With Friends Like Democratic Congresspeople

The natural hard-bargainers of the Democrats are the progressives, and they’ve been shutting us out for years.

If you’re a Democrat you have to appease those people who would never vote for you not even if you held a gun to their heads (AS IF a Dem would know what to do with a gun), otherwise you are being partisan.

Or to paraprhase FDR, the elected Dems agree with the Republicans, bipartisanship is their cover for being forced to do what they wanted to do anyway.

If 40% of Dems are thinking of not voting in 2010 it’s exactly because Democrats won’t stand up for their own base. For their own people and what those people believe in and need. They only stand up for Pharma, banks, insurance companies and other entrenched powers.

Loyalty. It’s a two way street. And neither the White House, nor Congress, have shown any.

Almost all of the Democratic congresscritters throw their supporters to the wolves, as it were, because they don’t really share the ideology of their base or their motives and interests. I can’t think of very many Democratic congresscritters I’d really class as “progressives” as in left-of-liberal political agitator type. In the Senate, Bernie Sanders. In the House, Kucinich, and a handful of others, who aren’t even always reliable on all issues.

Is there a list of Democratic congressbeings that were close to the base, and then “betrayed” it (depending on what you mean by betrayal)?

Who was supposed to have been politically loyal, that you accuse them of disloyalty?

I’d say: not very many, in actual fact.

Here’s the Wikipedia entry on the House Progressive Caucus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Progressive_Caucus

The list is…interesting…and includes people *I* certainly doubt I’d put there. Anyone can call themselves a progressive. In Ye Olde Canada, you may remember we had/have an aggregator called ProgressiveBloggers.ca. Been a long time since I’ve looked at it. The leadership somehow got co-opted by Liberal hacks and in typical Liberal hacktackular style, started including all kinds of bizarre blogs that I’d never call progressive and excluding some that were.

So the next question is, how should we define a progressive, and how do we exclude poseurs and impostors? Or is there even a good way to do this?

For me, “progressive” means, roughly, someone living in a capitalist society who questions capitalist dogma but chooses to accept working/living within the system to make incremental improvements towards the better, while undermining capitalist ideology outside the system. A both/and proposition.

A lot of the people on the official list of House Progressives, well, do you consider them to be people who question capitalist (these days, neoliberal) dogma?

So, what you’re positing, Ian, is a large group in Congress that in some way really, truly agrees in their innermost hearts with your position (on whatever, health care in this instance) but is simply too timid to act. Is that right? I’m pretty sure you’ve said literally this, but I don’t want you again to think I’m trying to put words in your mouth.

Leaving aside the question of how you would know this group exists if they never act they way you want them to on anything major…um, what exactly are they afraid of, and are they right to fear it?

(As you probably know, I suggest that if this group exists, they would have been foolish to try to act the way you wanted them to, at least on health care, perhaps not necessarily on other things, we’ll see. But then I consider that “if” to be a pretty big one…)

I haven’t made every thread into an argument over it, especially not most of the recent few, and I don’t think you’ve ever answered a number of questions that are crucial to your argument on politics, which is deeply, frustratingly incoherent, if apparently very satisfying to hold. So I’ll say one last thing (really, truly this time) and bid you adieu until some other new topic more conducive to productive discussion comes up:

You live in a very odd world. In the world I live in, people often don’t have the balls to follow their convictions, especially when there are strong institutional forces which will punish them for doing so.

In the world I live in, people often notice that some fights against the institutions are actually counterproductive, and the remainder are probably corrupt. That’s today’s politics in DC, in London, in Ottawa, in Brussels… So what do you do in the face of institutional consequences that are going to set you back even further if you make the Grand Heroic Stand that you seem to want?

This does not imply that there’s nothing we can do. I won’t expound at length since I’ve already done so.

And, my argument does not in fact rely on the internal experience of congresscritters—yours does. Mine comes from a simple deduction:

1. If they have convictions and refuse to act, then it must be the case that the price is too steep (and their choice is likely rational).

2. Otherwise, they actually belong to the other side for whatever reason.

No internal knowledge necessary! No imputation of cowardice or other moral character required!

You may be good at policy (I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with you on best policy) but it’s not clear that you’re any good at politics. And since no argument or tactic or example will convince you that you haven’t been failed by cowards, I can hardly stop you from continuing to bask in the admiration of dead-enders and hypocrites for your principled, Pyrrhic stand.

Have fun, and a happy holiday of course.

Actually, the Dems, both in Congress and the White House, are models of loyalty. They are loyal to their major donors–Wall St., Pharma, big banking, the military-industrial complex, the medico-insurance complex, the rest of the corporatists. As for the interests of the rest of us, our representatives–with a few exceptions–couldn’t care less. They are confident we will vote for the lesser of two evils like the good little incrementalists we’ve always been. What other choice do we have? they figure.