Bloggers and Billionaires, MoveOn and Howard Dean: The Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party

Don Hazen's article exposes the source of the corruption when discussing ideological deformation, distortions. It is clear that corporate and class interests have a generic death grip on democracy and always is the source of its betrayal and wholesale corruption.

What is missing in this article, is a historical and ideological framework that puts all these observed empirical facts, explanations, into perspective that reveals that these problems are not new strategic problems, but longtime historical failures that need further explanations, if we are to move humanity forward from its 5000 years of class history, since patriarchy, the first class society emerged.

Deformed, corrupt ideologies, class ideologies, are always the product of deformed, subordinated middle classes, who are themselves part of the deformed link to capitalist oligrachy, that makes up this deformed social mechanism, class mechanism, that keeps reproducing the class ideology, class elites, who always narrow the paramaters of social development, its own middle layers, and also reproduces the class hierarchies, which filter out real democracy, that comes from a fully social, devloped middle class, neither crippled, subordinated by class masters, and divided by exploited lower working classes. The partial and subordinated middle class is itself the ouctome of class society and the hall marks of all class societies, that goes beyond the 300 years of Capitalism, and explains the generic class mechanism, of 5,000 years of patriarchical class rule.

This framework explains the historical development of capitalist ideology, namely (class) Liberalism, that break down into their false Stalinist options, between tweedle dee and tweedle dum class failures. It also gives a renewed historical perspective and explanation, of the general failure of all Western democratic revolutions, including our own Ameriican version which was part of the European Enlightenment against feudal class society, with its regressive clerical, servile middle layers that too make up this class mechanism. The initial success of the Age of Reason, was based on the social principle of this fully developed middle class, without class masters, that linked with the nation state would have reproduced, once instiutionalized, a universal mechanism for social wealth, and real democracy.

However, both the Enlightenment and Socialists democratic movements, did not take into account this generic class mechanism, which operates on an international level, the sum forces and arrayed class forces, both tradtional and new forms of class rule, that were to corrupt all national democratic movements, by both Napoleon and Stalin.
Once the social liberals, revolutionary liberals were displaced by the merchant classes, industrial classes, betrayed with its property rights over universal social rights, the link to the nation state became transformed into class nationalism, and class Empire, just as it had done in Ancient Greece, where grafting democracy onto class rule, produced the same corrupting class forms on civil society: oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorship, class repulics, and Empire were all already identified as corrupting forms.

Bottom line, unless we dismantle this corrupt class mechanism, on both a national level and interantioanl level, history will stand still with regard to our social development. Once Napoleon, and STalin appeased the class forces, either within the nation state, or external to all global class relations, all hope of establishing a social middle class, and real democracy, morphed into these two dictators, and Empires. We must dismantle this class mechanism, its class hierarchies, and set up parties without class ideologies, if we are to see real fundamental change.

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When you consider how easily terrorized Americans have been by the Cheney/bush crime family, you’ve got to wonder how we’ll react when Russia or China start tossing around nuclear threats like Cheney/bush have been doing. Talk and threats are cheap, but not when you have nukes and appear crazy enough to use them.

Most of the world, including me, are convinced that the dynamic-duo are crazy enough to drop the BIG ONE first, and on anyone. C/b have already committed so many crimes, they can’t stop now for fear of International Judgment later. If a World Court began an investigation of Cheney/bush crimes tomorrow, there would be millions of victims eager to testify against them. No doubt Karl Rove has already told nitwit and King Cheney to cover their ass.

Based on what you’ve seen, how do you think they might decide to cover their ass? Go for broke, or face up to their crimes?

The thing that really grates is creeping sense of guilt that chokes America right now. Our leaders in both parties share the blame for C/b crimes, and they know it. But rather than trying to climb out of the hole, they keep digging deeper. Wars of aggression spawn many other crimes to cover up the original crime. We the people also share the blame for C/b crimes, and we know it. The question is, will we continue committing crimes to cover up the original crime?

Chances are, we the people might someday find ourselves hated and condemned by the world. Somebody’s got to take the fall, and I nominate Cheney/bush. When fascism fell apart for Mussolini, the Italians hung him upside down from a lamppost, which gained them points in International opinion. Nobody hated the Italians after the war, they made a mistake, but fixed it and everybody forgave them. We’ve got to show the world we’re trying to fix our mistakes, or they won’t be so forgiving.

Cheney/bush have to be Impeached for many reasons, but stopping them from committing more war crimes is number one. The whole world is watching, and we better get it right to save our country.

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As someone who hopes against all the evidence to the contrary that the Democratic Party will not blow it in 2008, I am confounded that the so-called Centrists still believe they have any new ideas. What, I wonder, might they be?

Seems to me that they shoot down every new notion that raises its head: MoveOn's use of the internet to raise money and issues, Dean's 50-state strategy, Gore's insistence that our careless affluence is destroying the planet, Obama's suggestion that we need to talk more with other nations and a little pressure on Pakistan might be useful in the fight against terrorism, not to mention anyone's suggestion that our blanket, unquestioning support of Israel is not helpful to the cause of peace. Their idea of an idea is really a gimmick that supplants genuine critical thinking, e.g. It's the economy, stupid. Now emulating starfish, that's a new idea.

Still, I find it depressing that two groups of super-wealthy individuals will duke it out to determine the party's fate. The consequences of a Clinton victory seem pretty clear: marriage to the corporate status quo with minor adjustments in policy. What's less clear is what happens if she loses, either the nomination or the election.

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...
Priority

1. IMPEACHMENT

2. ABOLISH the Electoral College. [The Electoral College made sense in the days of horseback communications; not so today with instant communications.] Today it only creates red and blue states and the battleground states which get almost all the votes that really make a difference.
The 50 state campaign could then, be a real strategy .

3. Real public campaign finance reform, with spending limits for all candidates.
No PACs or other sources of unaccountable sources of support.
No self financed billionaires.
Third parties and Independents could have a bit more than no chance at all.

4. Transparent government. Only military secrets are legitimate.

wmGreybeard

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I continue to rail on this thesis and I am perplexed that so many just don't get it. This nation has never been populist in spirit and never will be because there ain't no money in it. How many economic catastrophes must we create, how much infrastructure carnage must there be, and how many utterly stupid murder sprees known as "wars must be labored before the hoi polloi pass the hat and collect enough money to get back and hopefully get even. Dream on suckers while you watch MoveOn, Dean, Kucinich et al. get pummeled by the filthy lucre that is the serum that drives the American pulse. Think I'm out of touch? Look at the "hope" for redemption in 2008 and convince me that the masses will turn out and vote enthusiastically for any of them. We will be left with the residue of another hapless executive branch and feckless Congress overseen by a corrupt and distant federal judiciary. Money talks, suckers walk and this is suckerdom without equal.

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-- For the grassroots insurgents, the key players include the hugely successful citizens group MoveOn.org....

The MoveOn model is, Nita sends out a mass email and we all call our Congress critters. To me, that smacks more of power brokering than "bottom-up" grassroots crusading.

-- On the legislative side, establishment leaders include Rahm Emmanuel, former Clinton aide, and current House member who headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's successful 2006 effort to win back a majority for the Dems for the first time since 1994....

Here in New Hampshire, our Dems won in spite of, not because of Pharaoh Rahmses. Both our new reps beat out Emanuel's picks in the primaries. But it's clear they're still under his thumb at least partly.

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Hazen's review of Scott Bai's book is an excellent example of the nexus between 2000, 2004, and 2006; between differing intelligentia; between conflicting strategies of 50 states, strategic elites, or marginality; between big and small ideas. What's lacking - and painfully lacking - is a vision of how very local progressivism works with, against, or around very local concerns and politics. What's lacking is an Alinsky-like synthesis, since, at its root, politics is getting votes, wholesale, retail, door by door, or overthenet.

Before anyone tries to frame that synthesis, let's clarify at the start that everything-is-everything. When my Congressman, directly from a meeting with Rahm Emmanuel, suggests that a gay Native American may have a special problem in a campaign in New Mexico, that could be seen as targeting, as DLC-lite, or as Beltway timidity. When he's challenged - "Navajos think gay guys have two souls" - he re-frames (with respect to Lakoff) the problem: "We'll support him when he beats a straight in a primary."

When a gang of high school dropouts organize a response to yuppies taking over their neighborhood, they work with one of Schrum's predecessors among the K-Street Gang.

When that gang gets the city to sponsor a mural rather than a comprehensive housing policy assuring permanent economic diversity, it's just a first step.

The alliances necessary to frame real policy that has sustaining power take time, at all levels, and local is no different from international. That, at least, ought to be one great lesson from the success of AlterNet itself, and should have somehow slid into Hazen's critique.

But to get back to Alinsky: Neither the new nor Beltway progressives seem yet to get it: progressivism is whatever there is when the bunch in the room decide to get power. That's why it was so messy with the Southern Watson progressives and machine Tammany progressives of the '20's. That's why its still so messy. Absurdly, the right wing has real the progressive organizational style, of churches, sitting rooms, and columns, both online, in print, and of the fifth sort. What the left needs to do is listen, and then to empower rather than dictate. And that dictation can be just as brutal from the Deanies as from the DLC.

In practice, it means helping angry kids edit their "Kill the Yuppie" into starting companies to exploit those very yuppies; helping them hold a school system accountable for really stinking college, pre-college, and career options framed by "you're a problem kid" rather than "your problem is ours to solve." It's almost never an easy apothegm wrapping up an ugly enigma: the enigma itself needs a solution, not a label.

And whether that label is applied by MoveOn or Beltway, by the fascist right or the reactionary church, online or in your face, is all a matter of listening. That's where the ideas begin. If it's not their idea, it's nobody's.

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The marriage of James Carville and Mary Matalin is a microcosm of the marriage between big-money Republicans and big-money Democrats. Just as Carville and Matalin live in a symbiotic relationship--each feeding off the other--so, too, the Democratic and Republican national parties are joined at the hip in a similar competitive enterprise.

The prize in the latter competition is who gets to wield power until the next election, which is similar to who gets to buy the dinner in the Carville-Matalin competition. That's about as deep as it gets with our two parties. It's all about getting power, and in coming up with clever "new ideas" to frame issues, raise a lot of money, and trick the electorate one more time.

Is it any wonder that progressives are fed up with this system? That's what the 2006 congressional elections were all about. It didn't make any difference whether the new faces were conservative in their views, like Jim Webb and Heath Shuler, or whether they were liberals like Independent Bernie Sanders and Democrat Sherrod Brown. What stood out in the Democratic takeover of the House and the Senate was the vote against the status quo. It was a vote against the games that the politicians on both sides play. The fact that the status quo still seems to prevail in Washington--not only in the presidential debates, but also in the paranoic White House and the paralytic Congress--shows that the establishment politicians still don't get it. Maybe 2008 will be a watershed event for the games players. Maybe then an aroused electorate will show its disgust for politics as usual to rise up and throw the bums out.

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I don't think the Democrats offer any more hope for Progressivism in this country than the Republicans.

I think the Democratic politicians are as much in bed with the corporations and lobbyists as the Republicans. They are just as corrupt and prostituting for the oligarchy as the Republicans.

American needs a third party now more than ever. I think that there would be real opportunity for a new party that concentrated on the concerns of the middle class: health care, job opportunity, loss of jobs overseas, declining real income, illegal immigration, loss of America's credibility in the world, environmental issues.

A new party that had a solid platform addressing the above issues would blow-away the two "traditional" parties.

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Excellent article. I have noticed this aversion to the Berkeley/California crowd. Sort of curious how they constantly dismiss any of the "ideas" that come from here, and yet I don't see any ideas from there.

Enough of the dynasties. Enough of the centrist do nothingness glibness. The insider Democrats are on the take with the Subprime lenders as evidenced by Schumer et. al. I still blame the Clintons for no national healthcare and for so many cowardly retreats when they had the power. Pray tell why do we regard them as saviours. ?

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Hazen's piece is right on!! I just submitted "An Open Letter To The Democratic Party", which appeared yesterday at OpEd News. com, and described why I, and I'm sure millions of other progressives, will no longer support the party, but anxiously await the emergence of a new Progressive Democratic Party that we can be a part of.

I amazes me that those "insiders" who are all gung ho about Hillary don't see -- or don't care to see -- what's coming if she's the nominee. Any high school junior interested in politics can tell you that the "swift-boaters" will be promoting the notion, "Do you really want to see the White House become a playpen again for Bill Clinton's sex addiction?" Or, "We know what happened when 'Slick Willie' occupied the White House before; do we want to see that again?"

None of the other democratic hopefuls would dare propose those ideas, but the right-wing is salivating, waiting for the opportunity. And Karl Rove won't have to work very hard to defeat her with those kinds of TV ads, bumber stickers, and talking heads spewing that garbage all over the airwaves. Who do the democratic insiders think they're kidding? Do they really believe that they can overcome that contagious poison?

Now is the time for that new Progressive Democratic Party to be born, and I'm convinced that it can and will happen if MoveOn and the other genuinely progressive organizations jump out and announce the creation of the new party. We can't wait any longer, and this country can't afford another republican in the White House.

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The DLC, DCCC, DCC, and the inside-the-beltway consultants are a bunch of LOSERS. I have no use for any of them.
Who was the last progressive president? LBJ's domestic programs were more progressive than even FDR's! Harry Truman was a very worthy successor to FDR.
I have heard about how Rahm Emanuel did "such a great job." That's absolute BS! He personally cost the Democratic party to lose the Illinois 6th district open seat to the R's! And many representative candidates won primaries over Rahm's choices. Most of them went on to win in November!
Those inside-the-beltway-boys keep praising each other and patting each other on the back!
Out here in the "boondocks" of the California central valley, I think those insight-the-beltway types are full of shit.

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Electing Hillary Clinton!

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I couldn't agree more! I am so sick of the "establishment" elites who, with all of their hubris, think they possess the
knowledge of winning. I've been a Dem for years and have become ashamed of the party under these fools(including the Clintons,McAuliffe,Carville, Rahm, Schumer et al) who are nothing but Bush lite. WHY have they ignored reestablishing
habeas corpus immediately when they assumed the majority
in Congress Jan 2007? They capitulated just 3 weeks ago in granting the idiots more power under the homeland security
bill. Pelosi is another one...she takes over as Speaker and she takes impeachment off the table...stupid! Could have been a tactic but no. she takes orders from the "elite" of the party.
I also RESENT this group shoving Hillary as the candidate for
president 15 months before an election. They were instrumental in destroying Howard Dean in 2004 in favor of
their 'elite" pick John Kerry and consequently defeat at the polls.
Enough said? Many of us could go on and on pointing out the collusion between both parties but why? Both parties are instruments of corporate America so why not just rename the country United States of Corporate America.
And they think we are stupid???

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I am so so over "progressive" Democrats who are bloated with righteous anger over the centrist policies of their party but who, when presented with an honest-to-god progressive candidate such as Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader, can only reply "But he'll never get elected!" and then descend into some utterly incomprehensible debate over which one of the bought-and-sold frontrunners will best represent the progressive agenda. Is this not a study in insanity? You can't be against the war and in favor of a strong labor movement, universal health care and access to higher education--and then vote for Clinton, Obama, or Edwards. Well, I suppose you can, if that's what the voices in your heard insist you do. In the meantime, I'll keep "throwing away" my vote on actual progressive candidates. At least I can sleep at night.

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Does anyone out there think the losers who comprise the rethug presidential "candidates" have a ghost of a chance in a fair election? It's almost certain that, if the 2008 "election" isn't already rigged in favor of the rethugs, then a "dark horse" hero will burst onto the scene, sometime next year, to save the day. He/she is probably already being intensively coached and filled with plausible lies to blather endlessly until the electorate is subdued to the point of being comatose, while the Democrats are being outrageously libeled and slandered-all under the direction of, guess who? None other than Karl Rove, that pasty-faced arch villain who'se already done so much damage to our nation with his nasty deceits and back stabbing. Our biggest problem is that way too many of us actually BELIEVE these lying bastards, even now, when their destructive activities have been laid bare. As for the Democrats; I think it's still quite possible for another candidate to enter the fray-either late this year or early next year, if only to pull the rug out from underneath the Clintons, or to level the playing field. Don't get me wrong; I don't think it'd be a catastrophe if Hillary was elected. Even a schlup like me would make a better president than the chucklehead there now.

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Stevenson was great with ideas. The "egghead" epithet was invented for him. Remember? I suppose not. That was a long, long time ago.

I just happened to catch some of the Iowa Demo debate and was surprised to find issues being talked about. (Yeah, along with if you pray...duh.) Again we have a situation when any one of the Demo candidates would be better, by far, than any Rethug. But again they will be defeated if we cannot get our act together.

Yes, we need a stroke of genius, because the facts are still as they were when Mondale said "Reagan has just said he will not raise your taxes. I tell you that I will." If Americans had bit the bullet back then, imagine the likelihood of the US still being the world leader rather than the world policeman. Mondale was trashed because voters love being told it won't cost anything. That has not changed and probably never will.

Progressives like to be realistic. That's one reason we are such a minority. Yes we need a labor party. But we have just gone through, dating from the 1968 Chicago Demo convention, a transformation of the Demo party, learning to function without the racist solid South. It has been hell, but it might have been much worse. Imagine if the Shrub had his rubber stamp GOP majority still today!

In 1963, I was laughed down in my community (Sioux City, Iowa) for proposing a public mental health center. Reagan had come through in 1960 on his General Electric political tour and convinced everyone that there was a commie under every bed. Socialized medicine? Just as bad.

Today, single-payer health care is being discussed at the level of national politics. Unheard of back in my day. And don't forget who brought the issue to our attention most recently--yes, the old sinner himself and his lobbyist lackey of a wife :). With the pressures on corporations, especially in manufacturing that competes internationally, the time is finally ripe for health system changes. It's an idea whose time has come.

Bai's dividing the party is a self-fulfilling prophecy for a split. (However, his pigeonholes sure do make it easy to explain a complicated issue. We can choose red or black, as at the casino--and lose everything that has been won so far at such high cost.) If Demos can hang together, then the chance for a new party will eventually emerge, because the Rethugs, who now have the solid South racists, are about to become a laughing stock. Sorry Abe, but they traded you for tax cuts long ago. Progressives learn from our mistakes. Let's not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory one more time.

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I've always viewed myself as a democratic-socialist with civil libertarian tendancies. In other words, government stops at the frontdoor, except commonly agreed upon cases of physical abuse which often lead to murder.

On the other hand, I feel government's proper role is primarily the ordering of the economy, acting as the honest broker in disputes between citizens and corporations and taking up the burden of providing goods and services to the citizenry where private enterprise fails.

And private enterprise has woefully failed to provide adequate healthcare, education, basic public transportation, communication tranmission and energy. In fact, in my estimation, private enterprise, the military-industrial complex, does a miserable job of defending the nation, we should go to a national arsenal system.

About the only things private enterprise does well is sell shoes, automobiles, houses, and that not very well, groceries and run restaurant chains.

So, am I a progressive?

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Democracy is the active principle of this republic and end is freedom.

(The logic of democracy as a lever to engender freedom: People do not enslave themselves: people enslave others. People will not vote against their own self-interests, whether the question is slavery or the right to know the truth about something that affects them.)

This country came in to being as a result of active, participatory, rebellion against tyranny and the charting document of this nation, the Constitution, is designed to thwart tyranny and engender freedom.

The fact that the focus of discussion is on these financially "elite" groups duking it out for the policy rights that will pertain to all Americans and not on what most people think we ought to do is in itself most patently illustrative of the lack of democracy that is occuring in the country right now.

An unturned stone: This country was also endowed from the beginning with an assemblage of cultural mores and traditions that defined American society.

Democracy was the trellis and American culture was the vine. It was not envisioned that democracy would destroy these highly important socio-cultural attributes important at the time of the nation's founding and still utterly relevant today: enlightenment thinking, core Christian ideals, honesty, diligence, trust in one's own judgment, independence, reason, community, and individual responsibility and accountability. These existed in a cultural milieu handed down from the colonists, and prior, chiefly England, but the rest of Europe as well. Very few wanted to see American society's chief cultural attributes debased or destroyed.* -And democracy has not weakened or infected these things in any, for lack of a better word, heretical, way. It has been the cooption of Democracy that has attempted to destroy democracy itself -of course- and at the same time the correlative good/higher principles of American culture necessary to drive it: it has been necessary to kill both at once, because the greater characteristics of the American culture and thinking that brought about the constitution are a necessary correlative to its survival.

Authentic American cultural traditionalists would not advocate debt shopping to propagate the economy; they would not advocate relinquishing American independence to a foreign policy that defends Israel without "...complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest..."; they would not allow the press to devolve into a oligarchy of a few media companies controlled by just a few men.

It is my emphatic belief that the groups currently steering the levers of power do not support the good, grainy aspects of American cultural tradition, let alone the higher order ideal of Democracy.

*Of course, slavery and other abhorrences to and of the human mind and body existed in this milieu, however they were made to occur via false beliefs, distortions and misrepresentations of philosophies of the European tradition, including Christianity. The proponents of these varieties of thinking were going against the grain of proper, correct, or true, philosophical thinking, but they were not against legacy American culture and tradition.

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"Authentic American cultural traditionalists would not advocate debt shopping to propagate the economy; they would not advocate relinquishing American independence to a foreign policy that defends Israel without "...complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest..."; they would not allow the press to devolve into a oligarchy of a few media companies controlled by just a few men."

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. The people who fought off the British Crown Corporations in order to establish a republic, faults and all, would have said the exact same thing. Didn't they also warn us of 'entangling foreign alliances (Saudi Arabia and Israel being the most blatant)? Didn't they make freedom of the press a fundamental right?

The only place freedom of the press exists anymore is on the internet, and the media corps are desperately trying to convert this into their own private empire as well.

Why did Clinton win? Because he sucked up to the corporate media, and then he helped to increase their power via the 1996 Telecom Act. If you take even the most cursory look at the interlocking corporate media, from TimeWarner to Disney to NPR to FOX, you have to acknowledge that it is one big conspiratorial propaganda outfit. What little there is that is accurate and honest is buried in piles of BS engineered by government officials and public relations corporations.

We even have journalists abandoning the corporate media to start their own PR firms - why not? It's the same job, and they'll make a lot more money. Check out this recent job listing on craigslist, for example:

"Monument Worldwide is a dynamic and growing UK firm consisting entirely of former senior journalists. We're looking for someone to lead our US West Coast office. You'll be a no nonsense, common sense hard worker, with fantastic people skills and great creative journalism based instincts that will help place our clients stories and issues with the biggest national media outlets. You must be comfortable working in a team and by yourself, and must be able to make decisions without direction. This is a fantastic challenge and brilliant opportunity for the right candidate."

Yup. If you want to know why our political process is corrupt and dishonest, you need look no further than that. If Clinton hadn't been a corporate cash slut, he would never have won any elections, period. Was it worth it? Was he really all that different from Bush Sr., his new golf buddy? Bush Jr., however, is worse than either - a real fascist pig. That's what sucking up to the corporate media gets you in the end.

Let's consider NPR as one example - back in 1999, CNN and NPR were caught red-handed with eight interns from the US Army 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group. Chumps like Alexander Cockburn insinuated that they were there to 'spy on the media' or some such nonsense.

Not at all - they were there to learn the tricks of the trade from the real masters of propaganda - CNN and NPR.

Thus, building real independent media is probably the most important political step anyone can take... and it is being done, slowly but surely.

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Progressives seem to say that they are fed up with the "top down" politics of today and want a grassroots movement to take control of the Democratic party and force them to serve "The People".

However, when push comes to shove, I don't believe that most progressives really believe in democracy. They believe in "Government of the people, and for the people. The part "by the people" feels a bit uncomfortable.

We can't have a democracy until the average person realizes that he. isn't smarter, more compassionate, nor more ethical than the average person. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
Bob Reichenbach,
Director, The Lincoln Initiative.

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Matt Bai thinks straight Latin American men act "effeminate"? News to me!

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What we've got to do is bring back FDR. Maybe a seance will save us. What we have now is corporatism heavy or corporatism lite. What we need is FDR's kind of Democratic Party.

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...and I always wondered why the symbol is a jackass....

what a mess we're in..... :-(

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What soul?

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This article is way lame. Yak-yak-yak. I almost fell asleep. There is NO DIFFERENCE between the Hilbamawards corporate Frankenstein, Howie Dean, the DA, DNC, DLC, CFR, CIA, MIC, GOP. This excruciatingly boring claptrap is not fooling us anymore.
The great unwashed masses are no longer bamboozled by shiny trinkets and fancy words. Dennis Kucinich is the only real progressive, liberal, democrat or decent human being mentioned. He is a man. A simple truth telling man that the vast majority of Americans agree with about the war, war in general, health care(ABOLISH the blood sucking insurance industry) NAFTA(get the F out NOW), impeachment.

We don't need you gate keepers anymore. We are onto the Republocrat scam. What you long winded gas bag spineless cowards do not yet see is that even among conservatives and independents, Dennis takes stands that most people agree with.

A peaceful revolution is under way. The 4 major networks will be Nationalized, both parties will be outlawed and the CIA will be abolished, all that money going to promote PEACE world wide.

Howard Dean was created by his Skull n Bones brothers last election for the sole purpose of giving the stenographers in the "media" a distraction from the only real peace candidate, President Dennis Kucinich. And you clowns bought it, hook line and sinker. Markos progressive?? Give me a freakin break already. Progressive is demanding 9/11 truth.

Progressive is picketing your Reps office until he signs House Res. 333 to impeach cheney.

Sponsored by ..................................you guessed it, the only courageous voice in Washington, DK. Dont wait for Katie Kuric to tell you 18 brave reps have already signed on. Take the red pill! Break out of the Matrix. Look in the mirror and ponder how u will explain to your great grandchild their world, either 1) World peace, all humanity working together to cleanse and protect our Mother Earth, sports, music, science, and love in abundance. Greed hunger torture gone
or 2)Full blown fascist police state.
All the sleep inducing blather making excues for and differences bwetween soulless sold out "Democrats" is easily seen for the attempt to confuse it is.

Get in the streets! Demand your Rep sign HR 333 TODAY!! Everything else is surrender.

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This is one of the best pieces I've read on Alternet in a while. Thank you for this very thoughtful article.

As for the crux of the matter, this is a healthy debate that the Dems need to have, even if they do appear ready to trounce the GOP again. What's that line about gaining the world but losing your soul...?

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The Repubs and Dems officially got into bed together to create the Commission on Presidential Debates, a private institution operated in collusion by prominent Democratic and Republican party operatives, to dictate total control over debate format, moderators, and who is invited to participate.

Imagine the result in 2000 if Ralph Nader would have been granted the freedom to debate the ruling parties unencumbered? It would have been revolutionary to those citizens whose only source of info is broadcast news and the TV commercials of the candidates.

Please realize that the CPD exists only to serve the complicity of the two major political parties and will be displaced or forced to change only in the face of powerful, organized opposition. The Repubs and Dems are too solidly entrenched in -- and empowered by -- a corrupt system to change anything and must be relegated to the dust bin of history along with the CPD. New voices must be widely disseminated and heeded until they too become corrupt and we relegate them, too. Please write your newspaper editor or blogger to initiate momentum NOW to end the rule of the CPD before the 2008 elections.

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If the "progressives" win completely, it will likely be a repeat of 1972, when the Republicans won 49 states. I'd give Kucinich Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, and maybe New York. California and Illinois could be close, but I think he'd manage to lose them.

There is no viable national constituency for a genuinely leftist presidential candidate in the United States. A few things have changed, but this axiom of American politics is as true today as it was in 1972. FDR and LBJ are as good as it gets.

So all you whining leftists out there should just shut your fucking traps and get behind Hillary or Obama or whoever becomes the Democratic nominee. Or would you rather have Giuliani as president?

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