Fundamental Change has not come to Washington DC
by: Dave Belden on July 30th, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Still at Open Left, a quote that sums up where we are after seven months of Obama’s administration:
Big business lobbyists, in this case from the health insurance industry, still have more power than the President. The media establishment, for all their lost audience and credibility, still have the ability to drive a negative conventional wisdom story about how change is impossible. And Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, out of a combination of caution and the fear of these aforementioned lobbyists, still don’t have the ability to deliver transformational change. The kind of change Barack Obama based his campaign around is, so far, nowhere to be seen.
I do highly agree I think that there is something behind all of this. I am not so sure I agree with the Bilderberg or Illuminati conspiricy theories. But it was rather convenient that our economy went south just when the polls were predicting a victory for the Democrats.
But what I am sure of is that there will be no meaningful change until there is some political reform. I think that reform will only come from the presence of an active, popular and effective thrid party. For that to happen, the “thrid parties” have to change their tactics. Right now they are just a conglomeration of “also rans” who once every four years trot out some poor sucker who is going to “try” to convince an electorate that is voting their stomach that their off the wall theories are best for america. I recall the now incarcerated founder of the Libertarian Party offering as a solution to a non-existant “food shortage” the irrigation of the entier desert southwest by piping water from the Great Lakes. I’m sure Canada, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, and Minnisota would object veheminously. No this won’t do.
The Green Party is the most stable of them and seemingly the most popular. I am a litttle familiar with the Greens through personal association. But whatever party wants to stake out a respectible slice of the electoral pie must begin at the bottom. The two parties we have were created in a time when there was no such thing as constituent services. If you lived in the city, outside of police, you took care of yourself. If you wanted fire protection, you bought fire insurance and that company’s fire fighters wouold come put out your fire. If you wanted the trash dumped, just dump it in the street and eventually it will be cleaned up when the pile gets too deep for anyone to pass. But in these times, (unlike the above described Conservative Republican Utopia) if a politician wants votes then the buses in his district must be in working order and on time and the trash needs to be collected regularly. These parties have got to stop the 4 year flash and get local! Once reputations are built, votes will follow. Then real change can happen.
Otherwise, we can only hope and pray that the Repbulcans will shoot themselves in the foot and the Democrats will realize that they do not need to appease the unereducated, overactive, underachievers that make up the cadre of Talk Radio Hosts (Specially that BIG guy in Florida) and do what their constituents want. Maybe then Pelosi will allow Single Payer Healthcare and tell the Insurance Companies to take their hat and stick and split. Maybe then Coal will be out of the “Clean” Energy Bill. But so long as the political process is dominated by this notion that to he who raises the most money goes the victory, reform is impossible. Unless of course you are a Republican and you want the country to be like it was in 1830.
It dawns on me that a long time ago, maybe 15 years ago, I stopped donating money to any Democratic “establishment” candidate or organization. There has been a disconnect between whatever goes on in Washington DC and the discussions, ideas, wishes of everyone else.
Maybe it’s not that monied interest groups block change, although they do.
Another possibility is that it is very difficult to translate progressive ideas and ideals into laws.
Stealing from the poor is not difficult. Blowing up most anything is not a big problem. We are better at it that any group of Muslims.
Spreading the wealth around – becomes, in the public mind, stealing from the poor and bragging about it. To me this transformation of meaning makes no sense, but it occurs and it stops thought and makes change seem dangerous.
The stoppage of thought and the fear of change also affect Democrats who have power in Washington.
I really do not think there is a choice–until there is not such an exteme reaction to not doing things the standard American way–people are phobic about anything that is dramatically different then the standard quo.
It’s very hard to overcome vested interests, but I do think “Obama the idealist” has lost out to “Obama the realist”. Obama squandered his political capital and momentum when he listened to his Wall Street friends and bailed out the bankers, instead of letting the markets crash and then using that as an opportunity to really change “the system”. The wars still drag on and on, too. It looks like the insurance companies have taken over health care reform. It’s probably time for a Progressive Party to split the left the way the Reform and Libertarian parties have split the right, OR form a broad coalition of reform minded voters who just want to clean up Washington, investigate the wrongdoing, restore the Constitution, and throw the bums out.