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Why Fight the Hostile Takeover of the Dem Party? Here's Why. |
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by David Sirota
(No verified email address) |
17 Aug 2006
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Message from Washington, D.C. Democratic insiders: The world will come crashing down if Democrats actually show some independence from Big Money interests, and actually stand up for the positions on economic issues held by the vast majority of Americans. Puh-leeze. |
I get flack sometimes for talking about how the hostile takeover of our government has been perpetrated by forces within both political parties. It's pretty obvious, of course, that the Democratic Party is far less beholden to Big Money than the Republican Party, and that there are far more courageous reformers within the Democratic Party than within the GOP. But to those blind partisans who say the Democratic Party is unassailable, that corruption doesn't hurt the Democratic Party's ability to win elections, and that all we have to do is win the majority and the hostile takeover will be reversed - I say to you, choke down some horse tranquilizer and either go read my book Hostile Takeover, or go read the following three stories that came out today.
The first story is a Washington Post piece entitled "Democrats' Stock Is Rising on K Street." Some progressive writers are cheering this development, but even though its great that the story means Democrats really do have a shot at winning, I don't think a story like this is cause for celebration - I think it's a cause for at least some concern about what a Democratic-led Congress would actually DO. Here's the key excerpt:
"Washington lobbying firms, trade associations and corporate offices are moving to hire more well-connected Democrats in response to rising prospects that the opposition party will wrest control of at least one chamber of Congress from Republicans in the November elections...For example, earlier this month, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, or Bio, named Jeffrey A. Joseph, a well-known Democrat, as its vice president of communications. This followed other, high-profile Democratic hires this spring and summer, including Cory Alexander, former chief of staff to Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), who joined housing finance giant Fannie Mae, and Mark Schuermann, former chief of staff to Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.), who went to Public Strategies Inc., a large government relations firm...In the spring, former Democratic congressman Calvin M. Dooley of California was named to head the major trade association that will result from the merger of the Food Products Association and the Grocery Manufacturers Association...Lobbying firms have also increased their Democratic numbers. Venn Strategies LLC, a bipartisan lobbying firm that specializes in tax legislation, lost a junior Democratic lobbyist earlier this year but replaced her in recent months with two senior Democrats, Jessica Battaglia, a former counsel to Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), and Lori A. Neal, previously a legislative assistant to Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.)."
The second story is the front-page New York Times story about the incredibly important efforts to fight back against Wal-Mart. Buried in the piece, however, we see the ugly head of the Democratic Party's Big Money faction - aka. the corporate-funded Democratic Leadership Council:
"Some Democrats expressed concern about the direction the party was heading, saying it could turn back efforts by such party leaders as former President Bill Clinton to erase the image of the party as anti-business and scare off corporations that might be inclined to make contributions."
Message from Washington, D.C. Democratic insiders: The world will come crashing down if Democrats actually show some independence from Big Money interests, and actually stand up for the positions on economic issues held by the vast majority of Americans. Puh-leeze.
Finally, John Cohn has a short piece in the New Republic about former Democratic Sen. John Breaux using his status as a multi-milliondollar lobbyist to head up a pharmaceutical industry-backed front group aimed at further distorting the health care debate in Washington. Put another way, he's using his Democratic Party label to impart the hue of bipartisanship on Big Money's agenda. Here's the excerpt:
"Before retiring in 2005, Breaux was among the Senate's most famous proponents of the idea that bipartisan compromise was a virtue in itself...Breaux's positions aligned him with a number of wealthy financial interests--which, frequently enough, were generous benefactors of his political campaigns over the years. Whether those contributions defined his ideology or the other way around is, of course, impossible to say. But few of his admirers ever seemed to even ask the question...Which brings us to Breaux's current endeavor: A project called 'Ceasefire on Healthcare.'...It's familiar rhetoric, and, alas, it masks a familiar agenda. The giveaway is right in that quote above. Note the reference to 'market-based health care reform'...It takes a fairly distorted view of the modern political spectrum to define the 'market-based' position closer to the political center. Americans may not love big government, but, last time I checked, they're not big fans of HMOs and Big Pharma, either. And, speaking of the drug industry, that's the other curious--or perhaps not so curious--aspect of Breaux's high-minded appeal to bipartisanship: whose interests he really represents. Breaux surely doesn't need a speaking tour, let alone a lowly blog, to make himself a player on health care. But the p.r. campaign's very existence at least reinforces his image as a high-minded, commonsense thinker who is simply out to break through political logjams. It's one more reason why he'll pop up on the talk shows and op-ed pages if and when the next big health care debate takes place. And, more important, it's one more reason why he'll be accorded statesmanlike status. But Breaux is not exactly a disinterested party in these debates. On the contrary, he's now a lobbyist with the high-powered Washington firm of Patton Boggs. And one of his primary areas of interest? You guessed it: health care. Sure enough, a quick look at some of the firm's clients--courtesy of the Center for Responsive Politics--reveals a long list of organizations that would benefit from 'market-based reforms,' since such reforms generally mean less regulation and more freedom to charge higher prices. Perhaps the most vivid example is the pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb, which spent nearly half a million dollars to obtain the firm's services in 2005. (No figures yet for 2006, so no way to know if it's still a client--or, for that matter, whether Breaux has personally done work on their behalf.) Oh, and the Ceasefire campaign itself? It's being underwritten by Pfizer."
This, of course, says nothign of the Hill Newspaper piece yesterday about Democratic Senators listening to Michael Lewan, the Enron lobbyist, former moneyman to convicted Gov. John Rowland and former chief of staff to Joe Lieberman.
Put it all together, and you can see why the fight against the hostile takeover crosses party lines, and why holding both parties' feet to the fire is critical. I know there are some Democratic partisans in Washington who every two years tell everyone to just shut up and wait until we win the next election- and I certainly am working as hard as I can to help Democrats win Congress in 2006. But the calls every two years by Washington insiders to not raise any substantive issues is a ploy to get us to ignore their corruption. And make no mistake about it - when we ignore the worst forms of corruption because of purely partisan concerns, we become complicit in that corruption.
Alternately, by fighting it in the way Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson documents more Democratic candidates are, we not only fight for principles, we help create more Democratic Party discipline - discipline that is absolutely essential to Democrats crafting election-winning messages, and ultimately, public policies that don't just serve the interests of the highest corporate bidder.
Remember, as the Associated Press noted in a recent article, the batch of potential incoming Democratic chairmen in Congress are serious progressives - but they are going to face Big Money forces within their own party who will try to stop them from implementing the progressive agenda. The more we simultaneously go up against the GOP and fight the hostile takeover of the Democratic Party, the easier we make their jobs when it comes time for the rubber to hit the road.
David Sirota is a writer political strategist, and author of the upcoming book Hostile Takeover.
http://www.workingforchange.com/ |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
