I Cogitate
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Whose side are they on?
Being somewhat under the weather just won't allow me to stop from posting this, a must-read column from Harold Myerson in today's Washington Post. It epitomizes one of the major dilemmas within the Democratic Party -- is it an entity in existence to support average Americans or Wall Street financiers?
This is where the Democratic grass roots/netroots absolutely diverges from the Democratic corporatists, who have a Pavlov dog type reaction whenever the lobbyist money bell rings. Dual masters cannot be served and too often certain bigshot Democratic politicians are more than willing to run roughshod over Joe and Jane Public to lick the moneyed hands that feeds them.
Only John Edwards, although he has his own involvement with hedge funds, is even addressing this issue among the realistic Democratic candidates running for the presidency. Hillary Clinton is already in the hip pocket of Big Money, as was her husband. Barack Obama has failed to delineate himself so far in coming down on the side of those who don't have money to offer, and therefore, little if any power in D.C.
Wall Street Democrats vs. Main Street DemocratsGo here for the remainder.
Harold Meyerson
The Washington Post
Wednesday, October 24, 2007; Page A19
Never let it be said that there's no difference between the two parties. On matters economic, the Republicans are almost invariably the party of major banks and corporations (though the current backlash against immigration is one of the rare instances in which the party's voting base has triumphed over its financial base). The Democrats, by contrast, are on matters of economics the party of -- well, not labor, as such. Not consumers, as such. The younger masters of the universe who work on Wall Street like as not are liberal on cultural issues and appalled at Republican foreign policy, though they're no fans of regulating capitalism. They give big-time to such Democrats as Barack Obama (who supported legislation moving class-action lawsuits from state to federal courts, a bill intended to reduce the size of jury awards in such lawsuits) and Chuck Schumer (who has opposed a fairer tax rate for hedge fund operators). The Democratic Party is their political home -- just as it is labor's.
The Democrats, in short, are the party of class conflict. Nowhere is that conflict clearer these days than in the efforts of Senate Democrats to designate the two new Democratic members of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC has five members nominated by the president, three from the president's party, two from the opposition). One of two Democratic-held seats is newly vacant, and the other is expected to be vacant by year's end.
Largely behind the scenes, a battle has been raging between those Democratic groups that want to see the seats go to investors' advocates and the Wall Street Democrats who prefer new members who would keep the banks' and brokerages' concerns uppermost in mind.
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