LUIGI MANGIONE GAVE DEMOCRATS A CHRISTMAS GIFT—THE PARTY SENT IT BACK
COMMUNIQUE #14
Credit: Luigi Mangione photo via Facebook; composite by The Communique.
Dec. 13, 2024
It must be Christmas.
The Democratic party is dead after losing the 2024 presidential election, but the energy unleashed by the assassination of a corporate health insurance CEO could be harnessed to revive it. Or that energy could be used to create an entirely new political party. It's our choice. Now is the time to make it.
Perverse as it may sound, its really the best thing that's happened to Democrats in a long time.
Luigi Mangione allegedly murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York on Dec. 4. Mangione walked up behind the corporate titan as he strolled down the sidewalk in midtown Manhattan and casually killed Thompson with three shots from a 9mm handgun with a silencer, police say.
Instead of condemning the murder, millions of Americans expressed support for Mangione and condemned the U.S. healthcare system as predatory and unfair.
Mangione's family is reportedly wealthy and connected. His cousin is a Republican member of the Maryland state legislature. If even Mangione had problems getting the healthcare system to cover proper treatment, imagine what the system puts average Americans through.
The problem is so big and Mangione has received so much support that representatives of the status quo all across America, from government officials to newspaper editors, have felt the need to condemn it in sermons of varying length and severity.
I think its because they're afraid they might be next. If the bloodlust flowing freely on the Internet is any measure, they might be right. There's a distinctly French Revolution vibe in the air.
Meanwhile, the proverbial chickens have come home to roost and destroyed the corporate-controlled Democratic Party of the early 21st Century. The party has lost complete control of Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court. Its now rudderless, lost at sea and worthless. It might as well be abandoned.
To recall, Democrats sowed the seeds of their destruction in the 1990s. That's when they turned strongholds of Democratic power into economic wastelands by supporting "free trade" and NAFTA. Democrats made it possible and profitable for corporations to send their factories overseas so that they could earn more profit—even though it also deprived Americans of good-paying, union jobs. In the end, America's political and financial elite created a breeding ground for Republicans called the "Rust Belt."
30 years later, the children of the Rust Belt damned revolted and exacted revenge by electing Trump president, twice.
The party's full support of Israel and it's genocide against the Palestinians was the final nail in the Democrat's coffin. Instead of listening to legitimate criticism, the party just promised more American-funded mass murder through the aggressive, interventionist foreign policy it declared at its 2024 DNC.
All of it was too much to swallow for the millions of Democrats in the anti-war faction of the party's coalition. They seem to have mostly stayed home. Those that voted, turned their ballot into a protest against their own party by casting it for Trump—who at least says he believes in reducing the number of American troops overseas.
Longterm, election prospects for Democrats are dire because the party's devotion to identity politics allowed Republicans to become the party of the working class. It's tough to see how Democrats will ever win another presidential election as long as this popular belief persists and Democrats are defending the status quo instead of attacking it.
On top of that, Blue states are shrinking and losing electoral college votes while Red states are growing and gaining them.
The Democratic party or the new party that replaces it needs to prioritize pocketbooks over pronouns, actions over words, merit and opportunity over birth-right privileges, the First Amendment over censorship and class war over corporate slavery. This is where Mangione comes in.
The shockingly broad support he's received confirms a deep well of untapped, Progressive rage exists that could be as powerful as the regressive one driving the ascendancy of Trump. It doesn't look like the popular rage swelling against the status quo will abate any time soon, either, because the economic exploitation of working-class Americans seems set to get worse.
If Democrats want to ever win a presidential election again, they need to embrace the anti-corporate rage unmasked by Thompson's assassination. Instead of trying to stamp it out, they need to pour gasoline on it. This isn't Wonderland, its the real world. That rage is a fact of life. If we don't put it to our use, our opponents will put it to theirs'.
To meet this moment, the Democratic party must be purged of corporate interests and its leadership totally reconstituted. Given the party's dependence on corporate cash, this won't happen unless working-class Democrats literally take their party back—and take it back now.
But, instead of fighting a futile uphill battle against entrenched corporate interests like the one Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has been fighting for almost 20 years, it would likely be easier and smarter for fed up, frustrated Democrats to start a new party. The DSA, anti-war, pro-Palestinian, criminal justice reform and environmentalist factions of the Democratic party's coalition all hold potential recruits.
If strong enough, the new party could pull Democrats to the left by forcing them to formally negotiate and accept the new party's core interests as its own—if Democrats ever want to win another national election.
Something like the Barnburners or the LocoFocos would do.
