Why do we keep getting sold out? Because we were sold out.
If like me you're wondering how we keep being deflected and defused from any serious accomplishments on the war in Congress when our progressive ire as an electorate has been so up for so long, and we supposedly did so well in the last Congressional election, jump with me below the fold to a dismal story, covered in excellent reporting on truthout.org. You've heard parts of the story before, but never like this.
Here's the link to the truthout.org special report by Matt Renner, entitled "Democratic House Officials Recruited Wealthy Conservatives":
http://www.truthout.org/...
I'm a tough old bird, and I'm hard to demoralize, but this one has almost done me in, and please, if it doesn't do you in, tell me at length how you hold on in the face of it. Tell me I'm wrong to think this is rot at the core, all around the apple.
Understand, I can live with once-promising campaigns put to the torch because of "not electable," or "not trying hard enough." I've been in the trenches in local elections and seen lazy or inept or disorganized candidates who should have been dumped doom a progressive agenda. I know that the primary races are meant to be survival of the fittest.
But the message in this truthout report goes far beyond the usual political "darwinism of the campaign", and involves very serious and troubling matters about exactly what goals the national party leadership of the supposed opposition party has been working for. And it troubles me even more about the concerns I've had about what Hillary and her candidacy mean for the core of U.S. progressivism.
Seriously, I went to school with Bill Clinton for a few years, and he was an establishment guy even then, not a radical, he cozied up to the school administration and it was like a joke that the Rethugs later tried to label him as some hippie-type because he'd been such a tool, so I never presumed he or his staff and entourage were what I'd consider very far to the liberal side of the scale, and I told people that when he first ran. But I thought and told others that he and his were good folk, and certainly not the closet henchmen of the moneyed class.
This truthout report calls a lot into question for me. What we needed for all the hard work in 2006 were more blue dogs? I know there have been angry muttering about Rahm and the leadership for quite some time, but Matt Renner is describing something that sounds very, very deliberate. And where is Howard Dean anyway, he's been silent as a tomb.