I was invited to speak about the meaning of the midterm elections at the Rankin County Dems weekly breakfast on Saturday. To give you an idea of how hard Democrats have it in Mississippi, the guy we had running in the 3rd Congressional District against teabagger Gregg Harper was a guy named Joel Gill, whose signs read "Vote CONSERVATIVE Democrat Joel Gill for U.S. Congress, MS-03." Rankin Dems haven't yet learned that being Republican lite won't beat a Republican in an election.
Here's the speech I delivered below the fold.
The elections are over. The so-called "liberal" mainstream media wrote our obituary months before folks even thought about who was going to get their vote. And sure enough, we got trounced. But who trounced us? And why? It certainly wasn't their policy that won them the votes. In 2010, Republicans in the House and Senate...
-Said NO to help for homeless war veterans and their families.
-Said NO to providing health care to injured 9/11 responders.
-Said NO to more small business loans to spur hiring in the private sector.
-Said NO to money to help states shore up lost jobs in the public sector.
-Said NO to a measure that punished companies who outsourced American jobs overseas.
-Said NO to reining in Wall Street banksters that plundered our 401ks and rewarded themselves with millions of dollars in executive bonuses.
That's what they've said no to. But what have they done? How will they govern, now that they control a chamber of Congress?
They jumped in bed with a British oil company that polluted our shores, killed our wildlife and ruined an entire region's economy for a generation. In fact, the ranking Republican on the House Energy Committee, Joe Barton of Texas, apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward during a committee hearing. And the Republican Study Committee, which represents 116 House Republicans, called the president's $20 billion dollar escrow fund for claims, a "Chicago-style shakedown."
They've pushed candidates to the fore running for office who advocate against masturbation. Who want to hit seniors with a $2,000 medicare deductible. Who want to hand over the retirement savings of a generation to Wall Street. Who say they'll deregulate companies even further, and when those companies ship jobs to India and China, they'll deny those folks a mere $240 unemployment check.
Republicans who have just won office won the vote by pledging to repeal Health Care Reform. They want to allow big insurance companies to deny your children health insurance because he or she has a pre-existing condition, so the big insurers can increase their profit margin and buy a few more private jets.
The Republican "Pledge to America," the compilation of Republican policy ideas for the next decade, is a pledge to Big Oil. It was written by a former lobbyist for Exxon-Mobil. The Republican party wants government by and for the wealthy, not you. They don't care about you and me. Their allegiance is to their corporate backers.
So why did they win? Again, it clearly wasn't their policy. Was it because voters were frustrated with Democrats? What did the Democrats do to deserve such malice?
-Was it because the Obama administration cut taxes for the middle class by $240 billion dollars since 2009? and that taxes are at their lowest since the Truman presidency?
-Was it because the Obama administration is set to make a profit back on the bank bailouts, which are being paid back in full?
-Was it that under the Democrats' watch, the economy grew over the last four quarters?
-Did the Democrats lose because since President Obama signed the Small Business Jobs Act, the SBA has awarded $3 billion dollars in loans to 5,000 businesses?
Was our loss to the Republicans due to the fact that jobless claims are now at a 3-month low, down 21,000 claims from last month? Or that consumer spending is on the rise, giving employers more of an incentive to hire?
-Did we lose because GM, the company we bailed out in early 2009, is now going to buy back $2.1 billion dollars of stock from the federal government? That they've secured a $5 billion dollar line of credit? that they're sharing profits with workers and expanding their Detroit factories and hiring more workers? That because of help from Democratic policy, they're now creating 600 new jobs in Lansing, Michigan? that the Big Three are investing $2 billion dollars in Michigan thanks to new federal tax incentives? Or that Chrysler is now set to introduce a car that gets 40 miles per gallon and that Ford made a $1.69 billion dollar profit last quarter?
If the Republicans had their way, all of the American automakers would be wallowing in bankruptcy right now, and thousands of Americans would be crossing their fingers to collect an unemployment check that Republicans would deny them.
Clearly this wasn't a policy victory for Republicans, nor was it that Democratic leadership was ineffective in getting the job done. the Republicans did everything they could to stall the creation of jobs and slow economic growth, because that would make the President look good. They worked hard to hold this country back and voters rewarded them for it. Democrats like Travis Childers believed in the naive myth of bipartisanship, and they were ousted by Republicans like Alan Nunnelee, who says that the Democrats' policies in Washington are worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Likewise, our guy in the 3rd district, Joel Gill, ran as a not-quite-as-conservative alternative to Gregg Harper, and not surprisngly, lost quite handily. You can't hold hands and sing Kum-ba-Yah with folks who spit in your face and call you a Marxist. Touchdowns are NOT scored on the 50-yard line. Democrats aren't supposed to beat Republicans by being Republican lite.
The real reason Democrats lost this election was because of ineffective messaging. You can make great changes, but unless you communicate those changes to the public, the public won't know the difference. And that brings us to problem number one. The media.
The media in 2008 made Barack Obama into more than just a politician; he was a leader who unified his base. He was trumped up to be a guy who could walk on water. But what voters didn't get to see once Obama was elected and put out on the water, was the giant elephant underneath the surface with its trunk wrapped around the President's leg. And when the President started to flail about in the water, voters just turned their backs and walked back down the pier without looking beneath the surface to really see what was holding our guy back.
I've always said the media is the fifth branch of American government (the federal reserve is the fourth). Unlike the other four branches based in Washington, D.C., the media is all over the nation. We decide what you talk about at the gym, with your friends at home, with your colleagues at the water cooler, with the attractive woman at the bar. We are responsible for providing the public discourse. It is a job that comes with great power and great responsibility, although because most journalists are overworked and underpaid, we don't realize the power we wield. I contend that the media wields more power over the public than the other four branches combined.
Malcolm X said the media is the most powerful entity on Earth- they have the power to make the guilty innocent, and the innocent guilty. And that's power. The media narrative this time around was that the Democrats didn't magically fix all of America's problems in two years after the Republicans had 8 years to walk all over the American people and give a middle finger to rest of the world. And according to the media, that's the Democrats' fault. Now, the boot of corporate America is on the neck of the American people. Tuesday, Americans chose to elect leaders who would give us a kick in the face instead of a hand up. And I attribute that to corporate influence in the media.
There's a commercial that aired on TV a lot last week that talked about the ballooning federal deficit and the high foreclosure rate. It didn't endorse any party or candidate, but encouraged us to elect leaders who promised to rein in federal spending and curb the federal deficit. It was funded by a group with a vague-sounding name. That commercial was one of many, financed by $38 million dollars of corporate money all leading back to two oil billionaires, Charles and David Koch. They are the faces of the opposition. Americans For Prosperity, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Dick Armey's Freedomworks, Karl Rove's American Crossroads and all the other shadowy front groups that have been giving the Democrats a deluge of hatred on the airwaves are simply a marriage of conservative politicians and multinational corporations.
The Republicans' electoral victory Tuesday did NOT come from grassroots movements from the people. It came from Wall Street fat cat bankers, oil company bigwigs, health insurance executives and hedge fund managers. The message of lower taxes for the wealthy and less regulation for corporate America came from the very profiteers who want to fatten their pockets at our expense. Who care more about their bottom line than about protecting endangered plant and animal species in our Gulf. Who denied health insurance to the sick and dying because it would bring down their profit margin by a fraction of a point. Unlike George Soros, a philanthropist for liberal and environmental causes that don't make his paycheck bigger, the Koch brothers support the right because the right makes them richer. The right isn't looking out for workers' rights, or civil rights, or women's rights or gay rights. They aren't looking out for American veterans and their families. They aren't looking out for the folks on the street out of a job because of Reagan-era deregulation and greed. They're looking out for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, because that's where their money and support comes from.
The right says they want to cut the federal deficit and curb government spending, yet they want to make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent. And at a cost of $2 trillion dollars every ten years, that's more expensive than the Democrats' stimulus package and health care reform laws COMBINED. They say they want smaller government, yet they seek to thrust government into the daily lives of gay American citizens, and prevent them the equal right to marry whomever they want regardless of gender. They say they want the government to stay out of a doctor-patient relationship, yet they seek to have the government intrude on a woman's reproductive rights. They say they want a government accountable by the people, yet they seek to take away YOUR right to vote for U.S. senators by repealing the 17th amendment.
Fellow Democrats, WE are the party with vision for the future. WE are the people who want to lend a helping hand to our fellow Americans instead of a closed fist. WE are the ones inspired by hope and progressive change, not by fear of ethnic minorities and hatred of those not like us. Our problem is NOT inferiority. Democrats would have taken this election and RAN with it had they simply embraced their accomplishments instead of run away from them.
As Democrats, lets learn from this election and grow from it, instead of commiserate and lament. Let's promise to support Democrats who are proud to be Democrats, who believe in effective government over small government, who pledge to listen to Main Street instead of K Street.
Barack Obama won his 2008 campaign by pledging to be a Democrat and champion Democratic ideals, not by being Republican lite. Let's do our part to let Rankin County and the people of Mississippi know that government can actually do good for others if the right people are in charge of it. And let's prove it to them by electing proud Democrats to bear our party's standard.
Thank you, Rankin County Democrats. God bless.