Mar 14, 2018

March 11, 2018: The New Republicans, Staggeringly Stupid, Sacrificing the Heartland


For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

----Senator Chuck Schumer (D-Wall Street) (1)

If one were to seek an explanation of what has gone wrong with the Democratic Party one would have to look no further than the face of the Party in the United States Senate. I am referring here to none other than Wall Street's very own senator, Chuck Schumer.

Here, precisely, is what is wrong with the Democratic Party. Frank Bruni, writing recently in The New York Times, (2) describes how the Democrats are becoming the new Republicans. By foisting Caesar Disgustus upon the nation, the Rescumlickan Party has made a mockery of the political high ground; the defense of which has always been transparently fraudulent.

Bruni points out that it is the Democrats who now claim defense of family values, whatever that means, by promoting gay marriage and defending the social safety net, efforts directed at forming increasingly heterodox families and keeping them together. Democrats are now the party of patriotism by calling out the Russians for violating our political process as well as our political institutions actions against which tRUMP's nonsense about NFL players appear laughable. Democrats are the party of national security defending as they do the network of alliances that have kept peace between the major powers for three quarters of a century. Democrats are also the party of law and order defending the FBI and our intelligence services from savage attacks by the White House and the minions of Disgustus in the Congress and the media.

It is right and proper that the Democracy once again reclaims its role as champion of these values, a claim that has been brought into serious question by the fraudulence and hypocrisy of the conservative movement as manifest in the Rescumlickan Party.

But, unfortunately, the party of “fiscal responsibility”, is also now the party of Wall Street.

By ratifying Reagan and the Bush's several assaults on the tax code, the Democrats began a long slide down the path of perdition that led, by degrees, to deregulation and the savaging of the safety net. It led by the Obama years, into accepting the Rescumlican drivel about the need for austerity in times of recession, unlearning by degrees painful historical lessons. It led to the abandonment of unions. Indeed, the Democratic Party—since the day the Carter Administration folded its tents over labor legislation—has raised nary a voice in support of organized labor and the working man and woman that unions protect. These policies have resulted in stagnant wages, prolonging hardship in times of recession, burdening our young with crushing debts, and the decline of the middle classes in the United States.

In sum, the Democrats, becoming material accomplices in the dismantling of the New Deal, betrayed the Middle Classes that the party created and nurtured. The doors were left open for the rise of a Populist Revolt in the form first of the Teabaggers and then the tRUMPists.

With the elevation of Caesar Disgustus the Democrats presented the country with a new leader in the Senate: none other than the face of Wall Street. Accordingly, we are now about to see the Senate take up a measure repealing several provisions of the Dodd-Frank law, the tepid congressional response to the crash of 2008 with—you guessed it—bipartisan support. No stone, it appears, will be left unturned as Democrats tirelessly strive to transform their party into the Republican Party of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. At this writing, not only has Richard Durbin, the Minority Whip of the Senate, but a dozen other Democrats, including both Senators Peters and Stabenow of Michigan have pledged support for yet another effort by Democratic office holders to transform the party into the Rescumlican Party of our fathers and grandfathers.

This is what happens when the party of the working people has been sold out to Wall Street; and this is why the Democratic Party lost control of both houses of Congress, two thirds of the state legislatures and the White House. No, Chuck, the strategy hasn't worked. It didn't work in Wisconsin, or Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or Michigan. It hasn't worked in Iowa or Kansas or the former Democratic strongholds of West Virginia, Kentucky or Tennessee. By ceding vast swaths of this country, from the Appalachians to the rust belt, the Democrats have allowed Caesar Disgustus to sneak in through the back door; for the staggering stupidity that inspired the Clinton-led DLC and its latest incarnation called The Third Way is still with us as the entrenched mossbacks that lead this party continue to sacrificed not only the noble tradition of the Democratic Party, but the middle class and with it the American Heartland in the not-so-noble pursuit of Rescumlican votes.

Enter Caesar Disgustus.

an' Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.
__________________

  1. Bruni, Frank. “Democrats Are the New Republicans. “The New York Times”
    Wednesday, December 20, 2017. Page A27

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