Getting Into Bed with the #FUVoters

Strange Bedfellows: the Bizarre Coalition of Kochs, Neocons and Democrats Allied Against Trump and His #FUvoters

by John Stauber  - CounterPunch

May 6, 2016

Politics makes for strange bedfellows they say, but often political differences that appear deep and fundamental are not so much that way, especially given a threat to the bipartisan political establishment.

Take the strange case of Mr. Donald Trump.

Today the same pundits of all stripes who predicted he could never win even one primary, then that he could never win the nomination, now are saying “have no fear, he could never be President of the United States.”

Who you gonna believe, them or your own lying eyes?

The strange bedfellows publicly aligned against Donald Trump for President include, of course, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment. But they also include the leading neoconservative voices who Hillary, Kerry, Biden and others echoed in pushing America into attacking Iraq, a war that created IS, killed over a million people, violated the Nuremberg convention, and may yet be lost. To the promoters of militarism and empire, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) crowd, Hillary fits the bill oh so much better than Trump.

Then there are the Koch Brothers, the family and cabal that has been both the bane of and a fundraising boon to Democrats and the professional progressives. What remains of the labor movement, the mainstream environmental movement, and the Democrats’ well-kept and immaculately groomed professional Progressive movement have feasted on the Kochs, made them (until now) the scariest force on the Right. Now they are suddenly aligned with the Kochs, because the family has signaled clearly that they would rather live with the Wall Street militarist Hillary, than succumb in any way to the nest-robbing Republican Donald Trump.

Speaking of the Progressive movement, add its 500-pound fundraising, mobilizing and Democrat Party front group MoveOn to the top of the list of those mobilizing against Trump among the Democrats. As always, MoveOn needs a cause and a reason for being that will fill their coffers and feed their need for petition signers, and Trump is now that guy. MoveOn’s contributors signaled support for Bernie, so the clicktivists at MoveOn have been making noise as part of the Feel the Bern movement. But with it clear now that the SuperDelegates have rigged a victory for Hillary, they have pivoted to opposing Trump. #Duh! Of course they have! Trump provides everyone who understands anything about fascism a great reason for voting for Hillary or anyone not named Trump. The Democratic progressives have been salivating for a fight with The Donald, and now they get him.

Bernie Sanders, of course, will ride the horse at the front of the Progressive’s charge against Trump. Before he announced his run, he clearly had decided to become a True Blue Democrat, no longer an Independent, if for no other reason than not wanting to face the vile, bile and hatred Ralph Nader has endured for the capital crime of running for President as a Green in 2000. Nader did not give us Bush, but the Democrats prefer to think he did and it is a belief they promote because it is essential to their fear-based strategy for winning elections and suppressing the sort of Left third party that Sanders could have instigated had he not thrown his lot with the Dems.

Bernie is still doing his fire dance with his Feel The Bern movement, many of whom somehow still fail to realize he was a bait-and-switch guy from the beginning, offering deep reform but always planning to deliver his army into the hands of Hillary in Philadelphia when the Democrats establishment, in the form of the SuperDelegates, remind him what they really think of his brand of Democratic Socialism. Yes, he will win more primaries, and no, it will not matter in the end. The John Nichols crowd, the pundits-cum-cheerleaders of the progressive wing of the Democrats, will do their best to sell the notion of Bernie making a difference by representing reform and the future of the Party. But Nichols and his type of progressive Dem pundit have become a self-parody, although those steeped in the True Blue Echo Chamber will never realize this.

Polls show that right now 75% of Feel the Bern folks are also Ready for Hillary. When The Nation and the rest of the Progressive elite, along with Bernie himself, are finished polishing up her chrome, Hillary will have the support of 95% of the Feel the Berners. And she desperately needs them.

The Hillary-By-Default coalition includes a growing list of Republican oligarchs led by the Bush family, so embarrassed and run over by The Donald. Indeed, given this zoo of strange bedfellows, who the hell will pull the lever for Trump? Who is left out side of this growing Left to Middle to Right to Corporate Libertarian movement against The Donald? Lots of people.

How has Trump done what he has done so far? It hasn’t been by mobilizing an intellectual elite, appealing to reason or by spending massive amounts of money that he has demolished and taken control of the Republican Party. Yes, he has surely mobilized the racist vote, but the Republicans have always had that. Here is his secret: Donald Trump, more than anyone yet, has revealed the extent to which most Americans hate politics, even more than most Americans hate Donald and Hillary, and they do.

Donald is riding the “Fuck You!” movement. He is the choice of millions and millions who are simply so sick of the political establishment–what I call (but they don’t) the Bipartisan Oligarchy–that they just want a grenade to roll under its tent. They want to frag both political parties, as in alienated angry US soldier fragging (killing) their gung ho young officers to express their feelings about service in Vietnam. (Better Google that, youngsters.)

Let’s call them Trump’s FU Voters. They are huge in number, hate politicians with a passion, don’t give a rat’s ass about the Koch Brothers or MoveOn, might not even like The Donald, but see him as a statement of rage and discontent, as way of giving the finger, a huge middle finger, to all the hacks and flacks and whores and pimps of both the Republicans and Democrats who have delivered America into the hands of the 1%, the professional political class who are perceived as the enemy.

The FU vote is yuuuge, and getting yuuuger.

Things are shit-canning across America and the world in so many ways, and here comes this brash jerk of a sexist celebrity billionaire with the sexy model wife, a contradictory emotional angry guy who has never ever held office or been in the military or done anything you are supposed to do to be dogcatcher, much less President, and they are ready to vote for him, to say “screw you” to everyone. Do not discount Trump’s strongest weapon, the FU Voter, slouching toward Bethlehem to be born, just before Christmas, 2016, like some new Hollywood release.

John Stauber is an independent writer, activist and author. His books include Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, Mad Cow USA and Weapons of Mass Deception. In 1993 he founded the Center for Media and Democracy to expose corporate, political and media propaganda campaigns. He retired from the Center in 2008. http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnstauber.

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