Does Beltway "realism" have to mean political hopelessness? (These days it seems yeah, probably)

"You reap what you sow. Sell out the interests of your core supporters, and they can’t help you as much as they could if you helped them. When will Democratic politicians learn this lesson?"

-- Ian Welsh, in "Democrats Face $200 million Republican War Chest Without the Strong Allies They Should Have"

"This is the fundamental problem with the US. There is no accountability for the political class. They and those who take care of them have made sure of it. . . . And as long as there is no cost for them, they’ll keep doing it."

-- Ian Welsh, in "Of Course Politicians Don’t Listen to Ordinary Citizens. Why Would They?"

by Ken

A couple of weeks back -- around the same time we were marveling at Washington Monthly's in-breadth look at the inner as well as outer workings of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- the above chart was making the rounds of the progressive blogosphere. It was compiled, Sam Stein reported on Huffpost, by "top Democratic Party strategists," and showed what are supposed to be actual commitments for 2010 GOP election financing, and as commanding a position as the U.S. Chamber occupies, the chart shows that its projected $75 million isn't much more than a third of the projected institutional right-wing commitment. And Sam added this chilling update:

A Democratic operative makes the case that the total could rise to roughly $300 million if it includes additional pledges for campaign spending from Americans for Prosperity, promising $45 million, the Club for Growth, $24 million, the National Rifle Association, $20 million, and the Susan B. Anthony List, $6 million.

In good part, of course, this reflects what is probably only the beginning of the opening of the floodgates which was all but mandated by the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United that this country is the rightful and exclusive property of the rich. Sam made it clear in his report that the professional Democratic class, contemplating these numbers, was more or less running around like chickens without heads, with the corporate spigots Democrats were tapping in the last couple of election cycles pretty much shut off.

The best-targeted response I saw was Ian Welsh's: "Democrats Face $200 million Republican War Chest Without the Strong Allies They Should Have." Looking at these numbers, Ian wondered, "So, how did this happen?" (For links, check out the original post at the above link.)

First, Democrats didn’t make an all out effort to torpedo either Roberts, or more reasonably, Alito. With both on the Supreme Court, decisions like Citizens United were inevitable.

Second, when given a historic opportunity to break the power of the rich and corporations by not bailing them out, Democrats bailed them out. They did not make shareholders get wiped out (as they deserved, they took the profits from housing bubble fraud, after all) and they did not let the bondholders take their losses. Be very clear, this was never about saving the economy, the trillions of dollars used to bail out these corporations could have been loaned directly to consumers and businesses which needed loans. In fact, at this point, it is entirely likely that bailouts made things worse, not better.

Third, Democrats did not push hard for the Employee Free Choice Act, an act which would have made union organizing much easier. Union members vote for Democrats at much higher rates than non Union members (in particular, white male union members are pro-Democrat while as a group white males who aren’t union members vote Republican). Unions not only provide financial resources for Democrats, they put feet on the ground for Democrats. Where unions are strong, Democrats tend to win. Where unions aren’t strong, Democrats tend to lose.

Fourth, Democrats abandoned their constituencies economically in order to bail out the financial sector. They seem to have thought the financial sector would be loyal. Of course, it isn’t, it will give money to whoever it thinks can win and from whom it’ll get the best deal. Meanwhile unmarried women, Hispanics, African Americans and Youth, all core Demoratic groups, have high unemployment rates. That means they are not motivated to vote or volunteer, they cannot give as much money as they could if they were doing well. The money spent on bailing out banks and the rich, could have been used for a proper stimulus and proper loans which would have helped these groups.

Fifth, Democrats let ACORN be destroyed. ACORN was framed, but Democrats threw it under the bus. ACORN was a community organization which did huge voter drives which registered voters who were overwhelmingly likely to vote Democratic. Again, a key liberal organization was simply abandoned.

Democrats made a play for corporate money and in so doing, they sold out constituencies which were actually loyal to them, and could actually be counted on. Wall Street will never be reliably loyal to Democrats, neither will the very rich. At best they will play Democrats and Republicans off against each other, but realistically, they prefer Republicans whenever Republicans can win.

You reap what you sow. Sell out the interests of your core supporters, and they can’t help you as much as they could if you helped them. When will Democratic politicians learn this lesson?

Democrats should have much stronger allies in 2010. But they preferred to play footsie with Wall Street and abandon their own constituencies.

Which ties right into another recent post of Ian's, "Of Course Politicians Don't Listen to Ordinary Citizens. Why Would They?," prompted by reports that "apparently 68% of Americans think that the political class doesn’t listen to them," which prompted him to wonder, "Why should the political class listen?"

They get the majority of their reelection funds from corporations and the rich. Their spouses and children are given good jobs by such donors, and if ordinary people do actually ever vote them out for not looking after their interests, well, as long as they went down doing what they were supposed to, they’ll still be very well taken care of.

Get elected, do what your corporate masters tell you to, and you’ll never ever have to worry about money ever again.

Only a sucker or an idealist would do anything else.

This is the fundamental problem with the US. There is no accountability for the political class. They and those who take care of them have made sure of it. Go to war with a nation which has never attacked the US based on a big lie propaganda campaign, or spy on millions of Americans, or torture, or deregulate the economy so that Wall Street can cash in and crash the economy, and hey, so what, there’s no cost for you.

And as long as there is no cost for them, they’ll keep doing it. Just like Wall Street, having been bailed out after crashing the world economy, will do it again. They got rich doing it, why wouldn’t they do it again.

They’d have to be suckers or idealists not to.

#