Democratic Myth

After watching as much of the Petreaus/Crocker hearings as I could tolerate yesterday, I am less sold than ever on the prevailing myth that electing Democrats to office, and in particular electing a Democrat as President, is going to solve the problems of government that our nation faces today. It was difficult to detect who was triangulating more feverishly; Petreaus and Crocker, the Republican politicians, or the Democrats. Clearly, no one in that room was interested in anything other than self-aggrandizement. Well, Petreaus and Crocker were probably interested in leaving, but…

Consider that literally hundreds of incidents of graft, corruption, misfeasance, malfeasance and law-breaking have been discovered in the Bush Administration during the fifteen months that this Democratic Congress has been in session. Some of it has been uncovered by Congressional investigations, but not one single action of justice has been initiated by this Congress. Not one single subpoena or indictment has been issued. Not one single person has been fired or impeached. Upon discovering wrong doing, this Congress has complained and wrung its hands and has done nothing.

This is the Democratic Party, which we are hoping will save our government.

Consider that, even before it was elected into the majority, the leadership of this Congress declared that Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution of The United States of America was to be null and void; that their wisdom was greater than that of the founders of this country, and that the President of this nation should not be subject to and limited by threat of impeachment.

This is the Democratic Party, which we are hoping will save our government.

Consider the campaign staff of Hillary Clinton. I offer this not as an indictment of this candidate, although it certainly is just that, but because she is the candidate who has the support of the Democratic Party. While Obama outnumbers her in pledged delegates elected by voters, she has more pledged delegates who are those known as “superdelegates.” The latter are not elected by voters, but are granted that status by virtue of their standing in the Democratic Party apparatus.

Clinton’s campaign chief was Mark Penn, who also worked as a corporate lobbyist with clients including Microsoft, oil companies and, of course, Columbia. Clinton was very well aware of this and did not require him to sever his ties with corporate lobbying in order to manage her campaign; a rather serious conflict of interest. That came to a head last week when he was paid handsomely to lobby in favor of a Colombian trade pact which she was campaigning against. Even then, while she made a show of “firing” him as campaign manager, she did not remove him from her staff, and he continues to participate both in his corporate lobbying enterprise and as part of her campaign staff.

And after that happened, she did not lose the support of one single superdelegate. I don’t really care who Hillary Clinton has on her campaign staff, but the fact that the Democratic Party is supportive of her permitting a paid corporate lobbyist to be part of her staff suggests to me that, as Shakespeare might put it, “there is something rotten in the state of Denmark.” Or, in this case, New York.

Karl Rove not only quit his job as a lobbyist to work for George Bush, he sold his interest in the lobbying firm. Mark Penn, with Clinton’s approval, kept his ownership in the lobbying firm and continued to actively work as a lobbyist while managing her campaign, and continues to do so to this day. The Democratic Party has no visible objection to this practice, and her superdelegates remain pledged to her.

Our government is owned by corporations, and their lobbyists actually participate in writing the laws of this nation. That has been happening for many years, but legislators used to have the decency to at least to try to keep it under the table. The Democratic Party is now becoming so openly controlled by corporations that they are acknowledging that it is permissible to have corporate lobbyists as members of a legislative staff.

This is the Democratic Party, which we are hoping will save our government.

Electing Democrats, per se, solves precisely nothing.