If Dems can ONLY win the White House by appeasing Wall Street, is it worth trying to win it at all?

[Ken Burch]

Obviously, the Dems who got and get Wall Street money always ended up putting the rich before the people except on non-threatening, non life-altering side issues. Workers and the poor are always left out in the cold in that deal.

So is "winning" with Wall Street money really preferable to losing at all, other than for people who want to say that at one point they were in a Democratic administration?

Corollary: should we accept the idea that we can only win the White House by appeasing Wall Street at all? Or that being a "corporate liberal" really means anything at all?

[elleng]

1. Unfortunately yes,

because of the Supreme Court, but given that, if things go on as they have been, we're all sunk, for a long time.

[Agnosticsherbet]

2. Winning the White House and the Congress

is the only way to reverse transfer of power to wall street.

We need to seek out people who will work for us and elect them.

The President is just one person, our chief representative in the executive branch. Congress can effectivly limit the executive power by asserting their own.

Any Democratic President will nominate a better Justice than any Republican. Obama's appointments hae been good, even if he has been disapointing in other policies.

So even a Corporate liberal means something when it determins which side controls the agenda.

[Basic LA]

6. Well said.

It's our only chance to fix the battered Safety Net left by FDR. If only we had someone with great name recognition.

[brooklynite]

3. UNREC

President Obama signed Dodd-Frank into law. He also signed into law recision of the Bush Tax cuts for upper-income earners. Sorry if that's not good enough for you, but it's not appeasement.

[el_bryanto]

4. He also appointed plenty of former wall street guys to serve as the cops

While he has a better record than republicans or Bill Clinton, he also has some weaknesses in this area.

As to the larger issue, I think a large part of the issue is that most of our politicians identify with and are friends with wall street - they tend to buy into their world view to a certain extent. Yes, there is straight up corruption in some cases, but there is "soft" corruption as well. It is like if you were having dinner with a friend, someone of your social class that you liked/respected and they started talking about the ins and outs of their job - even if you didn't know a thing about it, you might well accept their explanations for what is going on, just because you like them and because you speak the same language.

Wall Street makes a lot of friends in the halls of power.

Bryant

[appalachiablue]

5. Indeed, many friends in Wall Street on the Potomac, as some refer to it.

[Agnosticsherbet]

18. His Supreme Court picks he been very good. Who would McCain, Romeny appoint....

or Jeb Bush?

What progras would a Democratic Congress and a Democratic Seante enacdt?

[el_bryanto]

19. That has nothing to do with Wall Street

And you can get a sense of what he would do by looking at what he has done - even when he has a strong hand, he tends to go soft on Wall Street.

Bryant

[Agnosticsherbet]

20. Running the goernment is more than just Wallstreet.

That is just one issue.

It matters who is in charge.

[el_bryanto]

21. Except that Wall Street and what it represents underlies nearly every other issue. nt

[Agnosticsherbet]

22. No, no it dosn't.

[el_bryanto]

23. OK - so fair enough. You on record as wanting to let Wall Street go on as before

and not hold them accountable for the real damage their speculative policies have caused. Fair enough. I disagree with you on that issue.

Bryant

[Agnosticsherbet]

24. Go back reread my posts. I did not say that. Don't put words in my mouth.

There are more issues than Wall Street.

[quaker bill]

7. Yes, it is worth winning

All things are not Wall Street. Some of them are "rectal feeding".

To some extent anyone we elect, from any party, ever, will "appease" those who have money. This is part of the point of having money. The question is how and to what extent. With Dems the extent is smaller and the means less of a problem.

Any government that is sustainable leaves a path for some level of wealth accumulation, even if small.

[0rganism]

30. +1

All things are not Wall Street. Some of them are "rectal feeding". Indeed.

[closeupready]

8. Here's the thing: how many normal people will vote for their abuser?

That is, the couple hundred of us here on DU are generally going to vote for whoever wins the primary.

But for those who are less vested in these affairs (and that's probably 99% of people - making us here the 1% in a way, lol), is it reasonable to expect them to vote for a candidate who - if recent Democratic history is a faithful guide - promises to abuse voters LESS than the Republican?

NO. It is not reasonable. And they won't do it. And this is why Democrats are going to continue to lose elections which they should NOT be losing.

[RiverLover]

9. It's worth trying. We need more than one party that represents Big $ and not US. nt

[TampaAnimusVortex]

10. Sure, things will change this time!

[Adrahil]

14. I'd argue there HAS been real change. We just need more.

And to really do it, we need Congress. That won't happen if we don't work to get our people into office. You think Obama would have pushed for that budget deal with a Democratic Congress? Not a chance.

[TampaAnimusVortex]

17. Maybe I'm not seeing it

More wars, more debt, more police shooting people and turning the country into a police state, and more politicians owned by the financial powers that be. If you want to call that progress, so be it.

[Ken Burch]

35. Fine...work to flip Congress...

That's something our party's leader's have refused to even TRY to do since we lost the House in 2010. They should have started the fightback to take back the House the day after the election, but instead they just gave up on EVER getting it back(or at least, from what I now hear, until 2022, at which time things might be too bad for such a take back to matter, and mass grassroots resistance might be the only hope.

[mmonk]

11. You should ask if one only elects Democrats

that serve Wall Street on the premise only they can, who's fault is that and doesn't such a choice mean the voter is serving Wall Street.

[TampaAnimusVortex]

12. Carlin agrees!

[Adrahil]

13. Of course it is.

Because there ARE differences between the parties. And a war is not defined by a single battle.

No general ever won a war by trying to accomplish every objective at once. That leads to epic failure.

We can certainly disagree on priorities and strategy, and heck, someone we don't agree with on priorities and strategy may even get the nomination, but that doesn't mean the whole fight isn't worth fighting.

It is important to pull the conversation in our national politics to the left. That can't be done if we don't hold any offices. There is a whole list of GOOD things that have happened in this country that would not have happened with McCain or Romney as President.

[Orsino]

15. In which direction do you want to move the needle?

The GOP stands ready to raze the country. Voting for the party that razes it more slowly seems worth doing...but I won't hate on anyone who has become completely disillusioned.

[Ken Burch]

34. The GOP wants to raise the country, and most of our party's leaders don't even try to stop them.

Last edited Tue Dec 30, 2014, 09:41 PM - Edit history (1)

And they are adamant about never, ever connecting with the poor, labor, the dispossessed, and the new jobless who have been victims of decades of "free market" downsizing.

And calling for "voting for the party that is razing it more slowly" may be the saddest thing I've ever seen anyone post here.

[raouldukelives]

16. It all depends on if people care about leaving a stable climate to future generations.

Or if they care about open & honest democracy for all people today. If not, then yes.

[lumberjack_jeff]

25. Winning is always better than losing.

it's generally better than revolution, too.

[hrmjustin]

26. Are you suuggesting we should not vote?

[Ken Burch]

33. No...we should vote...but under the understanding that the outcome would simply be

the resolution of a mundane contest between contesting sectors of the elites, and that no result in it would lead to anything people like you or I could ever celebrate.

There might be small gains under HRC, but small gains never matter. There would NOT be any guarantee that she would fight to make sure there was no lost ground(the minimum standard we should always expect).

There would be no voice for peace activists, labor, the Rainbow, only a token voice for the most capitulationist LGBTQ voices(in exchange for them agreeing never to criticize the wars or the trade deals or lost ground for labor).

Choice would continue to barely exist, but no one in a HRC administration would really care about defending it(centrists don't care about defending women from patriarchy).

The poor would be invisible, still.

Meaningful change would continue to never happen.

And Middle East war would never ever stop, no matter which candidate won.

There couldn't be anything to be passionate about in such a contest.

We would work, but we would do so knowing that we were totally and hopelessly out in the cold.

It's about being hard-eyed about the situation.

[Renew Deal]

27. You learned nothing from the Bush years

[Ken Burch]

31. The Bush years did NOT teach that "electing a Democrat" is anything, in and of itself.

Last edited Tue Dec 30, 2014, 11:35 PM - Edit history (1)

The Nineties taught that settling for just "electing a Democrat", and agreeing to let everything that mattered in the party's core values be discarded in the name of that goal, is worse than losing. And is also never necessary, since ANY Democrat could have beaten #41 simply by putting together a real economic populist message that spoke to those left out in the cold.

Some things are simply going to far.

Accepting trade deals that destroy decades of working-class gains, and do so solely for the good of the corporate few(as NAFTA did)was going too far.

Accepting the repeal of the most important piece of banking regulation, Glass Steagall (the only regulatory measure that ever really mattered)was going too far.

Massively cutting the social wage in the name of the totally unneeded concept of "welfare reform&quot in truth, the poor needed jobs...taking their benefits way never got them into jobs, because there weren't any significant number of jobs going unfilled)was going too far.

Sending the Haitian refugees back to get beaten to a pulp by the Tonton Macoute(at a gain of no votes anywhere, since nobody who hated Haitian refugees had ANY non-right wing views)was going too far.

The "any Democrat is better than any Republican" adage does not apply when the Democrat in question(as was the case with the Democratic president in the Nineties)doesn't disagree with the Republicans except on a handful of trivial side issues that only affect upper middle-class white folks.

Principles matter. Standards matter. Core values matter.

We don't need to make our party into the Vietnamese village, destroying it in order to save it.

[sendero]

41. I wouldn't waste too much..

... effort on those who willfully refuse to see the truth that the political parties are a game played to distract everyone, quite effectively I might add, from what is really going on.

Once people realize they don't have an argument on the banksters and wall street, they start in on things like the SCOTUS (already a conservative majority, deal done) and truly marginal crap like gay and reproductive control rights (both of which I believe in but they won't put food on the table so they are secondary IMHO) to explain why voting for the slightly better is worth bothering with.

A few years down the road when the Kabuki theater of our political parties becomes apparent to everyone with an IQ above 80, they will look back and wonder what the fuck they were thinking. And when the economy/currency completely collapses because of the free rein the banksters paid for has been exercised to its logical conclusion, then and only then will they get real.

[Recursion]

28. Does the Democratic base care about anything other than "Wall Street"?

Whatever that term happens to mean today.

I think you're right that this primary will be about that question.

[Ken Burch]

32. it means corporate and financial power.

Next to corporate domination of the economy, budget policy, labor law and environmental standards, nothing else is really all THAT important.

It's not possible to have a socially just and humane nation AND accept that "the people who own the country ought to govern it".

[fredamae]

29. I'm guessing "dems" are HOPING

the electorate will be So Desperate by 2016 we'll Continue to Elect "the Lesser of two evils aka: Corp dems" which is "evil" on it's own merits.

They, therefore can do whatever, appease the RW, beg our "understanding" that "we Had to do it-We had NO Choice-yeah, we know-it's a really Bad Deal, but What could we do?" bullshit.
Imho, of course. But we've seen this movie so many times---when will reasonable, critical thinking Democrats wake the hell up?

[bigwillq]

36. Unless we keep Wall St money out of politics

then we will never truly win.

[KittyWampus]

37. Apparently you can't get pregnant.

[Ken Burch]

40. Biologically no. I am just as pro-choice as you are, however.

But "defending choice" is not worth ignoring social and economic inequality, the continuing corporate takeover of life, and the insistence on perpetual military adventurism-all of which are required by Wall Street in exchange for its donations.

And we don't have to take Wall Street money to win. We just need to work hard and mobilize the economic majority.

[LWolf]

38. This thread ignores the final answer:

Appeasing Wall Street is not a "win", no matter who does it.

[Skidmore]

39. Well, hell. Let's just unilaterally disarm

and sit right where we are and complain. We don't need any foothold in any place where power is to be had. Anytime.

[Ken Burch]

42. History proves that elections won with Wall Street money aren't a foothold at all.

Taking Wall Street money means permanently abandoning the poor. It means conceding management power over labor(remember. without unions, working people are totally helpless). It means giving up on ever getting troops out of the Middle East.

It doesn't leave anything you CAN be progressive on that really matters...it chains us in the Nineties, where the Democratic president disagreed with the Republican right ONLY on choice and on(a totally watered-down) commitment to mild, non-threatening semi-environmentalism.

We can win on a REAL progressive program through hard work and passionate grassroots commitment. Money politics is not the only way. This is not a permanently right-wing, incorrigibly war-and-greed loving country. We can actually wiin the argument. Why not actually try for a change?

Why fight from a timid defensive crouch?