Writing on the blog WorkingForChange.com and for the September edition of the Washington Spectator, David Sirota, author of "Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government...", concludes that the Democratic party's likely renaissance in the coming Congressional elections will result in some change, but not the fundamental change the country and our political system need.
Sirota makes two key points. The first is that "Democrats right now are running a business as usual campaign. That is, the themes they are running on" do not address "challenging the current power structure." By "current power structure" he means control of the political process by big business through the medium of bribery, which we euphemistically call "campaign contributions."
Secondly, Sirota emphasizes that anyone politically leftward of clueless should hope the Democrats win anyway, even though, with few exceptions, they're not challenging the status quo. "(I)t's clear a Democratic win would represent change on a whole host of key issues," Sirota says, most importantly the Iraq War, which even moderate Dems like Senator Carl Levin are now demanding an end to by next year. Also, if the Democrats win the House, certain key committee leaderships will fall to some of the most uncompromisingly progressive figures in Congress. Most notably, John Conyers would be Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
However, peeing on fires the Bush administration has set and engaging in emergency damage control won't begin to address the fundamental, structural changes that need to occur in our political system if disasters such as we've seen in the last six years are to be avoided in the future.
"There are troubling signs," Sirota says "that the (Democratic) party isn't serious about reforming America's money-dominated politics. Many working-class swing voters are still suspicious of a Democratic Party that promised not to sell them out, and then supported President Clinton's alliance with big business to pass economically destabilizing 'free trade' deals.
"At the same time that leading Democrats have been publicly berating the GOP for corruption, they have been privately ramping up their own corporate fund-raising operations, and large numbers of Democratic lawmakers have provided the critical votes to pass some of big business's most sought-after prizes. The energy bill, the bankruptcy bill, the Central American Free Trade Agreement and the class-action 'reform' bill—all of these were written by the industries they benefit, and all required the support of key Democratic legislators in order to pass."
Sirota's analysis goes straight to the root of the problem. It's compounded by the sad fact that the majority of Americans are unaware that their government and political system have been sold to the highest bidders; they only know something is "broken," but are for the most part not quite sure what it is.
There's no excuse for this. Howard Dean's Y2K presidential campaign showed that adequate money to finance a campaign can easily be raised through small contributions solicited via the internet. All a candidate has to do is hire a webmaster rather than an image consultant. There's absolutely no reason for Democrats to go whoring after big money from corporations any more, and their persistence in doing so is actually self-destructive.
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