Last week the Anchorage Daily News published my Op-ed called Both parties serve entities other than voters. Its message may not be very popular on Daily Kos because I come to the conclusion that both parties have failed the middle class.
I wrote this because I believe that we spend too much effort competing on a playing field that is completely rigged against us. We keep trying to elect more Democrats only to be disappointed when nothing changes because we haven't first fixed that failed system. We can pretend that Democrats are just hapless victims of Republican obstruction and that President Obama is the worst negotiator in history or we can realize that too many Democrats actively undermine progressive ideals and President Obama has made little effort to govern as a Democrat. The vacuum formed by his failure to project a progressive message has allowed the Republican narrative to once again become dominant just 3 years after it nearly destroyed the global economy. While bribing politicians is still legal, we shouldn't expect any other outcome.
The last 12 years have clearly shown that our political problems cannot be solved by just voting for different politicians or a different party. Our problems are systemic and our failed system needs fundamental reform. Regardless of your partisan affiliation or your main issues, everyone's first priority should be to fix our system of legalized bribery.
During the last 12 years both major parties have been given a chance to govern and both have failed miserably. First President Bush and Republicans gained control of all branches of government. The result was $5 trillion added to the debt, two large protracted wars, attacks on civil liberties and privacy, unprecedented inequality, stagnant wages, crumbling infrastructure, 50 million Americans without health insurance, and the largest recession since the Great Depression.
After their abysmal failure, President Obama and Congressional Democrats were elected in the hope that they would change Washington.
Instead, with few exceptions, they just continued the race toward Kleptocracy. More continual war, more spying on Americans, and a further erosion of the rule of law. They continued the Bush bailout of corrupt Wall Street bankers, extended the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and continued to ignore a struggling Main Street. Democrats did extend health insurance to millions of Americans but only after huge giveaways to health insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
To pay for the disastrous policies of the last 12 years, Republicans now want to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the last vestiges of economic security for working Americans, and cut education funding, the last chance for economic mobility. Democratic politicians, as usual, are offering little resistance.
There clearly are large differences on social issues, but on the economic issues that affect the most people, the votes of the two parties are much more similar than their rhetoric. ...On every important economic decision in Washington, lobbyists won and the average voter lost. In most cases the outcome was pre-determined before the public debate ever started. The health care debate was limited to what the health insurers would allow, financial reform was undermined by Wall Street, alternative energy solutions were blocked by energy companies, and even our national defense policy was dictated by defense contractors.
Meanwhile, every institution that supports the middle class has been systematically undermined or dismantled. Independent media, independent politicians and labor unions have all been marginalized.
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In what may be the last nail in the coffin, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons and should be allowed to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns. ...politicians listen to big donors first, lobbyists second and voters last.
We need term limits, limits on campaign spending and the length of elections, instant runoff voting and other election systems that allow third parties to compete, and an end to the revolving door between government and lobbying. But most importantly, we need public financing of elections to replace the corrupting influence of money on our politics. We need to create a system in which good people can once again get elected without begging special interests for money...