Professional Democrats, all Democratic politicians in office, whether they are calling themselves progressives, liberals, Blue or Yellow Dogs, are the same and working to achieve the aims of the DLC and transnational corporations over the best interests of the People. If they are a professional politician, in office or not, a member of the Democratic Party (in Washington or back in the states), they have bought into and are supporting the culture of transnational corporations as their real constituents.
Their only problem with this is that corporations don't vote, and politicians need votes to get into office. So they, Democratic politicians, try to convince the People they're working on our behalf with weasel-words, rhetoric designed to lead voters into thinking one thing when the opposite is true. Obama can say, "I tried to do it, but those mean/crazy Republicans wouldn't let me."
Democrats in both chambers of Congress work as a team. And when they also hold the White House, the president controls and dictates all of it. They identify what they hope to achieve (pro-corporate legislation) and then strategize how to get it while saving each other's hides with constituents come election time. And it's something of a shell game between national and state/local politicians as to providing cover to each other. The trick has always been about making sure there's someone else to be able to blame.
Democratic politicians in liberal districts (like Woolsey) are the worst. If their votes are needed to cross over and kill liberal legislation (like a public option or access to abortion or reinstating the rule of law and closing Guantanamo and trying detainees in federal courts), the DNC will make sure they are covered come election time, with massive infusions of money into their campaign war chests and crushing any principled challenges to them from the left in their primaries.
Otherwise, if their votes are not needed, they can continue to vote along liberal lines and keep their liberal constituencies back home happy and in the dark as to how ineffectual they really are in achieving their constituents goals.
Obama's demand that Woolsey and the entire Progressive Caucus cave on a public option was insult to injury. He didn't even need all of their votes, by the way, to get the legislation without a public option to pass. The two last hold-outs (Kucinich and Massa) he crushed in particularly brutal ways.
Too bad for us that Obama doesn't use that same ruthlessness when it comes to dealing with Republicans and getting real Democratic legislation and policies into effect.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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