General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Dear Whiny White People: Great rant from a Native American Facebook friend [View all]Liberal_Stalwart71
(20,450 posts)While I do agree that both political parties have members who are in bed with corporations and the power elite, I DO NOT, however, believe that the degree of imbededness is the same.
In other words, yes, there are corporatists in the Democratic Party. I won't deny that the DLC has done more damage to the party in the last 20 years than any one Republican could ever do. Agreed.
However, two things:
1. The DLC is no longer around. The DLC dissolved a few years ago and is no longer a viable organization. And even better, at least in many of the Blue states like yours and mine (I'm in Maryland), most of the DLC Democrats have been defeated and replaced in Congress by more progressive Democrats.
2. There are more progressives in the Democratic Party than there are Blue Dogs or DLCers. The Progressive Caucus is the largest caucus in the Democratic Party. Admittedly their voices are not as loud and they are not as visible. Now, a lot of that has to do with a corporate owned and operated media that seldom allows for the Keith Ellisons and the Alan Graysons of the world to be heard in mainstream format, unless of course, they disagree with Obama. Well, then, they're front and center on the Sunday morning talk shows.
The bigger problem is money in politics. Citizens United is the biggest blow to democracy, which has made it all the more critical that we have to work with the Democratic Party from within. Continue to run as many progressive Democrats at the local and state levels as we possibly can. We'll continue to lose elections here and there, but it can be done. It's happening in California. It's happening here in Maryland and in other progressive blue states dominated by Democrats. It'll take some time because demographic change will take time.
At some point the corporatists will have no choice but to move if they are outnumbered.
That's why I have always yelled at the top of my lungs for progressives to get involved in grassroots politics--at the local level. That's where the real power is. That's how Donna Edwards became the star that she now is in Maryland, and she's been one of the most effective progressives in Congress. It takes time.
Progressives need to learn to be a little more patient. The wingnuts are. They patiently worked and waited nearly 30 years, slowing building up their power levers and running wingnuts for local offices for the last 20 years. When Gingrich assumed the Speakership in 1995, that was his goal: to concentrate on the local and state levels, ushering in an entire generation of young, conservative stalwarts, grooming them for office, for judgeships, for advocacy, hell, that's essentially how ALEC finally became the powerhouse that it did. ALEC was originally made up of very conservative members of state houses, both Republicans and Democrats. But over the years, the organization became so conservative and moved so far to the right that eventually all the Democrats left and now there's this unholy alliance between the conservative state legislators, right wing advocacy and think tanks, mega-corporations, and ultra-wingnut think tanks (Heritage, AEI) backed by ultra-wingnut corporatists KKKoch Bros., Adelson, and others. Now, again, it took 20, 30, 40 years to build this ultraconservative empire and use it to dominate politics and now our entire economic system. Conservatives have been patient. And many of them have succeeded in propagandizing the American public--and even Democrats--with its anti-government rhetoric.
Liberals, on the other hand, are not patient. We whine. We cry. We complain when we don't see change right away! It irritates me. Change never comes quickly. Change is almost always incremental, piecemeal--a very very slow process. Conservatives seem to know and understand this, and they don't care how many election cycles they lose because they stay busy thinking 5, 10 years ahead.
The redistricting scandal in Texas is a great example. Tom DeLay set that in motion when the Democrats and the rest of the country weren't even thinking about the 2000 or 2010 Decennial Census. Republicans were already setting in motion how they were going to have an impact on the voting process through redistricting, since they could already project (as any demographer or statistician can) changes in population.
Citizens United--already set in motion years before it happened. And when it did, it left Democrats dumbfounded, mouths agape. The stage was already set years earlier. Anti-abortion laws. Again, ALEC, state legislatures were already working behind the scenes for many years crafting legislation. All they needed was more wingnut Republican legislator and governors elected to state houses to ensure these extreme conservative laws could take effect. Stand Your Ground laws--the first one propagated in Florida in 2005--again, years in the making although conservative Democrats were onboard with Republicans. ALEC, NRA made it a reality in other states, mimicking the FL legislation, etc.
Anyway, I hope you see my larger points.
The Democratic Party has some not-so-good people in it--those who don't have the party or the country's best interests at heart. They are bought by corporations, just as much as the Republicans are.
But, there are differences in terms of degree. The Democratic Party will never have an equal amount of corporate backing that Republicans have. The Democratic Party--as a whole--doesn't have that kind of corporate power, at least not to the same degree as the Republicans. We just have to get rid of those bad apples and replace them with as many progressive ones as we can.
Easier said than done. And it'll take some time to achieve.