Forget Democrats vs Republicans-- It's A False Dichotomy-- Think Progressives vs Reactionaries

Monday when the self-proclaimed leader of the Senate ConservaDems-- a small, corporately-sponsored faction that has worked assiduously to thwart President Obama's legislative agenda-- declared that he couldn't stand the gridlock (that he has been so key in creating) and would leave the Senate when his term expires in January, the first note I got was from an Indiana Democratic Party activist entitled "Uncork The Champagne." He mentioned that Indiana progressives within the party had been waging "a stealth campaign... to withhold their active support from him this year [and that that] probably had a lot to do with" his decision to retire from the Senate.

The first comment to our post came from a progressive poster named Carter who accused me of not thinking through the ramifications of Bayh's decision to pull a modified Sarah Palin and leave the Senate behind as he pursues his dream. His missive is typically well-intentioned, if also typically fraught with factual error and strategic miscalculation. You can read it if you like (at the link), but, like most people, he can't get beyond the simpleminded narrative that pits the guys and gals in the blue jerseys against the guys and gals in the red jerseys.

Americans have to go beyond thinking in terms of that narrative and focus on the real struggle between the ordinary working folks who make up 95% of the country and the 5% who own most of it. Classically, this is the struggle between progressives and reactionaries (or progressives on the one side and reactionaries plus morons on the other side). Even on his way out, Bayh is screwing working folks and trying to bolster his big money pals. Yesterday: "Two days after he announced he wouldn't seek reelection, Sen. Evan Bayh is throwing a wrench in the works of a signature administration initiative, expressing reservations about the plan for the government to eliminate private-sector middlemen and make student loans directly... Bayh's stance could be a look toward either of two next moves for the senator: If, like his predecessor, he becomes a lobbyist, warm relations with the financial industry won't hurt. And if he runs for governor, he's standing up for Hoosier jobs."

Is it just that? Maybe-- at least among Republicans, the overtly conservative party that exists to protect the status quo on behalf of the ownership class, as is the case with all right-wing political parties. Right now the GOP is a narrowly based ideological party, very much in contrast to the Democrats' all-things-to-all-people "big tent." But if the Republican Party is the overtly conservative one, the Party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt has degenerated into a covertly conservative party, almost as thoroughly owned by the same anti-worker, anti-consumer, anti-human special interests that own the GOP. Almost. With innumerable corporate hacks beholden to Wall Street and other powerful special interests-- the same special interests that Republicans are beholden to-- what, aside from jersey color, differentiates notoriously corrupt Democrats like Rahm Emanuel, Harold Ford, Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman, Arlen Specter and Max Baucus from even the most blatant of the Republican whores-- the likes of John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Dick Shelby and John Cornyn on the Senate side and top House criminals like Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Roy Blunt, Eric Cantor, Spencer Bachus, John Boehner and Pete Sessions?

I remember a friend of mine telling me how he arrived at a job at the DSCC, all fresh and fired up with idealism. After a routine discussion in which he brought up someone's propensity to vote more frequently with the Republicans against working families than with the Democratic Senate caucus, one of the money men looked at him with contempt and said something to the effect of "Oh, don't tell me you're one of those ideological dorks!"

Last night I heard extremely corporate ConservaDem, DLC leader and Senate Democratic assistant whip Tom Carper making a half-hearted and utterly failed attempt to communicate on NPR. Listening to him-- even just his inability to frame a cohesive thought or sound vaguely interested or just his repulsive manner of speaking as though he were also eating at the same time (which he may have been)-- made me physically ill. Could I possibly be in the same party that this doofus in a leader of? He was supposedly on the show to represent the side that wants to reform the Senate by changing the filibuster rules that allow 40 senators to hold up every nomination and every piece of legislation passed by the more representative lower House. (England took care of this throwback from Divine Right and aristocracy in 1911.) And Carper had a solution as well. He said that if we just wait until there's a Republican President and a GOP majority in the Senate, we'll be able to scrap the filibuster. And from the corporate point of view, that makes perfect sense and is certainly worth waiting for.

Yesterday's Washington Post reported on a poll that shows nearly 80% of Americans agree that corporations shouldn't be allowed to buy American democracy. In other words, there is overwhelming public consensus against the single most important conservative initiative, diluting the power of the voters and tilting the balance of power into the hands of the rich and powerful. Will our political class do anything to serve this expression of populist desire? Don't count on it-- especially not on anything definitive.

The results suggest a strong reservoir of bipartisan support on the issue for President Obama and congressional Democrats, who are in the midst of crafting legislation aimed at limiting the impact of the high court's decision. Likely proposals include banning participation in U.S. elections by government contractors, bank bailout recipients or companies with more than 20 percent foreign ownership.

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other Republican lawmakers have praised the ruling as a victory for free speech and have signaled their intent to oppose any legislation intended to blunt the impact of the court's decision... Republicans and business groups have rallied around the ruling, arguing that the decision merely levels the playing field with free-spending unions and other liberal interest groups. The new poll, however, suggests there may be political risks for the GOP in opposing limits that appear to be favored by the party's base.

The Democrats have overwhelming control of the House and Senate and they occupy the presidency. But because they are nearly as sold out to the powerful special interests as the Republicans, it is unlikely that the handful of progressives within the party caucuses will be able to do anything effective at all.

When it came time for the Establishment to end the virtual state of war with China, the world's biggest market and an economic powerhouse of the (very immediate) future, it was lifelong anti-Communist firebrand Richard Nixon who could do it without damaging his political standing much. Now that the Establishment has determined it's time to ditch Social Security, they've tasked Barack Obama to do the job for them. Yesterday we saw how very ready he was to do the job for them with his selection of two mainstream conservatives to head up his deficit commission, Erskine Bowles (the Democratic Party conservative) and Alan Simpson (the Republican Party conservative), who the White House claims was picked to provide some levity for the gruesome task. He'll also provide the butcher's cleaver. Economist Dean Baker: "Simpson is not just your run of the mill Republican. He is an extreme foe of Social Security... [As a Senator] his agenda was cutting Social Security. And that is who President Obama picked to co-chair his deficit commission."

I don't want to sound like a Naderite-- I actually held my nose and pulled a lever that included the detestable Joe Lieberman on it in the fear that Bush was surging in California-- but I have so little faith in the Democratic Party as it stands that the only efforts I want to undertake are involved with helping it find its roots as the party that sticks up for working families and fights against the entrenched wealth and power that has taken control of it. That, of course, is why Blue America is concentrating on Sending Democrats A Message They Can Understand right now. And that's why, if I were a drinking man, I would have indeed popped the cork of a bottle of champagne when I heard Evan Bayh was going bye-bye.