegate Assembly where this leaflet was handed out. That first quote is from an interview I did for NBC's investigative report on the opt out gag order teachers face. Wow, this statement is more about eliciting fear and compliance for horrific policies that have caused irrevocable "reckless" & "feckless" harm on our profession, students and schools. The opt out/refusals have been the ONLY reason our state and federal govt have backed away from test based evals. This statement right here is very revealing of how out of touch our union leadership is. It means our work must continue because they haven't heard their members and communities at all.

Arthur's piece today:

Opt-out Answers UFT Unity

 

Unity-UFT Attack on MORE and Opt-Out Ghost written by Cuomo, John King, Bill Gates

MORE urged students to opt out of the state exams as a means of protecting the professional autonomy of educators and fighting against a corporate education system. ... Unity-UFT Caucus leaflet, June 2016

Guilty, proudly guilty as charged. Someone has to protect the professional autonomy of educators and fight against the corporate education system. Unity certainly isn't. In fact, they consistently prove time and again, they aid and abet and are allies of the corporate ed deformers. Any of the people mentioned in the headline could have written that leaflet since we've seen the same threats against teachers and parents almost word for word.

They are, in fact, attacking MORE as though we invented opt-out, and as though we are the sole participants. Can you imagine how much power they've attributed to us right there? Of course they ignore people like Leonie Haimson, Carol Burris, Jeanette Deutermann, Diane Ravitch and Beth Dimino, among many others.... NYCEducator

Does anyone doubt the fact that it was the 225,000 opt outers that got Cuomo to back down? Unity thinks it was really Mulgrew bluster or back door negotiating tactics.

Unity'-UFT has teemed up with the ed deform gang to try to kill opt out.

I actually laughed out loud when I looked at the Unity Caucus leaflet at yesterday's Delegate Assembly that attacked MORE and the opt out movement, terming us "reckless and feckless" - a Walt Whitman they are not. "This is a gift from Unity to us," I told our MORE colleagues "and will come back to haunt them."

Maybe Mulgrew can threaten to punch parents who opt out in the face at the AFT convention in a few weeks and the 800 Unity slugs where there can rise up and cheer his words. The big joke is the "threat" of losing money for schools whose parents opt out in big numbers.

The biggest joke of all is the phrase at the bottom of the leaflet. We know that there is no courage or vision but there is certainly persistence - persistence in supporting the ed deformers by hook or crook.

Bloggers James Eterno

UNITY'S BIZARRE DA LEAFLET

and Arthur Goldstein expose that farce.

 UFT Unity Fears Us

They say these "reward schools" will now lose as much as $75,000 in reward money. Whenever I see "as much as" I'm always skeptical. There's certainly something unsaid. And brilliant blogger Jersey Jazzman has already considered that, along with much more.

Last year, 143 city schools were selected as Reward Schools, according to the state, but only eight of them met the eligibility requirements...

That leaves them with a six percent shot at being eligible for "as much as" $75,000. And if you're thinking, which I can only assume the target audience of Unity faithful is not, you know that when someone uses a phrase like "as much as," you must always question what, exactly "as little as" is, because it could be zero, for all we know.  And in case you it isn't wholly apparent, being "eligible" for something, well, that doesn't mean you get it either. How do you become part of this lucky 6% that may or may not get you as much as $75,000? According to Jazzman, and please read his full column.

Afterburn
Outrage burns on social media.
Beth Dimino:

That moment when Michael Mulgrew and the rest of ‪#‎UNITY‬ dissolve in a puddle of bile attacking NYC's most dedicated student, educator, and parent activists for resisting high stakes testing, and double down on the attempt to silence and intimidate the opt out movement. Your true constituents in the ed. deformer community salute you! ‪#‎OPTOUTNYC‬ ‪#‎REFUSETHETEST‬

Defend the UFT Contract, Build Chapters, Stand Up Against Abusive Supervisors - MORE Summer Series Begins July 6

With the UFT/Unity deficient, Who Ya Gonna Call? MORE's Annual Summer Series:  Wednesdays: July 6, August 3 and August 31st

The DOE has given principals a blueprint on how to remove senior and troublesome staff and they can call DOE legal for advise.

The Unity/UFT leadership has no plan and has left our membership defenseless. The other day at the theater a teacher in our show - a very happy teacher by the way whose admin loves her - told me

there is some upset in her school because a few teachers have become targets - teachers others in the school respect. She knows that the admin can turn on her on a dime or if another principal comes in with his or her own favorites, she can end up on the doodoo list too. This is the sword of Damocles people work under.

See: Pissed Off Incompetence - Thirty two year old APs who know nothing about teaching and everything about harassing those who do and incompetent Principals who appoint and support them...

One of the roles MORE must play, even with limited resources, is assuming the role the UFT leadership has vacated. Though I must say there are sketchy reports that in our assuming this role, the leadership may be feeling pressure to be more supportive -- sketchy depending on the district. If we get the leadership to do a better job that is not a bad thing but MORE will continue to push.

This summer we will escalate with 3 sessions on the fundamentals - and I hope we can continue into the fall.

MORE's Annual Summer Series! Open to UFT Chapter Leaders and All Members.

Wednesdays: July 6, August 3 and August 31st
3:00-6:00pm Happy Hour Drink Specials

Veteran Chapter Leaders Will Lead Workshops On:

Learning The Contract, Coordinating School-wide Grievances, Dealing with Difficult Supervisors, Communicating with Your Staff, Building New Leadership, Intro to the UFT Structure, The Delegate Assembly: How it Works, Fighting Charters and Privatization, Building Power with Parents and Students, How to Organize an Opt Out Campaign in Your School

After burn: Is there a  better chapter leader than Kevin Prosen? The perfect combo of social justice and hard core unionism
Kevin Prosen became chapter leader of his middle school 4 years ago. It took guts because his principal was a noted abuser. I remember we had a meeting of new chapter leaders after he was elected and he said openly he knew nothing. Within a year he was already becoming an expert and has continued to grow to the point where he can lead workshops.

Kevin is also a hard core social justice advocate and an organizer and his views have enabled him to understand how to gain support in his school. Kevin did amazing work in the election, gathering over 80 signatures on petitions in his school and has worked with people in neighboring schools.

We try to tell people that fighting an abusive supervisor is not an individual battle but takes organizing skills.

After Kevin's first year as CL his principal announced her retirement.

Fifty Attend #MORE16 Wrap-up Meeting: Ovation for Ending Fair Student Funding

Dear Fellow MORE Members:

While we welcome a variety of gifts and insights, there is a need for prioritization. This is where we need an overarching analysis of what has hit teachers and other workers, namely neoliberalism, the purposeful destabilization of workers and workplaces in favor of ever cheaper labor. In the case of teachers, this translates into the attack on veteran teachers in favor of cheaper replacements.

TOP PRIORITY--JOB SECURITY: stopping the high turnover of teachers through Discontinuances, Bad Reviews (by whatever method) and Tenure Delays.We must end Fair Student Funding, where teacher salaries no longer come out of a common pot, but each school is a cost center. Fair Student Funding policy favors the cheapest teachers against the high paid veterans, forcing many tenured veterans into endless ATR and Provisional status. An insecure, migrant teacher is alienated from school community and is thereby hamstrung from being politically engaged.

Job Quality Issues are also important; lengthening of work week, paperwork increase, the high states tests are very important. However, a teacher must first have a job at all, before being able to focus on everything else. 

In sum, job stability has been fundamentally undermined. It must be squarely fought.

In solidarity, an attendee at the MORE meeting

Don't let good ideas fall into a black hole.

At the final MORE meeting of the school year, a retired teacher made a passionate statement about how the root of so much evil which has led to higher salaried teachers being pit against younger teachers has been the fair student funding formula when it relates to how teachers are paid out of school budgets instead of centrally and that it was incumbent for MORE address that issue.  He received a big ovation from the nearly 50 people present as he pointed out that the UFT/Unity caucus with access to the de Blasio/Farinia admin has not even brought the subject up. He pointed out it was incumbent for the MORE/NA high school exec bd reps to put this issue on the table ASAP. By the end of the meeting there were so many things for them to address.

I arrived 15 minutes early and the room was empty so I figured we might have 20 people at most. When meeting organizers Julie Cavanagh (with an almost 4 year old Jack in tow) and Peter Lamphere arrived a few minutes later, we began putting chairs around the tables. Within 20 minutes we were inundated by so many people we had to pull back into a giant circle that just kept growing as people arrived.

We spent an hour doing UFT election analysis where we heard the good, the bad and the ugly - I did the bad and ugly parts as I don't want people to dislocate their shoulders from excessive patting themselves on the back by focusing only on the positive. MORE needs to do a lot more organizing before it can be more than a glimmer of a threat to Unity.

Then we got into some meat of a discussion about the relationships between social justice unionism and what is termed bread and butter unionism - the idea that a union can't only be about fundamental service and defense of the contract - which of course the UFT/Unity doesn't even do well, if at all. So some fusion of the SJ and service concepts -- in fact the very idea of a union is social justice -- but a broader view of SJ is not just a moral issue but also a fundamental way of supporting the delivery of the service.

MORE's slogan that working conditions are student learning conditions and the converse - that learning conditions affect working conditions - is not a theoretical concept. As one person after another talked about abusive working conditions and abusive principals I pointed out that if there are hundreds of schools with toxic working conditions then those schools also have toxic learning conditions. There is the fusion of SJ issues. MORE can't just talk about student justice and people on the other side of the fence can''t just talk about teacher justice because the way to go after an abusive principal effectively is with a fusion because we know full well that the DOE and public will ignore teachers complaining but might listen when students, parents garner some political support and get press coverage.

The fair student funding formula helps create toxic working conditions which creates toxic learning conditions. The funding formula is not fair in any way.

There were suggestions that MORE and New Action use their exec bd seats to aggressively confront the leadership on its passivity when it comes to toxic work environments and that it put some serious pressure on Farina.

For people in the schools who don't go to Exec Bd meetings there are some thoughts of encouraging rank and file people (such as readers of the blogs) to attend some of the meetings during the year when some of these issues might come up. The EB can't just be a place where resolutions are brought up, debated, turned down ore watered down by Unity and then disappear into a black hole. MORE has to choose a few issues rather than throw everything up against the wall and see what sticks. Organizationally, one person needs to take charge and manage the campaign.

The problem often is that a great idea is floated and then disappears. It takes people power to form and execute a plan. There are people in MORE who teach in international schools with lots of immigrants. Some of them have teamed up with people in NYCORE to move on a plan. That is their passion and interest.

Back to fair student funding - if people want to get serious they need to form a FSF committee to plan a campaign. Otherwise a great idea falls into a black hole and never emerges again.

Dems Heads Up Asses and Soon to be in Deep Doodoo

The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide....

If they had any brains, Beltway Dems and their clucky sycophants like Capeheart would not be celebrating this week. They ought to be horrified to their marrow that the all-powerful Democratic Party ended up having to dig in for a furious rally to stave off a quirky Vermont socialist almost completely lacking big-dollar donors or institutional support. ....Matt Tiabbi in Rolling Stone, Democrats Will Learn All the Wrong Lessons From Brush With Bernie

Will the Democratic Party survive the 2016 election as the Clintons, with Bernie supposedly out of the way, triangulate to the right? Well, of course it will "survive" but what will it look like? Will the left continue to accept the repeated "lesser of 2 evils" argument going back through Romney, McCain, Bush 2, Dole, Bush 1? 25 years of seeing the triangulating Party move right as it abandoned so many hints of progressive policy - in essence abandoning FDR's New Deal which brought them to power in a serious way for the first since the Civil War. Power based on holding the racist south which was lost when LBJ pushed through the Civil Rights Act in 1965.

Bernie brought the left revolt into focus and there is hope that that revolt will continue to percolate up from the bottom at the local level. But that is a long slog and there will be pressure to just go ahead and from a new party or turn the Green Party into a serious challenger.

In the rules of palace intrigue, Sanders only made sense as a kind of self-centered huckster who made a failed play for power. And the narrative will be that with him out of the picture, the crisis is over. No person, no problem. This inability to grasp that the problem is bigger than Bernie Sanders is a huge red flag.... "The Democrats should be worried they're next,"...  But they're not worried. Behind the palace walls, nobody ever is.

 And so I believe the Democrats, win or lose the election are in for as big a revolt as the Republicans and we may see a new political landscape begin to emerge over the next 5 years.

As I pointed out in my Wave column (On UFT and Other Elections - Time to Think About 2019 and 2020?), the 2020 election is already looking interesting. Republicans like Paul Ryan can only hope for a bad Trump loss - can you imagine how many candidates there will be to challenge Hillary?

A weak link for the Dems is on education policy which has Republican support and Randi Weingarten's leading the band right into the mouth of extinction. We know about the disaster of the AFT/NYSUT/UFT as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. I bet 20% or more of UFTers vote Trump instead of Hillary.

Taibbi nails some interesting points on what the Dems will be facing. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/democrats-will-learn-all-the-wrong-lessons-from-brush-with-bernie-20160609

Years ago, over many beers in a D.C. bar, a congressional aide colorfully described the House of Representatives, where he worked.

It's "435 heads up 435 asses," he said.

I thought of that person yesterday, while reading the analyses of Hillary Clinton's victories Tuesday night. The arrival of the first female presidential nominee was undoubtedly a huge moment in American history and something even the supporters of Bernie Sanders should recognize as significant and to be celebrated. But the Washington media's assessment of how we got there was convoluted and self-deceiving.

This was no ordinary primary race, not a contest between warring factions within the party establishment, á la Obama-Clinton in '08 or even Gore-Bradley in '00. This was a barely quelled revolt that ought to have sent shock waves up and down the party, especially since the Vote of No Confidence overwhelmingly came from the next generation of voters. Yet editorialists mostly drew the opposite conclusion.

The classic example was James Hohmann's piece in the Washington Post, titled, "Primary wins show Hillary Clinton needs the left less than pro-Sanders liberals think."

Hohmann's thesis was that the "scope and scale" of Clinton's wins Tuesday night meant mainstream Democrats could now safely return to their traditional We won, screw you posture of "minor concessions" toward the "liberal base."

Hohmann focused on the fact that with Bernie out of the way, Hillary now had a path to victory that would involve focusing on Trump's negatives. Such a strategy won't require much if any acquiescence toward the huge masses of Democratic voters who just tried to derail her candidacy. And not only is the primary scare over, but Clinton and the centrist Democrats in general are in better shape than ever.

"Big picture," Hohmann wrote, "Clinton is running a much better and more organized campaign than she did in 2008."

Then there was Jonathan Capehart, also of the Post, whose "This is how Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are the same person" piece describes Sanders as a "stubborn outsider" who "shares the same DNA" as Donald Trump. Capeheart snootily seethes that both men will ultimately pay a karmic price for not knowing their places.

"In the battle of the outsider egos storming the political establishment, Trump succeeded where Sanders failed," he wrote. "But the chaos unleashed by Trump's victory could spell doom for the GOP all over the ballot in November. Pardon me while I dab that single tear trickling down my cheek."

If they had any brains, Beltway Dems and their clucky sycophants like Capeheart would not be celebrating this week. They ought to be horrified to their marrow that the all-powerful Democratic Party ended up having to dig in for a furious rally to stave off a quirky Vermont socialist almost completely lacking big-dollar donors or institutional support.

They should be freaked out, cowed and relieved, like the Golden State Warriors would be if they needed a big fourth quarter to pull out a win against Valdosta State.

But to read the papers in the last two days is to imagine that we didn't just spend a year witnessing the growth of a massive grassroots movement fueled by loathing of the party establishment, with some correspondingly severe numerical contractions in the turnout department (though she won, for instance, Clinton received 30 percent fewer votes in California this year versus 2008, and 13 percent fewer in New Jersey).

The twin insurgencies of Trump and Sanders this year were equally a blistering referendum on Beltway politics. But the major-party leaders and the media mouthpieces they hang out with can't see this, because of what that friend of mine talked about over a decade ago: Washington culture is too far up its own backside to see much of anything at all.

In D.C., a kind of incestuous myopia very quickly becomes part of many political jobs. Congressional aides in particular work ridiculous hours for terrible pay and hang out almost exclusively with each other. About the only recreations they can afford are booze, shop-talk, and complaining about constituents, who in many offices are considered earth's lowest form of life, somewhere between lichens and nematodes.

It's somewhat understandable. In congressional offices in particular, people universally dread picking up the phone, because it's mostly only a certain kind of cable-addicted person with too much spare time who calls a politician's office.

"Have you ever called your congressman? No, because you have a job!" laughs Paul Thacker, a former Senate aide currently working on a book about life on the Hill. Thacker recounts tales of staffers rushing to turn on Fox News once the phones start ringing, because "the people" are usually only triggered to call Washington by some moronic TV news scare campaign.

In another case, Thacker remembers being in the office of the senator of a far-Northern state, watching an aide impatiently conduct half of a constituent phone call. "He was like, 'Uh huh, yes, I understand.' Then he'd pause and say, 'Yes, sir,' again. This went on for like five minutes," recounts Thacker.

Finally, the aide firmly hung up the phone, reared back and pointed accusingly at the receiver. "And you are from fucking Missouri!" he shouted. "Why are you calling me?"

These stories are funny, but they also point to a problem. Since The People is an annoying beast, young pols quickly learn to be focused entirely on each other and on their careers. They get turned on by the narrative of Beltway politics as a cool power game, and before long are way too often reaching for Game of Thrones metaphors to describe their jobs. Eventually, the only action that matters is inside the palace.

Voter concerns rapidly take a back seat to the daily grind of the job. The ideal piece of legislation in almost every case is a Frankensteinian policy concoction that allows the sponsoring pol to keep as many big-money donors in the fold as possible without offending actual human voters to the point of a ballot revolt.

This dynamic is rarely explained to the public, but voters on both sides of the aisle have lately begun guessing at the truth, and spent most of the last year letting the parties know it in the primaries. People are sick of being thought of as faraway annoyances who only get whatever policy scraps are left over after pols have finished servicing the donors they hang out with at Redskins games.

Democratic voters tried to express these frustrations through the Sanders campaign, but the party leaders have been and probably will continue to be too dense to listen. Instead, they'll convince themselves that, as Hohmann's Post article put it, Hillary's latest victories mean any "pressure" they might have felt to change has now been "ameliorated."

The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide.

This is especially the case now that the Republican Party has collapsed under the weight of its own nativist lunacy. It's exactly the moment when the Democrats should feel free to become a real party of ordinary working people.

But they won't do that, because they don't see what just happened this year as a message rising up from millions of voters.

Politicians are so used to viewing the electorate as a giant thing to be manipulated that no matter what happens at the ballot, they usually can only focus on the Washington-based characters they perceive to be pulling the strings. Through this lens, the uprising among Democratic voters this year wasn't an organic expression of mass disgust, but wholly the fault of Bernie Sanders, who within the Beltway is viewed as an oddball amateur and radical who jumped the line.

Nobody saw his campaign as an honest effort to restore power to voters, because nobody in the capital even knows what that is. In the rules of palace intrigue, Sanders only made sense as a kind of self-centered huckster who made a failed play for power. And the narrative will be that with him out of the picture, the crisis is over. No person, no problem.

This inability to grasp that the problem is bigger than Bernie Sanders is a huge red flag. As Thacker puts it, the theme of this election year was widespread anger toward both parties, and both the Trump craziness and the near-miss with Sanders should have served as a warning. "The Democrats should be worried they're next," he says.

But they're not worried. Behind the palace walls, nobody ever is.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/democrats-will-learn-all-the-wrong-lessons-from-brush-with-bernie-20160609#ixzz4BBRHL81O
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook