Democrats against democracy

Well, the one thing that is clear this week in Denver is that we no longer live in a democracy.

How could it possibly be a democracy, when the people are forbidden to talk with their political representatives? And that is clearly the message delivered by the surveillance cameras and the helicopters and the amazing numbers of police in riot gear. Our representatives have no interest in what we say, and they want us pushed as far away from them as possible. Our representatives don't want their lives interrupted by even a faint squeak of protest, thus the riot police have orders to keep any protesters out of sight.

And, as I occasionally watch bits and pieces of this farce of a political convention, that is also the clear message. What is the role of a delegate at a modern political convention? Apparently the role of a delegate is to wear funny hats. Apparently the role of a delegate is to dance in the aisles. Apparently the role of a delegate is to attend expensive parties from which the public is banned. Apparently the role of a delegate is to provide a backdrop to a giant photo opportunity. Or just to be the live studio audience for the television infomercial.

One of the problems is that I am old enough to remember when it was different. To remember when a political convention was the gathering of a party. To remember when delegates at times had more important duties than the wearing of funny hats. I am old enough to remember when a party used to gather and debate its platform, and the planks that made it up. To remember when it was the members of the party, gathered together once every four years in a convention, that decided such questions for the party.

At this convention, there is no room left for quaint notions of democracy. The candidate has of course long been decided before the convention. Even the quaint notion of letting the convention have a say in who is the vice presidential candidate has long been discarded as well. Note very carefully the way the vice president is decided before the convention even begins. Note carefully that the vote of the delegates is now just such a formality that the results can be announced a week in advance. I suppose there might still be the farce of a vote. Where each delegation chair will make some cute little line about their state before the formality of rubber stamping the decision of the party leaders. But this has become meaningless ritual. The real notion of democracy that used to underlie it is dead and gone.

That is very representative of today's farce of democracy. Decisions are made at the highest levels. At best the people might occasionally be asked to rubber stamp that decision. Another meaningless ritual that has lost all its real meaning.

Think for a moment about the farce we've seen in meaningless ritual of the primaries. At the surface, it at least looks like democracy. Voters going to computers to indicate their choice for the next candidate. But what choice were voters really given? Because, by now its surely obvious that at least one of the candidates was lying during the campaigns.

Stop and think a minute about what we've seen. The primaries began with one clear Democratic front runner. Hillary Clinton was running for a third term of the Clinton administration. The problem of course was that way too many members of the Democratic Party knew exactly what this meant. In the corporate media, the corruption of the first two Clinton terms is now described as Bill Clinton's famous problems in keeping the zipper of his pants closed. But that was never the true corruption of the Clinton years. The true corruption of the Clinton years was the way the Clinton's sold the services of the Presidency to the highest bidder. There was little that was out of bounds. They happily sold off America's economic strength. The trade agreements of the Clinton years were the death knell to the notion that America would build anything real and of value. Our manufacturing capability was sold off for a short term bump in the corporate balance sheet. Today's economic problems all trace back to that. We are a nation of debtors who don't produce anything of real value any more. All of our trade deficits, the falling dollar, the bubbles in the speculative markets, they all stem from this basic problem.

The Clintons were willing to sell anything. Our manufacturing base, our democracy, our freedoms. It was the 1996 Clinton\Gore campaign that tore the giant loopholes in the post-Watergate political reforms that tried to limit the role of money in an election. It was the 1996 Clinton\Gore campaigns that opened the door to the hundreds of millions of dollars that have flowed into first the Bush campaigns and now the Obama campaign. The Obama campaign has raised over $400 million dollars so far. And despite the mythology spread by the campaign, this hasn't come in $20 bills from concerned college students. Instead, that is corporate money that is flowing in through the giant loopholes that the Clinton's ripped in our campaign finance laws.

This was the problem the Democratic front runner had at the start of the primaries. Way too many members of the Democratic party knew exactly what another Clinton Administration would mean. They knew it would be what the rest of the world would call either a center-right or a pure right-wing government. That beyond a couple of litmus test issues like abortion, that a third Clinton term would mean yet another government of the money, by the money and for the money. A big portion of the Democratic party wanted something different.

Thus evolved the farce of the primaries where it appeared that the party would indeed be able to choose something different. A slick new candidate was presented, one who spoke of hope and change. Sure, he was awfully vague on what that meant. But he looked good and he looked different. He used the words 'hope' and 'change' so often that they became associated with his name. The candidate made noises that if elected he would indeed make changes to America's foreign policy and to its economic policy. He said he'd be willing to talk with our enemies, instead of just bombing them. He said he'd be willing to renegotiate the trade deals that have so crippled our economy and sent so many of our good paying jobs overseas.

So, the members of the Democratic party, in primary after primary across the nation, made the choice to go with this new candidate. They rejected the corporatism of the Clintons and instead decided to send their party and their nation in a different direction.

The only problem was, it was all a giant fraud. As soon as Barack Obama had the nomination in hand, he immediately started telling everyone that his entire primary campaign had been a giant lie. Suddenly the idea of changing our foreign policy was off the table. He would only talk to our enemies if his preconditions were met. Or do deliver ultimatums that precede the usual bombings. He pledged to ally his foreign policy with the same right-wing goals of the Cuban terrorists in Florida. And to make certain that America's interests were secondary to that of Israel.

The candidate's pledge to renegotiate trade deals like NAFTA were then dismissed as the overheated rhetoric of the campaign. And most telling, the same old crew of advisers and party hacks that had characterized the Clinton years suddenly coalesced around the new candidate. While the members of the Democratic party had voted for change, suddenly it was revealed that no change was possible. It was revealed that an Obama administration would look amazingly like what a Hillary Clinton administration would have looked like.

This is today's Democratic Party. Its primaries are a fraud, and its political convention is a farce. Today's Democratic party treats its members as people to be lied to and manipulated. Today's Democratic Party relegates its delegates to the role of dancing in the aisles wearing funny hats while the next speaker for the TV infomercial gets ready in the back room.

And if no democracy is allowed inside the party, there is certainly none allowed outside. What is perfectly clear today is that there is one thing that the Democrats are willing to fight, and that is democracy. A Democratic Party that constantly shocks its members by its unwillingness to fight its Republican opposition shows that it has no problems at all fighting the people of this country who still want democracy. A party that seems spineless instead morphs into a vicious attack dog should words like 'Nader' or 'Green Party' be mentioned in their presence. A Democratic Party that is unwilling to use the political or legal process to fight to defend its own votes in rigged elections suddenly is willing to go to great lengths to fight say the petition signatures that might put an independent or Green party candidate on the ballot. A Democratic Party that is too cowardly to fight the Republicans unleashes the riot police on any citizens who might dare to try to march in the streets in protest.

Yes, there is one thing that is certainly clear here in Denver this week. The one thing the Democratic Party certainly hates is democracy. From its lying candidates in its rigged primary campaigns, to its delegating the delegates to the role of mere extras, to the attacks on any who dare protest, the message of the Democratic Party in this area is quite clear. Democracy is not allowed.

All decisions are to be made at the highest levels. And they are to be made by politicians who refuse to even to talk to the people any more. If the people of this country say they want these wars to end, the leaders of the Democratic Party instead promise to expand the wars. If the people of this country say they want national health insurance like every other civilized western country, the leaders of the Democratic party respond with proposals to make it a crime not to buy corporate health insurance. If the people of this country say they want the laws upheld and political criminals prosecuted, the leaders of the Democratic Party respond by taking impeachment off the table and by promising not to prosecute the criminals of the current regime after they leave office.

Yes, the one thing that is most certainly clear this week in Denver is that the Democratic Party opposes the very idea of democracy. From the fact that its primaries were a fraud because of the dishonesty of its candidates, to its turning its convention from a democratic event to a corporate sponsored infomercial to its sending the riot police out to deal with any dissent, its all too clear we are on our own.

If you still believe in America. If you still believe in democracy. If you still believe in a free country, where our freedoms are protected by the rule of law and a series of checks and balances between branches of the government. If you still believe in the Bill of Rights, and its guarantees that we would be free of a government spying on its citizens and its guarantees of a chance of political expression, then its all too clear that today's Democratic Party is a part of the problem. Its all too clear that this Democratic Party has sold its soul to AT&T and its other corporate sponsors. If you want democracy in America, its all too clear that the Democratic Party is not the answer. In fact, the clear message from the riot police being ordered into the streets by the local Democratic mayor is that the Democratic Party is the enemy of democracy.

And the real puzzle of the week is why the American people seem willing to accept this?