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Oh, I will, and you, too. I think what we see playing out in this thread is very illustrative

of the Third Way's rhetorical and PR tactics.

To me, perhaps the most revolting aspect of the PR of corporate politicians is the shameless, outrageous claim to be the ones who *especially* care about racism....even while they are aggressively and relentlessly advancing policies that actually savage minorities and minority communities.

These national conversations are always the same. The corporate PR machine relishes seeking accolades for corporate candidates' pretty but deliberately vague speeches about race. They also benefit from stoking anger between groups to enhance whatever division is possible in the electorate....But if you even begin to mention actual policies that affect minority groups, the defensive attacks begin....because the actual record of corporatists on policies and race is an ugly one, indeed.

Racial Aspects of Economy are Significant for White House to Address
http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/28/racial-aspects-of-economy-are-significant-for-white-house-to-address

The Astonishing Collapse of Black and Latino Household Wealth
http://www.alternet.org/economy/black-and-latino-household-wealth-has-collapsed

The Roots of the Widening Racial Wealth Gap: Explaining the Black-White Economic Divide
http://iasp.brandeis.edu/pdfs/Author/shapiro-thomas-m/racialwealthgapbrief.pdf

Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2011/07/SDT-Wealth-Report_7-26-11_FINAL.pdf

The truth is that women and minorities can't afford more corporatism and are already dying because of it. The effects of *continued* corporate warfare on this nation will be a disaster for all Americans, but *especially* women and minorities.

It's all viciously cynical rhetoric. The Third Way will not protect values of racial *or* gender equality by supporting candidates whose policies are dismantling the very economic and democratic systems that make it possible for women and minorities to be empowered. They certainly won't do it with policies like Obama's and Hillary's that protect bankers, starve schools and communities, grow exploitative industries including private prisons, and militarize the hell out of police in marginalized communities.

If people think things are bad now, just wait until we see the status of women and minorities in this country when we are all working for Third World wages, Hillary's trade agreements have ramped up corporate power and the ability of predatory corporations to override our democratic laws and protections, and dissent in the new corporate America has been crushed.

It's a vicious agenda. It's the corporate agenda:

Poor minorities are worthless to corporations on the street. In prison they can bring in $40,000/yr
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023368969

Poor Land in Jail as Companies Add Huge Fees for Probation
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014158005

The Caging of America - Why do we lock up so many people
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002226110

The Obama administration is aggressively growing private prisons
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022568681

Obama's 2013 budget: One area of marked growth, the prison industrial complex
http://sync.democraticunderground.com/1002392306

Obama selects the owner of a private prison consulting firm as the new Director of the United States Marshals Service (USMS)
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/12/mars-d03.html

Private prison corporations move up on list on federal contractors, receiving BILLIONS
http://www.nationofchange.org/president-obama-s-incarcernation-1335274655

Federal Private Prison Populations Grew by 784% in 10 Year Span
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4362184

Prison Labor Booms As Unemployment Remains High; Companies Reap Benefits
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/prison-labor_n_2272036.html

Private Prison Corporation's Letters to Shareholders Reveal Industry's Tactics: Profiting from Human Incarceration
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022665091

Financial growth of private prison industry...Profiting from caging humans.

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/BshteP8i282pcaeH8pdUsA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTUyMA--/

We heard about private prisons...but do you know of the private probation industry?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025380204

NYT: Probation Fees Rise, Firms Profit and the Poor Go to Jail
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002893040

No Safe Place: How Cities Are Making It Illegal to be Homeless
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101699724

Thrown in jail for being poor: the booming for-profit probation industry
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024603515

The exploitation of Ferguson I: In 2013 the town issued over 24,000 arrest warrants..
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025404667

The exploitation of Ferguson II: The Seamy Underbelly Of Ferguson Starts To Appear
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025416747

The exploitation of Ferguson III: Ferguson Feeds Off the Poor: Three Warrants a Year Per Household
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025428157

Posted by woo me with science | Fri Dec 5, 2014, 02:10 AM (7 replies)

+1 Two terms of corporate rule by Democrats

have had an important silver lining that we can't risk allowing to slip behind the cloud again.

More and more people are aware that the corruption in our government is not just a function of one party, but rather is the result of a deep, systemic, corporate, monied corruption of our democratic institutions including BOTH parties. That we live in an oligarchy now that serves corporations rather than people.

And most importantly, that we need deep, radical, fundamental change to get corporate money out of our government. That it won't be solved by more of the same hoping one party is uncorrupted or by PR fiddling around the edges by the corrupted parties themselves.

The trick will be holding onto that awareness of the need for fundamental change - the need to rally the entire nation to demand corporate money out of government - when corporatists of both parties achieve their apparent goal of getting a Republican in next time. The corporate elite are hoping that, as corporate Democrats go back to pretending to oppose these policies, people will forget all this talk about oligarchy and the need for fundamental change. They hope that the feigned opposition of corporate Democrats to the same policies they aggressively promoted while in power will reassure people that we do still have a democracy. That we will fall back into our divided, mindless cheering of one party over another and forget the urgency of coming together as a nation to demand corporate money out of government and elections as a whole.

It's a constant, incremental game of corporatists....keeping people passive and hopeful that merely voting will be enough this time....through just one more election cycle...

Posted by woo me with science | Thu Dec 4, 2014, 07:44 PM (8 replies)

+100000 But not to the bipartisan corporate oligarchy and their PR machine.

Corporatists want to create in Americans rabid loyalty to party, as disconnected from actual policies as possible.

They want the Two Minutes Hate reflex in us to be so strong that mere *mention* of a Republican or a Republican's family member will elicit a spitting, vitrioloic response of hatred and rage.

That's why we see a steady stream of Two Minutes Hate from corporate posters on discussion boards like this. It's deliberate, and it's orchestrated. If someone who molests a child in Oklahoma happens to be a Republican, you can be sure we will hear about it here....and if that person turns out to have been a Democrat, you know it will lead at Free Republic.

The goal is for ANYTHING associated with *their team* to be doubleplusbad, and ANYTHING associated with *our team* to be doubleplusgood, even when the Republicans and Democrats are alternately pushing exactly the same corporate agenda of war, police state, and economic policies when they are in office.

By attaching loyalty to party rather than principle, they can continue the same corporate agenda no matter which party is elected, and count on half of the country always to rally around it and prevent real change.

Posted by woo me with science | Thu Dec 4, 2014, 06:42 PM (1 replies)

+1000 Actually, you're correct, and it's an important distinction

in terms of drawing support from current Republicans for a candidate like Bernie and breaking the hyperpartisan con game that corporatists use to keep us divided and unable to unite against what they are doing to us.

We tend to equate Republicans and corporatists because the Republican Party was infiltrated by Wall Street first and has been working for corporate interests for a long time.

But the truth is that traditional Republicanism was corrupted by the corporate monsters just as much as the Democratic Party is being corrupted now. The corporatists lie to Republicans as much as they lie to us. Just as our corporate politicians lie to us about wanting to protect public education, social justice and the social safety nets, unions, and the environment, their politicians lie to them about wanting to stand for small government, limited government interference in private lives, and the defense of civil liberties. Yet no matter which party is elected, we get the same corporate monster agenda of larger, more oppressive and authoritarian government, assaults on and privatization of public services, and more warmongering.

Every poll shows that Republicans are just as angry about what is being done to this country as we are. We drown in corporate propaganda to make us hate and blame each other so we won't realize that that we are ALL victims and so we won't unite to demand our representation back. They want it to be more viscerally repulsive to us to ever think about uniting with a Republican on ANYTHING, even than to defend our Bill of Rights and our democratic representation. Even though we keep getting the same suicidal, predatory agenda under both parties, we are to circle the wagons when it's our guy in office.

I think being clear that corporatists are the enemy is important because we have got to break the con game of hyperpartisanship they use to keep us divided, and teach ALL Americans that we have a stake in getting corporate money out of government. The truth is that we can beat traditional Republicans at the ballot box. But right now, we don't even get the chance to do that. The system has been purchased by Wall street, and they aren't running traditional Republicans *or* traditional Democrats for office anymore. They are running corporatists on both sides.

We need to become the 99 percent to take our representation back. We don't have to agree on everything. Just that our representation has been stolen from ALL of us by corporate corruption of our government and elections. And that we demand corporate money and power out of government and the political system so we can have our representation back.

K&R

Posted by woo me with science | Thu Dec 4, 2014, 03:59 PM (2 replies)

It's not even incrementalism.

Corporate Democrats and Republicans are moving us steadily into fascism.

Absolutely false. Overall, this country is moving relentlessly in the wrong direction.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4712258

Last edited Sun Mar 23, 2014, 10:17 AM - Edit history (3)
To claim that progress is being made but is merely incremental is overwhelmingly untrue in the most important areas of policy. We are being thrown bones on social issues but inequality has been escalated viciously through policy, the power of corporations is being relentlessly increased, our fundamental civil liberties are being dismantled, journalism is under assault, peaceful protesters are being surveilled and brutally suppressed, whistleblowers are being persecuted, our president has claimed the right to imprison indefinitely and even kill without due process, militarization of our police forces has been expanded, our public education system is being corporatized and even dismantled, corporate power over the internet is being enabled, our environment is being opened to drilling and fracking, and a new pipeline is on the horizon. In addition to all this, this government is engaging in mass surveillance against its own citizens and assaulting us with propaganda and disinformation.

Corporatists have been installed in virtually every area of government by our Democratic president.

The most significant policy proposal on the horizon is the most predatory free trade agreement in history, which will force Americans to compete with workers in Third World countries. It will kill jobs, reduce wages for over 90 percent of American workers, restrict freedom on the internet, make obtaining life-saving medications more difficult and more expensive, and allow multinational corporations to sue for profits and overrule national decisions on everything from wages to regulations for environment and safety. It is an assault on all of us, and it is unconscionable coming from a Democratic president. However, it is wholly consistent with this administration's long record of working on behalf of corporate interests.

...We are relentlessly badgered to uphold the illusion that our corporate Democrats really do care about the same issues, principles, and goals that we do, even though their actions relentlessly pursue the opposite. As much as we are told by the corporate crew working this board that War is Peace and the chocolate ration has been increased, we have lived with our eyes open during these past five years, and we have watched first-hand what the flooding of our party with corporate money has done to its behavior...and to us.

Nothing is fixed until we are honest about what is happening. All the propaganda notwithstanding, more and more courageous liberals are standing up to do just that. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Robert Reich....the launch of FirstLook....Bill Moyers' excellent work. The new statement at the Daily Kos that they will work to defeat the malignant influence of the Third Way in our party....These are all positive signs.

People who care deeply about this country are telling the truth about what we really are facing...the corporate hijacking of our party and our government....because the rose-colored glasses are malignant. The rose-colored glasses are a corporate lie, and they prevent real change.

Posted by woo me with science | Thu Dec 4, 2014, 03:12 PM (2 replies)

No, those are Third Way talking points.

In order for that assessment to be true, current policies under the current president would have to be yielding incremental progress toward liberalism.

They are doing just the opposite.

We are not dealing with a slower or more pragmatic journey toward the same liberal goal. We are dealing with a corporate propaganda machine pretending that corporate Democrats *have* the same goals.

The absurd claim by Third Wayers that corporate Democrats have merely been obstructed by Republicans is so inconsistent with blatant reality and has been demolished with lists and lists and evidence of that reality so many times here that its repetition at this point can only reflect a repeating advertising/propaganda machine rather than attempts at good-faith discussion. We can post it all again and again and again: the relentless corporate appointments, the executive decisions, the slimy deals in which just enough corporate Democrats reliably appear to ensure that promised liberal legislation can't pass, the betrayals of liberal candidates and deliberate throwing of elections...

...but the Third Way "2+2=5" drones on.

That's what corporate usurpation of politics does, after all. Corporate money pouring into government and politics means the replacement of good-faith efforts to represent citizens with what corporations do instead: advertise, propagandize, and sell a product for profit, no matter how viciously and pathetically the shiny picture on the box misrepresents the product.

The talking points, the propaganda machine, and the rewriting of reality get so old.

Shun the Third Way Shills with extreme prejudice.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5767160

Posted by woo me with science | Thu Dec 4, 2014, 02:41 PM (6 replies)

Nonsense. He deliberately buried the public option.

A public option was polling very well among Americans at the time.

The Third Way always wants to argue about single payer in order to try to obscure the fact that Obama sold us out on the real potential reform of a public option, which is what he campaigned on and promised to fight for.

Obama chose not to fight for a public option *after* he had promised to do so, *even when* polls showed that the country was strongly behind it, and *even though* public opinion could have been mobilized to demand it.

Not only did he make a backroom deal to kill the public option, he lied to the American people and claimed that he had never campaigned on a public option *after* the deal had been made, just as he lied to Americans that he would not support a mandate.

The truth is that, consistent with his aggressively pro-corporate appointments and proactive corporate policy agenda in virtually every other area of policy important to his corporate donors, he was working for the insurance companies' version all along.

Posted by woo me with science | Wed Dec 3, 2014, 06:24 PM (1 replies)

+10000 You are exactly right.

And you are exactly right about the next part of the plan, IMO.

Corporatists on both sides are working hard to set the stage to elect a Republican next time, because eight years of corporate Democratic rule has opened too many eyes to the fact that we are an oligarchy rather than a democracy now, and that the predatory corporate agenda continues no matter which party is elected. That awareness is dangerous for the PTB.

They NEED a Republican in office for awhile so that that corporate Democrats can pretend to be against corporate/warmongering/police state policies again. They hope that the country will forget all this silly oligarchy talk and go back to believing that the only thing wrong in Washington is that a Republican is in office and we need to rally to get the Third Way Democrats back in again.

Excellent post.

Posted by woo me with science | Wed Dec 3, 2014, 03:05 PM (5 replies)

+1 If people felt the Democratic Party were actually functioning to defend them

rather than to defend the corporatists and oligarchs who have purchased it, there would probably be more interest in a Democratic board.

People have lost enthusiasm for the "democratic" two-party system, because, as Jimmy Carter pointed out, we no longer have a functioning democracy.

Posted by woo me with science | Wed Dec 3, 2014, 02:57 PM (1 replies)

DU's corporate Third Way message brigade is already trying to swarm and spin responses to this OP,

which is how DU rolls these days. I think the answer is simple: People are weary of the failure of the party to represent us rather than Wall Street, and they are weary of the message control/propaganda machine that infests and poisons even places that purport to be discussion areas for citizens who care about liberal political principles and are deeply worried about the direction of their country.

I think people are finally waking up to the fact that we have a united oligarchy rather than a gridlocked democracy, and they are increasingly aware of being played by the owners of the Red versus Blue theater production.

I think corporatists vastly overplayed their hand this summer when they had corporate Democrats actively suppressing Democratic votes for the 2014 midterms. I think the deliberate lack of a clear, positive message and the DCCC "Accept Doom" email campaigns....combined with the relentless campaign on DU and elsewhere by Third Wayers to insult and demoralize the base... caused a lot of people to realize that rallying around party has become a scam.

DU at least claimed to stand for liberal principles when it began. Now, anyone who comes here and attempts to use the site to speak honestly about what corporatism has done to this nation....from looting the middle class out of existence to trashing the Constitution and implementing a police/surveillance/propaganda state....will meet immediate, relentless response by our resident message control brigade. There is a 24/7 propaganda machine here defending the party no matter what the party stands for....and right now the party is very, very corrupted.

We don't have a functioning democracy anymore. We have a purchased, united, bipartisan oligarchy that is pretending to be a democracy while relentlessly implementing fascistic policy no matter which party is elected. Keeping the illusion of Red and Blue "democratic" teams alive, while also propagandizing tolerance and submissiveness out in the nation for the predatory corporate agenda that continues no matter which side is elected, is a full-time job now for the corporate message machine. Meanwhile, the Americans whose lives are being destroyed by this corporate takeover are merely trying to find somewhere to discuss what to do about it, where they won't be relentlessly message controlled, diverted and disrupted.

Corporate voices here now start approximately half of the OP's on this site. It used to be that messaging like that was rare. It has been slowly increased here to become the norm.

Those who build surveillance machines also build propaganda machines. It's sad that propaganda has become part of daily life in this country. But it happens in all countries that turn authoritarian.

Posted by woo me with science | Wed Dec 3, 2014, 02:35 PM (6 replies)

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