Are The Political Conventions Relevant?

Although I would actually love to hear firebrand congresswoman Linda Sanchez speak-- and Alejandro Escovedo sing-- at the convention today, I think I could survive passing up a pack of hacks like Chris Van Hollen, Carolyn Kilpatrick, Bennie Thompson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Ed Rendell, and most of all corrupt corporate shills Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer when they take the stage and make the Democrats seem just as unpalatable as the Republicans they so thoroughly resemble in so many, many ways. Most Americans wouldn't know one of these self-aggrandizing bozos from any other well-compensated corporate employee. A far more compelling picture would be to show the looks in Emanuel's and Hoyer's faces were Lady Guillotine to be rolled onto the stage.

Most Americans are paying no attention whatsoever to this costly shill-fest. And why should they? Today's NY Times reported that home prices in June were off by another 17%, a clear indication of the worst annual results ever. "But the Republicans did it," you say? OK, fair enough... the Republican Party ideological mania for unrestricted "free" markets-- i.e.- for the rich and powerful to plunder the rest of us while paying off the politicians-- has sent them on a largely successful jihad against federal regulatory agencies that were put in place by real Democrats to protect workers and consumers. Today's Emanuel-Hoyer version are more exclusively interested in protecting their own career paths and care almost as little about consumers and worker protection as your garden variety voracious Republican.

Blue Dogs and other Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party worked hand-in-glove with Bush and the GOP to dismantle the federal regulatory agencies that protect society from the excesses of corporate avarice. The feeding frenzy that followed the loosening of regulations that governed banking and real estate-- greased by hundreds of millions of dollars in political bribes, not just to the Tom DeLays and John Boehners and Mitch McConnells, but to the Blue Dogs, Hoyers and Emanuels as well-- is at the root of why American's mistrust of Washington is turning to actual hatred. I doubt most Americans are prepared to watch Lady Guillotine in action yet... but give it time.

Yesterday the execrable Larry Kudlow, spokesperson for the Greed and Selfishness wing of The Republican Party, blamed the steep drop in the Dow on the Democratic Convention. No one who knows anything about GOP tactics-- or about a wretch like Kudlow-- would expect him to examine the systemic weakness of a rigged market system that is leading the nation into the worst economy since the early 1930s, the last time a played-out, greed-obsessed Republican Party was lucky enough to have so complacent, pathetic and cooperative a Democratic Party to push around. And then came Franklin D. Roosevelt? Will Barack Obama live up? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, there is much work to be done to make the legislative branch more responsive to ordinary Americans-- no matter what Obama turns out to be like.

The difficulty in excising metastasized cancers like Emanuel and Hoyer from the body politic is next to insurmountable. It's why Emanuel nearly had a hemorrhage when I went up to him in a bar to talk about his ally Al Wynn's primary defeat a few weeks prior. One of the only reasonable things progressives can do is to participate vigorously in primaries and defeat the corporate shills from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party before they are elected to Congress. Today Orlando voters will decide between progressive champion Alan Grayson and two sad-sack establishment rubber stamps, while in Alaska Emanuel is pushing a corporate-friendly puppet, Ethan Berkowitz against independent minded progressive Diane Benson.

On September 2nd, in Arizona's gigantic first CD, Emanuel-Hoyer-Van Hollen and the rest of them make an all out effort to shove another hopelessly ineffectual hack, Ann Kirkpatrick, down the throats of low-info voters, many of whom have probably never even heard that there is actually a real Democrat in the race, Howard Shanker. Yesterday Democrats.com made a ringing endorsement of Steve Harrison for the Staten Island congressional seat. Harrison is running against someone who combines the very worst one could ever hope to never find in a Democrat-- he's both a corporate shill and a reactionary hack. Needless to say the Democratic Establishment is firmly on the side of the corporate shill and a reactionary hack, Michael McMahon. If he gets into Congress he will just be another metastasizing cancer. The same day Staten Island Democrats choose between Harrison and McMahon, western New York voters also have a real Democrat, Jon Powers, and a free-spending freakshow from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, Jack Davis, to choose between-- unless Davis winds up in jail before the primary: