As Gaius Publius noted in his post here this past Sunday evening…
…I’ve been writing about the split — the chasm, really — between progressives and “progressives” in the Democratic Party for at least a year, and…[others] have been documenting the sins of money-bought “Democrats” like the DCCC since forever.
Some want that split to heal, and some want it to widen. Democrats who want it to heal are motivated by two main interests, it seems. One is the desire, understandable enough, to keep government out of the hands of Republicans, who really are the greater evil, if only by a little.
The other interest, though, is more insidious and far less defensible. If the party pulls together, those whose careers are tied to the success of its money-soaked DLC wing will see those careers advanced — in some cases, spectacularly.
The losers in all this? Unbailed-out mortgagees; students with crushing personal debt; the soon-to-explode bomb of poverty among soon-to-retire 401k-holders — the jobless; the poor; the barely-making-it in a Nike and Apple “made in Asia” economy. The bottom 80% who are going nowhere or going down. The traditional constituents, in other words, of the real Democratic Party as constituted in the pre–Bill Clinton years.
Who wants the split in the Democratic Party to widen? Anyone who wants progressive change in America at a non-incremental pace. And everyone, voter or activist, who no longer wants to reward “professional Democrats” — self-serving, money-serving women and men — for their constant and regular betrayals…
So, guess who wins if the President and the turncoat Dems in the Senate and House shove these job-killing (and, yes, people-killing, which the Big Pharma-related pricing protections currently in the TransPacific Partnership draft, in and of themselves, will "accomplish") trade agreements (the TransPacific Partnership, a/k/a “TPP”, the TransAtlantic Free Trade Agreement, a/k/a “TTIP/TAFTA,” and the Trade In Services Annex to the General Agreement on Trade in Services, a/k/a “TISA”) down our throats? Well, that’d be the same triangulators within our Party that have brought us to the foreign trade precipice where we’re standing, right now.
Matt Taibbi, as usual, not pulling any punches (which is why I admire his work), has just made a few observations about this, and I hope you’ll consider reading much more about his thoughts on these matters over at RollingStone.com. In the meantime, here are some excerpts...
The Democratic Party Would Triangulate Its Own Mother
The latest squabble over the Trans-Pacific Partnership shows just how low America's "Progressive" Party has sunk
By Matt Taibbi
RollingStone.com
May 14, 2015
Barack Obama made headlines this week by taking on Sen. Elizabeth Warren in a dispute over our latest labor-crushing free trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The president's anger over Warren's decision to lead the Senate in blocking his authority to fast-track the TPP was heavily covered by the Beltway media, which loves a good intramural food fight…
Of course, over the past 24 hours, once the horse-trading kicked-in, we’ve all learned that this was, simply, Washington Kabuki of the most classic sort. Taibbi delves into greater detail about this, in the most common sense, what-you-see-is-what-you-get-so-cut-the-sh*t way, which is his trademark, and something he does better than just about anyone else in the U.S. press, these days.
As Taibbi notes it, when the President, who’s just about always, “…one of the coolest cucumbers ever to occupy the White House…”, has an extremely public “beef” with none other than Senator Elizabeth Warren, what that really tells us is that it’s time to fetch the popcorn.
…if you think that Barack Obama, one of the coolest cucumbers ever to occupy the White House, sat down for a scheduled interview in front of a professional softballer like ex-Times and current Yahoo pundit Matt Bai – a setup that's the presidential media equivalent of a spa treatment – and just suddenly "lost it" in a discussion about the TPP, you've been had.
And, if there’s anyone reading this that thinks this isn’t how things roll in D.C., I’ve got a bridge to sell you!
…It was quite a show, which was the first clue that something wasn't quite right in this picture. The Beltway press made a huge spectacle out of how the "long-simmering" Obama-Warren "feud" had turned "personal."…
And, no, this isn’t 11-dimensional chess. This is Introduction to Beltway Political Communications 101.
…Even Bai approvingly described Obama's move as an effort to triangulate the "professional left." …
…
…Triangulating – beating up on the ideologues within your own party in order to shore up your centrist cred and reassure your money sources – is an especially brilliant solution for Democrats targeting national office. Those politicians need virtual monopolies on union and minority votes, but also need just enough centrists and white southerners to stay viable. To keep those latter votes, you need to make a few very conspicuous moves from time to time.
That's surely what happened here with the TPP, a monster deal with the potential to reshape not just our trade profile but our domestic financial regulatory structure. Along with a Democratic Party that would love one last chance to prove itself to Wall Street heading into 2016, Obama badly wants this deal passed, perhaps as a way to steer his legacy in a more bipartisan direction before he rides off into the sunset.
So he picked just the right moment and just the right words to goad the press into painting him as someone who's just so angry at Elizabeth Warren's failure to understand how the real world looks from behind the Oval Office desk, he just couldn't keep his feelings reined in… …but the oven-mitt questioning of Matt Bai just beat it out of him!
And, while I disagree with Taibbi’s efforts to downplay/trivialize the corporatocratic devastation inherent within the Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS) clauses, when it comes to 40% of the world’s trade—which goes hand-in-hand with the implementation of just the TPP--the manner in which Matt closes out this piece (and much of what I haven’t covered in my brief summary, above) shouldn’t be missed. So, read the whole thing, if you dare!
Matt reminds us: "...this goes back to Clinton, Al From, Dick Morris, the DLC days. Third Way Dems first dared American workers to try to get a better deal with Republicans. Then, once they established that they could safely take minorities and labor for granted, they used right-wing caricatures of welfare moms or rappers to score points with the political middle."
It's clever, and it sure as hell works as a way to win elections. It just seems like doing the right thing and standing up for actual people would work just as well.
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