On Thu, 13 Jul 2000, Gordon Fitch wrote:
> The Democrats work alongside the Republicans to construct a
> state of affairs in which there are such things as "poor
> nations" and "rich nations", that is, a variety of plantations
> and plantation-owners. The solution is not to establish the
> more humane slavemasters, but to abolish slavery.
Blah..blah..blah- calling Danny Davis and Gregory Meeks "slavemasters" takes a heck of a lot of chutzpah. Name names of plenty of individual Democrats who have made evil votes, but this constant lumping of folks elected from very different constituencies with very different kinds of financial backing into one category is just intellectually empty.
Just as there is no discernable difference between how Bernie Sanders votes from progressive Dems, there would be no discernible difference in voting patterns between elected Greens or any other party elected to Congress. The fact of the matter is that if 49% of the members are leninists, the real decision-maker will be the moderate 2% who decide the majorities on passage of bills.
Intellectually, the whole mindless mantra that Dems are just the same as the GOP seems to be an excuse by a lot of folks not to provide any empirical facts for their statements or apply any sophisticated analysis to the broad divisions in election and voting patterns across the 435 House and 100 Senate districts. Elections and power politics do not operate the same in Danny Davis's Chicago district as in Tom Delay's Texas district. The Congress is not structured as two Leninist parties that can whip their members to obedience for their joint aims, but is rather a bizarre byzantine alliance of factions that would be "parties" in a proportional parliamentary system, but in our district based system become internal constituencies of the two parties. And yes, money is a countervailing constituent, even a dominant faction in most cases, as well across the board, but that does not mean lack of analysis is a valid approach. Unless you want to argue that all of American politics is a marionette game where capital stages its own losses and everything from the Wagner Act to Social Security to Medicare to antitrust law were all pushed by financial interests, then the point is to analyze how grassroots constituencies fight for power against financial power district by district, vote by vote.
People are going to die because of the GOP voting down of debt relief. You can play rhetorical games to deny there is a difference between voting for death or for relief from debt, but the difference is very real on this vote.
Morally hygenic politics where you only vote for guaranteed losers may make you feel all fuzzy and warm inside, but it doesn't change policy or end murder, injustice or economic inequality.
-- Nathan Newman