I heartily agree with your post.
I had heard privately from some usually reliable DC insider friends of mine a long while ago that Obama was perhaps going to pull some progressive trojan horse shit in his second term (if only the American public would have the patience and brains to enable him). I first mentioned it about 4 years ago in these forums and I think earlier about 5 years ago or so, but the search engine on this BBS makes it a pain to find it. However, I did dig up my boingboing post from some years ago that said basically the same thing.
Via my post linked above:
" … there is some background noise rumblings that he might be a trojan horse in his second term especially if the American public steps up and throws out a lot more republicans in the Senate and House. But really, I gave up a long time ago trying to predict for sure what humans will do… especially stupid Americans."
Nobody listens to cow…
Tragically, now here we are in 2015… much of the American public has done goofed in the midterms, sat on their asses, didn’t vote and Republicans have taken over the joint.
A lot of posters here are deluding themselves if they think there was ever an empowered majority of truly progressive Democrats that failed them during Obama’s administration thus far.
What we’ve had during Obama’s administration was a near-constant Republican filibuster power that neutered the Dem majority. Not to mention some of the DINOs and bluedog Dems that are basically “republican-lite” moles that would have aided and abetted the Republicans when needed as well.
The corporatists love it this way.
The Democratic party can “appease” some of their voting base by blaming the Republicans for inaction. This way a lot of powerful Democrats can appear to be fighting for the middle and lower classes while also serving the corporatist right almost as fanatically as the Republicans do.
Granted it’s more complex than that. There really are Democrats that are fighting for average Americans, but they tend to get destroyed fairly quickly because they don’t “play ball”, don’t get enough funding to combat Republican campaigns and disconnected Americans never really find out about them (nor help or empower them in the process).
Those that are embracing false equivalence between the two parties are playing right into the hands of our current status quo.
How are we ever going to usher in truly progressive third parties down the road when people abstain from voting and put Republicans in power that have district gerrymandering, voter suppression/disenfranchisement down to a science?
Have these people that abstain from voting ever been an (offline) activist trying to push forward progressive third parties and agendas? It all gets massively regressed when Republicans take office. At least the Democrats have weaknesses that can (and are) exploited in order for activists to slowly push forward some progressive agendas. However, with Republican rule all of that regresses and even goes devastatingly backwards.
The Democratic party is a corporatist front (in large part), but if we’d stop embracing false equivalence and ping-ponging back and forth between them and Republicans we could finally force the hands of the Democratic party instead of always giving them the perpetual Republican scapegoat to blame (to their Dem base) for their inactions.
Showing the Dem base what the Dem party really is like would be truly revolutionary and something that has never happened in modern times within the USA. It would finally send even the most indoctrinated Democratic voters looking for progressive alternatives outside of the party and/or demanding massive reformists to take over the party.
We shouldn’t be fooled, there really is a powerful majority of progressives that can achieve this once we tap into them.
I’ll put it this way, when Obama ran on a progressive platform (single payer health care, anti-war, anti-bankster, etc.) before he was elected, it mobilized powerful, progressive activists all over the country to help him. Pedantic pessimists will point out that Wall Street funded the Obama campaign and Obama didn’t follow through on much of his promises (and they’d be correct), but that’s not the point.
The point is that on his truly progressive agenda, Obama won in a landslide with the highest voter turnout in 40 years. When Obama and the Democrats failed to follow through on those progressive agendas, those same activists became disgusted and voting was the lowest in 70 years as a later result (the midterms).
What this shows is that there really is a truly progressive majority in the USA, but they are fickle. We just need a progressive Democrat (or Independent) to run and follow through after elected (or at least sincerely try and show the public who their real enemies are).
That’s why I hope Bernie Sanders runs for president. I think he’ll follow through and actually fight for the middle and lower class instead of simply pandering like we’ve seen too much from Obama, etc.
However, if this nation keeps embracing false equivalence, then the same DINO/Republican ping-pong cycle will continue unabated and the corporatist right status quo will remain in place indefinitely.
