What has happened to the Democrats in Congress...Have they all joined

[INdemo]

the ideology of the Republicans..Do we not have any representation for the working class anymore?
Nancy Pelosi says no unemployment extension? What..they will give away billions to banks but allow the unemployed to sink farther into this economic quicksand..And why isn't Obama stepping up and demanding that Congress pass this legislation...the job market has not improved but yet Congressional leaders say they need to protect their corporate donors..What a shame..

[vi5]

1. "Do we have any representation for the working class anymore?"

No. The answer is that simple. If a legislation or a law or a solution is not rooted in "1 for the working class.......1, 2, 3 for the wealthy/corporations.....1 for the working class.....1, 2, 3 for the wealthy/corporations" then it just does not get passed. It's that simple.

It's hard to tell which fallacy our elected democrats have internalized more to the detriment of the country: The notion that if the wealthy/corporations are given more money that they will benevolently choose to use this money for job creation and helping the country in general, or that in order to be "tough" you have to keep endlessly funding wars.

[cali]

3. Well, altthough representation of the working class is woefully inadequate

there are exceptions. My Congressional delegation represents the working class. And there are others.

[vi5]

5. Maybe a small handfull in the house....

....but in the Senate? Name one Senator who consistently and vigorously defends the poor/working class. Maybe there's 1...possibly 2 I'm not thinking of. But I'd be surprised.

[cali]

6. Bernie is the champion of working class people in the Congress

and though not a democrat, he's been endorsed by the VT dem party and the national dem party. Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy, Sherrod Brown are also good on defending working and poor people.

[dionysus]

8. + 1

[vi5]

13. Good point on Bernie.....

The rest are good and definitely have their moments. i won't deny that for a second.

But when I think of this subject I think of someone like Paul Wellstone. Just a complete champion of the working person. And those guys don't really come close to that. I had high hopes for Franken since he was such a good friend of Wellstone, and he's done some good stuff. But I just think he doesn't have a high enough profile yet.

[Better Believe It]

12. How many in Congress are labor union members or at least were union members in their lifetimes?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. Kucinich has been a union member

but I forget which union.

[pocoloco]

2. 2006 didn't teach you anything???

You can hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up faster!!

[Yuugal]

4. As long as we keep electing spoiled rich people

we will keep getting the same results. I despise the right but I reserve my deepest hate for the sellouts on the left. When the lower and middle classes smarten up and stop electing the Harvard-type crooks to office, things will get better for the rest of us.

[dionysus]

7. ah, so people who went to Harvard are all crooks.. gotcha!

:eyes:

[blm]

10. Clinton came from working class and used his skills to move Dem party mindset towards corporatism

I don't think wealth or lack of it determines who will work for a greater fairness.

[begin_within]

9. Their hands are tied by their corporate donors

Democrats assumed they had to accept the huge corporate donations to stay competitive in elections, otherwise they would be outspent by the Republicans and would thus lose elections. The result is that there is only one party now, the Corporate Party, and all partisan politics is just a sideshow to present the illusion to the voting public that democracy still works in some crippled fashion. The endless fighting over social issues that will never be resolved because they are based on beliefs is just a distraction. We actually have a one-party system now that is essentially fascism of an economic nature. Democrats are afraid to rock the boat by doing anything that helps anyone except their corporate donors. Witness the debacle of health care "reform" which was just another gigantic giveaway to corporations. Democrats are afraid that if they rock the boat by doing anything for middle class, working class, poor or disadvantaged, that the corporate donations will dry up and they will be out of the game. So it has become about them, not us.

[Octafish]

11. Who needs Diebold when we vote for Democrats and get Republicans?

Weird what working in Washington does to people.

Big Money must await those who go along.

[niceypoo]

14. The Dems and Obama are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome

Centrist Democrat 2010 = Republican 1985

I see Obama as a Reagan Democrat. It's bad enough that the GOP has frogmarched the country to the extreme right for the last 30 years. Now the Democrats are doing the same thing (Obama bragging that his healthcare bill contains EVERY Republican idea yet those who elected him get a few meager crumbs). They identify with their tormentors and walk on eggshells so as not to upset them.

The Democratic party is taking the role of the battered wife.

[tom_paine]

15. Unquestionably true.

The trillion-dollar-question is WHY?

It's something we can never truly know, and likely comprised of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of multi-pronged offensives by a large majority of the Wealthy American Aristiocracy to reshape this nation into more of a 1880s kind of mentality, andsomethimes to a 1580s mentality where that suits them.

In either case, it has been wholly effective in basically following Orwell's 1984 book by more and more creating a Media Hologram where it is impossible to truly dissent because "the language for dissent does not even exist anymore".

Orwell's IngSoc did this by eradicating old language and creating NewSpeak. America's Aristocracy knew this was hamfisted and would never work as well as what they did, a gentle easing using all the modern methods of marketing/advertising/PR and trillions of dollars - buit both lead to the same stultified position.

Google "Ed Bernays" and read some of his early books to get a true sense of the pernicious, dare I say evil, nature of this methodology which now rules our nation and the world.

[Hydra]

16. Actually

The newspeak thing happened, in a very subtle fashion. You can rant and rave over the approved causes of various problems, but don't you DARE talk about the base issues.

It's so bad that if you talk about a base issue with most normal people, they'll automatically dismiss your argument because "They wouldn't do that."

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. I've made references to Barnays here

as well as the fact that we have a command economy run by the corporations... free market, capitalism, are just the front words to the truly evil nature of the fascist system we live in...

And now we have BP hiring mercs in the Gulf... we have officially crossed into the world of Cyerpunk and Gibson's Neuromancer.