Forum Post: The Democrats Prepare to Colude with Republicans on Gutting the Social Saftey Net
Posted 11 years ago on Aug. 23, 2012, 8:45 p.m. EST by PeterKropotkin
(1050)
from Oakland, CA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
By Glen Ford
The Republican presidential primaries drew on the metaphor of the Etch A Sketch, that 1960s children’s plaything that allowed kids to instantaneously erase what had been drawn or written on a page. American presidential elections, stage-managed by money and refereed by the corporate media, produce a kind of Etch A Sketch effect: in an instant, history is erased, and the sheet is wiped clean for the candidates to write on.
Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats under her leadership have a lot of Etch A Sketching to do, to keep pace with the steady rightward movement of their party and their president. They are immeasurably assisted in these maneuvers by the Republican troglodytes, especially vice presidential pick Paul Ryan, whose damn-the-government-to-hell budget makes President Obama appear like a friend of working people. It provides a perfect camouflage for Democrats to adopt positions they had only yesterday rejected as unthinkably rightwing. This, of course, has always been President Obama’s game: to move inexorably into Republican territory, putting his own brand on austerity, militarism and the growing police state, until the Republicans have nowhere to go but off the cliff, like Wiley Coyote.
Nancy Pelosi, who in a long ago time was co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, and who opposed the recommendations of President Obama’s Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction Commission as “simply unthinkable” two years ago, now says she supports it.
The evolution of her thinking is quite simple. With the Paul Ryan budget now indelibly stamped onto the Mitt Romney campaign, the way is clear for the Democrats to move another step to the right and embrace Simpson-Bowles $4 trillion in spending cuts that will eviscerate what’s left of the social safety net. Which is what President Obama offered the Republicans, last summer. The Republicans didn’t take Obama’s offer, because it included modest tax increases and cuts to the military.
The current speculation – and I think it’s correct – is that Obama will again offer the deal to the GOP right after the election. And, why not? Simpson Bowles was really Obama’s vision all the time: the austerity plan he had in mind when he announced, two weeks before taking the oath of office, in 2009, that Social Security and all other entitlements would be on the chopping block. Back then, the Republicans were in no shape to do any pushing, having just suffered a whopping electoral defeat.
It was Obama who put austerity on the Democratic agenda. He has always been determined to forge a Grand Alliance with the GOP. The trick has been to make his war against the poor appear to be a “compromise” necessitated by Republican meanness and intransigence. Nancy Pelosi and the rest of Democratic leadership act as magician’s helpers in this performance, edging ever further to the right side of the stage. At the end of the show, the audience thinks they’ve witnessed some kind of victory for the little guy. The President will once again pull Simpson-Bowles out of his hat. The flim-flam man does it again!
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/democrats-prepare-post-election-grand-compromise-gop
Why We Don't Spend As Much Time Denouncing Republicans As We Do Democrats
Fletcherism and Fakery: Guarding Obama’s Left Flank
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/fletcherism-and-fakery-guarding-obama’s-left-flank
Dems have moved right for 30 years! There are always some Dems corrupt enough to vote for conservative policies. There is always others without the backbone to stand up to the right wing.
We need to elect real progressives like Sanders and Kucinich, And vote out anti Social Security, anti safety net republicans.
"It's the only way to be sure"
It is not that they are corrupt enough to vote for a conservative policy. It is that any politician is corrupt enough to act against the best interests of society of the people of the environment of the world - all for money and/or the promise of power.
Conservatives per say are not all evil. Progressives per say are not all angels.
But it seems that these are the chosen definitions of our times - however wrong they may be.
You are of course correct, there are no absolutes, and no one is perfect. However we will get pretty close to the target if we elect progressives like Sanders, and vote out conservatives like Todd Akin.
Just a guideline.
Not a prob. Just trying to save unnecessarily hurt feelings. And avoid pointless arguments.