The Only Thing Worse than a Republican is a Depublican

I mean a Democrat. Whatever.

It’s become axiomatic that the New Left is the Old Right. But more and more the New Left is looking a lot like the New Right.

Only one Democratic Senator voted against the Patriot Act (I’m still a little gay for you, Russ Feingold).

The Clinton administration did more to roll back environmental protections than either of his Republican predecessors.

When was the last time anyone publically admitted to being a liberal?

The New Left was so pro-war that they couldn’t offer up a candidate in the last presidential election who could honestly present himself (or herself) as an alternative. It was excruciating to watch Kerry lamely try to his distinguish his pro-war stance from the Bush administration’s pro-war stance. God forbid he should have just been honest and said: “Sorry America. I fucked up bad—I was gutless and gullible and I voted in error. Now let’s move on.”

But he didn’t, because he didn’t want to look like a “flip-flopper,” so he rambled on about how his new stance wasn’t really different from his old stance.

Now the American people are pretty stupid. But we’re not that stupid.

So we had two candidates who didn’t really stand for anything substantially (or discernibly) different, so people voted for the guy who had been seemed most straightforward (see above, re: we are stupid).

The Democrats have abandoned the interests of working Americans. Between 1997 and 2007 Congressional pay raises total $34,900. The Spokesman Review does a startling bit of math:

It would take more than three workers to make $34,900 at the minimum wage stuck at $5.15 an hour – just $10,712 a year – since Sept. 1, 1997.

Most Americans don’t make in a year the amount that Congress has added to its pay, while refusing to raise Americans minimum wage.

But even this isn’t the worst of it. What it really so damaging is the Democrats beholdenness to corporate America, voting for big-business tax “incentives” (which mean that the people making $5.15 and hour get to pay their bosses taxes) and international trade agreements that hurt American workers and foreign workers who often labor in criminally bad conditions.

Our choices are: the party of the rich that will let you have an abortion or the party of the right who won’t. And the Democrats have the gall to blame the Green Party for their losses.

So as we head into midterm elections, the Dems are following their usual gameplan: drifting ever farther to the right and trying to suppress any voice that offers legitimate opposition to conservative hegemony. I think that the Democrats logic is that this move to the right will defang Republican criticisms.

They should worry less about what the Republicans will say and more about the well-being of the workers and of the world. I think they would be surprised by how well voters would respond.