SIROTA: corporate Democrats days are numbered

[yurbud]

The insider candidates won the last round of primaries, but David Sirota adds some context: when a grassroots challenger to an incumbent blessed by the president can come within single digits of winning, the days of Democrats owned by the wealthy are numbered.

The real question is what Obama will do if these turds are flushed out of Congress to the point that they can no longer shape the agenda by threatening to side with Republicans or quietly withholding their cloture vote in the Senate to block desperately needed fundamental change.

If someone says this thread is divisive, you should look at the actions of the corporate Democrats who outspend their progressive challengers then when they win, ignore the will of the Democrats who voted for them as the lesser of two evils.

If the Democratic Party leadership doesn't get their shit together and stop trying to be the other corporate white meat, they will be responsible for any losses in the White House or Congress--or they will be replaced.

Considering Bennet's wealth, corporate fundraising, incumbency and presidential support, it is astounding that a whopping 46 percent of this bellwether state's Democratic voters cast their ballots against him, against their own party's establishment and against their own party's president.

For those who care about a progressive economic agenda and about injecting democracy into the Democratic Party, this is encouraging when put next to the similarly impressive results of White House-thwarting Democratic primary challengers in Pennsylvania and Arkansas. And that trend explains the increasingly fierce pushback from Washington.

Yes, this is why Obama's spokesman, Robert Gibbs, so vociferously berated the progressive movement on the eve of Colorado's primary, and why DNC powerbrokers moved so forcefully against Romanoff. He was the latest candidate to represent what those elites know to be an ascendant national progressive uprising inside the Democratic Party – one that keenly understands money's corrosive effects on public policy and that, therefore, rejects the Beltway's corporatist model.

Seeing that this uprising threatens their power and their D.C. worldview, these elites are desperate to preserve Dark Helmet's principle – so desperate, in fact, they have resorted to employing Obama's presidential campaign infrastructure to prop up more conservative candidates against progressive challengers in intra-party battles.

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/08/elites_democratic_days_are_num.html">FULL TEXT

[myrna minx]

1. K&R n/t

[dipsydoodle]

2. "if these turds are flushed out"

Very apt expression.

[yurbud]

5. I think that's actually being unfair to turds, but if I described the form of excrement

they are more accurately, people would toss their cookies.

Euphemistically, I could say they are like what comes out during the final stage of ebola.

[cascadiance]

6. Turd describes their shape, look, and stink. Cancerous tumor has been what they are..

where their infection has been just about destroying us all, and they are so hard to "flush out of the system". We're going to have to be given heavy doses of chemo for a long while afterward to completely flush their influence out of the party, even after the tumors have been forcibly removed earlier. Hopefully we can get rid of them sufficiently before they kill the party.

In a way, even if they win the primaries, they are more toast in the general election, which in effect makes the Republicans that takes the Blanche Lincoln's place for a term more like the chemotherapy needed to get rid of them. We'll suffer while the Republican "chemo" is there, but later we can start over fresh later if we can replace that Republican with an uncancerous progressive!

[nashville_brook]

3. k n r

[glitch]

4. "an ascendant national progressive uprising inside the Democratic Party"

make it so.

[Tutankhamun]

7. This article outlines one reason net neutrality is so incredibly important right now.

The grassroots progressive ascendancy Sirota discusses will die in obscurity with a corporate controlled (read:censored for non-corporatist politics) internet.

As Al Franken said, "Net Neutrality is _the_ First Amendment issue of our time."

Actually, the Senator _understated_ its importance.

[nightrain]

8. knr. yes, I heartily agree with the principle at hand, and I will be dead by the time

all the flushing is done.

It is a day to day feat, and the sewer system (gubmint) is probably going to need several Roto-Rooterings before all is said and done.

But, the end result will be worth it. Never give up the Democratic principles and values.

[awoke_in_2003]

9. not likely

they have money on their side.

[Hardrada]

12. But not God or History.

[laughingliberal]

10. K & R nt

[ooglymoogly]

11. KR nt

[defendandprotect]

13. We need more of this kind of insight --

and less corporate wing Democrats --

DLC is a cancer growing INSIDE the Democratic Party -- !!

[colsohlibgal]

14. I Hope He's Right

Not so sure myself, but he seems like a smart guy hopefully he's prescient in this regard too - the sooner the better.

[Capitalocracy]

15. Why are they wasting money on primaries anyway?

Shouldn't they use the warchest for the general election, if what's important is having more Democrats in office? Why waste it on a primary?

They obviously have a corporate agenda that takes precedence over winning. And then they tell us we have to show up and win their elections for them because it's all about winning regardless of whether or not you like the individual "Democratic" candidate.

[yurbud]

16. that's been obvious since Duckworth v. Cegalis.

Cegalis shamed Henry Hyde into retiring by coming too close to beating him in the general election, and the thanks she got from the DLC crowd was Rahm Emanuel recruiting a more corporate compliant Dem to run against her in the primary. Cegalis couldn't match Rahm's money, but Duckworth didn't have a base of enthusiastic supporters to back her in the general election and she lost the open seat to the republican.

The DLC literally chose Wall St. over winning.