Democrats Against Democracy, Self-Styled Progressives Against Progress
[font color="FireBrick"size="5"face="times new roman"]If it were the case that money had no influence on politicians, Frank once observed, "we’d be the only human beings in the history of the world who on a regular basis took significant amounts of money from perfect strangers and made sure that it had no effect on our behavior."
In other words, when a candidate insists that they are not influenced by corporate cash, they are peddling nonsense.[/font]
In an effort to win elections, Democrats abandoned their working class base in favor the professional class and the riches of corporate sponsorship — and, as a consequence, they have adopted swaths of the Republican agenda to appease, and prove themselves worthy of, this new, and far wealthier, base of support.
The Democratic Party is now, in short, doing out in the open what it has done behind the scenes for years: Shedding principled positions in favor of so-called pragmatic alternatives.
Democrats have abandoned democracy because it's inconvenient; self-styled progressives have abandoned progress because it's impractical.
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While Democratic leaders present their party as one of openness, inclusion, and free thought, their attitudes toward independents — those who pay no allegiance to either major political party — are often condescending, scornful, and dismissive, revealing their distaste for those who don't walk the party line.
This distaste has gradually emerged throughout the primary process, as Democrats have chided Bernie Sanders for not rising to the standards set by "real Democrats" — as if this were a scathing insult rather than a compliment.
And, needless to say, this hostility is often reserved for independents on the left, those who attempt to push the Democrats toward social democracy and away from the neoliberal consensus that has worsened deep poverty and inequality while providing the framework within which the wealthy can pursue their ambitions unhindered by countervailing powers.
Sanders has angered Democrats by pointing repeatedly to these trends and refusing to "tone it down" — refusing, in other words, to walk back principled positions to salvage "party unity."
Another accomplishment of the Sanders campaign is that he has adjusted expectations upward, against the downward pressure exerted by Democrats espousing a philosophical approach to change that Matt Karp terms "fortress liberalism," an approach that, while shrouded in the garb of pragmatism, acts to "disguise what is effectively a right-wing retrenchment."
Because of these self-imposed blinders, establishment Democrats have, as Matt Taibbi puts it, viewed the movement Sanders has sparked not "as an honest effort to restore power to voters," but as an oddity to be dismissed.
"If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform," Taibbi argues, "if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide."
Instead, they have chosen the path of comfort and opulence — the path that flows nicely through corporate boardrooms and luxury galas and around the suffering of the millions the party has so flippantly abandoned.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/06/13/democrats-against-democracy-self-styled-progressives-against-progress
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