Reply #61: Twin Sons of Different Mothers

[eyeswideoopen]

Coincidently, I wrote this commentary today regarding what I believe is the corporate control of the democratic party.


As a blue state conservative, George Bush has given me one thing to be grateful for - his administration cured me forever of the disease of partisan political blindness. The utter rotten-ness and corruption of the Bush Administration and the republican political machine in Washington DC tore down the barriers in my mind allowing some of the messages from the democratic party to penetrate.


With great enthusiasm and renewed sense of purpose, I joined MoveOn.Org I participated every day on their Great Goals Forum. What a disappointment it was to realize that the forum means nothing to the MoveOn people. They have their agenda - much of it I agree with, but that is not the point. The point is that they bill themselves as a grassroots organization that takes its direction from the members. Not so. The Berkeley limousine liberals who run MoveOn are getting their marching orders from somebody - but it is not the members. Moving on - pun intended.


At the time, the primaries for the next presidential election were just beginning to gear up. I found a Meetup for Dean in my local community. I thought it would provide an opportunity for sharing ideas AND making plans for political action. I was half right. At the Meetup, I met a group of people who were intelligent and articulate. I had a delightful time talking to them - but that’s all it was and all it was intended to be - just talking amongst ourselves.


I let it be known that I like to write and that I post my commentaries online. One of the Meetup members gave my email address to the Bonneville County Democrats. They contacted me and invited me to submit my commentaries for publication on their web. There was just one rule, I could only write about local issues. The example of something I could write about was the issue of the street locations for the exits to the new Walmart superstore - No… I’m not kidding.


Recently, I found a Yahoo group billing themselves as Idaho New Democrats. Yippee, thought I, a ‘new’ Democratic organization. With great enthusiasm and a renewed sense of purpose, I joined. Since George Bush’s plan for social security had become the national topic of conversation, my first email to the group was something to the effect, “Do you have any plans for an information campaign against Bush’s social security plan?” The moderator rejected my message with a note, “We only address local issues - no national issues”. Disappointed again, I quit the group.


At this point, it became clear to me that the Democratic Leadership at the local level serve as gatekeepers rather than organizers for participatory democracy. This was confirmed for me when I received a response to my comment on the “What did we do wrong” email when I quit the New Democrats group. Curiously, the response came from the publisher of the North Denver News. Here is the response:


Vicky--
I hope I can persuade you to understand that local party organizations have the important function of maintaining the machinery of the local party first and foremost-- and that there is no other venue for those issues--- where as there are many national venues for national matters.

I hope you can also see the problems inherent in literally thousands of local party organizations creating separate issue campaigns on various issues like social security, with the result of competing messages and resources confusing voters... Many people have powerful concerns and feeling about the gamut of important issues facing our country-- but all politics are ultimately local, and that is what this forum is for.

******

So this is the democratic strategy, maintain the party machinery to muzzle the grassroots so that the leadership can control the message. Pander to minority special interest groups in order to alienate their majority counterparts. Suppress any mention of economic class warfare between the wealthy elite and corporate interests against the middle and lower economic classes. Focus attention on issues of race, gender, sexuality and religion - divide and conquer.


Democrats are fond of quoting Tip O’Neill, “All politics is LOCAL”. The emphasis should be, “ALL politics is local”. The mantra of democrats this past election season was, “We need to retake our country”. I respectfully suggest that they will need to retake their party before they can retake the country.