Just for starters let me say I am registered as “Decline to State” and have been for what seems like forever; I have, however, voted for Democrats 99 percent of the time. The other one percent, as an example, was when I filled in my cat’s name instead of voting for Kerry, and I haven’t voted for Dianne Feinstein’s tired ass in the last three congressional election cycles.

So with that out of the way, let me get to the point, which is this:

The Democratic party and specifically Hillary Clinton aren’t ‘our friends’. By ‘our’, I mean progressives or the old-fashioned word, liberals. The Democratic party is controlled largely by folks who look out for the interests of big business because, after all is said and done, Big Bidness has all the money. To keep getting reelected you have to keep those coffers filled, don’t ya know? Getting into bed with the Corporatocracy eases that pain quite a bit. Now, publicly funded elections might change all that… but that is for another time and rant.

Many of the grassroots candidates were such because the DCCC didn’t see fit to send any appreciable cash their way. That sure as hell says “We LOVE ya,” don’t it? Some Democrats who ran for office lost only because the DCCC didn’t help them out, using the tried-and-true excuse of “Gee, we are low on funds and have to squeeze every penny we got into the for sure races,” or flat out decided to support the more ‘moderate’ candidate. If Kos and other folks had not done a fair amount of fund raising, there were other candidates that wouldn’t have made it to Congress, too. Now, you might want some proof that what I just said is true, and I could land a boatload of links on you here and there, but the bottom line is, a real progressive knows I am not bullshitting them.

The DLC should be known as the Clintons’ Personal PAC as far as I can tell. It’s no surprise that Bill Clinton and his wife are big supporters of this bunch since the Clintons seem to reap the most from the cash register at the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC); after all, Bill used to be the head cheese there, you see. The DLC likes to label itself as ‘moderate’, and the truth be told, that very same DLC really hates the progressives. They think we want to control the agenda, which wouldn’t bode well for rich folks and Big Corporations.

They are right. We do want to wrestle the power away from them. Damn skippy mutha fuckas.

Progressives want to maintain the middle class and help the bottom third of the economic scale. The *cough moderate cough* section of the Democratic party doesn’t want to give up too much to help those less fortunate folks below the middle class. They believe there has to be a trade off so the top one percenters don’t bitch about making a million or two less on any given social program that requires their tax monies to support it.

Now, I also don’t really give a rat’s ass if investors get a nice fat return check each quarter. Those folks are doing quite well all by themselves; and if their livelihood depends on their stock holdings in some Corporatocracy, then they better get a real friggin’ job like the rest of us… and they are lying about being rich, anyway.

It’s a pretty good guess that folks with a lot of expendable cash don’t want to part with it unless they have to. We all don’t want to pay more in taxes for something that doesn’t benefit us personally, and I accept that; but when it comes to progressives, many of us want to make sure the less fortunate are given a road to get their share of the American Dream as well. We don’t want a tax burden on anyone who works for a living, that would defeat the purpose.

So we—the universal “we”—believe in taxing those who are making obscene amounts of money and do very little for it. That is why I attend protests and why I get outraged when people tell me they always vote straight Democratic tickets. We are allowing the powermongerers at places like the DCCC and DLC to continue to shake hands, stuff their pockets with cash, and smile at Big Business interests while telling us they are doing what they can for those of us that are just working shmucks, or worse, the disabled, the infirmed, or the elderly.

Those two groups know that people will vote Democratic over Republican every time, even if they bitch about it. Its the “lesser of two evils” scenario.

To a large extent, Ronald Reagan, Bush 41 & Bush 43, and to a small extent Bill Clinton, have ticked people off so much that there are a lot more progressives than there used to be. This is a good thing for us progressives if we chose to take advantage of it. We have to tell the candidates that, no, we won’t vote for them just because the alternative is some bible-thumping, oil-loving Republican. We will give our vote to a candidate who probably won’t win; but, thanks to us, that candidate will get enough of the vote to make a difference in the final vote tally. The DLC and DCCC should not expect our votes for their candidates, my dear readers.

But the reality is this: those Democratic shills do get the votes, now.

We have to make them afraid that we will abandon them if they do not quit buying into the lies spewed by the lobbying arm of the Corporatocracy.

Seventy-three Democrats voted for the Bankruptcy bill. That’s not a lot, but it is something over which I personally freaked out. Same with the Democrats who voted for the suspension of Habeas corpus in the Military Commissions Act. My rights are not negotiable; and yet, here we have Democrats—Democrats—negotiating them away on my behalf. How DARE they?

I am not a moderate; but, then, neither is Hillary Clinton. We are on the opposite sides of the center, ol’ Hillary and I. She pretty much represents most of the things I despise about politics; but she does it with a smile on her face and a breathy bit of lip service to those less fortunate than her. Her last ad that ran in Iowa was so full of bullshit I could smell it emanating from my computer screen as I watched it. Her ability to score big bucks for her war chest from the Corporate Big Boys and lobbyists shows how she panders to them. It’s not rocket science, readers. You cannot have an allegiance to both the little people and big business… it’s impossible.

This post is long enough… It’s probably way too long, in fact. I could write for hours about this subject. I just wanted to get some serious angst off my tired and sagging old chest. Not that you readers are going to see just how tired and sagging it is… or isn’t.

Crossposted at The UnCapitalist Journal

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