The Difference

Trey Smith

For the past 2+ weeks, I have been trying to underscore the point that, on most of the issues that impact rank-and-file Americans as well as the national ethos, there are no significant differences between the Democrats and Republicans. While their rhetoric differs and they paint the other as bitter adversaries, they share bipartisan agreement on policy after policy.

However, as Dave Lindorff recently pointed out, there IS one major difference between the two parties: The Republicans are loyal to their base and the Democrats are not!

The Republican Party has become almost a brown-shirt party of the white race in America, fearful and bitter about gradually losing its primacy in a nation that is becoming one of the most multi-ethnic societies in the world. What should be a cause for excitement and hope is being fought tooth and nail by a dangerous movement that seeks to roll back the clock by 100 years to a time when black people had to drink from separate fountains, go to separate schools and hotels, and use separate bathrooms.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is basically run by and in the interest of large corporate interests, but since those interests don’t bring many votes to the table on election day, [it] has to keep pretending to be the party of the people, so that it can send its deeply compromised or outright bought-and-owned candidates back to Washington to do the bidding of those corporate interests.

You see, a good deal of the positions taken by rank-and-file Democrats are not supported by their leaders! During campaigns, Democratic candidates talk the talk, but when they are elected to office, they don't walk the walk!

In his column, Lindorff offers a glaring example of this two-faced approach.

Evidence of the split between the Democratic base and the party’s leadership became apparent Wednesday, when the party leadership introduced a motion to re-insert into the party’s “platform” document a phrase saying that a “unified” Jerusalem would be seen by the Party as the real capital of Israel — a change which under party rules required a two-third vote. When the matter was put to a vote of the delegates, the chair of the convention called for a voice vote. When it seemed clear to all that the “No” vote was far louder, thus rejecting the change, the chair called for a second vote. When that one also resulted in a much louder “No” vote, the chair tried one more time. When the “No” vote remained louder, the chair simply declared that the “Yes” vote had won. The platform now says that the Democratic Party believes that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. It was a shameless display of corrupt power ignoring the wishes of the party rank and file. But the only thing unusual about it was how obvious it was.

I have many friends and acquaintances who are ardent Democrats. They are progressive in every form of the word. They support such novel notions as universal health care and an end to wars of aggression against Muslim nations. But while they are strong in their convictions, their party leaders are not. The sad part is that these members keep hoping that the president and leading Democrats will finally begin listening to their political base when all evidence points to the contrary.

In my mind, it is the rank-and-file Democrats who are making the biggest electoral mistake of all. Year after year, they vote for candidates who do not serve their interests and, each time a corporate Democrat wins, it only insures that they won't listen to the majority of their party's membership. Why should they? They can continue to serve corporate interests and still receive progressive public support!

There is almost no chance that the modern Democratic Party will change its tenor unless (until?) rank-and-file Democratic voters revolt. If they refuse to, then the Democratic Party will continue its march to the right and the democratic ideal will further slide toward oblivion.