There is no difference between the the two major American political parties. To wit:
The GOP class of 2010’s ideological convergence extends across a broad terrain. All of the Senate candidates have endorsed a balanced-budget constitutional amendment (except Fiorina, who hasn’t taken a position). Every one except Hoeven has pledged to oppose any tax increases. And all 21 have said they support permanently extending the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts for all families.
In 2005, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., won votes from half a dozen Republican senators for his cap-and-trade legislation limiting emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global climate change. But all 21 of the leading GOP Senate challengers have declared their opposition to cap-and-trade (and, for that matter, so now has McCain). Even Kirk, who voted for cap-and-trade legislation in the House last year, has renounced his support.
Nineteen of the 20 Republican Senate nominees who have expressed an opinion on the widespread scientific consensus that greenhouse gases are altering the world’s climate have declared the science either inconclusive or dead wrong, often in vitriolic terms. (Kirk is the only exception.) Ron Johnson, a business owner who won his party’s nomination in Wisconsin, says that accumulating carbon dioxide emissions are a less likely cause of any climate change than “sunspot activity or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate.”
All 18 GOP candidates who have taken a position support expanded drilling for oil and gas on public lands. All 19 who have taken a position want to expand construction of nuclear power plants. In each case, these positions represent a nearly complete rejection of the views of the leading environmental groups — many of which worked closely with significant numbers of congressional Republicans in earlier decades. “Those Republicans are all gone,” says veteran environmental lobbyist Dan Becker.
On immigration, as well, the 2010 class captures a sharp right turn in the GOP. As recently as 2006, 23 Republican senators voted — with the enthusiastic support of President Bush — for comprehensive immigration legislation that linked tougher border security, a guest-worker program, and a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants now in the United States. But now, all 20 GOP nominees who have taken a position say that Washington should toughen border security before considering any broader immigration reform. What’s more, all 19 who have expressed a view say they will oppose any “amnesty” or pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants even if Congress considers more-comprehensive reform at a later date.
Just sayin’….
Two political scientists – Bartels and Gilens – did a study once looking at how senators’ votes corresponded to the opinions of their constituents. For Republicans, the votes were strongly influenced by the opinions of their wealthy constituents. The opinions of the middle-class and poor did not count. Democrats were about equally influenced by the opinions of the wealthy and the middle class (once again, poor folks did not count).
Here is the dilemma in a nutshell: democrats do the right thing some of the time, which is far better than Republicans who never do the right thing. It’s easy to get discouraged by this, and personalize the issue, but basically it is just a reflection of the institutional forces at work in our political system, which favor wealthy and corporate interests far more than we realize.
It’s easy to get discouraged by this, and personalize the issue, but basically it is just a reflection of the institutional forces at work in our political system, which favor wealthy and corporate interests far more than we realize.
Which is exactly why people believe Nader is right. Just look at the tax increase for the rich thing. It’s hugely popular yet the Democrats just diddle. How are people supposed to believe that the Democrats are much different when they can’t, or won’t, enact popular legislation?
Nader’s right, but I don’t have any respect for him. I have far more respect for someone like Russ Feingold than I do for Nader. Nader doesn’t practice what he preaches.
And just to be clear, I am just saying why people would get the idea, not my own opinion on Nader.
Well, my point is that 50% good/50% bad is not the same at 100% bad. Nader would say that the two parties are equivalent. That’s not the case, but it is also true that there is no true progressive party, which can be discouraging.
The tax cuts are a good example. Yes, it’s discouraging that some dems, say 20-30%, want to give tax cuts to the rich. But all the repubs want this…so what are you going to do…not support the dems and have the repubs win?
But I agree that it’s hard to make a contrast if you are 50% the same as the other guy. On the other hand, I don’t think a truly progressive party could survive in the current system…they would get slaughtered.
Well, the teaparty is surviving so far despite being way further off the charts than any conceivable lefty movement in America. They are not a real party, but have managed to enormously change one of the big ones and keep the potential to become an actual party in their own right.
I don’t think that’s because they reflect the considered views of Americans. It’s because they know how to tap into the entirely appropriate rage that that is igniting the country, and the liberals/Dems just try to co-opt the anger with soothing words. Fighters tend to win fights. Liberals/Dems would rather just do therapy sessions.
Congressional Fortitude (or lack thereof) is equally distributed across the parties, that’s for sure. For everyone complaining about how spineless the democrats are, how spineless are those republicans who vote against things they actually agree with because they are scared of big bad mitch mcconnell/john boehner or of the tea party idiots?
The difference is that the Republicans’ cowardice is actually rational. They are getting ousted from office for their moderation. The Dems are hoping to be kept in office for their moderation.
Which is also rational—if you’re a Congressional Democrat and fear losing your seat because your voting record is too liberal, then you, like many Blue Dogs, announce you’re against the Obama tax cut on the first $250,000 of income.
I happen to think they’re wrong, but it has a certain internal logic.
Except the Blue Dogs are hardly ever right. They come from poorer districts, yet want to raise taxes on their constituents? That’s what the ads will say. So tell me who the dumb MF’ers are? Hint: it ain’t the DFH’s. Look, I don’t expect many Blue Dogs to vote with us on things like DADT. But economic matters? That’s another story. Yet, they never do unless forced to.
I hear you Calvin. I didn’t say I agreed with the internal logic…but that’s what we seem to be up against.
I actually expect the opposite. They’re Blue Dogs not because of their constituents’ views, but because they raise money outside of their constituency. Thus I expect them to vote for Big Money’s interests, yet be there with us on social issues.
Why would the Blue Dogs be there with us on social issues? Do you really think John Barrow or Jim Marshall(just using two examples) are going to vote with us on DADT? Walt Minnick? Are you saying that rural areas are more pro-gay than urban and suburban areas?
No, but I am saying that Blue Dogs never seem to have their constituents in their interests when they vote, and that their money comes from outside of their districts.
The only reason they bullshit on economic issues is because of this.
I guess this is why they might as well be Republicans: They vote Republican on economic issues because of their corporate daddies, and then they try and rev their constituents up with wedge issues.
I’ve advocated that for a while. We need to find progressive populist candidates who won’t bad mouth the Democratic brand.
That’s not necessarily true of the Senators from Maine whose largest block of supporters are actually democrats.
So, the Republicans are still moving further right, and the Dems are still following them, albeit slowly. There is no left-leaning major party and no reason to expect this to change.
I just don’t see how we fix this solely by dint of action at the ballot box. We’re going to have to organize in other ways to confront the plutarchy.
Agreed. The question then becomes what strategies to use?
Given that we do have a center-left president, it seems to me that organizing to confront private sector actors in ways that allow/force the administration to act as our ally (even if reluctantly), makes the most sense.
I’m thinking of the sitdown strikes at Ford in the 1930s, and lunch counter sit-ins at Woolworth’s in the 1960s as historical examples. A current example is Metro IAF’s “10% Percent Is Enough” campaign, targeted at banks, with the goal of reinstating usury laws.
You remember Huffington’s recent thing about moving your money(if you have any there) out of the TBTF banks, right? Have you ever seen what has happened? People are doing that. There is one problem. Have any idea what it is? If you don’t, I’ll come back and answer it later.
I don’t know, and I’m interested to know the answer.
Off the top of my head I can think of a couple of possibilities:
(By contrast, in the 1980s when INFACT ran a boycott of GE because of GE’s business lines connected with nuclear weapons the key pressure point was not individuals buying Westinghouse light bulbs instead of GE light bulbs. It was Catholic nuns who run hospitals refusing to buy GE products.
That included light bulbs, but where it really hurt GE was in its medical imaging business (X-ray, CT and MRI machines). Jack Welch flew a group of nuns to GE headquarters to negotiate the issue. When it became clear the nuns wouldn’t compromise, GE got out of the nuclear weapons business—and Catholic hospitals resumed buying from GE Medical Systems.)
The answer is a hybrid of # 3. I’ve read elsewhere that the Fed is helping prop up the TBTF banks. And the sums being taken out aren’t trivial. Meaning that probably a lot of people have taken the idea and run with it, whether they heard about it from Arianna or decided to do it on their own.
Thanks, good to know.
Personally, I think we’re going to have to start thinking in terms of general strikes. It’s just about the only bullet left in the chamber.
Those are not two separate things. You don’t win at the ballot box unless you organize around issues between elections and organize well enough to get the majority of voters in that election to the ballot box.
The real issue is the self-selected concentration of progressives into only a few well-defined areas where they have power. This leaves progressives outside those areas with insufficient numbers to overcome slurs and stigma. Which, in turn, causes progressives to hide their politics from their families, friends, neighbors, and co-workers — the very people needed if you are to become organized.
At what point does one walk away from a rigged game?
Walk away from a rigged game and you lose.
Figure out how to play the game better and you have a chance of winning.
Organize and build enough power, and you can change the rules so the game is less rigged.
But who’s playing, exactly? Can you think of a single issue on which the liberals have taken a fighting stance to the left of the Nixon administration?
When leaving the game doesn’t have worse consequences than staying in it.
In politics? When you’re ready to have everything that matters to you flushed down the toilet.
Nader is irrelevant. Why do you keep flogging this red herring? It doesn’t matter if there’s no difference or some difference when neither side has what it takes to fix our society’s fatal diseases — the electoral system, Congress, economic principles, overpopulation, sustainable survivability, for starters. You’re of course absolutely right that we can’t afford to let the honest-to-god crazies run the country, but OTOH they are not the core of the problem.
The problem is the cowardice, lack of conviction, and cowardice of the American left and the Democratic Party. The GOP/teabaggers are simply filling a vacuum. The “left” blogs spend, I’d guess, 80% or more of their time and space pointing out the craziness of the other side without coming up with convincing alternatives. We are inevitably reduced to making the best of craven compromise and the results of obsessive delusions about being “one nation”. We talk about how the GOP has purged its moderates, but the Dem party has been equally effective in shutting out its social democrats.
The teabaggers’ incoherent anger appeals because at least it acknowledges that there’s real reason for rage, while all we can do is nibble around the edges and then squabble over the threadbare scraps of a garment that was shoddy and inadequate from its very beginning. The teabaggers are right when they call for revolution. We’ve sunk that far. The relevant question now is not which party is less crazy, but whose revolution wins. We’re losing that game big time because we can’t even admit that it’s become the only game in town.