My party has lost its soul: Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and the victory of Wall Street Democrats

[nationalize the fed]

A former Clinton aide on how Democrats lost their way chasing Wall Street cash, and new populism the party needs

Bill Curry Salon.com Jul 27, 2014

Ralph Nader, Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Cory Booker (Credit: AP/Evan Vucci/Lauren Victoria Burke/Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Stephan Savoia/Reuters/Eduardo Munoz)

1.

In 2006 the Atlantic magazine asked a panel of “eminent historians” to name the 100 most influential people in American history. Included alongside George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Mark Twain and Elvis Presley was Ralph Nader, one of only three living Americans to make the list. It was airy company for Nader, but if you think about it, an easy call.

Though a private citizen, Nader shepherded more bills through Congress than all but a handful of American presidents. If that sounds like an outsize claim, try refuting it. His signature wins included landmark laws on auto, food, consumer product and workplace safety; clean air and water; freedom of information, and consumer, citizen, worker and shareholder rights. In a century only Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson passed more major legislation....

...In 1985 moderate Democrats including Bill Clinton and Al Gore founded the Democratic Leadership Council, which proposed innovative policies while forging ever closer ties to business. Clinton would be the first Democratic presidential nominee since FDR and probably ever to raise more money than his Republican opponent. (Even Barry Goldwater outraised Lyndon Johnson.) In 2008 Obama took the torch passed to Clinton and became the first Democratic nominee to outraise a GOP opponent on Wall Street. His 2-to-1 spending advantage over John McCain broke a record Richard Nixon set in his drubbing of George McGovern.

Throughout the 1980s Nader watched as erstwhile Democratic allies vanished or fell into the welcoming arms of big business. By the mid-’90s the whole country was in a swoon over the new baby-faced titans of technology and global capital. If leading Democrats thought technology threatened anyone’s privacy or employment or that globalization threatened anyone’s wages, they kept it to themselves. In his contempt for oligarchs of any vintage and rejection of the economic and political democratization myths of the new technology Nader seemed an anachronism....
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/27/my_party_has_lost_its_soul_bill_clinton_barack_obama_and_the_victory_of_wall_street_democrats/

[Go Vols]

1. I voted for Jimmy Carter/nt

[nationalize the fed]

2. It's almost 2015

Be sure to have your insurance papers in order or you'll be fined.
Insurance companies are the New Sliced Democrat Bread

Maybe the 2014 candidates can think up more mandates.
Then watch as you're called a racist for objecting.

[Go Vols]

5. I have all my ducks in a row,

ty for your concern.

[Uncle Joe]

3. This is a good read.

Populism isn’t just liberalism on steroids; it too demands compromise. After any defeat, a party’s base consoles itself with the notion that if its candidates were pure they’d have won. It’s never true; most voters differ with both parties. Still, liberals dream of retaking Congress as the Tea Party dreams of retaking the White House: by being pure. Democratic elites are always up for compromise, but on the wrong issues. Rather than back GOP culture wars, as some do, or foreign wars, as many do, or big business, as nearly all do, they should back libertarians on privacy, small business on credit and middle-class families on taxes.

If Democrats can’t break up with Obama or make up with Nader, they should do what they do best: take a poll. They would find that beneath all our conflicts lies a hidden consensus. It prizes higher ethics, lower taxes and better governance; community and privacy; family values and the First Amendment; economic as well as cultural diversity. Its potential coalition includes unions, small business, nonprofits, the professions, the economically embattled and all the marginalized and excluded. Such a coalition could reshape our politics, even our nation.

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/27/my_party_has_lost_its_soul_bill_clinton_barack_obama_and_the_victory_of_wall_street_democrats/

Thanks for the thread, nationalize the fed.

[Go Vols]

7. I prefer liberal to progressive

I recollect liberals as being "for the people" in govt. activities.
Progressives seem to be happy as long as a D is leading?


Edit:

[Uncle Joe]

8. I don't care about labels, liberal, libertarian, populist, progressive, all I care about

are the policies.

All of these labels are for the people on at least some issues, if not all of them.

I believe the best way to "recapture the soul of the Democratic Party" as the OP strives to suggest, is to form new coalitions across these ideological boundaries and to find common ground where we can.

If we don't, that power vacuum will be left to the corporate supremacists in both parties to fill and nothing will change.

[Go Vols]

9. I hope it plays out this way/nt

[nationalize the fed]

12. "We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately"

or sleep under bridges outsourced to China

You're exactly right- labels are for people that can't think for themselves

Americans are (or were) Rebels that always question "authority".

[Uncle Joe]

13. That's a good post, nationalize the fed.

Franklin was a wise man.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

14. "Fart proudly" was sure a winner.

[Uncle Joe]

17. "Study says farting may improve your health"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025236802

KUSA – Whoever smelt it may have dealt it, but according to a new study, whenever someone 'cuts the cheese' they may be helping to save your life.

A study from the University of Exeter in Devon, United Kingdom has released a new study identifying the benefits of hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is toxic in large doses, but it is showing potential health benefits in small doses.

"When cells become stressed by disease, they draw in enzymes to generate minute quantities of hydrogen sulfide. This keeps the mitochondria ticking over and allows cells to live," University of Exeter medical school professor Matt Whiteman said.

"If this doesn't happen, the cells die and lose the ability to regulate survival and control inflammation. We have exploited this natural process by making a compound, called AP39, which slowly delivers very small amounts of this gas specifically to the mitochondria. Our results indicate that if stressed cells are treated with AP39, mitochondria are protected and cells stay alive."

(snip)

Of course Benjamin Franklin was being facetious, while making a statement regarding "pretentiousness and concerns with the impractical" even wise people can have a sense of humor, but if you could make the passing of gas smell like a rose, that would be the best of all worlds, fragrant and healthy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fart_Proudly

"A Letter To A Royal Academy" was composed in response to a call for scientific papers from the Royal Academy of Brussels. Franklin believed that the various academic societies in Europe were increasingly pretentious and concerned with the impractical. Revealing his "bawdy, scurrilous side," [3] Franklin responded with an essay suggesting that research and practical reasoning be undertaken into methods of improving the odor of human flatulence. [1]

[Spitfire of ATJ]

19. He was ahead of his time,...

....and hopefully downwind.

[Uncle Joe]

20. I agree, Spitfire, Franklin was ahead of his time. n/t

[G_j]

4. *@#%k Nader

(Thank Nader)

[DeSwiss]

10. ....

[DonCoquixote]

11. Too bad Ralph

is backign Ron Paul, who will ensure no consumer oversight of any sort is allowed.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. They tell the voters they're populists....

Then they get in and cater to Wall Street.

Then they're told their success is due to their catering to Wall Street and they believe it.

Then you tell them to do the populist things Wall Street HATES and they believe that will get them in trouble as if the voters ELECTED THEM to cater to Wall Street. Or worse,.....that they have to ask for Wall Street's permission.

[stillwaiting]

21. Nah, they don't believe it. Deep down they know they are corrupt assholes. nt

[johnlucas]

16. Quit worrying about this party. It's the principles that matter

Truth be told, it doesn't matter what the label of the political body is called.
I am not attached to the label of Democrat because it doesn't mean anything anymore.
You gotta take that back to the 1790s for its intended meaning.

I wrote a whole history of how these labels formed & how they shifted back & forth over the decades.
It was called a A long story about The Southern Strategy.

The political parties were formed on the basis of the Black slavery issue & monetary controls therein.
That's the whole working engine of the American system.
That's why when Blacks are involved prominently in a political scene, the parties shift & realign.
We're going through another one right now with that Black President called Barack Obama.

It was the Federalists vs. the Anti-Federalists.
In other words those who wanted Central governmental control through a 'feder' or a league vs. those who did not preferring government control be DE-centralized wanting more of a CON-federacy (states in league WITH each other).

Naming yourself after the opposition is sort of lame so the Anti-Federalists came with this special name:
Democratic-Republican.

It's a combo-Greek/Latin title meaning the following:
Demos = People. Crat = Rule. That's the Greek half.
Res = Matters/Things. Public = People. That's the Latin half.
Break it all down & it means People Rule the Matters of the People.
That means Confederacy. That means States' Rights over Central Rights.

When the Democratic-Republicans took over pretty much all government by the 1820s, just like the nWo of pro wrestling they got so big that they split on themselves.
This is where the Democratic party derived.
And the Democratic Party pretty much continued the legacy of the Confederate-minded 'States over Central' slaveowning South.
That's the party that split the country in two when Republican Abraham Lincoln got elected.
They knew he was gonna end slavery & they were RIGHT! Hahahahaha!

This Democratic party was the bad guys for a very long time.
But one of the fragments of that old 1820s split were embodied by this guy named Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat of the Northeast.
A different kind of Democrat who somehow got the whole country behind him North, South, East, & West.
But part of his legacy was to help the Blacks (desegregating the military) & whaddaya know here comes the South splitting among those familiar lines yet again.

So what does Democrat mean if it's not in the interest of the Confederate-nostalgic South?
That's its roots after all, right?
John Kennedy killed the rest of that meaning in the 1960s & the South split from the Democrats ironically joining the Republican Party which they fought against 100 years before.
That doesn't make sense, does it?

These labels don't mean anything anymore.
There IS no Democratic platform. It's a vehicle to use, that's all.
Don't give it more meaning than it deserves.
It's just an organizing body to advance the MORE important PRINCIPLES.

Even the labels Liberal & Progressive are a waste of time.
What makes this world a better place for EVERYBODY?
That's the only mentality we should have.
The world's bad enough on its own so how do we make it better for all people.

To make these principles part of the social standard, we can use this Democratic Party vehicle to help us get where we need to go.
But if the vehicle crashes remember that we can still walk on our own two feet.
We can also get another vehicle to drive.

I don't care about the Democratic Party.
I care about Human Rights & Fairness.
If I gotta use the Democratic Party, the Häagen-Dazs Party, the Mario Party to get these things done, then I'll do it.
But it's all about getting the things done not worrying so much about what I have to use to GET it done.

Who cares about the label? Care about the contents of the package.
John Lucas

[jonjensen]

18. why white voters who consider republicans evil still vote for them.

61% of white voters voted for mitt romney. Many white voters consider republicans evil but vote for them anyway why? If you ask them as I have they will tell you. The republicans leave them alone while they do their dirty work. Liberals won't leave them alone while they are doing "good!" I asked one reagan democrat don't you know republicans are evil? He answered yes but they won't take away my gun or gas guzzling suv put photo-radar on every street to gain revenue or raise my taxes while they are doing their evil and liberals will. This is why most white people won't vote democrat.