Democrats vs Progressives

The Democratic Party has been infiltrated by progressives, there in lies the dilemma. I am posting the following diary because the writer articulates with clarity the difference between Democrats and Progressives and why the two will never be one in the same. A party divided will not stand.

The democratic party is not pure or perfect because it's been infiltrated by those who don't share democratic party principles or values.

Why I am not a Progressive and other liberal musings

A letter came to our household the other day from President Obama. He wanted money and our support on November 2 for Democratic candidates, so he could continue to promote the changes our nation so desperately needs, in areas like health care, banking reform, and job creation. I wasn’t expecting him to mention anything about a liberal agenda, but there wasn’t anything about a progressive agenda either or any sort of underlying philosophy motivating the Democratic Party. Instead, it was all about the Obama administration and his goals, which assumedly provide the philosophy and platform for the Democratic Party. 

My dear departed mother continues to get mail from the Republican Party, so I look at it now and then. Of course they want money too, whether you are dead or not, but they need this money to support conservatism and conservative causes. Lowering our taxes is high on this list, along with getting big government out of our lives. The Republicans do talk a lot about the liberal agenda, which is focused on gay marriages and murdering innocent, aborted children. 

At least I know what the liberal agenda is, even if it is only the Republicans who talk about it. They’ve been doing this for 30 years, but really made a science out of it in the 1990s during the Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz hay day. That’s when Republicans decided to make “liberal” into a dirty word, along with “tax and spend liberals” and the “liberal agenda.” 

They’ve certainly succeeded; even the liberals don’t think of themselves as liberals. Liberals these days are “progressives”. That sounds kinder and gentler, and maybe that’s why it has never caught on with the public. Who wants a kinder and gentler political philosophy guiding the nation at a time like this? The public wants to be protected from the evil terrorists, and in recent years they also want someone to protect their job, or at least make it relatively easy to find an equivalent job if they happen to lose the job they have. 

This is one reason I can’t see myself , or describe myself as a progressive. The other reason that has rankled for a long time is why should I allow people like Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz define who I am, or define a whole political movement? Someone should have stood up to these word-manipulating bullies a long time ago, but since they didn’t, they should certainly be standing up for liberalism now. The public has seen in gruesome detail the consequences of Republican borrow and spend economic philosophy and their laissez-faire approach to regulation.

Call me a tax and spend liberal any day. At least it is honest. If the money can’t be raised in taxes for whatever favorite projects liberals may wish to implement, the projects don’t get done. I know this sounds a lot like the Pay as You Go policy of the Democrats during the Clinton years, but back then there was a federal budget surplus, and at least the Republicans didn’t call us “spend and tax liberals”.

The thing I like about liberalism is that it is honest, not simply in its fiscal approach, but its ability to promote the interests of the people against the power of corporations and government itself. It was the liberal wing of the Democratic Party that pushed for post-Watergate reforms to prevent government spying on its own people. There used to be a liberal senator – William Proxmire of Wisconsin – who presented a regular award to that government agency or department most worthy of disgrace for wasting taxpayer money. The Environmental Protection Agency was designed specifically to stand up to corporate polluters. When liberalism was at its strongest, under Kennedy and Johnson, it was unashamed to state honestly what its philosophy was and whose interests it served. 

Basic honesty is sadly lacking in Washington. The Republican Party is hopelessly entrapped in a web of hypocrisy and delusion of its own making. The Democrats are led by a president who has failed to govern honestly, because he supports initiatives and causes that are the opposite of those he promised to implement in his campaign. The whole political system is as dishonest as it appears, which makes people wonder what is really going on behind the scenes. Most people conclude that corporate money has bought off the Congress, one administration after another, and increasingly the judiciary.

It is a rare politician who will admit to this, though, since it is corporate money which buys all the television ads that are such an essential part of running a political campaign for national office. John Boehner, Republican leader in the House, was caught this week during a vote on tobacco industry subsidies handing out checks to Republican Congressmen – checks which were issued by tobacco industry lobbyists. No matter how many Republican voters realize that corporate money drives the political process, John Boehner is not about to change his ways. Instead, the Republican leadership is goading the Tea Party activists to protest any attempt to shackle business with more regulation.
In a perverse way, this is as close as we are going to get to honesty from Republican politicians; admit that corporate money owns the Republican members of Congress, and then dress it up for the party faithful as something noble because it allows the benefits of the free market to flow unimpeded. The only thing missing is a Republican politician willing to admit that unimpeded free markets blew up our economy, but it is probably just a matter of time before someone agrees with this and says, So What?
So What seems to be the last refuge of any of our politicians. So What if you don’t have a job, if your unemployment benefits have expired, if the oil is running out except when it is gushing by accident from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, if the ice caps are melting and this past summer was the hottest on record, if your civil liberties are disappearing, if you have no health insurance and the reform package isn’t going to help you until 2014, if the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have no end in sight, if the budget deficit is at an annual running rate of $2 trillion, if the Fed is starving the economy of interest income, if the zombie banks aren’t lending despite all the largesse showered upon them, and if we refuse to talk honestly about any of these problems. We’re doing the best we can here in Washington, and don’t forget we spend 20 hours every day begging for campaign donations from corporations. We don’t have time for your problems.
These are the people asking us to go to the polls in November and vote for them once again. The White House is imagining all it needs to do is crank up the Obama-mania and even the progressives will run to the polls, or just as likely, the White House doesn’t really care whether the progressives vote at all. Judging from the comments of press secretary Robert Gibbs, the political wing of the administration is fixated on the ingratitude of the liberal wing of the party. 

As for this liberal, the only reason I have to trudge to the polls is to prevent the crazy wing of the Republican Party from getting into office. These are the people proudly wearing the Sarah Palin seal of approval. They run on platforms to outlaw masturbation and overturn the 14th amendment so “terrorist babies”, meaning children of immigrants, will no longer automatically be granted citizenship. If asked to come up with policies of substance, they talk about abolishing Social Security and the income tax, and eliminating all federal departments except for Defense and Homeland Security.
I won’t be voting for the Democratic candidates; I will be voting against the Republican Party candidates, all of whom represent the logical result of Ronald Reagan’s efforts to denigrate public service so thoroughly that only a moron would possibly want to run for public office. 

I will vote for a candidate – and it will likely never be a Republican but needn’t be a Democrat – when that candidate speaks honestly about the list of problems facing our nation, and when they present intelligent solutions to these problems. Given the depth of these problems, the solutions will likely be radical, and involve an overthrow of the existing political system, and the banishment or at least significant curtailment of corporate influence from the political sphere.

I’m like Diogenes searching for one honest citizen. That such people are rare in the political arena is a matter for despair. If I let the despair get a permanent grip on my soul, I wouldn’t vote at all, but allowing absolute morons anywhere near the levers of power is so dangerous that it overwhelms my despondency that the people I am forced to vote for may not be morons but are still creatures of a corrupt system.