Spineless and ineffective to the bitter end? Hardly,

Let's calculate just how much "progress" has been made due to the Dems' gaining control of Congress.

On the plus side, we saw Kucinich give a speech on the House floor, where he quite rightly pointed out that the US was trying to steal Iraq's oil. There was virtually no comment about this in the MSM (the sparse coverage tended to ridicule DK), & no reaction by Congress. During his hour-long speech, there was precisely zero applause -- even from members of his own party.

Also, Kucinich introduced articles of impeachment against Cheney about 4 weeks ago. To date, there have been precisely 2 other congresspersons who have lent support to this initiative.

So much for the positive news!!

On the minus side, we see that the Dems capitulated 100% to Bush on war spending, abandoning their song-and-dance of "non-binding" timetables (with gaping loopholes embedded in them). However, this is not to say that they didn't work hard. They did indeed work hard. The problem is that what they worked for was not to defeat Bush's Iraq agenda, but rather to conceal the ways in which they were actually guaranteeing that Bush would prevail.

Pelosi created a procedure of splitting the war funding bill into two portions, so that there would be 2 votes instead of one. This would allow more than half of House Democrats (including Pelosi herself) to vote against the military spending part, while supporting the domestic part (a gradual raise in the minimum wage, and assorted pork). But she created this procedure knowing full well that all 200 Republicans would join with about 80 House Dems to guarantee passage of the military spending part.

This in turn allowed the Dems & MSM to portray the Dems' efforts as "antiwar" & as attempted opposition to Bush -- conveniently omitting mention of the fact that the Dems themselves designed the whole voting procedure. All but 7 House Dems voted in favor of Pelosi's procedure on the supplemental -- guaranteeing the final outcome.

This is a nice illustration of why the Dem Party is actually even more dishonest & treacherous than the Republicans. Next time you hear the fools' argument about the "lesser evil," just remember that while almost NO Democrats have come forward to support the impeachment of Cheney, virtually ALL of them supported the deviousness of Pelosi's betrayal.

This was written May 26 2007.

Rinse-repeat.

Anyone who believes the Dems are anything other than the more dishonest half of the imperial slaughterhouse is naive to the point of being dangerous.

The Dems are neither spineless or ineffective.

The first implies that they are caving in to something that they otherwise find detestable. The invasion and occupation of Iraq has been a bi-partisan affair for more than a decade, in fact if you examine the deeper history of this the assault on the Iraqi people has been fully sponsored by both right-wing American political parties going back to the early-mid 1900's.

The Dems are not spineless they are simply being slightly more manipulative in their style of observing the rules of Empire than their more obvious brethren the Repubs.

The second part-"ineffective"- is also not the case. They are very effective. They do an invaluable service to the Corporate machinery of the Empire.

The Democratic Party plays an indispensable role in society's political machinery. This doesn't mean it has any power, in terms of controlling the state or setting policy. It means that without the existence of the Dem Party, the US could no longer maintain the pretense that it's a "democracy." If the Dem Party disintegrated, the US would be revealed for what it really is -- a one-party state ruled by a narrow alliance of business interests.

In terms of defending the general population against the depredations of this business consortium, the Dem Party gave up the ghost in the mid-1960's. Their threadbare act as the "Party of the People" serves not to defend the well-being of the population, but merely to persuade ordinary citizens that within the official political system's framework, there's at least some faint hope for eventual progressive change. Their focus is not so much being on our side, as convincing us that they're on our side -- without the slightest serious examination of what that might entail.

The party's true function is thus largely theatrical. It doesn't exist to fight for change, but only to pose as a force which one fine distant day might possibly bestir itself to fight for change. Thus the whole magic of the Dem Party -- the essential service it renders to the US power structure -- lies not in what it does, but in its mere existence: by simply existing, and doing nothing, it pretends to be something it's not; and this is enough to relieve despair & to let the system portray itself as a "democracy."

As long as the Dem Party exists, most Americans will believe we have a "democracy" and a "choice" in how we are ruled. They will not despair, and will not revolt, as long as they have this hope for "change within the system." From the system's point of view, this mechanism serves as the ultimate safety valve -- it insures against a despairing populace, thus eliminates the threat of rebellion; yet guarantees that no serious change to the system will be mounted, because the Dems weren't designed to play that role in the first place.

~chlamor

So,like the never ending Sisyphus story, you are growing old, hoping beyond hope that Obomba or someone will save us all. 18 months from now, just as 18 months ago, you will see yet again, that there is no difference, (only in degrees) between Coke or Pepsi.


That's the left wing of the CIA debating the right wing of the CIA."
—Timothy Leary, discussing CNN's "Crossfire," ca. 1992