What the Democratic Party Does Well

[Crewleader]

August 11, 2014

Doing Itself In

What the Democratic Party Does Well

by Ralph Nader

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the minority leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, just had her political consultants send out a mass mailing to women asking for money and responses to an enclosed survey of their opinions.

The mass mailing duly recites the truly horrible House Republican votes against a variety of women’s health, safety and family protections and seeks to survey women’s priorities for the Congressional Democrats’ legislative agenda. Under the category titled “Employment,” there is no mention of restoring the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, which Rep. Pelosi supports. The closest option to check was “inadequate/or no salary increase.”

The Pelosi mailing, uninspiring and defensive, is another product of the Party’s political consultants who have failed them again and again in winnable House and Senate races against the worst Republican Party record in history. These consultants, as former Clinton special assistant, Bill Curry, notes, make more money from their corporate clients than from political retainers. Slick, arrogant and ever reassuring, these firms are riddled with conflicts of interests and could just as well be “Trojan horses.”

The full restoration of the federal minimum wage to make up for the ravages of inflation since 1968 would take it from the present, stagnant $7.25 per hour and beyond the proposed $10.10 to $10.90 per hour. Over thirty million American workers – two thirds of them women and two thirds of them employed by large low-wage companies like Walmart and McDonald’s – would benefit from this wage restoration, and in turn would be able to strengthen the economy by increasing their consumer expenditures. There are a lot of votes out there if the Democrats go beyond lip service and push for a major media and grassroots campaign against the Congressional Republicans who are blocking a vote on this minimum wage bill.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/11/what-the-democratic-party-does-well/