Defining The Political Struggle Of Our Time

Yesterday we took a look at the congressional campaigns that pit progressive Wayne Powell against reactionary Eric Cantor, progressive Ken Aden against reactionary Steve Womack, and progressive Wenona Baldenegro against conservative Ann Kirkpatrick. The less and less relevant Democrat/Republican nomenclature is barely worth mentioning. There are three progressives dedicated to the interests of working families, all of whom are independent-minded Democrats, and there are two reactionaries (both Republicans) and a conservative (a completely corrupt Establishment Democrat) dedicated to the interests of Wall Street and other venal corporate interests.

The Republican part of this equation is simple as pie. There are no good Republicans, no honest Republicans, no patriotic Republicans, no Republicans even worth considering against the most horrible of Democrats-- and there are plenty of them in Congress, at this point at least half. The Democratic half is more complicated and more troubling. Too many Democrats-- Ann Kirkpatrick is just one-- have just given in to the cash corruption that defines DC politics... and they're crowding out real Democrats. Because the cash allows them to establish themselves as power players, you find third rate minds like Joe Crowley, Steve Israel, Steny Hoyer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Allyson Schwartz in leadership positions-- although most of them are utterly devoid of any leadership capacity beyond aggregating bribes and passing them out to other Members in return for personal loyalties. That's what makes DC politics go round and round.

We saw the breathtaking number of corrupt lobbyists flocking to join Steny Hoyer in supporting Kirkpatrick against a candidate of and for the people of Arizona's first CD. Why do you think so many lobbyists are so desperate to get a weak loser like Ann Kirkpatrick back into Congress? Think about it. Or read what cutting edge populist economist David Korten had to say about this kind of politics in his brilliant book, Agenda For A New Economy. Here he is articulating a vision for a democratic America that isn't there to serve the special interests of a few super-wealthy families and corporations:

The life-serving market system we want and the life-destructive capitalist system we have feature very different structures and operate by very different rules. A healthy market system in designed to facilitate the beneficial self-organizing exchange of goods and services in response to people's self-defined needs. The capitalist system, by contrast, is designed to concentrate economic power to support the expropriation of wealth for the exclusive private benefit of the system's most powerful players.

The rules formulated and enforced by government ultimately favor one or the other of these competing systems. The tension between them defines the political struggle of our time. Government makes the rules that determine the economy's structure and priorities. Its choices commonly favor Wall Street capitalism over Main Street markets, because Wall Street controls the money and the media that drive Washington politics. The public rarely hears about options supportive of a healthy Main Street market system, and such options do not find their way into the platforms of the major political parties.

These Wall Street interests already have the GOP serving them. Working American families need a political party as well. That used to be the Democratic Party. Now it's just a fraction of the Democratic Party. That's why it's so, so important to support progressives like Raul Grijalva and the candidates he's backing... like Wenona Baldenegro, like Ken Aden and like Wayne Powell.