DownWithTyranny!: The Wall Street/Beltway Conservative Consensus Is So Transpartisan

I missed the raucous 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami. I was living up in Afghanistan's remote Hindu Kush and no one in the village that had taken me in had ever heard of electricity. But I remember reading about it afterwards, particularly about how effectively and with such ruthless determination conservative Democrats set out to sabotage George McGovern's nomination. They really did Nixon's job for him and most of them, without Nixon even asking them to. One though who was asked by Nixon to lend a hand was the head of the AFL-CIO, George Meany, a reactionary and viciously bigoted throwback. Let me quote Rick Pearlstein from Nixonland on how that pillar of Democratic Party politics handled a progressive winning the nomination:

[O]ne week later, George Meany officially announced the AFL-CIO wouldn't be endorsing a presidential candidate that year. At a Steelworkers convention in September, he explained why: the "Democratic Party has been taken over by people named Jack, who look like Jills and smell like johns."

And here, McGovern had just betrayed the gay delegates to please Meany, making sure their equality plank was defeated at the convention! There's just no pleasing some people! Especially not conservatives.

Yesterday I tried to explain why I think the congressional SuperCommittee-- which is meant to determine the future of our lives behind the cover of something no one quite understands-- is a load of bollocks that is utterly stacked against us. There are 12 members, 6 from each of the Beltway groupings. Needless to say, Boehner and Miss McConnell selected 6 Austerity devotees whose fondest shared dreams are the elimination of Social Security and Medicare and, whether they're bold enough to admit it to themselves or not, the reinstitution of slavery. Of course, the same way Paul Ryan claims he isn't trying to get rid of Medicare because his plan will still have an entity called "Medicare," they probably won't call it "slavery" because of the unpleasant connotations. So what about the 6 stalwart Democrats we have to count on to protect us from these heartless predators?

One, Xavier Becerra (D-CA)-- just down the road from me; Go East Side!-- voted against the Satan Sandwich. And though Becerra comes from solid working class roots, I fear that's trumped by political ambition and a blind devotion to his party-- not the values or principles of his party or the people his party represents... just to the party itself, the organization. And he's the only member of the Committee I have any respect for or hope in!

Baucus might as well be a Republican; he certainly votes like one. His voting record shows him the second worst Democrat in the Senate (after Ben Nelson) and his career-long Progressive Punch score on crucial votes is a dismal 62.33%, slightly worse than Joe Manchin's. (But give Manchin time; he's catching up quick.) Murray is more liberal but she'll do exactly what Obama wants her to do-- as will Chris Van Hollen and Jim Clyburn. Reid could have put a fighter on the committee-- or, to be effective-- three fighters, the way Miss McConnell did. He could have sent a very different message-- that Democrats were ready, finally, to stand up for working families, by picking Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley and Tom Harkin. He didn't. And Pelosi could easily have picked three who live and breath the cause of ordinary Americans-- Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Judy Chu, Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, John Conyers... But, silly me, no one wants an independent mind on a Committee this important, whose work of putting the country onto an Austerity Death March is predetermined. So what about John Kerry, you ask? Glad you asked. Nor are you the only one who has.

Kerry’s opportunity, however, is troubling to some liberal leaders and labor union officials who worry that the senior Democrat from Massachusetts might be too eager to strike a grand bargain.

...Kerry inflamed those anxieties over the weekend during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press. He spoke favorably of a grand bargain that President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) had tried to reach, noting it would have included “a mix of reductions and, and reforms in Social Security.”

Kerry alarmed liberals by repeating the standard argument of Washington’s deficit hawks.

“The real problem for our country is not the short-term debt. We can deal with that. It's the long-term debt. It's the structural debt of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid measured against the demographics of our nation,” Kerry said.

Some liberals were not pleased with Kerry’s selection.

“Like President Obama, Kerry is fatally attracted to the notion of a grand bargain, sacrificing cuts in Medicare and Social Security in exchange for increased revenues to reduce long-term deficits. And he is simply wrong-headed about what the nation must do in order to get the economy on track,” said Robert Borosage, co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, a progressive advocacy group.

Alan Charney, policy and strategy director of USAction, said Kerry’s selection raised eyebrows among liberal groups.

“Kerry is a little bit of a surprise to many of us. He hasn’t really been a central player in taxes and revenues,” he said.

Charney said Democratic lawmakers representing the liberal position on the supercommittee cannot agree to cut entitlement programs.

“My bottom line, if Sen. Kerry’s position on this new committee is such that he is for entitlement cuts, then he can’t be someone who represents the progressive liberal viewpoint on this committee,” he said. “It seems he’s open to cuts in entitlements. If that’s the case he’s going against the cardinal liberal principle in this debate of no cuts to entitlements.