Reply #37: The Democratic Party represents business interests, not the people [View All]

[IrateCitizen]

Those of us who still cling to the idea that the Democratic Party is some kind of "party of the people" are only deluding themselves. While the Democrats championed some reforms at various times in our history, the vast majority of those reforms came about out of agitation more than from the bottomless courage of Presidents and lawmakers.

For instance, look at an exchange detailed by Mark Hertsgaard in his book, The Eagle's Shadow -- How America Fascinates and Infuriates the World. In it, he relates a conversation he had with a Dutch businessman friend of his prior to the 2000 US Presidential election. This Dutchman had just voted for the right wing party in his own election, but hoped that Al Gore would win the US Presidency. When Hertsgaard asked him why, he said that even the most right-wing, pro-business party in the Netherlands was STILL to the left of both parties in the United States.

We don't have a viable major left party in the US. We never really have. The closest we came was the New Deal, but the policies of FDR could probably best be described as slightly left-of-center, when compared with other governments in the industrialized world.

With the rise of conservatism and the embrace by Democrats of many of the assumptions of the Reagan era, we now live in a country in which the political parties largely represent the reactionary right (Republicans) and the center-right (Democrats). Both parties champion free trade, market fundamentalism, minimizing government involvement in the marketplace (at least on the side of workers), militaristic foreign policy, and so on. While I readily admit that there are Democrats in Congress who fight against these things, they are largely relegated to permanent backbencher status. The true movers and shakers in the Democratic Party all embrace this corporatist agenda.

The main difference between the parties seems to be that Republicans want to force a combination of rigid religious fundamentalism and brutal, unrestrained corporatism on the United States. Democrats, OTOH, eschew religious fundamentalism and are in favor of a slightly less brutal version of corporatism. But at the essence, both endorse corporatism. And so long as money rules the game, they will both continue to endorse corporatism.

I still plan to vote for Democratic candidates. And for some of the better ones, I'll even send them a few dollars here and there. But I think that one lesson that should be gleaned from this election is that energy and resources are too valuable on the left for us to divert them from meaningful, important causes (i.e. stopping the war on Iraq, fighting the rising tide of corporatism, advocating economic justice, etc.) to the candidacy of a person who only proposes a continuation of the status quo, albeit with a few tweaks here and there. True progressive change will not come by backing a candidate promoted by monied interests every 4 years. True change will only come as the result of people dedicating themselves to the possibility and hope for that change, without any timetable placed on its realization.