The Sides Have Already Been Chosen

At Hullabaloo, Tom Sullivan discusses taking sides between corporate or populist Democrats.

Village Democrats are consistently about a decade behind their base. Their dependency on corporate money is a big reason why. Money has such a nice, insulating effect that way. But it's time party leaders caught on and caught up. Perhaps defending the status quo is the real dead end.

Rich people hate you. They are selling you a product so they pretend to be nice but they are not. They are trying to monetize our new poverty. We will be branded as another interest group, with a slogan, a catch phrase, a meme or two, and a slow dribble of charity to keep us voting for the rich's lackeys. They will incessantly stroke our economic fears and hold our children's futures over our heads. And they will get away with it because most people already have picked a side. They knew full well that the president and all the other presidents will seek to preserve the status quo because that is how they became rich and powerful. The common people who are still successful also want to preserve the status quo.


Sullivan links to Harold Myerson's "Why The Democrats Need To Take Sides." Myerson gives a lot of advice that would have been very good about 40 years ago and is now 40 years too late. You cannot correct a gross imbalance of power when you are the one on the bottom. And you cannot expect that the rich will do anything but crush you when you try. You must use the only power you have, which is not the vote. It is the power of choice.


We are frightened to change and we can't imagine an action that will end successfully. Not voting, not violence, not talking or planning or begging. But we do have the power to say no. The poor want to change the status quo and their numbers are growing. Our young people don't expect to join the rich and powerful anymore and are losing their loyalty to it. The Democratic Party will run a woman for president but after that they will be out of cheap momentum. Then they will claim to be populist, will talk about labor heroes and successful movements of the past, but it will never to time to fight. Before and after the election they will celebrate the base. During the election they will crank up the pressure to force Democrats to vote for the servants of the rich and powerful.


But the ranks of the poor and marginalized will grow until they take their power in their own hands. Then it will be far, far too late to change sides.