From this weekend's Counterpunch.com:
The Democrats are at risk of making the rest of their already frail political agenda, such as it is, collateral damage in their pursuit of a collective fantasy, a mad quest to find ghostly Russian agents inside the House of Trump. No amateur spy hunter has been more intrepid than the Walter Winchell of MSDNC, Rachel Maddow, who has rebranded her nightly show “The Russian Connection.” For two months now, Maddow (annual salary: $7 million) has been spinning nightly sagas of Russian espionage that twist and turn through the dark labyrinths of Washington and end where they began: nowhere. Predictably, Maddow’s audience is swelling as numbed Democrats, still dazed by Hillary’s defeat, tune in hoping for some kind of explosive revelation that will explain the inexplicable from these paranoid potboilers, which often cast the CIA in the most unlikely role of victim.
I fear our long national hangover is just commencing. The deeper the Democrats descend into the Russian rabbit hole, the farther they remove themselves from the working-class people whose defection cost them the election and the longer the odds grow that they will ever revitalize their party as a real oppositional force to the reactionary freight train bearing down upon them.
Trump has probably had the worst start to a presidency since William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia only 32 days after taking the oath. But by all measures the Democrats have fared even worse than the president, and rightfully so. Since Trump’s win, and despite relentless attempts to invalidate his victory, there has been a steady attrition of support for the Democratic Party. The Democrats are now less liked (35%) and more hated (50%) than Trump (44%/47%) and by a fairly wide margin, according to a recent Suffolk poll.
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