I keep asking myself why it is that the Democratic party is not screaming bloody murder about what is being done to the electoral system and the rights of you and me. Why is Bill Clinton so buddy-buddy with daddy Bush anyway, after what his two boys did to Al Gore in '00? I think I have a better idea of what is going on now after a recent experience.
Two Tuesday's ago I attended a local Democratic Club meeting for the first time, to meet one of the candidates for Lt. Governor of MD, the running mate of Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley. To say that I left disappointed is more than an understatement.
There are two major Democratic candidates for Governor, the other is Montgomery Co. Executive Doug Duncan, someone I thoroughly dislike, and is probably a "DINO" (Democrat in Name Only). I swore I'd never vote for Duncan for dog catcher, let alone Governor, largely based on two of his most onerous positions; support for an environmentally ruinous highway called the Intercounty Connector (between I-270 at Gaithersburg and I-95 near Laurel), and his adamant refusal to allow the county police to check on the immigration status of obviously foreign-born arrestees in the county, let alone do anything about employers who hire illegal aliens.
Well, it turns out there isn't a dime's worth of difference between Duncan and O'Malley on these two issues. O'Malloy also supports the highway that current Republican Gov. Bob Ehrlich revived after his predecessor, Parris Glendenning, had spent years trying to finally drive a stake through the heart of this beast that won't die. O'Malley also won't do anything about having illegal aliens who are arrested in the State deported. Instead, his platform calls for making them pay for their car insurance and tax withholding. Excuse me, they shouldn't be here doing those things anyway!
So now I'm left with no real choice for Governor this year, unless I find a third-party candidate willing to take on the developers, paving contractors, employers of illegal immigrants, the Catholic Church (that encourages the largely Catholic Hispanics to come here illegally) and the extremely vociferous "open boarders" crowd that just drives me up a wall. I'm a very far left liberal on most things, but why does it take Republican Lou Dobbs to hammer home the point night-after-night that this border crisis is a direct assault on union and other native-born labor in this Country? Not to mention the environmental nightmare of an ever-increasing U. S. population that consumes so much more of the World's resources than everyone else.
I think it's time to take back the Democratic party for the people, the real people. I've been reading Howard Zinn's classic "A People's History of the United States", and he makes a very good case that the Powers-That-Be allowed a somewhat progressive Democratic Party to exist as a safety valve to keep the lid on a true revolt of working and oppressed Americans that would confiscate the ill-gotten gains of the rich and create a society of true justice and equality for all. The fascist right-wing nuts who've taken over the GOP and upset the balance have shown the true nature of this beast of an establishment. If they don't succeed in totally shutting down dissent and preventing any fair elections at all, then we have a chance to start a movement to truly engage in class-warfare. Yes, I said class-warfare, and finally have a Country that lives up to the highest ideals of it's founding documents; documents that were really meant more as platitudes, but could someday really mean what they say. And as much as I hate to see it happen, maybe the Democrats need to lose some elections until they come up with candidates that are something other than "Republican Lite".
I urge all of you to keep picking away at this establishment, and I will too. We'll all probably end up on some secret Administration 'Enemies List', like Nixon's; but I would consider it a badge of honor. Good people who really care about this Country, and this World, and the future of both need to keep on fighting!