"Clearly, if we are going to save the middle class and protect our planet, we need to change the political dynamics of the nation. We can no longer allow the billionaires and their think tanks or the corporate media to set the agenda. We need to educate, organize and mobilize the working families of our country to stand up for their rights. We need to make government work for all the people, not just the 1 percent." Sanders writes in his column for the Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Within this column, he proposes an agenda for the coming year that includes such things as reining in Citizen United, raising the minimum wage, actual banking/finance reform, creating jobs, safe-guarding Social Security, corralling the out of control surveillance apparatus, and tax reform for corporations and wealthy that use loopholes and legal legerdemain to avoid, in many cases, paying any taxes at all.
My question, the question that keeps me awake at night, the question that causes me to worry endlessly about this country?
When did concern for the citizenry become only the agenda of socialism? How is it that few, very few, within the Democratic Party, bother to articulate, much less support, these issues?
How is it that when Warren and Grayson stand up within the Democratic Party to voice their deep and abiding concern, they are lambasted as the far-left wing; out of touch with the mainstream Democrats?
I don't know the answer.
I became a Socialist for a very specific reason: The Democratic Party left me behind.
They supported Wall Street policy positions, appointed former bankers and hedge fund managers to influential positions, accepted campaign contributions from the very people and institutions whose policies and agendas are antithetical to the welfare of the majority of Americans. They allowed the national dialogue to be dominated by right wing bombast, put themselves on the defensive in nearly every major policy conflict in the last twenty years.
The Civil Rights Act was not passed by luke warm Democrats sitting back on their heels while the Governor Wallaces of the right controlled the national debate. Neither was the Voting Rights Act, for that matter.
How is it that Democrats in the House and Senate are not doing everything in their power to strengthen the right of the people to Unionize? How is it that when SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act, the Dems failed to introduce legislation the next day to codify and strengthen voting rights across the country? How is that many, many Dems went along with a PPACA bill that failed to offer a true public option?
Democrats used to fight for their agenda. Now they only fight against a conservative agenda, and don't even do that very well. For far too long democrats have waged a war of appeasement with the right. It hasn't worked. It won't work. It can't work. You cannot negotiate with a cannibal how much of you he can eat.
