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The "Liberal, Rockefeller Republicans" now Obama Republicans have hijacked the Democratic Party. We’ve been duped by Obama Republicans.
The fiscally conservative but socially liberal Rockefeller Republicans were successfully ousted from the official Republican Party by the extremist religious conservatives, beginning in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
The socially liberal Republicans, no longer able to control their traditional fiefdom, looked to the Democratic Party for their future. They created the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), and under its banner began a campaign to wrest control of the Dem Party from its traditional labor union and progressive base. Commandeering their wealth and political connections, they succeeded, first with Bill Clinton’s presidency, and now with Obama’s.
The charismatic Obama, with his eloquent rhetorical skills, was the perfect “stealth candidate” for these exiled Republicans. How could a mixed Afro-American–White, once even a community organizer, possibly be just another representative of the corporatist class? After all, he said he was opposed to corporate lobbyists influencing government, opposed to the Iraq War, even dreamed of single-payer health care (although that was not “realistic” yet).
The liberal Republican DLCers who chose Obama as their candidate, were able to use the hard work and enormous energy of Democratic progressives in the newly revitalized Democratic Party (thanks to Governor Howard Dean and his activists) to elect Obama with resounding national support, curtesy of eight terrible years of George W. Bush.
Then, when Obama took office, he fired Dean and the other Democratic Party activists who had gotten him elected and relegated the Party to the hands of the cipher Kaine, who obligingly disappeared into the woodwork, taking the party’s national presence and organizational network with him.
Worse, upon his election, Obama placed all the Republican DLC corporatists in positions of power in his administration. Who needed lobbyists when the CEO’s who had been raping our economy for eight years were still calling all the shots and writing all the legislation?
We Democratic Party activists were extremely confused. How could our new FDR countenance all these corporatists in positions of control?
We blamed it on Rahm Emanuel and other “left-overs” from the Clinton administration, not wanting to believe that our ideal “change” candidate, who still mouthed all the liberal rhetoric, could really understand that his administration was being corrupted by those he had railed against during his campaign — the same interests that did so well under Bush.
But, now that the Obama administration has so publicly attacked the same progressive “retards” and “drug-addled hippies” who worked so hard to elect them, we are having a moment of stark clarity.
We must now realize that Obama and his administration panders to Republicans because that is what they are.
These liberal Obama Republicans who have now taken power and are bent on destroying the traditional Democratic Party, represent the same interests as the former Rockefeller Republicans. They eschew the racism and overt religious moralism of the right-wing religious conservatives who now dominate the official Republican Party, but they still represent and carry out the corporate interests of the Rockefellers and their class.
The Rockefeller, now Obama, Republicans, are in power. We Democrats put them there. They now control our government and our Party. We’ve been hijacked!
Now the socially liberal Republicans are busy scuttling the Democratic Party ship so that Democratic Party values – placing human needs and interests before profits – will be forever muted so corporate-driven policies can continue to loot taxpayers, rape our economy and impoverish our people.
Governor Dean, a loyal member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, re-vitalized the Democratic Party as DNC chair in 2005 to 2008, only to watch Obama and his corporate friends turn it into a fund-raising appendage to the DLC while carrying out their corporate Republican agenda.
We need Governor Dean to come back and lead the charge to re-take our Party and re-make our economy and government. We need the help of those like Dennis Kucinich and Alan Grayson, and labor leaders like Richard Trumka, to build a new movement of genuine progressives to carry the banner of traditional Democratic values front and center once again.
We progressives got Governor Dean elected to the Democratic Party National Committee chair once. He and his activists transformed it and created a national majority. We can do it again. The majority of Americans will vote for jobs for human beings, not profits for banks, real health care reform, not more profits for insurance companies, and real financial regulation, not useless re-decoration, an end to imperialist wars and war crimes. They have voted for these things. They voted for Obama mistakenly believing that he represented those values. He does not. He is a Rockefeller Republican who puts corporate profits before improving people’s lives.
Time to kick out the Rockefeller Republicans from power and restore real Democrats to office in both the Democratic Party and the nation. We must make people, not profits, our number one priority: throw the pirates out!
29 Comments
Agree with you that the party has been hijacked, but we could see this coming; we had a very thin slate from which to choose in 2007-2008, and the rebuilding of the party was still tenuous since we’d only had a little more than a congressional term before we had to hit the ground with a presidential campaign.
The one cautionary statement I’d make is that many of us who voted for Obama didn’t do so because of his race, but his experience and his campaign promises. One would think that a community organizer would do better by the party to keep it energized, right? and one would think that a constitutional scholar would fully grok the prohibitions against illegal search and seizure, or the obligation to adhere to terms of international treaties. The problem is a matter of corruption, in terms of failing to do what was committed and promised.
Some of us voted against racism by voting for Obama. The fact of his election was a major advance in race relations in the U.S. There is no getting around that. Others of us, perhaps unconsciously, believed that an Afro-American necessarily represented progressive politics. Whoops, just as being female doesn’t guarantee a great progressive candidate (Palin, et. al.), neither does a Black Republican, be it Steele or Obama.
Sorry, I meant to thank you for your comment, and let the time elapse. I too have been astounded at how easily Obama has ignored all the principles he has to have taught in Constitutional law.
But I think the problem goes deeper than “corruption”, it is a question of looking at the class interests that Obama has chosen to represent. These are not the interests of the working class or even the middle class, not to mention the majority of those in the minorities.
I am heart-broken that such a brilliant writer and speaker has chosen to ignore the very words he has written and spoken to side with corporate interests against the interests of the majority of Americans. He could have been a magnificent progressive leader, but he is definitely not.
Nice read, I like the concept of the Social Repubs being usurped by Religious Nutz (Newt, too) and taking over the Dem Party vis a vis DLC.
My only quibble with your position is that BOTH parties are equally owned and operated by the corporations.
We have a fascist political structure, and both parties are fully invested.
And as you put it, Clinton and Obama are proof. Not to mention our House and Senate.
Rcc’d, refreshing look on how the Dem’s came to be bought up by corps. Thanks.
The DLC’ers remind me of Wallstreet Democrats like Al Smith, 1928 Democrat candidate for the Presidency and later a key member of the American Liberty League(DuPont’s fascist anti-New Deal organization).
Labels aside, I suppose these folks have always been around but when they are in the drivers seat it’s nothing but disaster.
I agree with you that:
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There are just different factions of the corporatist class controlling both parties (although many corporatists contribute to both parties, just to hedge their bets!).
I also agree that we are well on our way to pure fascist control, where the state and the corporations are virtually indistinguishable, as the major players pass back and forth from one team to the other as their interests require.
Justina, great post. You hit the nail on the head about the hijacking of the Dem Party but trying to remake the party in its former image is no longer viable. Progressives will never again be able to trust anything or anyone in or from the Democratic Party ever again, not after Clinton and Obama.
With approval ratings so historically low for both parties, there has never been a better time to organize a progressive party. How do we convince a nationally known figure like Howard Dean to break ranks with the party and help lead the charge?
more at link
I know very little about Al Smith, can you write more about his politics and significance? Thanks.
Thanks for your comment. We basically agreed on the problem, but may differ on the solution, though I may come around your view in the future.
Given the dismal fate of many third party movements in this country, I am reluctant to summarily give up the ghost of the Democratic Party and support starting another one. I think we would do better to build the progressive forces within the party to a point where we can over-whelm the liberal Republicans there.
As an active member of various local Democratic groups, I have always been concerned about the fact that the party has consistently refused to require that its electoral candidates agree with with the party platform, a looseness which has allowed the Republicans to instantly become Democrats just by signing a party card. We would spend hundreds of hours writing state party platforms, only to have them ignored by our official candidates.
Since the Republicans usually have lots of money, it was easy for them to generate support for their blue-dog candidates without making any commitments to the fundamental concerns of traditional Democrats. Then, once the blue-dogs were in office, it was even easier for them to be bought off by corporate interests.
Public financing of elections, as hard as it might be to effect that, is needed to even the playing field for progressive candidates. Passing that legislation should be a bottom-line commitment for anyone seeking Democratic Party support in any election, local, state or federal.
Do you think we just imagined that Obama was a progressive? No, I think he deliberately and cynically mislead us into the conclusion. Thus, he lied, no two ways about it. Just review his campaign promises and avoid the temptation to try to find little ways that he may have hinted at his real right-leaning views. If you find them, it simply confirms that he lied. Now, on your premise that the Rockies have hijacked the Democratic Party. I think you astutely made your case and I think it is ObamaRahma’s ultimate dream to construct a party out of moderate Republicans and independents, why else do they support Lincoln and Bennet, etc. And why else would Gibbs have such a low opinion of universal health care, setting aside for a moment his apparent bigotry against Canadians (probably the French too). Anyway, I enjoyed your piece. Unfortunately I think we can’t get the Party back, but perhaps we can kick it in the _ _ _ _ _ and find some new way to oppose their craven plans. Time to get off the bus and see whats’s out there.
He ignored the principles in the Constitution because he has no person principles either.
Face it: he’s a charming but narcissistic sociopath.
I don’t believe it’s possible for the people to take back anything. The corporations/corporatists have too much power. The system IS broken. All we have is revolution. My old man is a republican only because he hates the left so much but he argues with me constantly that I have too much faith that we can change the way the system operates. Anarchy is the only answer.
You write:
Frankly, if a narcissistic sociopath were faithfully carrying out the progressive policies of the Democratic Party platform, I’d be happy to ignore any psychological problems he might have. But, whether President Obama is personally a great, together guy or a sociopath doesn’t matter, since he is objectively carrying out the policies which serve the interests of the corporate capitalists — and not those which serve the needs of the majority of Americans.
I’m living in Venezuela where the Chavez government is in the very process of taking back their economy and their culture from the corporatist vultures, both domestic and foreign species. Believe me, turning a capitalist society into a human society is not an easy job, even when there is oil revenue to cushion the transition.
But Chavez and his supporters are showing what can be done by a few million seriously determined people. It is possible to restore democracy and human values in the U.S., it just ain’t going to be easy. It takes vision, discipline and hard, hard work. To get anything of this massive scale accomplished, takes solid organization. Individual anarchism just isn’t sufficient for the job.
In his ten years in elected office, Chavez has drafted and passed by a resounding majority vote a new Constitution which enshrined as constitutional rights virtually all the things that progressive democrats have been fighting for in the U.S. for decades: free, universal health care, free education to the doctoral level, the right to adequate nutrition and housing, participatory democracy at every level of government, even a vote counting system that provides for automatic hand-counted audits of computer totals and a paper trail.
My apartment complex’s community council makes all its own decisions, by majority vote, on community improvements and priorities. The government supplies technical expertise to assist the community in planning repairs and improvement and the government provides the funds for their implementation. Similarly democratic institutions are operating at every level of this society.
A monthly “Mercal” takes place in our multi-purpose room where folks here can buy greatly subsidized foods — milk, coffee, rice, flour, chicken and beef, while a few minutes away is a free neighborhood clinic, medical and dental, where the friendly doctors are not under severe time pressure to see as many patients as possible in ten minutes. The doctors provide their patients with many of the drugs they need,free. Many free educational programs abound, to the point where it seems like everyone is a student of some kind.
Yes, the corporate oppositionists here, frequently funded by U.S. tax payers, are constantly using their privately owned media to demonize Chavez. Their complaints are duly repeated by the U.S. State Department and the American media. But the truth is that the opposition is furious because they are no longer able to put their profits ahead of social needs. They don’t like having to give all workers a minimum of two weeks paid vacation and a month’s salary as a a Christmas bonus, much less being required to pay workers a livable minimum wage (the highest in South America) and being required to negotiate in good faith with workers’unions.
All the labor laws here carry a presumption in favor of the rights of the workers.
It is possible to transform the U.S. into the kind of society that the majority of Obama supporters were voting for when they elected Obama. Just because Obama has abandoned his campaign promises does not mean that we can’t make them a reality, but it is going to take a lot more work.
If you voted for Obama because he’s Black, you were not voting against racism, you were practicing it.
In terms of which approach offers the best odds of success, you may be right. But consider this: If your apartment had an old, broken down refrigerator in such bad shape you can’t even be sure you’ve found all the bad parts, would you want your landlord to repair it or replace it?
Well said!
cbsunglas writes:
You nailed it, the formerly Rockefeller, now Obama Republicans want to recreate their old (non-religious lunatic) Republican Party, and they want to destroy the old Democratic Party to do it.
Isn’t it interesting that we are being taken over by Republicans and the Republicans are being taken over by the wingnuts. Who could ever have imagined? !
Al Smith
———
Anti-FDR
Anti-New Deal
Pro-Wallstreet
1928 Democrat Presidential Candidate
Help found the American Liberty League
The New Deal’ers considered Al Smith and his associates to be economic royalists… and for good reason. Just look up who funded the American Liberty League and what it was all about. For the most part, it was funded by the DuPont family and a dozen of the largest US corporations. It’s membership included conservative Democrats and Republicans. They actively opposed the New Deal, especially Social Security. They really resented Social Security.
The relevance would be that the Democrat party has long had a DLC faction. It wasn’t called the DLC back in the 1920′s and 1930′s but same type of people and politics. Before FDR forged the New Deal coalition, men such as Al Smith and John J Raskob would be prime examples.
I’m just wondering what the Republicans will do once Democrat candidates start hunting wild animals from helicopters.
As I remember him, Nelson Rockefeller was considerably to the left of Richard Nixon, who, in turn, was considerably to the left of the policies of this Administration. As someone who watched him, but never voted for him, I really can’t see Nelson Rockefeller tolerating 10% unemployment, or a deteriorating educational system, or trying to frame politics to create austerity, or trying to shred social safety nets. In fact, I think, without a doubt, that if Rockefeller had won in 1968, this country would be a helluva lot better place than it is now.
Even Medicare for All wasn’t out of the question for him. And had he been elected and served eight years, the chances are a lot better that the Dems would have come back with Teddy in 1976 rather than some southern centrist Governor who really began the transition toward neo-liberalism.
This freakin’ Administration makes Richard Nixon look liberal.
I’m even noticing some Reaganites attacking this administration from the left!
Our system isn’t designed for high long term unemployment. Fire and forget stimulous packages don’t cut it. Crumbs from a bipartisian table don’t cut it. Leaving the problem in the hands of Corporate America and the FED doesn’t cut it. The unemployment issue needs to be pursued doggedly with a persevering tenacity of such intensity that Republicans and Blue Dogs will spend all thier remaining years skulking in the corner licking thier wounds.
No humane person should tolerate 10% unemployment(which is really 20%). The Obama admin is calling this the new normal… we should be calling for thier immediate resignations. We’ll make our own “new normal”, one which includes full employment.
I don’t believe the Democratic Party was hijacked, and I’ve never bought into the “Rockefeller Republican” hypothesis.
What happened is that Northeast Republicans had less and less in common with the Sunbelt Republicanism of Barry Goldwater, which itself reflected the old Taft-Roosevelt split of 100 years ago (Bull Moose Party).
People die and new voters come of age. So what you have is a wing of a party that disappeared over 40 years. It’s like the Whigs, only more slowly. They were there, the slavery issue split them, and they disappeared into the Democrats and Republicans of the later 19th century. But any number of them were just gone.
Remember, the Democratic Party used to stand for slavery and Jim Crow. Its base was the South. The North stood for all those nice, modern things that we now associate with Democrats and America. But in the 19th century were more Whiggish/Republican views.
The Democratic Party under Bryan stood for Free Silver and massive subsidies to the agricultural South and West. The Republican North and Midwest was for industry and the tariff. The modern Republicans are for massive subsidies to the South and West, now even using an income tax and perennial deficit spending. Where are the northern Republicans to go?
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 started the mass conversion of Southern Democrats to Republicans, and so the Republicans of the North were obviously going to vote the opposite–since they favored and even voted for the Civil Rights Act.
There is no more Republican Party as it was traditionally understood in the North. It’s gone. It’s not simply that straw-men “Rockfeller Republicans” have taken over the Democrats.
This is an awesome diary, I’ll read about Rockefeller now. Thanks for your comments on Venezuela; they are appreciated. We have someone that posts very anti-chavista diaries here, but it takes a few of us to counter the garbage he churns out, (macaquerman) but I have learned a lot in the process. We don’t have someone who actually lives there, posting here. I really hope you spend more time at this site.
The amusing thing is I live in Chicago and I did not hear of Obama until he ran for Senate back in 2004. The only reason he was elected was 1) Peter Fitzgerald (R) was not right wing enough and decided not to run again. 2) The republican primary winner imploded with the Jack Ryan/Seven-of-nine sex club scandal and they ended up running carpetbagger Alan Keyes. 3) The Dem primary side imploded with some scandal… wife beater? Whatever. In the meantime, Obama was running hard with great speeches and real opposition to the war and Bu$hitCo. Youth were eating it up, as well as many others. He got the backing of Daley in Chicago and away he went.
As for community organize… well… I never heard of him doing that. If he did, it was pretty low-key. Jessie Jackson, for whatever people think of him, is a community organizer. Obama was a State Senator from the Chicago Hyde Park district (a middle class area with University of Chicago in it). If he really was a community organizer of note, I think I wold have seen something on the news or papers. That was something spun afterward from minor work. It sounds better than it really is.
Oh, I do recall back in ’99, and this I had to look up to be sure back in the day, he tried to run for the House. The problem was he tried to do it by taking liberal firebrand Bobby Rusch’s seat; a real Black community organizer! Bobby’s district saw through the smooth talking Obama and gave him a 2-1 ass spanking! Obama learned from that and modified his dreams of going DC until the opportunity in 2004.
The one thing you can say about Obama is he is an astute, ambitious political animal. Too bad he is not working for liberals/progressives as much as simply using them to further his ambitions. Fool me once….
Regarding Obama being a constitutional scholar and a former community organizer (please forgive the imminent analogy because even though you abjure the evil, you have to respect the genius), a person is a more successful hijacker if he knows how to fly the plane, especially if his ultimate goal is to crash it.
Not sure whether Rockafeller Republics took over the Dems, or if it’s just the corporations hijacking both parties, just in slightly different ways. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter all that much. This is what we’ve got, and it ain’t pretty, is it?
Didn’t know doodly about Obummer until he made his fabled announcement to run, and I still feel like I know doodly about him. He is a bit of cypher, and that’s deliberate, I believe. I think he’s very smart; I seriously doubt that he’s “afraid” of the Repubics (as some would have it). I just think he used the progressive momentum to get what he wanted. Whether he sold out to the PTB a long ago or more recently is quite irrelevant.
Besides all of the numerous campaign “promises” that he made… and then promptly broke and/or forgot, there are numerous other “tells” about BHO. For ex, no one that I can recall in his Admin made a peep about the disbanding of ACORN based on Rupert Murdoch’s lies brought to you by Andrew Breitbart. Why not? Allegedly BHO was Mr. Community Organizer, and he was supposedly associated with ACORN. ACORN has done good work, esp in registering minorities to vote and assisting them to get to the polls. Yet BHO says nary a peep when Republics vote them out of existence based on total lies.
On a similar note, BHO races to fire Shirley Sherrod bases solely on more crappy lies from Breitbart, and then barely issues an apology. Connect the dots further, and one week later the Senate votes once again not to fund the settlement in favor of Black Farmers of America v. the Dept of Ag.
And then there’s the f***ing retards & now Gibbs’ comments. What other “proof” is needed?? BHO is *some* kind of Republican or at least rightwinger, and the Democratic party has now been morphed into what we see.
Whether it makes sense to try to change the Dem party “back” to what it was a couple of decades ago – or to start over with something new?? A good question. For sure, what we’ve got to work with is pretty worthless in terms of what I feel this country needs, and the current Dem party in no way represents me or my opinions.
I feel like the nation is really headed into the hopper, and I don’t see how the excessively wealthy can believe it’s all going to be beer & skittles for all of them. Albeit, a certain smaller percentage of the upper 2% will certainly come out smelling like roses and rich as they come.
Good post; good food for thought. Good commentaries. Good luck to us all.
Very true. There’s an interesting and not well-know sidebar to that story, btw.
Shirley and her husband Charles were part of the Pigford v. Glickman class action suit and were awarded the single largest payout in the settlement: $150,000 each.
This was an excellent informative read, very intelligent piece of writing. You may think that we New Zealand (where’s that you say?) folk are not interested in American politics. Well we are, and overall we are a very political savvy nation. However, we do have a rather negative view on the average American, whom we are led to believe does not understand their own country’s political structure, or dare I say it, ‘do not care’. Some of us are rather concerned about the breakdown of democracy in the States and the evil influence (you refer to) of what can only be described as fascism. We in the South Pacific, are worried about our future, and more than just a little because of this evil trend that ultimately effects us as well . History repeats, man does not learn, we all suffer as a consequence (even here in l’il old NZ). Please fight for your rights and democracy, for all our sakes, and become very very aware, wake up American people, because we down here are at your (albeit not by your choice) ruthless corporate greedy lobbyists mercy, whether we like it or not. This country (NZ)is Godzone, we want to keep to that way. Remember: ‘Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.’ – Thomas Jefferson
and
‘When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny.’ – Thomas Paine . Lest we forget…from a Kiwi who cares.