But Where Are The Democrats?

[Q]

Bill Moyers on the Politics of a Struggle

3.18.03

There was a news report in Washington this week about how Democrats and Republicans in Congress conspired to close down the investigation of an alleged abuse of power by a leading member of the House. Now we'll never know the truth of the matter.

The story reminded me of a conversation I had many years ago with a constitutional scholar who said the most important function of one political party is to keep the other party honest. "No party investigates itself," he said, "so the public safety depends on each party shining the spotlight of scrutiny on the shenanigans of the other."

Once upon a time, this happened quite often. Both parties could be counted on to mock the deceit, hypocrisy, and pretensions of the opposition, while they cloaked their own vices in the warm pieties of patriotism and altruism. They also challenged one another's belief systems with the two-fisted ferocity of street brawlers. Such spirited partisanship wasn't a pretty sight for children, but it offered choices, got the public's attention, and aroused a robust and sometimes ribald participation in democracy. Politics mattered.

Things have changed. Republicans still love a good brawl - they could appreciate the movie the GANGS OF NEW YORK. Because they will claw, scratch, jam their knee to your groin and land an uppercut to the jaw after the bell has rung — and if they don't finish the job their partisan press will do it for them: Rush Limbaugh and the Darth Vaders of talk radio; the pamphleteers at the WALL STREET JOURNAL, FOX NEWS, and a host of publications aided by big business.

But where are the Democrats? As the Republicans were coming back from the wilderness - lean, mean and hungry - Democrats were busy assimilating their opponents' belief system. In no small part because they coveted the same corporate money, Democrats practically walked away from the politics of struggle, leaving millions of working people with no one to fight for them. We see the consequences all around us in what a friend of mine calls "a suffocating consensus". Even as poverty spreads, inequality grows, and our quality of life diminishes, democrats have become the doves of class warfare.


http://www.pbs.org/now/commentary/moyers20.html

[Maccagirl]

1. Mr. Moyers, you are a good one!

This needs to be sent to every Dem (in name) on Capitol Hill.

[Q]

3. We need to search...

...our souls and ask if we're doing enough to fight the 'suffocating consensus'.

- The Bush* government has NEVER had a mandate to force this country to the FAR RIGHT. They've accomplished this...not by democratic means...but by force, intimidation and bribery.

- Whether you call this nation a democracy or a republic...the intention was always a government of, by and for the people. The Bush* Republicans have circumvented the Constitution and corrupted the voice of the people...the free press.

- It's up to the Democrats to break this stranglehold on our nation, expose the corruption and bring the fight to those who would use war for political gain and profiteering.

[TN al]

2. Bill Moyers...

...hit the nail on the head. Elected Democrats should hang their head in shame or loudly explain why this does not apply to them.

[LeahMira]

5. Only elected Democrats?

Elected Democrats should hang their head in shame or loudly explain why this does not apply to them.

Maybe the comments are not limited to the elected Democrats. If there are some elected Democrats who are taking on the values of Republicans (Zell Miller comes immediately to mind but there are some others), why are Democratic people not willing to attack them publicly for their behavior as well? Does anyone really expect the elected officials to "police" themselves?

[unblock]

4. in a nutshell, money matters ... too much

a LARGE part of the problem is that money matters, campaigns are expensive, and it's especially important for democrats, who cannot also get good 'free' press due to the right-wing domination of the press these days.

consequently, democrats must hustle funds. unemployed workers, workers without pay raises for several years, and so on do NOT contribute buckets of donations, certainly not the way corporations do.

criticizing democratic leaders for not getting out there and feeding red meat to the base is one thing, but it's simplistic. there's more chicken-and-egg going on here.

we must figure out a way to make money matter less, to get better free press, and so on as well. when those conditions change, then circumstances are better for democratic leaders to appeal to the true majority.

right now, they must appeal instead for funds. and funds do not come from the majority these days.

[BeFree]

8. Refreshing, unblock

Glad to see someone else understanding the reality of politics in America, today.

Far too much, I see nothing more than knee-jek reactions from members of DU when it comes to working within the established confines of modern American politics.

As for money in political campaigns: Here's what I am thinking... every dollar in income will forever more be listed as a contribution to my political campaign. Tax free, right of free speech, and all that. If we all began to list income as contributions, the campaign contribution laws would be changed, eh?

[Q]

6. America as a One-Party State

America as a One-Party State

Today's hard right seeks total dominion. It's packing the courts and rigging the rules. The target is not the Democrats but democracy itself.

By Robert Kuttner
Issue Date: 2.1.04

America has had periods of single-party dominance before. It happened under FDR's New Deal, in the Republican 1920s and in the early 19th-century "Era of Good Feeling." But if President Bush is re-elected, we will be close to a tipping point of fundamental change in the political system itself. The United States could become a nation in which the dominant party rules for a prolonged period, marginalizes a token opposition and is extremely difficult to dislodge because democracy itself is rigged. This would be unprecedented in U.S. history.

In past single-party eras, the majority party earned its preeminence with broad popular support. Today the electorate remains closely divided, and actually prefers more Democratic policy positions than Republican ones. Yet the drift toward an engineered one-party Republican state has aroused little press scrutiny or widespread popular protest.

We are at risk of becoming an autocracy in three key respects. First, Republican parliamentary gimmickry has emasculated legislative opposition in the House of Representatives (the Senate has other problems). House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas has both intimidated moderate Republicans and reduced the minority party to window dressing, rather like the token opposition parties in Mexico during the six-decade dominance of the PRI.

Second, electoral rules have been rigged to make it increasingly difficult for the incumbent party to be ejected by the voters, absent a Depression-scale disaster, Watergate-class scandal or Teddy Roosevelt-style ruling party split. After two decades of bipartisan collusion in the creation of safe House seats, there are now perhaps just 25 truly contestable House seats in any given election year (and that's before the recent Republican super gerrymandering). What once was a slender and precarious majority -- 229 Republicans to 205 Democrats (including Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who votes with Democrats) -- now looks like a Republican lock. In the Senate, the dynamics are different but equally daunting for Democrats. As the Florida debacle of 2000 showed, the Republicans are also able to hold down the number of opposition votes, with complicity from Republican courts. Reform legislation, the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), may actually facilitate Republican intimidation of minority voters and reduce Democratic turnout. And the latest money-and-politics regime, nominally a reform, may give the right more of a financial advantage than ever. --- http://www.prospect.org/print/V15/2/kuttner-r.html

[Q]

7. Hey, They're Taking Slash-and-Burn to Extremes!

From the Washingtonpost.com

Hey, They're Taking Slash-and-Burn to Extremes!

By Charles Babington

Sunday, December 21, 2003; Page B01


Congress's minority parties have suffered indignities for decades, but few could top the insult that Republicans dealt to Democrats this fall. When House-Senate negotiators began a series of closed-door sessions to craft an ambitious Medicare overhaul, GOP Rep. Bill Thomas summarily announced that he would allow not a single House Democrat -- and only two Senate Democrats -- in. His edict was a jaw-dropper, given Congress's long history of letting each party appoint its own representatives to these all-important "conference committees." To add injury to insult, the banned lawmakers included the Senate's Democratic leader, Tom Daschle.

Whether it amounted to cool Republican efficiency or an assault on fairness and democracy, politicians and the American public had better get used to it. Thomas and his GOP colleagues brushed aside Daschle's complaints and enacted their bill -- aided by a now-infamous three-hour House roll call -- with less minority party involvement than on any major issue in recent times. Congressional Republicans and the Bush administration now appear poised to press other initiatives with barely a pretense of seeking Democratic input. The strategy could go on for years if Republicans keep their House and Senate majorities in 2004 and Bush wins reelection -- certainly a plausible scenario.

What's taking place is more than bare-knuckled partisanship, though there's plenty of that. A potent confluence of events and personalities is changing Congress. Will that matter beyond the Beltway, or even Capitol Hill? Republicans say the Medicare bill would have come out the same even with a semblance of greater Democratic input. But some congressional scholars see tactics that, while perhaps ruthlessly expedient in the short run, seem destined to generate future animosity and retribution. "I honestly believe that policy suffers when enacted in this way," says Thomas Mann, who monitors Congress for the Brookings Institution. "There really is something to be said for a more open, deliberative process where you give full airing to issues and you try to build a larger majority. I don't believe major social changes are sustainable with margins like this."

Congress's majority parties have always dominated legislative action, but they typically have given the minority some voice -- even if it has amounted to little more than a floor vote on a sure-to-lose alternative bill, or conference committee recommendations destined to be rejected along party lines. Often, majority party leaders have made enough concessions to attract a few votes from across the aisle, withstand some intra-party defections and tout a piece of legislation as "bipartisan." (The conference on the original Medicare bill in 1965, when Democrats controlled the White House and Congress, included Republicans. Roughly half of all House and Senate Republicans voted for the final legislation.)

Recently, however, GOP leaders have largely dispensed with such niceties. Senate Republicans rewrote a massive (and still-pending) energy bill with zero Democratic participation. And top House and Senate Republicans negotiated the complex Medicare bill with only two conciliation-minded Democrats -- Sens. John Breaux (La.) and Max Baucus (Mont.) -- in the room. (When some House Democrats barged in one day, Thomas, the Ways and Means chairman, halted the meeting until they left.) --- http://www.yuricareport.com/Corruption/RepublicanOneParty.html

[keithyboy]

9. Dems really aren't much different. Hidden under the cloak of Christianity

and democracy. Dems share the same sorrid history as the other bastards: I recommend this book highly. It gives a startling discussion and information on a history that seems to be repeating itself in the ME and particularly in Iraq:
<snip>

‘The “Church closed its eyes” to the prostitution and social injustices carried out by big business and military and political leaders against the people and commended the perpetrators for their “virtuosities.” It excoriated the poor for their vices, but disregarded their virtues. It demanded obedience and obeisance to the higher authorities, while acquiescing and participating in the vices and corruption of the higher authorities. It assiduously accumulated wealth for itself, but counseled poverty and resignation for the people. It remained silent in the face of wanton cruelty and tyranny, but displayed impatience with public disobedience to unjust authorities.”

“”The aboriginal inhabitants were almost completely annihilated, their way of life destroyed, and their land and its wealth appropriated by the European conquerors. Poor European workers and prisoners of war were condemned to a life of servitude in the new land. The white pioneer small farmers, utilized by the ruling families of Europe and North America to eliminate the Amerindians, were themselves evicted from the land and transformed into proletarians, sharecroppers and a host of social undesirable.”

“Thus, the economic development of Western Europe and the United States was achieved at the expense of the Amerindians, Africans, Asians and poor Europeans. It was realized through genocide, plunder, human enslavement and other forms of exploitation now universally denied, but once justified as features of progress.”

Patrick “Pops” Hylton from his book “The Role of Religion in Caribbean History”

[Q]

10. That's the 'secret' of the New Democrats...

...pretending that nothing has changed...when many of us 'older' Democrats don't even recognize the party anymore. They've literally given up the fight...the struggle of the poor and working class.

- The 'new' Democrats hate the likes of Moyers, Byrd and Kennedy...who remind them of what they've given up for a few silver coins. Political expediency is all that matters now.