Thanks to Bloomberg for clearing the air about what's going on at the heart of the Democratic Party. On the one side you have the Clintonistas from Wall Street; on the other is organized labor and the interests of 90+% of Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike.
Democrats are returning to power on Capitol Hill just as two powerful wings of the party, labor and Wall Street, are colliding over economic issues.
The dispute over trade and budget policies prompted a high- level private meeting earlier this month between AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who is now chairman of the executive committee at New York-based Citigroup Inc.
Labor Challenges `Rubinomics' as Democrats Gain Power
That puts it in a nutshell right at the top of the article. Wall Street is very happy, thank you very much, with free trade and federal deficits. For them it's win-win. For American workers it's lose-lose, but who's counting.
There's no point in repeating the litany of everything that is wrong with NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO and the whole panoply of international agreements that American capitalists have put into place. We know the effect: gutted living standards, gutted production, gutted country. Oh yeah, gutted American kids in the streets of Baghdad and Kabul.
So here's the question, will the Democratic Party remain Republican-Lite and continue to represent the less than 10% or will the progressives win out and represent the 90+%? Stay tuned. It's going to be a fun-filled 110th Congress.
PS: Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday.