Revoking Their Membership in the Washington Club

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Kathleen Reardon has a powerful article at the Huffington Post that shreds the shabby myth of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill, exposing the hollow ritual of Congressmen and women “respectfully disagreeing with my learned friend and colleague etc.” Even now with the slash and burn Tea party insurgents vowing to take no prisoners, the collegial nature of the “best club in the world” will eventually prevail.  It’s called bipartisanship and it is hailed as compromise and getting things done for the American people, but Kathleen Reardon is calling it what it is, cowardice.

Jim Hightower once said that the only thing in the middle of the road is yellow lines and dead armadillos, and without calling centrists road kill, it does appear they are irrelevant to the forces shaping American politics today.  I am sure the White House has the opposite view as they turn their back on the whining left and try to curry favor with the sensible center, however fickle it might be. 

Meanwhile the people who are really driving the agenda and getting the rewards in American politics are the super rich and the powerful corporations.  Using ideology as a fig leaf to dress up naked greed, they give money to both sides and always seemed to be satisfied with a compliant Democratic Party, but no more. Now they have clearly thrown their lot in with the Republican right who sound more like the party of Stalin than Lincoln and rather than debate, want to eliminate the political opposition as well as deny the Democrats the ability to compete for campaign funds.

So while Obama reaches out to swing voters extolling the virtues of working together, when nothing of the sort is going on, you can either conclude he is a delusional dreamer or a clever strategist who will be expose the obstructionists and get rewarded in 2012 by an electorate that no longer believes in the American maxim that nice guys finish last.

Just as the Arab “street” is changing politics in the Middle East; it will be the American “street” that changes politics here at home.  If the alternative is a compromise in which the American Middle Class negotiates its own surrender, then the Democrats have the right message. If getting an extension of unemployment benefits in exchange for continuing tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent is as good as it gets, then bring on the revolution.

The American people are not all battered housewives prepared to put up with endless insults while clinging to what little security they have. We have seen the first round of inchoate anger from the “grassroots” Tea Party captured by plutocrats and turned against working Americans. But the next round is likely to be the real thing.

Last time the Democrats allowed the Republican right to co-opt Main Street’s rage against Wall Street.  Next time the Democrats had better step up and represent the people and not the Beltway consensus.  They may still have the old government, but we will have a new people.