Reply #73: Now read this counterpunch.org article from Nov 2002 that warned us!

[JohnOneillsMemory]

(This is a very good article from two years ago that tells exactly what happened again this year. Imagine that.-JOM)

http://www.counterpunch.org/sperry1126.html
Spank the Donkey: Why We Should Give Up on the Democrats: a polemical essay

"Next to Clinton, the Nixon administration was one long orgy of fuzzy-headed liberalism."-Steve Perry at counterpunch.org

>snip<

Our values and aspirations as a society are now routinely subjected to the flummery of cost-benefit analyses in which it's understood that the only thing that really matters is cost. Democrats, under cover of "realism," are every bit as complicit in this shift as Republicans.And where does it leave us? More than ever, the business of America is business (and its stepchild, war) and the business of Democrats is betrayal.

>Why give up on the Democrats now?<

Here's the first thing you need to understand: Election Day may have been a shock and a disappointment to the national Democratic party, but it was not a failure. For all the hits they took, the Democrats held the line where it mattered. They did not let in any genuine political dialogue about the central issues of war abroad or of the economy and managerial lawlessness at home. In this they served their masters very well, and that's really all any political party tries to do in the end.

And how does the rank and file react? Why don't the Democrats... If only the Democrats... If the Democrats were smart... Hold on right there. Let's dispense with the ridiculous, shopworn notion that the Democrats don't get it, that they are too dim or too timid to do the things that are evident to the rest of us: tack left, talk populist, stand up to Bush, push hot-button issues like corporate malfeasance, health care, and campaign finance reform.They see these things as clearly as the rest of us, and they choose not to do any of them. Why? Money is the simple, vulgar answer, and the correct one.

>snip<

more....