Political Suicide: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party

Publication Date: June 23, 2020

Ted Rall’s latest is a no-holds-barred look at the civil war raging within the Democratic Party in the graphic style of his national bestseller, Bernie.

There’s a split in the Democratic Party. Progressives are surging with ideas and candidates like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 72 percent of Democratic voters are progressives. But centrists like Tom Perez and the Clintons still run the DNC party apparatus–and they don’t want to compromise. Intraparty warfare exploded into the open in 2016. It’s even bigger now.

The struggle goes back decades, to the New Left and the election of Richard Nixon over George McGovern. It continued with the Democratic establishment’s quashing of insurgent progressives like Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader and Howard Dean. The vast scale of the DNC’s secret conspiracy to stop Bernie Sanders in 2016 nomination came out courtesy of WikiLeaks.

Will Democrats again become the party of the working person? Or will the corporatists win and continue their domination of electoral politics? Ted Rall gets to the bottom of the story neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want you to know: how the civil war in the Democratic Party poses an existential threat to the two-party system.

Current Events/Biography, 2020
Seven Stories Press Paperback, 5″x7″, 192 pp., $16.95

Click here to Order Online.

14 Comments.

  • It has been so long since the `60s that I have almost forgotten what it was like for political parties to have withered souls and some small pangs of conscience and some fear of the people, — but I do remember.

  • Searching for the soul can be like searching for dark matter, Ted – one can’t be quite sure that the object one’s looking for exists. But Caitlin Johnstone has a notion of what the Democratic Party is all about….

    Henri

  • alex_the_tired
    June 19, 2020 6:45 PM

    Ted,
    Not to get too meta here (which means I’m about to bend meta over and take it for the ride of its life) …
    Everything in Caitlin Johnstone’s linked piece (op. cit.)? Absolutely correct. (I didn’t read the whole thing because I already know the points being made).
    But take it one damned step further. Look at everything that’s been done to you in your fight against the LA Times. That whole thing boils down to you standing there screaming at the top of you lungs, “Just LISTEN to the recording that the LA Times used to make its decision. There’s literally no content in it. How can that be fair? That’s all I’m asking for. Just look at the ‘evidence’ against me.”
    And the New York Times didn’t cover it. FAIR covered it in, what, one whole article that disappeared like a fart in a high wind? CMLDF (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund?) Weren’t they finally goaded into drafting (for a fee) an amicus curiae.
    Poynter? I don’t scour the Poynter site daily — I simply don’t have the ability to suppress my gag reflex to that degree — so I’ll ask: Did they write even one piece about the assrapery that was done to you at the behest of and demand by the LAPD? Did they fight for you for even a single goddamned second?
    See? That’s the point. The soul of the democratic party? That what got done to you — to any journalist — could be done and with such a weak, inchoate shout back from the left tells me all I need to know about the soul of the democratic party.

  • alex_the_tired
    June 23, 2020 4:49 AM

    Speaking of political suicide. Does political iatrogenic poisoning count?
    I just got back from voting in the democratic primary. When Sanders got bounced off the ticket, I switched to the Greens. Then the dems were forced to put him back on the primary, so I switched back.
    I got to the poll just before 6 a.m. They weren’t open yet. Okay. I realize, these things never open on time because, well, why should anything run on time? So I get in around 6:15. I get my ballot. There’s nothing for the primary: no, um, Biden, no Sanders, no nothing. I ask the poll worker, “Shouldn’t there be something for the primaries?”
    “That’s in October,” he tells me. (Yes, “October.”)
    I’m not buying it. “No, the general election is November. Today’s the primary.”
    The poll director or whatever they call him comes over. “Let me check.”
    He comes back about 30 seconds later. “Yes, you’re right. The ballot’s on two sheets this time. Hang on.”
    So I voted for Sanders. The last vote I expect to ever cast as a democrat.
    I wonder how many people are going to discover they only got to cast half a vote this time due to lack of education in the poll workers.
    November’s gonna be a disaster.

    • «Does political iatrogenic poisoning count?» Alex, were these poll workers medical doctors ?… 😉

      Henri

      • alex_the_tired
        June 23, 2020 10:02 AM

        Hell, Henri. I don’t think most of the medical doctors in America are medical doctors.

      • «Hell, Henri. I don’t think most of the medical doctors in America are medical doctors.» But Alex, poisoning is not iatrogenic unless the perpetrator has a medical degree from a certified university. Them’s the rules…. 😉

        Henri

  • Back in April I preordered the book from my local bookstore in order for them to keep afloat. I wonder when they will mail it to me(it’s 4 days post-publication date as I write).

  • […] You’ve probably seen his political cartoons, which are often published in urban weeklies. His newest book is called, “Political Suicide: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party,… which uses the graphic novel form to trace the history of the Democratic Party’s rightward […]

  • […] Stories Press just released Ted Rall’s new book, “Political Suicide: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party.” Rall is a graphic novelist, a syndicated columnist and the author of many books of art and prose, […]

  • […] Stories Press just released Ted Rall’s new book, “Political Suicide: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party.” Rall is a graphic novelist, a syndicated columnist and the author of many books of art and prose, […]

  • alex_the_tired
    July 7, 2020 12:19 PM

    Ted,

    For the next edition. On pp. 72-3, you’re talking about the Eugene Debs case, and you mention the “shouting fire in a crowded theater.” I realize you’ve got space limits on the book, but it’s the Schenck case (decided earlier than Debs v. United States) in which that phrase is used and it’s “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater.” The “falsely” is relevant because its inclusion means that truly shouting fire would not be affected by the ruling.

    (Also, I wonder if Holmes “thundered” but I’ll let that one go for dramatic purposes.)

  • Say what you will, Ted, but you’ve got a great corp of proofreaders !…

    Henri

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