One of the gravest political mistakes this party makes is to presume that those who cannot vote for the Democratic Party must for for it, no matter how lame, how pathetic or right wing it gets. Surely past failures would disabuse them of that fact. But sure as the sun rises, the neoliberals who dominate this party's leadership and policy making swap old clubhouses for new ones, retool their PR campaigns and fire up the fearmongering and charm campaigns again and try to peddle the same failed policies that continually get them in trouble with their own electoral base.
Please note I said 'electoral base', not 'activist base'. What I mean by that is the poor and working class that can deliver them not only victory, but crushing victory. Bullet-proof mandates and quorum-proof majorities, on top of control of the White House. This was shown in dramatic fashion in the 2008 election. Failure to protect those constituencies - in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression - also led to the election disaster of 2010.
But rather than learn from 2010, this party has doubled down on its right-wing bets and found new ways to throw the economically endangered - which now hover near 40-50% of the population - under a bus. Passionate speeches and declarations of the 'line in the sand' are all fine and well, but if that line in the sand is too far into Republican territory; if the agenda going forward does not serve those who have been harmed by this corruption-caused economic crisis; if the agenda does not acknowledge and address the structural destruction of people's economic lives AND their desired social needs; then it looks like smoke and mirrors to those of us in the cheap seats.
The greatest mistake this party makes is to treat the poor, the working class and their advocates as 'captured' constituencies. To be ignored once in power and lied to when elections roll around. 43% of the people who voted for Democratic Congressional candidates in 2008 stayed home in 2010. By comparison, the Republicans lost only 13% of their 2008 Congressional vote totals. Some in this party's electoral base, crossed the aisle and voted with their anger. Most just stayed home.
To those who would say the poor and working class cannot be trusted for their votes, and therefore need no consideration in terms of policy, I say to you: you don't know the poor and working class. Loyalty is a prized personal value among the poor and working class. It goes hand-in-hand with a statement of friendship. Friends who aren't loyal aren't friends at all. The value of loyalty grows exponentially the closer one gets to the street and the economic bottom.
But the opposite of loyalty is betrayal. Those who betray become hated. And retribution for that betrayal becomes a just reward. For three generations, the working class and the poor were loyal to this party. This was the reward for the New Deal, the expansion of educational opportunities and veteran benefits, for the promises of the Great Society and for the enfranchisement of people of color into the political life of this society.
30+ years of neoliberal social and economic policy have gutted the support for this party among the poor and working class. We have been left with the hollow rhetorical words of the New Deal and the Great Society, while this party's policies more resemble the socio-economic policies of moderate Republicanism, with a dash of liberal symbolism. Policies that not only change nothing for close to half the people on the bottom, they often make their lives measurably worse. Particularly when it comes to economic policy matters.
The 2010 election was a warning shot across the bow of this party that neoliberalism is a vote-killing political philosophy, made worse by its policy expression. When set against the hollow echo of its rhetoric, it reads to the cheap seats like hypocrisy and its expression as betrayal.
When the best hope for the 2012 Presidential campaign is a far-right lunatic candidate to represent Republicans, the neoliberals in this party are clutching to power and praying for a marginal victory to allow them to continue their job-gutting, living wage-killing policies. If Republicans post a candidate who can project a moderate facade, all bets are off.
But such small-minded and selfish political ambitions bring with them small coattails. Because the growing mass of poor, declining working classes and shrinking working middle classes are not as 'captured' a voting bloc as its ivy-league elites believe. Even if President Obama gets a second term, how many Congressional seats will he bring with him, if the overall vote totals are down? A marginal victory for the White House may not return Congress to the Democrats. Kowtowing to a Republican Congress and dancing further to the right will only further the gap between this party's leadership and its electoral base and make future election victories harder to achieve.
A sector of the working class will return betrayal with betrayal and cross the aisles again in 2012. Most of the poor and many in the working class will just stay home, because they believe neither party represents their interests any more. A small sector of principled progressive/liberals will vote third party or join the economically abandoned and vote with their feet for the betrayals of the past 4 years. While fear campaigns will salvage some of those votes back, these efforts will not recapture the 2008 electoral mandate in any way, shape or form. At best, the party can hope for marginal victory. At worst, 2010 was a dress rehearsal for elections to come.
The gap lies in the distance between the Democratic party of old and the 'new' Democratic Party. We hold on to rhetoric, but we have abandoned the policies that made this party great. The poor and the working class can clearly measure the gap, in their pocket books, their ever deepening debt and their collapsing futures.
So how shall we contrast the Democratic Party of the past with the 'new' Democratic Party?
Please read on.....
The Democratic Party of the past would have gotten a WPA-style jobs program going as its first act upon taking political power. The 'new' Democratic party would never do such a thing. Instead, we get moralizing lectures about 'responsibility' and 'shared sacrifice' that are clearly piling up entirely on our backs.
The Democratic Party of the past would have let teachers teach and be the judge of student achievement and poured resources toward that effort. The 'new' Democratic party bought into 2/3 of the Republican education agenda and poured money into corporations to subvert, circumvent and control teachers, while blaming them for the poverty of the schools they teach in. Nothing substantial has been done to address the destruction of poorer schools, let alone deal with the poverty that lies at the heart of unequal outcomes between schools.
The Democratic Party of the past would have stood on the principle of equal access to higher education. The 'new' Democratic party shunts the poor off to underfunded community colleges, while chaining all but the richest students into a lifetime of student debt many - if not most - will never escape, while exploding the costs of higher education with pro-corporate policies, privatization, the explosion of administrative costs and the destruction of teacher salaries. The 'new' Democratic Party never speaks of the civic responsibility of education - to provide for an educated citizenry capable of participating in the political life and decisions of the country. They speak only of training workers, an agenda no different than the Republican Party and perfectly consistent with elite corporate interests.
The Democratic Party of the past would have stood its ground on the matter of living wages for all Americans. The 'new' Democratic party has been a happy co-collaborator in the destruction of living wage work in this country, across the employment spectrum. This has been going on for decades, the collapse of the economy in 2007/8 simply exposed the sinkhole that has been growing since this party embraced neoliberalism under Carter.
The Democratic Party of the past would have created many more public jobs - at living wages - to serve the needs of the people. The 'new' Democratic party killed a million public jobs - in the middle of an economic depression - and was the leading agent of public job destruction, until the Republicans outflanked them on the state level and went whole-hog against all public workers.
The Democratic Party of the past would have responded to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and the wholesale destruction of thousands of cities, towns and communities - over the past few decades - by investing in those communities, providing work, rebuilding from within and creating new opportunities for grassroots economic activity. The 'new' Democratic Party serves the same economic agenda of corporate consolidation, globalization and the wipe-out of Main Street, for the same corporations that finance and support both parties.
The Democratic Party of the past would have defended homeowners against predatory banks. The 'new' Democratic Party defends banks guilty of fraud against the homeowners they defrauded. Watching Axelrod and Obama defend the status quo as the mortgage crisis was exposed as mortgage fraud just before the 2010 election, was the absolute kiss of death. Never mind the immorality of their actions, it was pure political suicide.
The Democratic Party of the past would have made sure people had heat and food when they were wanting. The 'new' Democratic party cuts food stamps and fuel assistance, even as these costs skyrocket and the trajectory of global warming warns us all these two issues will become more serious and dire in the coming decades. To add insult to injury, the 'new' Democrats not only depend on cost of living calculations for food that bear no resemblance to prices in the markets, they use their absurd calculations to determine poverty as a whole, even as the cost of shelter outstrips all essential life needs, except health care.
The Democratic Party led the charge on progressive tax rates and making sure the rich paid more. The 'new' Democratic Party gives lip-service to this issue, while cutting the budget on the backs of the poor, the unemployed and the economically endangered and putting corporate tax deadbeats - like GM's Immelt - in positions of enormous political power. They also filled their cabinet and economy recovery teams with Goldman Sachs alumni and beneficiaries, despite the centrality of Goldman Sachs to the corruption-driven economic collapse.
The Democratic Party of the past made the same mistakes as the 'new' Democratic Party, and bought into imperial war, leading to their swift defeat and destruction by the Republican Party. This led to disaster for LBJ, despite his wonderful domestic programming and his courage on civil rights.
Endless wars have no victors, only casualties. Our budget woes are the direct fault of several decades of out of control defense spending. It was capped off by the 'new' Democrats capitulation to the Bush administration on tax cuts and multiple wars, which exploded the budget beyond all measure. That moment also marks the first time in recorded human history that a government cut taxes and started wars. That's right folks, the first time that's happened since the Sumerians ruled Mesopotamia 12,000 years ago.
The Democratic party of the past created the working middle class, the 'new' Democratic Party is destroying it. Deal with that issue head on, folks. Because these are the people most likely to switch sides in an election. The poor will, most likely, just stay home.
The Democratic Party of the past was the party of FDR, JFK, the New Deal and the Great Society. The 'new' Democratic Party is the party of Wall Street, K Street and the military industrial complex. The 'new' Democratic party is the party tax cuts for the superrich (sorry, you agreed to it, now you own it too), programmatic cuts for the poor, endless corporate welfare that produced no jobs, imperial war and smarmy public relations campaigns that recall the memory of the old Democratic Party, while their policies resemble last year's Republican Party. Bankruptcy Joe Biden is your poster boy. Joe Lieberman is more a 'new' Democrat than most of you are willing to accept.
Throw in the perversion of universal health care until it is no more than just another round of corporate welfare backed up by a federal mandate to reach into our pockets for more corporate subsidy; a 'green energy' policy based on phenomenally dangerous nuclear power and siting biomass and other energy plants in the zip codes where they don't matter and we have a party that depends on the bottom 50% for its political survival but refuses to do anything for them, except find new ways to chain them to corporate power. Talk about stupid politicians!
Unfortunately for them, I am not stupid. I am not fooled by their hollow rhetoric, nor can I be cowed by fear campaigns into voting for people who have destroyed my ability to earn a living wage and who collaborate with corporate predators to find new ways to chain me in perpetual debt.
I'd tell the Democratic Party to pick a side, but its clear by now they have: Wall Street, K Street and the military/security complex. Fine. Good luck to you. Try and win an election without the support of the bottom 50%. Even if you get half of us to come to your rescue, it won't be enough to win an election. Republicans have a party they can vote for, its called the Republican Party. Democrats - unfortunately - do not.
To those who believe the hype of the undefeatable President Obama, I remind you: 43% of those who voted for the Democrats in 2008 stayed home in anger in 2010, while the Republicans ran a congressional campaign against Obama to great success. Beware of optimistic poll numbers that show a Democratic plurality or majority. This next election will be won by how many people show up to the polls and vote Democratic.
If 2010 is any guide - and if you have any wits at all, it should be your only guide - this party is in far more trouble than the optimists and hype-mongers would have you believe.
Too many people across too many key Democratic constituencies are ranging from extreme disappointment to furious rage. None of this has been abated or addressed, except with hype, vague promises and fearmongering. Its not a coalition if none of my issues are addressed. And for half this country, none of their baseline issues are being addressed, while we watched the rich and the guilty get rewarded for their crimes.
This is not the change I voted for. It is exactly what I thought I was voting against.