The Rainbow Coalition Part 6: From the Maoist ‘New Progressive Majority’ to Steve Phillips’ ‘New American Majority’

Part 5 here.

The modern Democratic Party espouses the same policies as did the 1980’s “League of Revolutionary Struggle.” Identity politics, mass voter registration, opposition to strict voter ID laws and calls for the abolition of the Electoral College.

Steve Phillips, Nacy Pelosi with “Brown is the New White”

Steve Phillips and his Power PAC+ are working to create a “New American Majority.” Steve Phillips explains in his 2016 New York Times bestseller “Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority”(endorsed by Barack Obama and House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi), that demographic changes have already made “progressives” the majority in America.

From the Amazon blurb:

Despite the abundant evidence from Obama’s victories proving that the U.S. population has fundamentally changed, many progressives and Democrats continue to waste millions of dollars chasing white swing voters. Explosive population growth of people of color in America over the past fifty years has laid the foundation for a New American Majority consisting of progressive people of color (23 percent of all eligible voters) and progressive whites (28 percent of all eligible voters). These two groups make up 51 percent of all eligible voters in America right now, and that majority is growing larger every day.

Phillips’ case is the Democrats can win (permanently) if they stop wasting hundreds of millions of dollars trying to convert white swing voters (and Trump supporters) to the blue column. Instead Phillips argues that money would be far better spent hiring thousands of voter registration and Get Out The Vote activists to work among the “progressive base” – Blacks, Latinos, Asian, Muslims, Native American, “poor whites” and other racial, sexual and economic minorities.

Stacey Abrams, Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, and a long time Steve Phillips/PowerPAC+ protege, puts it this way:

“We spend a lot of time trying to convince atheists to be Catholics rather than just getting Baptists to go to church”

Abrams just beat her well-funded primary opponent 76% to 23%.

This pie graph explains Phillips’s arguement.

In “Brown is the New White,” Phillips explains further why the left has grounds for optimism:

Most of the attention paid to the country’s changing demographics focuses on the trends showing that Whites will one day be a minority of America’s population. Many articles and analyses look to a distant date when the United States will become a “majority minority” nation. According to the most recent census projections, that year is expected to be 2044.

There are two major problems with emphasizing the point when Whites will lose their majority status. First, it presumes that all White people are and will continue to be at odds with all people of color, which is untrue and unfounded. A meaningful minority of Whites have always sided with people of color throughout U.S. history.

The second problem is that the focus on 2044 overlooks the equation that’s been hiding in plain sight, one that shows what happens when you add together the number of today’s people of color (the vast majority of whom are progressive) and progressive Whites. It’s this calculation that reveals that America has a progressive, multiracial majority right now that has the power to elect presidents and reshape American politics, policies, and priorities for decades to come. Not in 2044. Not ten years down the road. Today.

This is why the left so fear President Trump. Under Obama, the left was on the verge of creating a permanent American ‘one party state’. President Hillary Clinton would have surely finished the job.

If President Trump is successful, if he can stop illegal immigration, keep lowering taxes and bring back American jobs and industry, and “Make America Great Again,” the Democrat strategy collapses. If even a small percentage of Blacks, Latinos, Asian and “poor white” voters move over to the red column, the Democrats could be decimated.

Does that explain the never-ending Democrat vitriol and obstruction? Democratic Party survival is at stake here.

Steve Phillips’ strategy is not new. It comes straight from Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and before that from the pro-China League of Revolutionary Struggle.

At Stanford University, Steve Phillips was a self-declared Marxist-Leninist and a regular contributor to the LRS’ Unity newspaper. He was also a leader of the LRS’ successor organization, the Unity Organizing Committee.

Phillips’ PowerPAC+ board is stacked with former LRS and Unity Organizing Committee members.

Stanford University student newspaper The Stanford Daily, exposed the LRS in a series of articles in May 1990. In one May 23 article: “League has played little-known role in campus politics” by senior staff writer Michael Friedly, Steve Phillips was accused of actively working with and recruiting for the League. One alleged recruitee, Stanford activist Ingrid Nava, was specifically mentioned.

(Ingrid) Nava lived briefly at a house on Bryant Street in Palo Alto known sarcastically by some progressive students as the “Revolutionary Hotel,” where recruitment for the League has occurred, according to sources who say they have been recruited. (Elsa) Tsutaoka and Steven Phillips, a former BSU (Black Student Union) chair and current Daily multicultural editor who has allegedly recruited for the League, currently live in the house. Phillips recruited Nava beginning in September, according to a student who was also recruited by the League. Phillips said he had no knowledge of the League’s involvement at Stanford and has not recruited for the organization

Ingrid Nava went on to join the Unity organizing Committee and today serves on the board of Steve Phillips’ PowerPAC+.

But there is another Steve Phillips/LRS connection. A very important one.

November 16, 1984, just after Ronald Reagan had won a second term, The LRS’ Unity published a small article, “The New Progressive Majority.”

Read it. See if it at all sounds familiar.

Unity November 16, 1984

If present voter registration rates are increased and voter turnout can go from the present 56% to 85% of all eligible voters, a new progressive electoral majority on a national level can be forged. According to a state-by-state statistical analysis done by Unity (see October 12, 1984 issue), an average of 36.2% of the white vote in 20 states and the District of Columbia, combined with high percentages of the minority vote, would constitute and electoral college majority.

For instance, in Mississippi, just over 25% of the white vote would be needed, together with 95% of the Black vote, to win an electoral majority in that state. In Texas, 36.9% of the white vote would be needed, in addition to 95% of the Black vote, 75% of the Latino vote, and 65% of the Native American Indian and Asian American vote, to win a majority of the votes in that state.

To reach that number of  registered voters and to ensure such a high turnout, especially of oppressed nationality voters, voter registration must be simplified and made easier, and there must be a strong program and inspiring campaign.  In addition, if the electoral college can be abolished, and the president be elected solely by popular vote, chances for victory by a progressive candidate in presidential elections will increase.

Is Steve Phillips’ “New American majority” just a re-vamp of the League of Revolutionary Struggles’ “New Progressive Majority?”

Remember, this was written thirty-four years ago by a 3,000 member Maoist sect – which folded in 1990.

That said, the League of Revolutionary Struggle was the backbone of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, which in turn gave us the Obama movement.

The modern Democratic Party espouses the same policies as did the 1980’s League of Revolutionary Struggle. Unrelenting identity politics, mass voter registration, opposition to strict voter ID laws and calls for the abolition of the Electoral College. Little has changed, except the demographics have moved considerably in the left’s favor since 1984. Deliberate encouragement of illegal immigration and massive increases in legal third world immigration have seen to that.

Steve Phillips and his PowerPAC+ colleagues were involved in the League of Revolutionary Struggle, the Rainbow Coalition and the Obama movement. Now they are active in the highest levels of the Democratic Party.

Is it any wonder that we are seeing some policy continuity here?

Look for Part 7 coming soon: “Democracy in Color and ‘Return of the Majority: A Roadmap for Taking Back Our Country’”