A series of articles over at the TAPPED blog reminds us that the corporate DLC wing of the Democratic party is doing just fine in Congress and Obama administration. Don't look now, but the DLC wing may have won after all. So far we are seeing on many economic-business issues the same serial compromising we have always seen from the corporatist Democrats (not just Baucus & Nelson), Obama included, have been offering on everything... don't look know but the DLC wing won after all.
Mandatory Disclaimer: Any Democrat is better than any Repuglican. It is really really good, and much much better that Obama won. It is really really good and much much better that Dems control the House, and sort of control the Senate.
Still... ever since the roll out of Obama's Rahm and the Economic team (Wall Street rules our universe; worst of the Clinton retreads; if we wanted them we’d have voted for Hillary in the primaries; Secretary of Labor does not count as part of economic team, etc.), we have seen an awful lot DLC-ish looking policies and quick serial compromising.
"Respectable" moderates and liberals just love compromise, especially when it just happens to also serve the interests of big business and the richest 5% of the country.
- Employee Free Choice legislation: First we have the original labor-backed plan, supported by Dems during the primaries, even by Specter previously. Now a first round of compromising has weakened it without actually a promise that that version would be final. So of course pressure is now being brought to compromise again.
- Health care reform: First single payer was off the table, before election. Then strong public option is a nonstarter. Then mediocre public option is compromised away in the Senate committee. So now they are down to a 3rd level of compromising on what it to allowed as a "public option". All without an actual vote or even a promise to allow it to pass. And by the way, the latest version of public option is definitely "public option". It is not tied to Medicare, has to follow the same rules as the private for-profit insurers and not Medicare, and is explicitly designed to not compete with private for-profit insurance and to control costs while expanding access. In other words it is designed to fail and give "public option" a bad name. Just as Medicare "reform" (Medicare HMOs/Advantage, Part D, etc) have been designed to give Medicare a bad name.
What else are essentially pre-compromised, DLC/corporate-approved mediocrities?
- The bail-out...?
- The stimulus...?
- Regulation of financial industry...?
- Climate change...?
- Mass transit...?
- Credit cards...?
- It's the income stupid: This is the big one! Folks keep saying Obama gets the problem of inequality. Will we, over the next four years, really get policies to reverse the loss of income/inequality of the other 95% of the population ever since Reagan: increase minimum wage, wage enforcement, expanded EITC, bringing stronger progressivity to the total tax burden, etc..? I have heard rhetoric. We shall see what the policies are.
I don’t care about compromising for the sake of compromise.
Give me the best we can get with 51 votes in the Senate.
The problem is that there is no consequence for our ever so respectable moderate friends when sell out and pre-compromise away hope we can really in.
Do Baucus and Nelson and Schumer define what is allowable?
When do the real liberals, lefties, progressives and economic populists get to say no?