Norman Solomon: The Blue Road to Trump Hell

This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J. Eskow, produced by the WEAC Radio Network and broadcasting from the banks of the Anacostia directly into the halls of power. And now your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the program. Midway between the Democrats, a disastrous performance of 2024 and the critical congressional elections of 2026. Trump's popularity is falling, but recent polling does not show that that makes this a big win coming up for the Democrats. In this hour, we'll explore a new book that talks about what the Democrats might need to learn. We'll be right back after this. This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J.S. gal. Check out our free video archives at YouTube.com slash the Zero Hour.

We are back on the Zero Hour. I'm your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. And joining me once again is friend of the program and friend of the left, Norman Solomon. Norman, as you probably know, is co-founder of roots action or rootsaction.org. He is also executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, which I rely on in putting this show together many times to find the right guests and the right... information. He's also an author whose latest book, until now, I should say, was War Made Invisible. And he has a new book coming out now on, in fact, it should be out by right around the time of year of this, called The Blue Road to Trump Hell, or how corporate Democrats paved the way for autocracy. So first of all, Norman, welcome back. Thanks a lot, Richard. So tell us a little bit about, I'm sure you've given this spiel before, but tell us a little bit about the book and the thinking behind the book, putting it together. I think for one thing about how we have been told that everybody believed there were weapons of mass destruction before the invasion of Iraq, which is the rewriting of history. The anti-war movement was saying there's no evidence. And we also hear, well, everybody thought that it would be plausible to have Joe Biden run for reelection as president. No, many people were screaming at the top of their metaphorical lungs for years before the disaster debate in the middle of 2024, which includes our team at rootsection.org that launched Don't Run Joe campaign 18 months before that debate. I think there is that. tendency that's very strong in the mass media and mainstream politics to pretend that progressive analysis doesn't matter that critiques around class don't matter that the politics of genuine progressive populism is just not popular enough when the polling says the opposite i know you've worked for many, many years on issues like supporting and enhancing Social Security, how we need enhanced Medicare for all. This stuff pulls through the roof. And yet the pretense at the time and then ongoing in retrospect from mass media and the powers that be on Capitol Hill is, well, we can't do these left ideas because they're not popular. So this is a mythology. And there's also the idea that, well, yes, in retrospect, we saw X, Y, Z. that Biden running free election would be a disaster, that maybe Harris shouldn't have been anointed automatically to run, but nobody knew this at the time. Well, I'm sort of leading up to the fact that this book was written in real time between 2016 and just a few weeks ago, especially during the years of 2016 through 2024. And so I make it a point. at the start of the book in the introduction to say, this is not hindsight. I didn't go back and edit it. This is what I was writing at the time week by week. And I think this is important not to just, you know, not to pat myself on the head. What's important is that progressives, not just commentators, authors, writers, and not just people doing media, but activists saw this.

which is, you know, in a sense, what your book does, I think, and remind ourselves of everything that went wrong as it went wrong, and as, you know, you and others tried to raise a warning flag, what do we hope that will motivate people to do? What's the desired outcome? Yeah, that's something I addressed at the outset in the book, that it's not only about getting clarity about what happened in the past. It's about understanding how we can prevent past disasters from being replicated in the future. And it's very specific. Do we want the Republicans to retain Congress in 2026? Well, if it's the same attitude and priorities and the spending focus and messaging from the Democratic Party leadership as in the past, then we're not going to get the turnout that we need. And there's been this very facile attitude that Hillary Clinton had, that Joe Biden had, and also Kamala Harris, basically that... Donald Trump is so terrible that all we have to do is mainly talk about how terrible he is and people will vote for us. Well, I don't know what the math would be, but can you beat a negative times a negative and get a positive? I don't think that generally works. And we've seen, like it or not, and this is the history of the Democratic Party and presidential elections, economy, economy. And there are many other issues, but people are... generally driven by what they see as so-called pocketbook issues. There's the Orwell saying those who control the past, control the future, those who control the present control the past, or something like that. And we're seeing that again and again. So the Blue Road to Trump Hell is a way of saying, yes, this sort of neoliberalism, this affinity with corporate power, this refusal to fight the power of huge corporations and the wealthy, that is what paved the way for Donald Trump twice to go into the White House. And that has to change. And that means energizing from the base and changing the politics of the party. And I think that's a great summary, Norman. And I think the other element of it is that when you base your entire, essentially your entire campaign around how awful Donald Trump is, I do believe that there's a kind of energy that shifts the energy to Trump. And when people are disaffected with elites and disaffected with the system, as they rightfully understandably are, And they thought, look, all these elite people and not just Democrats, but the fact that they brought in a Liz Cheney, a John Kasich from Ohio, whoever it might be, if all these elite people who ignore us all these years hate him, hey, this guy may, you know, deserve my vote. I hate the way things are now. So what the heck? And I think that was a factor here and continues to be, don't you?

Yeah, it's sort of a feeling. It's got level. I mean, the so-called low information voters, I think, share it to a large degree is that there's this chess game being played way above us. And it's time to kick over the board. We just don't like it. Now, that was a terrible mistake by the electorate in 2016 and 2024. And we have basically... we can say a fascistic politics coming out of the Oval Office, controlling the executive and legislative branches, largely controlling, not entirely, but the highest up you go in the judicial branch up to the Supreme Court, mostly holding sway there too. So this is where a big needle has to be threaded in a very concerted and organizing way. On the one hand, We might have people listening to us right now Richard would say, well, you know, this guy's a fascist. Why are we talking about the Democratic Party? Because that's the way to stop him electorally. So just going along to get along with the so-called leadership of the... the Chuck Schumer and the Hakeem Jeffries, that's a prescription largely, predictably, for more disaster. So that has to be fought. At the same time, there are some people who have said, and this was true in 2016 and 2024, including many who lived in swing states, they hell with them. I hate both of these parties. They're all pigs. And then so they're going to stay home, so to speak, not vote in the presidential race, or they vote. for Jill Stein or something like that, well, that's a disaster too. You know, that's sort of this fantasy world, this kind of imagining, wishful thinking that doesn't comport with the real world. I mean, if you want to fight the fascists, then you don't want them to win elections. And only hallucinations will tell us that you're going to elect a president who is not a Republican. And not a Democrat. It just, just to sort of wind up this little soapbox oration here, in 40 years, the Green Party has never come close to electing one member of Congress. And that ought to tell us something that like it or not, and I don't like it, the future of fighting fascism and the future of progressive politics in this country at the federal electoral level. I'm not talking about municipalities. I'm talking about Congress and the presidency, we are entwined with the Democratic Party. And so we'd better fight like hell to change it. Well, that's persuasive, Norman. I will tell you that there are a lot of people listening who will make certain counterarguments that we should explore. Okay. And by the way, I didn't vote for Conno Harris in in, in 2024, but look. By the way, I live in California, I didn't vote for either. Oh, okay, there you go. First of all, obviously, for both of us, it didn't, it wasn't going to change the outcome. You know, I now live in Maryland, which is always... They're totally blue states, yeah. Yeah. And except for governorship, which is a whole other conversation. But then there are one thing that I think...

change. Well, let me go at it a different way. For one thing, I think it's important to talk to all voters from a position of respect, right? And here I'm not addressing you so much as many Democrats, rank and file Democrats as well as elected, who speak to green, have spoken for years now, to green voters with contempt and blame. And I don't think you win anybody over. And again, I'm not saying you. Yeah, it's not about contempt or blame. It's about efficacy. It's about let's think. Let's analyze. Let's be clear and not be in fantasy world. Yeah. But I think that's left a scar on people, on Green Party voters, that the years of abuse that they've taken. Yeah, that's right. And I always, I'm tough on politicians. Maybe it's because I've worked on campaigns, but. You know what? You're in a sales job. You didn't make the sale. You effed up. And of course, activists also have, like us, have to decide and journalists and so on, writers, observers like us, have to make our, you know, we're called upon to make our recommendations. And certainly there's a lot of recommendations for not having. not having a Trump as president. He clearly is imposing fascism. I don't challenge that for a moment. But. But it's a tough argument to make, especially now after Gaza, I think, on the national level, and especially after what went along with Gaza with the active participation of Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer, which is a suppression of freedom of speech on campuses and elsewhere around the issue of Palestine. No doubt. Absolutely. So that's right. We'll be right back after this with more of my conversation with Norman Solomon. I'm Richard R.J. Eskow, and you're listening to The Zero Hour.

You are listening to the We Act Radio Network produced in Washington, D.C. Visit us online at weactradio.com or at YouTube.com slash weactradio, D.C. And we are back on the Zero Hour. I'm your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. We now continue my conversation with Norman Dan Sullivan about his new book on the 2024 election. And people for understandable emotional reasons. And as they say, in most states, we're not swing states. Why vote for Kamala Harris? Of course. I agree. How bad does it have to get with domestic repression before people say that, no, we don't conflate the two parties. We don't pretend that the Joe Biden treatment of the people in this country, the poor people, I mean, snap and food and so many other examples, we could spend the hours. How long would we, how bad would it have to get before people recognize that we're in the danger of fascism in this country? So how bad would it have to get? If it's not bad enough now, I just can't imagine how bad it would have to get before people say, you know, it really would be better to have a garden variety, even Democrat in the White House, than the fascists we have running the executive and legislative branches now. I just think it's sort of self-evident and, you know, magical thinking is great in literature. I just don't think it works in politics. That doesn't in any way. in the slightest get the Democratic Party leadership off the hook because it's abysmal and it's doing two things that are well many things that are horrific one is it's aiding and abetting de facto the consolidation of fascist power in the federal government but it also is laying out and continuing to reinforce a politics that does not challenge the kind of corporatocracy we have that is so terrible for people's lives. Little on the militarism, and this is where, again, I think we need to make a distinction. It was hard to believe that anybody in the White House could be worse than Biden. in assisting genocide direct complicity i mean let's face it biden should be at the hague right behind uh Benjamin Netanyahu so no question and it's hard to find except for issues like climate a lot of huge difference between the two parties in terms of foreign policy but domestic policy it would be preposterous to say that there's no significant difference. There's a huge significant difference. Just look at the Supreme Court decisions and how the votes are between who was appointed by Democrats and Republicans, just for instance, let alone nutrition and health care and so many other issues, again, not to let Democrats off the hook for their neoliberal failure to enact enhanced Medicare for all and free public college and so many other programs that we as progressives need to fight.

fight for. To get back to the Blue Road to Trump Hill, I do want to say that we have a capacity now in this country. Every day, millions and millions of people are getting news and information from progressive sources. And that is crucial. I mean, we're talking about, no, this isn't hindsight. People can go back one, two, three, five years and see clips from... The zero hour, and we were saying things then. You know, it's not, it's not hindsight. So we have been developing not enough, but to counter, at least partly as much as we can, this really right-wing Zionist pro-corporate craziness taking over outfits like CBS News now, we can more and more sustain programs like this, the zero hour, others. Don't give your money to NPR, when you can give it to the zero hour, give it to Pacific or Radio, give it to Democracy Now, and other outlets. So that's important at that level. And then we also have to combine it with action and organizing. And that's been a shortage of resourceional, if that's the term, use of resources to pair the infrastructure. of progressive media with, we've got to organize, you know, and Indivisible is not some radical left group. Credit were due, though, they have organized these No King's Days, have been very important and so forth. And frankly, a lot of the YouTube shows, and I'm going to call out what's the one that is so popular, the Young Turks. I mean, it becomes entertainment. No, folks, this is not entertainment. the blue road to trump hell title of my book is chosen because the blue road to trump hell was paved by people not only going along with the democratic party so-called leadership but also seeing politics as a passive entertainment activity and that has to change as a cultural thing and i think the left and progressives have improved in the capacity to say, no, this isn't just something that you watch. It's something that you change. But we've got to increase that cultural change so that we see not just as a platitude, but reality. If we don't change history, it's going to crush us. Well, I think you're absolutely right. And I think you make the case very well. And to me, what it's, what it brings up is, and maybe now we can pivot to, you know, the future and the conclusion of the book. But it brings up to me something that's a little bit intangible, but important, I think, which is, I think millions of good-hearted. committed, passionate people have kind of retrofitted their vision to the Democratic Party as it exists, because it's the only vehicle that exists for them. And to me, that's why I wrote a piece called, you know, left populace. Well, the headline they gave it was left populace, unshackle your imaginations. To me, people do need community. They need solidarity. They need to be part of something. That's part of what makes us human. But to me,

The way to work with the Democratic Party is, you know, like the Bible said of the world, be in it but not of it, right? Yeah, that's great. You know, that if, first of all, you know, there may be, there are the cases like Nebraska where an independent. got 45% of the vote. Bernie's endorsed him. I think now the Democratic Party is going to come to him and endorse him the next time around because he said could be the kiss of death in Nebraska. I don't know if I want it. I know. It really could. But it seems to me. That's where people like us come in. That's where movement activists come in. That's where it's not enough, as so many Democratic politicians have, including privately and conversations and so on that I've had here at D.C., it's not enough to scold people. for not voting Democratic. It's, we need to say to people, you want a better world. We want a better world. So if we suggest that you vote Democratic, it's not because we think that's the end state. It's because, and you've expressed this in other conversations we've had very eloquently norman, but it's because to build a world we need to build, which looks different from this. Pretty. freaking different. To build that world, we have to preserve those freedoms or remnants of freedoms we have, which means that it doesn't mean listening to all the lectures about don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It means use the good as a tool. and discard it when you can move closer to the perfect do you get what i'm driving at yeah yeah yeah very much you know there should be zero scolding there should be solidarity and there should be hey the future is with Pardon the saying, the working class. I mean, that's where it is, the middle class, working class, however you want to define it, low-income people, the poor, the near-poor, those who are struggling, which is most of the country, one way or the other. So it has to be an anti-rich, anti-corporate politics where, no, it's not fine to have billionaires. Bernie has said billionaires should exist. Well, that's anathema. That's a sin. to corporate media and politics one of the points that i wanted to uh raise which is very much i think richard what you're referring to is that the traditional electoral politics view including some of the best quote unquote liberal elected officials is that social movements should be a subset of electoral campaigns and it's bass backwards

electoral campaigns should and must be a subset of social movements. And when you look at it historically, that actually is what happened, you know, whether it was FDR in 1932 and 36, the labor organizing, the activism really lifted that boat. It wasn't that the elected officials lifted the boat of movements. It's the other way around. And so that is really a different sort of a... a language and lexicon that is just rejected. I mean, and the Democratic Party is led by people who, as you referred to a few minutes ago, they have their syndicure, they have friends and they often themselves, they're getting huge consultant fees. And grassroots organizing is really not where it's at for them. One of the things I talk about in the book is that this pathetic dynamic went on where in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, for example, people in low and moderate income areas were begging for campaign materials. And meanwhile, there was all this money being sunk into, what do they call it, the Collar counties around Philadelphia, where appealed to the affluent, suburban, often Republican people to turn away from Donald Trump. Well, this is ridiculous. Every time we hear, is it a turnout election. Oh, yes, it's a turnout election. But the behavior of the people running the party is it's not a turnout election from their base. You might say it's a turn away your base so you can suck up to people who are not voting democrat usually anyway Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that's exactly right. And let's close with this, then, maybe if you have a minute, as a way to kind of tie it together, which is you write at the end of the book about Sohran Mangani. And, you know, he's a fascinating, obviously you can't universalize any one politician, nor do I think movements should invest themselves 100% in any. politician even a talent such a talented one but um the fact is Zohran Mamdani uh one in part, a large part, because he was first and foremost associated with the movement. In his case, it was the Democratic Socialist of America. It doesn't mean it always has to be, but he had already made a set of allies, volunteer, supporters, advisors out of that. And it helped him immensely. It scared mainstream.

Republicans you write about. We all remember Chuck Schumer's refusal to endorse him. And which course has bitter irony to those of us who have been lectured about vote blue no matter who for so many years. And then the speaker, I'm sorry, the minority leader in the Senate won't, I call it vote blue and we'll tell you who, which has been, you know, Democrat as I think it's what happened to Bernie. But. Now he's mayor-elect, which has been, you know, the best news in a while. Now we have a self-described Democratic Socialist as mayor-elect in Seattle as well. Again, not to say, you know, there will be different labels and different identities and different parts of the country for working people's agenda. But. You wrote recently, and it almost seems like it could be an appendix to the book or an addendum to the book, about what everybody's talking about now, which is Zohran Mamdani's meeting with Donald Trump. And I'd love for you to summarize your thoughts about that briefly in a way that sort of ties it into what we've been talking about here, too. Yeah, I used the metaphor that just because a rattlesnake purrs, it doesn't mean that it isn't a rattlesnake. And so Donald Trump, we know, is... To put it mildly, mercurial, much more extreme than that, he makes stuff up as he goes along, and you can't depend on anything. And I point out that if he can denounce vitriolically, Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of his foot soldiers of the MAGA forces, on a dime and spin, he can certainly do that to Zohran Mamdani. And I'm sure that Zohran Mamdani clearly knows that this guy is a nut. You know, the president is a nut, but it's a tactical thing. And so I was really pleased that right after that Oval Office meeting, the mayor, like Zohran Mamdani, goes on and meet the press and says, yes, he is a fascist. I mean, so here's a guy who is so rooted in a movement that he doesn't change what he has to say, because it's true. and he's not going to be a win sock. That's why so many people have one reason so enthusiastically supported Bernie Sanders over the years. You can go from one decade to the next to the next. It's derision, and there's going to be derision towards the new mayor of New York from corporate media. Oh, it says the same thing all the time. That's the point, because the problems are the same, and they have to be changed. Overall, I think that this is about flexibility. And the cliché is governed in prose after having campaigned in poetry. But we want to have as deep and poetic governance as possible and practicality, you know, feet on the ground, eyes on the visionary horizon. So I think that's, you know, it's a challenge ahead. And we are not dead, as progressives, as fascistic as this regime is. So we have a lot of work to do. And it's daunting.

but it's our potential future that's worth fighting for. I do want to mention that I did give a lot of thought to, is there a point in doing this book, the real-time writing in 10 years primarily in looking ahead from there? And one of the aspects I'm most glad about is that after writing 14 books, this one's free. I was able to set it up so that from the very start, this book is free, PDF, e-book, all people have to do is to be able to go online. And I want to invite people to do that. Just go online to bluerode. info. That's bluerode.info. And various formats are there for you to read the entire book, including more than 10 wonderful cartoons by the Pulitzer Prize winning. progressive cartoonist Matt Worker. It was just fabulous. If people have been seeing progressive cartooning for decades, he's been there. And so I encourage folks to also go and look at the cartoons. They look great on a screen of any sort. And one more aspect. Activism is really the ultimate engine for the social changes we want. And I love working with colleagues at rootsaction.org. And you can sign up for activism there. Just go to rootsaction.org. Well, there are a million other things I could ask you about Norman, but they'll have to wait for another time. But, okay, it's blue road. info. Yeah, people should definitely check out the book. And, you know, you can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been, right? Yeah. Yeah, really. And as always, great to talk to you. And as always, thanks for coming on the program. Hey, thank you, Richard. And we'll be right back after this. I'm Richard R.J. Eskow, and this is The Zero Hour. This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J. Eskow. Check out our free video archives at YouTube.com slash The Zero Hour.

And we are back on the zero hour. I'm your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. One by one, it seems as if the international institutions that were supposed to bring us peace are failing or falling or, in the case of the Nobel Peace Prize, we're actually deserting over to the pro war. Now, the Nobel Peace Prize was created by, of course, the chemist Alfred Nobel, who was appalled that his invention of dynamite was used to kill so many people. And for years, it was awarded to pacifists and anti-war people or people who negotiated it. peace in one way or another. Now, of course, there have been many controversial selections over the years, including Henry Kissinger and his North Vietnamese equivalent, given that Kissinger and arguably his counterpart had committed grievous war crimes, and certainly Kissinger had gross, it was clearly a war criminal. And in fact, that agreement turned out to be more or less a treaty of surrendered by the United States. So there have been controversies over the years. The awarding of the prize to Barack Obama seemed ironic when he spent eight years of his presidency continuing the war in Afghanistan and illegally droning people in extradition. judicialist fascinations, as they recall, which are in terms of international law murder. But none has, I think, been as ironic or bizarre a choice of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate as that of the Venezuelan dissident leader, apparently U.S. funded and U.S. backed, and I'm speaking about... about Maria Corina Machado. She has won the Nobel Peace Prize, despite the fact that she has been coming very close to openly calling for an invasion of Venezuela, and she has cheered on the equally illegal seizing of oil tankers and other actions by Donald Trump and the American government. For example, when Donald Trump bombs what he believes to be Venezuelan or other boats and kills their occupants on the pretense that they are narco-terrorists, because of course we have no idea who they are, or when he proposes sanctions and other extrajudicial or quasi-judicial measures to harm Venezuela and its people, she cheers him on. So in this case, and she does so as the U.S. government seems clearly to be preparing for an illegal invasion of Venezuela. So perhaps this may be the first time that the Nobel Peace Prize not only did not celebrate peace, but it has in fact actively collaborated in creating a political environment that is more conducive to war, more conducive.

to war crimes, more conducive to the breaking of international law. It is a strange and sad moment in the history of our global decline. We'll be right back.