Well, the fix is in folks. As you may know, the Super Congress we're all so excited for needs only a simple majority (i.e. 7-5) to be granted an up-or-down, no-amendments-added vote in Congress. So naturally with the Republicans who will always either vote in lockstep, or have mad dissenters hollering to go even further to the right, we are going to need 6 strong Democrats on our side (3 of which, picked by the Senate majority leader) at the very least voting in lockstep to defend core Democratic values, lest we dive even further down the economic crevasse. Good thing we have progressive champions like Harry Reid to count on, right? Right?
Yeah...right. Well, the 3 senate democrats (the small 'd' is a clue!) have been announced. They are (as per Huffington Post) :
Senator Patty Murray - Senior senator from the great state of Washington, whose 4th largest contributor over her career is the company Boeing, Inc. Given that deep defense cuts acts as part of the "trigger" being pulled if this Super Congress doesn't cut enough from the middle class, I'm sure having a major corporate interest in our neverending, neoconservative global conquest as one of her biggest sugar daddies, will not play a role in her decision.
Senator John Kerry - One of the richest members of the Senate, whose 4th largest contributor over the past 5 years has been none other than Blackstone Group. The juggernaut hedge fund headed by deep, deep pocketed Social Security jihadist (and friend of Barack Obama's) Pete Peterson. Don't worry though, I'm sure when the Republicans propose SS cuts, he'll defy his corporate overlord and act like an actual Democrat. Also, there's this (from the HuffPo article):
In Kerry's home state of Massachusetts, meanwhile, the defense industry has tripled in size since 2000.
Again, we know rich, well-connected politicians generally have consciences and unsefishly do the right thing in adverse scenarios.
and now the star of the show...
wait for it...
Senator Max Baucus!! - You may remember this progressive stalwart from the health care debate, in which he had single-payer activists arrested on the charge of disrupting his quest to corporatize health-care so as to please his bosses and eliminate any inkling of cost-saving. I don't need to go on about Baucus, you know who he is.
Sarcasm aside, this is an absolute disaster, and our fate is essentially sealed. As stated earlier, the commission only needs a SIMPLE MAJORITY vote to get their up-or-down vote in Congress, a.k.a, only 1 Democrat needs to jump ship. Honestly, I could have written this same exact diary mentioning just Baucus alone. Reid could have had Bernie Sanders and Al Franken as his other two picks, and Pelosi could have picked Kucinich, Schakowsky and DeFazio...it wouldn't have made a lick of difference with a single hard right-wing DINO such as Baucus being on board. We might as well have picked Mitch McConnell.
So what can we expect? I guess that remains to be seen, but when you have one side brazenly declaring their hatred for keynesian economics and what's left of our social safety net, and the other side (and President) who are wishy-washy at BEST (and that's putting it mildly) about those very same things, I'd say put your stock in some cat food. It's gonna be a loooong decade.