When you stand for nothing, you get nothing in return. [View all]

[WilliamPitt]

I know the Koch brothers exist, and I am all too aware of what they are up to. I know you need to contend with the billionaire neo-oligarchs who think they deserve to run the country because they can write checks with a lot of zeroes to the left of the decimal. Near as I can tell, however, your plan to this point has been to run away from those of us trying to fight these bastards. We're useful right up to the fundraising deadline, but after that, we get the back of your hand.

You support fracking while giving lip-service to climate change? You want Keystone XL approved, despite the fact that it will run the world's dirtiest fuel through our breadbasket and over our main aquifer in a pipeline that is dead-bang guaranteed to leak? You endorse the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement? You're satisfied with the barren lack of accounting meted to the Wall Street brigands who stole our future? You're down with a third war in Iraq?

Wait, you don't support all that? But you won't stand against it, because you're afraid of losing votes or campaign money?

My heroes.

A bunch of braniacs have crunched the numbers and concluded that young people, plus minority voters, plus women, plus old white racist Fox News viewers dying off, means the long-term electoral odds are in the Democrats' favor, and gee wilikers, isn't that nifty news for the party in 30 years...except for the millions of people who will take a deep beating between then and now, and that's only if the party's institutional cowardice and greed doesn't let the oligarchs buy out the whole process from soup to nuts in the meantime.

The police are being weaponized and militarized from coast to coast, making even mild street protest a potentially lethal exercise. The Supreme Court doesn't believe women should have control of their own bodies. There are parts of the country where the tapwater is flammable. The US is spending billions of dollars to bomb the weapons it spent billions of dollars on just a few years ago.

And from the alleged "liberal" party? Silence, acquiescence, and that's only if they're not too busy cashing a check.

Come November, if the Democrats wind up flopping and flailing for an explanation as to why they got routed at the polls, let me offer a succinct reply: You stand for nothing. You are the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters. Everyone expects you to go down to defeat, because you always lay down, because you are paid to do so.

It doesn't have to be that way, but that's the way it is. When the midterms eat you alive, remember what I said. When you stand for nothing, you get nothing in return.

Write me an email about that.

An Open Letter to My Democratic Spammer
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/26605-an-open-letter-to-my-democratic-spammer