If You're Wondering Who's Worse, The Democrats Or The Republicans, You're Missing The Entire Point-- Which Is Exactly What They Want

Greg Sargent asked yesterday about the latest manifestation of a left-right alliance, this time against unconstitutional war. If the "left" and the "right" are forming an alliance, who is it aimed at? Who are they fighting?

[T]here are internal disagreements among Republicans over how to vote on the narrower question of arming the rebels, with some conservatives demanding a vote on this separate from one on the “continuing resolution” temporarily funding the government. The White House wants GOP leaders to package the two together.

This is more than just an arcane Congressional procedural dispute. A separate vote on arming the rebels may be the closest thing we get to a Congressional vote on war, since Congress has no plans to vote on the escalation itself.

Indeed, Congressional progressives are now calling for a separate vote, too, allying themselves with conservatives who want the same.

…What we’re seeing here are the outlines of that left-right alliance between antiwar liberals and conservative libertarians that occasionally rises up to act as a check on presidential power in the realm of national security and to act as a counter-weight to the many “hawks” in Congress. Both sides’ leaderships appear to believe it is in their parties’ political interest to usher this through as quickly as possible. GOP leaders don’t want government shutdown theatrics heading into the midterms and appear to think it’s bad politics to oppose Obama’s ask on ISIS. Dem leaders want to help the White House get what it wants with a minimum of fuss.

But ISIS, Iraq, Syria and American foreign policy per se are not the subject of this post; politics is the subject. I grew up hating Republicans and, tempered by my Socialist grandfather who warned me to never trust the Democrats, always willing to accept the Democrats as the lesser of two evils. Today I look at Steve Israel and Steny Hoyer and Debbie Wasserman Schultz and at the increasingly dominant Republican wing of the Democratic Party or at crooks in blue t-shirts like Andrew Cuomo and just come to the conclusion that they aren't lesser enough of evils and that the evil that they are is too great to matter regarding the differences they have with Republicans.

I won't support any politician any longer based on a party label. Politicians have to earn my support on their own now. Being a Democrat isn't a plus… it's something a candidate has to overcome-- like being a Republican. It may not be as bad as being a Republican but it isn't enough to earn support-- not from me.

The political elites have been happy to see the populace divide up into increasingly less and less meaningful partisan teams, each team owned by the Big Money interests. When it comes to the corruption of Big Business, the Military Industrial Complex, the 1%, Organized Crime, neither party is less evil than the other. There are no Republicans worse than Joe Crowley (New Dem-NY) or Steve Israel (Blue Dog-NY) or Debbie Wasserman Schultz (New Dem-FL) or Jim Himes (New Dem-CT), not by any measurement of corruption of public life. The special interests have underwritten their careers and they own them, utterly and in the exact same way they own the Republicans.

This year Republican rebel Justin Amash beat back John Boehner's attempt to defeat him and replace him with a zombie. Two years earlier Amash was clearly a better choice than the homophobic, anti-Choice asshole the DCCC ran against him, Steve Pestka, who casually, hatefully called a gay primary opponent "a fudge packer." The GOP Establishment schmuck who ran against Amash this time, Brian Ellis (who wrote his campaign a check for $1,007,214, raised another $555,145 in big donations and outspent Amash $1,230,307 to $840,370) and Pestka have one thing in common-- they are members of the ruling elite, one with a red t-shirt and one with a blue t-shirt but both sworn enemies of the American Revolution.

The American Revolution meant something-- meant a lot as a matter of fact. It was pretty astounding, even if conservatives kept it from going as far as it wanted to. Now I look at candidates differently. I try to determine which side they would have been on in the American Revolution. That's why I backed Tim Wu and Zephyr Teachout last week against royalists Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul and the Benedict Arnolds known as the WFP.