Rotting Empire: Failure of Mass Parties

The Electoral College Motto: "No Good Can Come of This"

When I was involved with the American arm of the CWI, every other newspaper article that was published would end with some variation of "... and this is why we need to build a mass party in the interests of the working class."

It was the kind of thing people made jokes about, sounding like a goddamn broken record every issue. It was also the sort of thing that caused me endless writerly exasperation. I'm sure it eventually bored the few readers who were not already members.

But hey, on its own, a "mass party" sounds well and good, right? After all, as the activist group (rightly) points out: Wall Street has two parties of its own - Democrats and Republicans. Two variations of the same general practices. A center-right party and a conservative party. They keep America good and profitable. It sure would be nice if there was a great big party for working folks to defend their own interests, wouldn't it? Fight fire with fire?

No. Wrong.

Hence:

RULES FOR RESISTANCE, #1: NO ONE WHO USES THE WORD "MASS" OR "MASSES" IN A POSITIVE WAY IS YOUR ALLY.

People who don't use those words aren't necessarily your allies, either. But folks who use this kind of terminology tend, in my experience, to either be psychopathic schemers or the boot-licking lackeys for psychopathic schemers. They will also, at some point, refer to you as "unwashed."

"The masses." If people referred to me by my density, I wouldn't wash, either.

Let's face it: when you join a "mass party," ie, a party made up of lots of people united for a common interest, you're compromising your individual positions for a party platform. That has its uses, sure. Legalizing gay marriage. Legalizing hemp. Banning the death penalty. We live in a pretty big country and pretty big decisions "have" to get made.

But your voice gets drowned out. There's lots of people shrieking for the ears of just a few representatives. Having a new political party doesn't change that. And it's always the political people shrieking the loudest, the ones who think they know best for everybody else.

We don't need another party that whitewashes personal and regional differences.

Also big parties are targets for big interests. The Democrats are constantly co-opted by business, and they're constantly co-opting social movements in turn. Big institutions, whether it be corrupt labor bureaucracies or planet-poisoning industries or corrupt financial powerhouses, use big political parties to cover their asses. That's how the Republican party can house both working-class conservatives ("I don't want my money going to anyone else!") and rich conservatives ("I don't want my money going to anyone else!").

We can't get what we want out of national parties. We can't build a "mass party" that we won't eventually lose to other "mass" institutions. Look at the Labour Party in Britain!

It'd be much wiser to form smaller parties that we can hold on a short leash. Keep em accountable. Keep em close to the people they represent. It'd do us far more good in the long run to start paying more attention to our local political scene, instead of fixating on a cabal of a few hundred limp-dicked old fossils in Washington whose geriatric minds we will never change.

Political parties love their Dicks (this one is Cheney).

Mass parties emerged from mass communications: the telegraph, the radio, telephones and television. Look at where our technology is heading, what it's doing to our lives and our society, and ask yourself what it will and could do to the political parties of the future. And to you socialist activists, nostalgic for the myths of the mighty Bolsheviks, you need to get yourselves in shape. This is far, far away from the Russia of the first World War. This ... is reality. And the old models cannot engage it.

The Presidential Selection of 2012

No, that is not a typo in the title. That is a more accurate description of our current political process, particularly of the presidential contest, than the sappy bullshit about our Republic you hear Ken Burns or other amateur historians spouting. The candidates are selected for us by the elite and then we chose between the Democratic and Republican wings of the Property Party.
Whether the GOP finally decides on Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney is a small matter ( the other contenders having been displaced by the inevitable winnowing process as big money throws its weight behind those candidates who can talk right- wing crazy on cue but who won't actually rock the boat too much ). Never in the history of American politics have the two parties been closer in their ideologies. Contrary to what the few remaining true believers in Obama think, bombs do not magically stop killing people just because the guy in the White House as a ( D ) after his last name. The very same liberal democrats who took to the streets to protest Bush's War suddenly fell silent on the subject once their hero assumed power. And Obama's political foes in the GOP do not question the President's drone campaign in Central Asia on moral grounds, but in terms of how much more tons of high explosives those drones would drop if they were President.
Civil rights? The Obama administration took over the continuing erosion of the rule of law from that of George W. Bush without missing a beat. The National Defense Authorization Act now makes it legal for the U.S. Military to arrest American citizens overseas or in their own homeland. Goodbye, Posse Comitatus Act. Again, the GOP candidates do not criticize the actual destruction of our rights as U.S. citizens. Their complaint is that the President is not throwing more people in jail.
Both the President and the Republican candidates agree on the fact that Capital must be dominant over Labor. Again, it is a matter of degree. The Democrat must make promises to organized labor and throw a few scraps to the workers now and then. Of course the promises to the Unions can be ignored until the next election cycle comes up ( remember the Employee Free Choice Act ? ) and workers can be distracted by minor cuts in payroll taxes while our Democratic President quietly praises indentured servitude programs like Georgia Works. The Republican candidates have it easier- they do not have to pretend they are a friend of the working class. Their solution to unemployment is to build more prisons.
" Why am I voting for Obama? Two words: Newt Gingrich ( or Mitt Romney )." With President Obama sounding like Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich sounding like, well, Newt Gingrich, even the standard shitty reason of Democrat diehards to vote for their idol falls flat. More and more people are waking up to the fact that the Two- Party system is a pretty crappy form of representative government that is unresponsive to the needs of 99% of its citizens.
The rallying cry of America's workers for the upcoming Occupy campaigns in the spring should be simple: We Deserve Better.

O Verdugo!

American Public Media's segment Marketplace has been running stories on my hometown of San Bernardino and the Inland Empire region all week. Every morning I drive into work listening to NPR and feel my heartstrings ache to hear stories about "Verdugo" (as the thugs call it) and Rialto, where I lived on my own and first organized as a socialist. 17% unemployment, epidemic-level foreclosures, businesses shutting down and boarding up.

Today's article in particular hit me hard because it was an issue my friends and I noticed and discussed a lot in political terms. Why is the area so religious? Why is it so conservative? Along with crime and drugs and alcohol abuse, pollution and traffic and apathy, the religious thing colors the IE with crayons of nihilism. This community seems nigh suicidal.

So I had to write a comment, and I'm reproducing it below:

I spent the first 25 years of my life growing up in San Bernardino. I had to move to Minneapolis, Minnesota with internet friends to get a real job, even after 4 years of college. This was just ~before~ the recession hit - the economy in the Inland Empire is nothing short of abominable. I was always disappointed when members of the community turned towards religion in times of hardship. It's a rather conservative area and voted Republican for as long as I was conscious of politics. Republican strategy seemed to strangle the Inland Empire, and the Democratic Party - disorganized, no message, Republican-lite when it gathered influence at all - hardly bothers with the area.

Having blinded themselves to politics, never banding together in an economic sense, struggling with poisonously high real estate costs ... and then to turn to religion? It never failed to look like escapism to me. The same with the meth epidemic, or the rampant alcoholism. I don't generally have a problem with Christianity, and I especially appreciate it when churches provide services to the poor - services gutted from county, state, and federal levels of government. But the brainwashing makes me uneasy, as do the homophobia and oppression of women and the, yes, racism - not all churches accept blacks and Latinos.

Even as an aid to the poor, these churches only address the symptoms, not the disease. The real disease is an economy that systematically keeps down the poor. Prison rates in the IE are huge. Gangs are a problem because there are no concrete, constructive alternatives. The school system is a wreck. No churches can possibly alleviate all the conditions that cause these problems. The region needs good jobs that pay a living wage and keep cash in the local economy rather than sending it to faraway home offices and Wall Street as profits and investments for the few. Sadly, until then all churches can provide is an sedative for the groaning, pained residents living in this post-industrial wasteland I'm pained to call my home town.

Minnesota State Shutdown

File this one under "Recovery Strategies: Failed." How do you justify putting more people out of work? It can only take an ideological hatred of government that puts some anarchists to shame.

Not that I'm a big fan either, mind you, of the parliamentary form of capitalist democracy. I'm much more of a hands-on kinda guy myself.

But the hypocrisy is sickening. Why the tax-or-cut fetish? Republicans are so set on "not raising taxes (for their rich backers)" that they'll shut down the government entirely?

To prove what, exactly? That we don't need building codes approved, or children educated, or highways paved? Or perhaps just that their rich backers can be made even more wealthy by stepping into these roles themselves, and charging extravagantly for the services.

Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining. The GOP consistently runs a strategy of deception, blame-shift, and obstruction. The DFL, on the other hand, is relatively good-natured, if still much too constrained by in-the-box thinking and totally inept at handling the sheer batshittery of the Repubs. This is their fault, and the fault of an electoral and representative system that cannot represent everyday people, but of course everyday people, who are honest and eager to "contribute to society," get fucked because that society barely even belongs to them.

What to Expect After November

With a typical song-and-dance, the media is painting the elections as an epic struggle of Republican versus Democrat. This entirely distracts the American people from the real issue at stake - the fate of the working class at the hands of the two capitalist parties. Progressives and radicals need to be developing a wider vista of the political landscape. Gird yer loins and prepare yourself for the Democrats' retreat - no matter what size the gains of the Republican horde.

NPR is playing stories in which they interview candidates across the nation. The Democrat they played last night was insistent on his "independence" from the party that endorsed him, said the Republicans had some valuable ideas, and said he was prepared to receive a reach-around reach across the aisle. Even if Democrats hold or gain offices, they seem more likely than ever to be so-called "blue dogs," aka "the other Republicans."

The question among pundits is "how influential will Republicans become?" Many news stories cover the moment-by-moment bean counting of polls among likely or registered voters. And while the Dems are rallying to greater or lesser degrees in some states (Obama drew 26,000 speaking in Madison, WI recently), they're falling behind in others. It's an important question, of course - the face of the struggle will change state by state and even city by city. But unless we build broader perspectives, we as a political wing remain divided and frustrated.

(Remember the feeling of hopelessness on November 5th, 2004 - when Bush was elected to a second term? That is what happens when you don't have a contingency plan.)

My own experiences with people's political consciousness is limited to paper-selling and tabling and discussions online and at work. Still, advocating the issues that I do, you'd be extremely surprised by the uniformity of answers I receive from people. Political arguments move like memes through people's heads and it takes a lot of work to convince people that there is an alternative to our helplessness, our feelings of political and economic disenfranchisement. Perhaps there is some way to pre-empt people's response to the loss of Democrat "control" of the government (which is not to blame on human nature, alleged conservatism on the part of the American people, or the fact that right-wingers have better ideas, but rather the complete spinelessness and lack of leadership among the Democrats).

Whether or not the Republicans specifically win a certain number of gains in Congress, or gubernatorial positions, we can anticipate the Obama administration's possible responses. We can anticipate the tactics used by both parties because we know their character. We know their agendas, broadly speaking. We know the issues of this election and we know the methods the parties typically employ in the pursuit of their ends. So while many people may say, "We don't have a crystal ball, we can't know the political landscape after the election," I find it helpful to prepare.

Obama's pick for his next chief of staff has signaled, according to the media, a "low key approach" as opposed to the (relatively) proactive attitude of Emanuel. This may be an indication that Obama wants to "work with" the Republicans, even though, of course, Republicans have continually scorned him and have next to no interest in cooperating with him unless they can push his policies ridiculously far to the right. Even I admit that half the reason this poor man looks like such a bad President is because Republicans refused to meet him half way, and even turned members of his party against him. They used every word he spoke as evidence that he is unqualified to be President, even if they had to stretch the truth beyond recognition.

But he hasn't helped himself, either. Like so many Democratic politicians of the past and present, the O-man is setting himself (and his base) up for disappointment by reaching across the aisle to the almost feline-ly fickle Repubs. Government leaders, especially the Dems, like to look like coalition builders, like to look tolerant and amenable to "bipartisan" policies, even when these CONSISTENTLY disappoint Americans and undermine the position of the working class.

See the health reform bill for a now-classic example of this process, although welfare reform under Clinton is also a good example.

And in fact, the right-wing shift of the Clinton era is a good example of the swing-set election pattern the United States has developed. (It's a deceptive pattern. The more Dems concede to Repubs, the more the center moves to the right and, ironically, the more the right screams about leftist bias.)

So we can predict some attempts - mostly in Congress - in the next two years to reach out to Republicans on a number of issues. What EXACTLY these issues will be remains to be seen. One struggle we are likely to see will be over the Bush-era tax cuts, due to expire in January, as the decision has been pushed back. November and December will set the stage for the next period of political maneuvering with implications likely to color even the 2012 elections. In all likelihood, Obama, in his stern and gentlemanly manner, will acknowledge Republican wins as a new period and welcome it as an opportunity to work together. Republicans will unanimously respond with vitriol and incite their base against everything elephant.

The Democrats never respond to these things by whipping up leftist sentiment among their own base. All the talk about working across the aisles with Republicans actually proves DE-motivating, and frustrates and disappoints progressives. Dems respond to this disappointment by making excuses for their party leaders. "He's trying," they say and will say again, "it's all the Republicans' fault."

Rather than being proactive, Democrats plan poorly and drop the initiative time and again, allowing the Republicans disproportionate control over the direction of the country. Rather than rallying to end the war or push for single payer, Dems attempt not to "alienate" the right. But they needn't worry about that; the right is perfectly capable of alienating itself! If the Democrats used their positions to encourage counter-protests, for example, every tea-party rally would be scattered like leaves in the wind. A truly populist agenda is entirely possible in the United States, but the Democrats are unable to script a positive story to frame it. Instead, they let the Republicans catch the media spotlight and spout controversy about socialism and big government. Even the illusion of populist change embodied in Obama's vague '08 promises drew people to the polls in record numbers. The myth that Americans are conservative in nature actually contributes to dispirited low-voter turnout, and in turn enables Republican victory, creating a self-perpetuating cycle in this period.

It's almost like the Democrats don't even know HOW to use the power of government to help out everyday Americans. It would not have been hard to create jobs through Depression-era-style legislation (even though even Roosevelt's policies in the 1930s fell short too). Americans would have been receptive to bolder attempts to create - not just "save" - jobs. Republicans could have screamed bloody murder but if the Dems were ever willing to villainize THEM for a change, as corporate stooges, as reactionary - and CONSISTENTLY - Americans might have listened. Considering, y'know, we had just elected the Democrats FOR A GODDAM REASON.... We were sick of the Republicans.

The Democrats do not distance themselves enough from Republicans and right-wing policies, and do not attempt to paint a more positive picture of the left. Everyone accepts the premise that this is a conservative country and no one seems willing to challenge that presumption or attempt to change it, not even the people who conceivably have the most power to do that.

"Rank and file" Dems - the voters, not the politicians - do no service making up excuses for their politicians, but they inevitably will because they see Republicans as the only alternative. This is not true. Another alternative - pressuring the Democrats - exists. A third alternative is even available - breaking with the Democrats entirely. There are left-wing alternatives in many cities and states - sometimes the Greens, sometimes independents or other parties. This doesn't seem like a winning strategy in the short-term - it seems to be handing victories to Republicans by dividing the left among other parties. But nothing lights a fire under a political party like the thought of actually losing voters. That was what really gave the Tea Party such influence over the Republicans. As long as Dems can COUNT on the left to stick with them - as long as voters feel there is nowhere else to go - they have no incentive to reconsider their bad policies. If they have to work hard to compromise with their leftist base, agitating for progressive policies, they come out the gate hardened against the Republicans.

Y'all were enthusiastic about Obama, yes, but you were enthusiastic to hand over control to a politician. You wanted to rally for a superhero to fix your problems. If you're a Democrat, you need to hold your politicians accountable now. You need to go to the rallies and the fundraisers and the debates and demand actual progressive change, wave signs and chant slogans, and you can't just plop down on your couch after the elections. If you want a better country, you actually have to work for it, and that means working beyond (and inside) your job and your family and transforming your social institutions into instruments of change. You need to threaten the Democrats by voting progressively and embarrassing them in front of the opposition. You have to learn 'em, and then tell them to shape up or you'll really give them something to cry about by forming a new progressive political party.

So yes, come November people are going to be disappointed, and many of them will react in the coming months by making excuses and blaming the Republicans. But unless we start coming up with alternatives to holding our nose and voting Democrat all the time, we're going to be acting like abused spouses an awful lot. It is ALWAYS the time to challenge the people in power, even the people that we see as the better of two evils. How good are YOU if you don't challenge evil, especially the one that tells you you depend on it?

Minneapolis, Minnesota FBI raids

Yesterday morning several Minneapolis peace activists got an unpleasant wake-up call: the Federal Bureau of Investigation busted down their doors and began rummaging through their stuff. The warrants gave them authority to seize computers, documents, cell phones, etc. on the grounds that they may have "funded foreign terrorist groups." One of these groups is allegedly FARC, which is a peasant guerrilla group in Colombia. Now, I don't know much about FARC (yet) and I know there is some disagreement about tactics and stuff on the left. But I do know that the Colombian government shoots peasants and dresses up the bodies like guerrilla fighters and that they have one of the most oppressive and violent regimes in Latin America, and I know that Obama praises these tactics openly, just how many other American administrations cozy up to tyrants and dictators, especially south of our borders.

This also gives us some very revealing insights as to how the Democrats intend to use the PATRIOT Act - to clamp down not on terrorist plots, but on ordinary grass-roots organizations trying to enact positive change. The Anti-War Committee isn't an al-Quada plot to blow shit up, it is a group of US citizens who want to end the bloody conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But under Bush the rhetoric was to paint any opposition to imperialist strategy as terrorism, and Obama has no intention of calling for the Act's repeal. No Democrat does. It serves their police state means towards their global dominance ends.

This is the real face of federal law: state-sanctioned terrorism. Forcing activists to live in fear. Making Americans afraid to stand for change. Turning our hope into dread. Close your doors, duct-tape your windows, and stay in front of the friendly glow of your corporate-mindwashing television.

Hundreds of Minneapolis activists turned out in solidarity last night against these raids. Because we don't fuck around. We know that an injustice to any group on the left is portent of injustice to us all. And without left opposition to the growing power of the right - led by FOX news, the Tea Party, and the Joint Task Force among other government agencies - then everyday Americans will live in ignorance and helpless fear.

We need a grass-roots political party that will repeal the PATRIOT Act and end the raids on peaceful activists.

if you believe hard enough, maybe the money will just pour out of your ass.

I came across an interesting link in the blog "Mark Mendall's America" today, discussing the pessimism that, with American business and consumers in its grip, threatens the whole world economy. The implication is that if the economy isn't friendly enough to business - if credit isn't sufficiently free-flowing, if labor costs aren't cheap, if markets are unprotected, if consumers aren't nibbling on the lures, then they'll hold their cash reserves hostage. No money for anyone else. (Obviously we're talking about the medium-term here, as the law of diminishing returns will set in after a few years ... leading to something like the 20 years of stagnation Japan has seen.)

The problem with faith-based economics, though, is that it doesn't address the underlying material conditions.

It's great to say, "Consumers need to buck up and spend," like Bush did after 9/11. Or for the economists to say, "Let's encourage business back to the table." (Businesses are indeed composed of "fat cats," and, like cats, must be coddled and cajoled into dealing with actual people. Unlike real cats, our entire social well-being depends on them.)

Yet this rhetoric doesn't deal with concrete policies. Let's look, briefly, at the pundents and their suggestions.

In this corner: Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Slick Willy and member of Obama's "economic transition team." He spells out that US consumers are out of cash and credit now that the housing bubble has burst. Foreign consumers could fix this - if only their economies hadn't been geared to producing cheap goods and had instead given them some sort of consumer wage. Oops.

Guess we shoud've fought harder against NAFTA. When you lose unions, you lose a significant amount of the working class's involvement in the consumption sphere.

In this corner: Peter Morici, former Chief Director/"Head Economist" of the U.S. International Trade Commission. His article points out that the Obama administration's trillion-plus stimulus squandered much of the money and failed to produce an adequate number of jobs. This is ... actually, very true. (Don't worry, the stuff he says about the deficit being bigger than it was under Bushie is also stupidly ignorant, considering Bush didn't have more than a moment of the recession to deal with; any Prez under that pressure would have enacted some kind of stimulus.) Under the Obama model, a lot of that money went to NGOs and nonprofits and private corporations. Under the Republican model, it probably would have gone to private corporations and tax cuts for the rich. The difference is pathetically negligible.

A "New-New Deal" would have been better - but even that hadn't been sufficient in the 1930s. The economy had only been rebooted by World War II, the significant loss of industry and labor in Europe, and the unprecedented rebuidling effort of the Marshall Plan. In order to create jobs on the scale we needed (and still need), we need to bypass big business's profit model entirely. (On a related note, has anybody thought about how the census project is what kept employment even remotely afloat through the Spring? The census happens once every ten years - we only had this boon because it happened to be 2010. That's like calling Christmas sales sign of a recovery. It's seasonal, you idiots!)

Anyway. People don't get fed on prayer; people get fed on bread. People don't get jobs on faith. We get it from employers. And as if bakers hoarded bread, people would riot and take it, if employers refuse to give us jobs, we ought to take the workplaces. Obviously they aren't running the economy in our interests. Perhaps its time control of the economy changed hands.

Preferably before the budget cuts - which will be equally ineffective, and even more harmful for working families- come rolling in.

Send the Donkey to the Dust-Bin

While X is on the subject of the uselessness of the two pro-business parties, I thought I'd throw out the idea of what a real working people's party would look like, if it were to spring out of the movements and sentiments of right now.

It would require the broad enlistment of rank-and-file members from these sectors of society:

• Trade Unions, both from the big, traditional industries and the more grass-roots efforts;
• The LGBT movement, from the couple who wants their marriage recognized by the state to the transsexual triad that recognizes their oppression is one more way to divide the working class and therefore they will not subscribe to gender-normative consumer culture;
  
• Every immigrant, legal or not (whatever the term you want to use), their family and friends, of every race and color and creed and ethnicity, who knows that Democrats and Republicans alike only enforce borders when it suits their own conquest of wealth;
• The anti-war movement, whether its members be freshly angered by the raids in Pakistan and Yemen, or burnt out on nine years of protest without a single goddamn acknowledgement from the System;
• Community activists and environmentalists, who know that free trade and the destruction of the environment are two sides of the same coin;
• Some Marxists and socialist, although admittedly this portion of the left as a whole has failed at really stepping in and assisting the working class - for a wide variety of reasons, some the fault of the Marxists (or "marxists") and some not - the sectarian portions cannot and will not take a notable part.

And what, pray tell, would this party's platform look like?

Hopefully - and just going off popular sentiments today - something like this:

• The nationalization of BP as punishment for the global eco-disaster they have created, profits to be invested in a gigantic, national mass-transit system - and a bit fat tax on the profits of all other oil companies doing business with America;
  
• The immediate repeal of SB1070 and the strict enforcement (and expansion) of all federal laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, language, gender (and/or gender identity), sexuality, etc.;
• An immediate withdraw of all United States forces from Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt;
• A condemnation of the policies of the state of Israel as regards not only the Flotilla Massacre, but also the rampant human rights abuses committed against the Palestinian people - complete severing of all weapon sales and suspension of commerce until it fucking shapes up;
• Full funding for schools, Social Security, medicare and medicade, unemployment and employment services - to be funded by the money-formerly-known-as "the military budget."

Now that is what I call "a start." With a party like that up and running, what would we need these spineless so-called Democrats for?

(Also the Socialist Rose makes a much cooler emblem than some dumb animal.)

Let the corporate bidding begin!

The most active sector of society has shifted to the right. And I'm not talking about the Teabaggers.

I'm talking about this report from the Washington Post re: corporate donations to the Grand Ole Party. So we're pretty much assured a shift to the right come November.

Don't get me wrong: it looks like it's going to be close at this stage. Obama's victory is still a perceived landmark for the little-f-left, despite the fact that the man and his administration have left ample space in every issue for criticism among every stripe of supporter. A lot of people still believe in what he fundamentally stands for - hope, change, all that jazz. And he's still African-American, although he's a Kenyan-American, basically, and doesn't exactly come from the tradition of "black America." He's just very much a hand-holding liberal politician, which makes him a corporate puppet when all is said and done.

The economic crisis and the mandate of a new President, however, has put a little bit of fight back in the left's diverse forces. (Just a little bit.) The future seems grim indeed, but there are other sectors of the left getting ready to fight back against the attacks on their standards of living - the nurses who care for us when we are ill (the battle in Minnesota has been foreshadowed by the struggle in Philadelphia), and the teachers whose responsibility it is to groom our generations despite lack of funding and backwards legislation.

These are the two places where struggle is very likely to break out in the near future. We aren't done reclaiming our country from the grip of the last administration's mistakes. (Boy howdy, there were a lot ... have we even gotten started yet?)

Unfortunately, the unions will continue to throw money at the Democrats with the misguided hope that they can possibly compete with corporations like the finance industry, like big oil and big weapons industries that basically ensure they get their man.

They tossed a black man on top of the bureaucracy heap and called it "socialism." Without further explanation, and with tiny reforms that could have taken place under anyone, right or left, the media and political system has again villainized left ideas and government oversight and allowed the rabid right to appear credible and heroic.

So come November we will indeed see some fucking nutty Republicans, maybe even some far-right independents where the Republicans can't accomodate the clueless constituents. We will see Democrats continue to crumple spinelessly. Hopefully the mountains of cash from corporate America doesn't tip the scales entirely, but the real catalyst for change rests as usual on the shoulders of the American working class.

Twilight Of The Moderates

Poor Evan Bayh. All he tried to do was to keep leftist extremists and the hard line right of the two parties from derailing the Congress. But they refused to work with him, so now he has to save America the only way he can- by going into business in the private sector and creating jobs. Well, a couple of them anyway.
That's his spin on his abrupt decision to quit his Senate seat. Reality is that he is full of shit.
Although there are a number of clueless pundits out there who mourn the loss of the moderates in Congress, truth is there is no such thing as a " middle" in the American political system. To have a middle, you have to have a right- wing and a left- wing. What we have in this nation is a right and then the extreme batshit right. As much as the crew at FOX News wants you to believe that Obama and the Democrats are socialists and the Republicans are the true blue defenders of flag, country, and apple pie, truth is both parties, in the end, are corporate parties. They aren't so much parties as two factions of the ruling class fighting over the rotting carcass of capitalism.
Sure, they have different ways of getting into power and they represent different markets of big business, but essentially they serve the same master- global capitalism.
The real role of " moderates" in a capitalist republic is to mediate between the two main factions ( either the two parties of the American system or the coalitions of parliaments) and get legislation passed that benefits both. Presently in America, this is not happening. One of the two factions- the Republicans- are no longer willing to share the loot and power with their competitors, the Democrats. Hence, the absolute gridlock in the Congress. The Republicans know the great weakness of their opponents is that while they are the party of outright capitalism, the Democrats have to make at least a token gesture to their ideology of community service. While doing this, they have to make sure that it does not inconvenience their corporate backers in the slightest. All the GOP has to do is block whatever bill the Obama administration tries to pass to make the Democrats seem ineffectual and weak to the voting public.
The irony is that if Obama and the Democrats did back a progressive measure like single- payer health care, which the majority of Americans are in favor of they would be unstoppable, even with the loss of the super- majority. But they are reigned in by the people they are beholden to first- their corporate backers. The people of the United States come in a very poor second.
So I am not really sure why anyone should feel bad that Evan Bayh, or any other moderate checks out of the Senate. They don't do anything for us, the citizens, and they aren't really all that bad off themselves.
Maybe his wife Susan can get Ev a cushy job at one of the insurance companies she worked for. Of course that didn't have anything to do with Bayh's support the Senate's version of the Health care Bill- the " reform" of mandated insurance without a public option. Moderates are the good guys, right? They wouldn't chuck their Senate seat for a higher paying position in a company they lobbied for- would they?
To quote the Geico man: "Does 10 pounds of flour make a really big biscuit? "