College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  Government/Political Theory

We have heard this term used widely in the past couple of years….Blacks are the Obama base….or corporations are the Repub base……progressives or Radical Right are the base they play to with every speech…..I keep reminding my readers that what they voted for and what they got were two different things……it was so in the ’08 election and the landslide election of 2010……and no matter how much I and others try to make the American voter see what will likely happen….we were ignored and now every body is up in arms over the lack of concern for the BASE.

Let us talk about the base for the Dems and Obama……Are progressives truly the base for Obama?  I good answer to that question is to look at their signature works…health reform….Wall St. reform…..was the base ever considered when these laws were made?  Hell NO!  If they were we would have a public option and we would have REAL regulation of the too big too fail….NOTHING in those bills were progressive other than the original thought.

If the progressives are not the base for Obama and the Dems….then who?

The Democratic Party’s real constituency is the American rich.  And it’s not just that the Democrats are funded by the rich. At the highest echelons of the party, they are the rich. The apparent “weakness” of the Democrats in the face of Republican attacks is not “spinelessness” or lack of negotiating savvy, but a logical consequence of the reality that they serve the interests of the wealthy, while struggling to maintain the appearance of doing the opposite.

Many people suffered under the illusion that the horrors of the Bush years (illegal war, torture, attacks on immigrants) flowed somehow from Bush’s personal nature–ignorant, nasty, etc.  Surely, if he were replaced with someone different, then the policies of the White House would change.

Snooze!

But instead of profound change, we have experienced profound continuity.  The wars continue and are even expanded.  The detention and deportation of immigrants continues and are likewise expanded. High-stakes testing in our schools has continued, and the stakes are raised higher.

I love being proven RIGHT!  In 2008, when Obama was a candidate for the presidency, I wrote on Daily Kos, a progressive site that was heavily invested in the Obama candidacy,  that if he were elected and his rhetoric about change….would be hollow!

The Dems have done little to change anything in Washington….especially the way the country is governed…..