Amnesty for Corporate Whores
Tue Nov 14, 2006 at 08:36:56 PM PDT
Once the Supreme Court decided that money was the same thing as speech and the spiraling costs of media driven campaigns made the quest for greater and greater sums of cash necessary to run competitive campaigns, it became necessary for politicians of both parties to pursue policies that made them attractive to large corporate donors. Through the 80's and 90's turning your back on this source of campaign funds amounted to unilateral disarmament.
This created quite a dilemma for Democratic politicians and a boon for Republican politicians. This is because the support of corporate interests is built into the basic ideology of the Republican Party. Therefore, they are guaranteed to garner significant corporate underwriting. Democrats had a much more difficult balancing act to perform. Hence the emergence of the DLC and other corporate friendly policies within the Democratic party. Compromises had to be made with basic populist impulses in order to make the Democratic message palatable to potential corporate donors. There was simply no other game in town. And the more Democrats tried to appeal to their corporate donors the less difference the public could see between the Democrats and the Republicans.
Times have changed. In a major way. Beginning with the Dean campaign in 04, we saw the emergence of the netroots model of fundraising. This is not to imply that the internet is sufficient as a sole source of campaign funding. But it points to a model of using small donors, hard money and issue advocacy groups that are harmonious to the basic political philosophy to more than compensate for the loss of corporate money that will be associated with the adoption of a more populist party message.
The point is that now that this new model has emerged, we cannot engage in some sort of Jihad to hold past practices against our senior members. In the past, these folks did what they felt they had to do to be competitive. If they broke the law, that is another matter, but if it is a question of having engaged in practices designed to keep their heads above water in this dysfunctional system in the absence of a sane fundraising model, it is time to forget about the past and start building a positive future. This is why Jack Murtha's history doesn't bother me all that much. It raises flags. It makes me want to watch what he does in the future and insist that he get on the right page. But I am not about to let past practices disqualify the right man at this critical time from moving into this position.
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