General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy Democrats Can't Be the Party of Business
Bad fuckin' idea all the way around, if ya ask me.
By Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
16 July 14
he business lobbys very public exasperation with House Republicans has given Democrats in Congress an idea: They can lure the business lobby to switch sides. The basic underlying calculation makes a certain degree of sense. The most recent controversies in Congress have all entailed Republicans defying corporate Americas preferences by killing immigration reform, threatening the Export-Import Bank, and blocking any long-term solution to highway funding. It is a trifecta reminder of how the tea party has taken over the Republican Congress, says Democrat Steve Israel, who, reports The Wall Street Journal, has stepped up his courtship of business donors. Likewise, Senator Charles Schumer pleads, From the Export-Import bank to tax extenders to immigration reform, Democrats and business are on the same side on a range of issues. The Tea Party has dragged the Republican Party so far to the right that business is now closer to mainstream Democrats than Republicans. But the Democratic courtship of the business lobby has not worked, and it isnt going to.
It is certainly true that the business lobby has some bitter recriminations against the GOP. The House Republican takeover in the 2010 election, to which the business lobby lent its overwhelming support, went off the rails almost immediately. In their mania for confrontation, Republicans kept shooting at President Obama and hitting the economy where their business allies live. They have repeatedly ratted markets by threatening default, and then, as the price of avoiding full calamity, received budget sequestration cuts that have cost around a million jobs. The costly government shutdown likewise impaired the federal governments basic functioning.
The most frequent talking point used by businesses to denounce Obamas agenda that it was introducing uncertainty turned out to be a demonstrably false description of Obamas agenda but a plausibly true description of the House Republican one. The erratic pattern of angry backbench rebellion, failed votes, and John Boehner giving up in tears has turned even the normal, status quo gridlock business thought that it would get into an unattainable aspiration.
Yet several things stand between the Democrats and the dream of prying business, and its hundreds of billions of dollars in contributions. One is the inertia of established loyalties. During their 12-year reign from 1995 through 2007, House Republicans carried out what they called the K Street Project to cleanse the ranks of the business lobby of former Democrats and fill the slots with GOP loyalists. The mostly Republican loyalists who direct K Streets political orientation are not eager to sever ties with the Party that nurtured them.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/24804-focus-why-democrats-cant-be-the-party-of-business
villager
(26,001 posts)...in each instance.
What we need is a party to represent the people the Democrats (now currently "the Republicans" used to be the party of.
A Labor Party? Un, or under, employed Americans probably wouldn't understand the party is for them.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)"Lunatic Anarchists."
villager
(26,001 posts)...so do I!
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)But y'all knew I'd say that didn't you?
villager
(26,001 posts)...is comprised of Godless Commies!
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)At least among a lot of workers I know.
villager
(26,001 posts)If there's to be even the faintest hope of pulling the country out of its nosedive.
Unfortunately, that's a pretty damn faint hope.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)That's why it is so crappy.
The best government is a wholly democratic government. Instead we have a congess of bought elites. Those elites are in congress for one thing: Profit.
We need a congress of 1,000 representatives. That would be a non-profit congress because it wouldn't be profitable to buy 1,000 members.
As it is we are stuck with the level of reps from the 1930's. That's no progress, it is regress, and that, is our congress.