David Sirota: Dems Driving Triangulation "Over the Dead Bodies" of the Progressive Movement

from HuffPost:


David Sirota


05.20.2007
Dems Driving Triangulation "Over the Dead Bodies" of the Progressive Movement (14 comments )

The term "triangulation" in politics means a set of leaders trying joining with their opponents to pass measures that run counter to those leaders' own supporters. Typically, triangulation is practiced by presidents against their own parties in Congress, with the master of triangulation being President Bill Clinton who, among other things, rammed welfare reform and NAFTA "over the dead bodies" of rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers and the progressive movement.

Can congressional leaders pull the same move? Unfortunately, we're going to find out very soon, as congressional Democratic leaders are very clearly attempting to triangulate against their own party on the three issues the party ran on to win Election 2006.

TRADE - TRIANGULATING WITH A SECRET DEAL IN PURSUIT OF WALL STREET CASH

On trade, Public Citizen has shown that the Democratic Party relied on candidates who ran against lobbyist-written trade deals in order to win many of the crucial conservative-leaning districts that were necessary to win the congressional majority. Yet, as we've seen over the last week, a handful of senior Democratic leaders are joining with the Bush White House in an attempt to ram an ultra-secret free trade deal through Congress, acknowledging that in order to be successful, they will rely on all Republicans and just 25 percent of Democratic lawmakers. As rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers and organizations representing millions of workers, farmers and small businesses have raised objections to the deal, Reuters reports today that Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) is digging in, saying that if he knew what he knew now about how serious rank-and-file Democratic opposition to lobbyist-written trade policy was, he would have tried to negotiate the deal in even more secrecy than it was negotiated in in the first place.

On Bill Moyers' terrific PBS report on Friday about the secret deal, author John R. MacArthur says the motivations for the triangulation on trade are obvious. "This is like the NAFTA campaign of the '90s, an attempt by the Democratic leadership -- in those days it was the Clintons -- to raise money from Wall Street." You can watch Bill Moyers' entire piece on the secret deal here.

This drive to triangulate on trade has now reached a point where the handful of Democrats who made the deal are publicly attacking those rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers, labor, environmental, health, human rights, religious, consumer protection and agricultural groups raising questions about the deal. On Friday, Reuters reported that Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) "offered no apology" for negotiating the deal in secret or for continuing to conceal the legislative text of the deal. Instead, he went on the attack, saying the only thing he would do differently would be to "ignore a lot of people that really were just wasting my time." He claimed innocently that "I cannot see how anybody would be upset" by the deal, even though as Public Citizen shows today, the list of reforms to current trade policies that fair trade groups forwarded to Democratic leaders many months ago was almost entirely brushed aside by Rangel, as were proposals for a whole new framework for global trade deals.

...(snip)...

LOBBYING - TRIANGULATING TO PERPETUATE THE CULTURE OF CORRUPTION

Most observers agree that outrage at the Republican's corruption scandals and Democrats promise to clean up the "culture of corruption" helped Democrats win in 2006. Yet, late last week, The Politico reported that Democrats on the House Judiciary committee yesterday "scrapped a beefed-up provision of the Lobbying Reform Bill that would have prohibited former lawmakers and senior staff from lobbying their former colleagues during their first two years out of office." The original bill would have extended the revolving door ban from one to two years, but the amendment eliminating that provision passed by a unanimous voice vote. AP reports that "several days of backroom deal-making where some of the toughest proposed reforms were left on the cutting-room floor." The shenanigans come just as freshman Democrats announced their demands for a much stronger anti-corruption bill.

TRIANGULATION STRATEGY: The dynamics set up a situation whereby the Democratic congressional leadership would join with all Republicans to ram a sham lobbying "reform" bill through Congress potentially over the objections of many of rank-and-file Democrats and the progressive movement.

...(snip)...


The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/dems-driving-triangulatio_b_48907.html
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I must admit that I generally agree with Mr. Sirota.

"Call me unreadable. Call me un untrustworthy. Call me arrogant, too..."

you have completely turned me around on Sirota.

Gee, I miss Old Democrats a lot, a whole lot.

depressing reading. I had such high hopes...

it is slowly happening.

You would think the near loss of lieberman would have put them all on their progressive best manners.

you will be ignored by the media, outspent by your opponents, and if you get to close to the levers of real power, assassinated with personal attacks, ridicule, or the old fashioned way.

We all worked our asses off to get a majority Dem congress, so what do they do as soon as they take over?

They turn around and betray those who worked so hard to put them in office. It's disgusting.

They've sold their souls to the corporations just for campaign funds.

I've lost all faith in the party, but don't know what can be done about it any more.