Take Back America conference: Democratic candidates seek “progressive” support

Take Back America conference: Democratic candidates seek “progressive” support

By David Walsh
23 June 2007

At the “Take Back America” conference, held in Washington June 18-20, leading Democrats played to a crowd of 3,000 Democratic Party activists and members of liberal protest groups, promising an end to the war in Iraq and a number of social reforms. The crowd met the politicians more than halfway and chose, for the most part, to believe them.

The annual “Take Back America” conferences have been organized by the Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal Democratic Party organization co-directed by Robert Borosage. A contributing editor at the Nation magazine, Borosage was a long-time director of the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank, and served as an advisor to the campaigns of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Senators Carol Moseley-Braun, Barbara Boxer and Paul Wellstone.

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In his opening remarks to the conference, Borosage sounded several themes. He observed that the political winds were changing, saying, “The conservative era that defined our politics for the last quarter century is at its end.” Public opinion had turned sharply against the Bush administration and “Americans are looking for a way forward.”

Borosage outlined a program of limited social reforms, a policy repudiated decades ago by the Democratic Party, and warned of the need to “revive the American dream.” He declared, “Corporations are now shredding the social contract that was the linchpin of the American dream—secure jobs that provided a family wage, health care, paid vacations, and pensions ... We must sustain the American dream.” He did not draw out the explosive political implications of a failure to do so.

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Borosage and the other organizers of this conference, however, are not leading a shift to the left. They are making every effort to control the popular radicalization and subordinate it to the Democratic Party. That is their overriding political concern

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jun2007/dems-j23.shtml

I am not a member of a trade union, but my company (for now) still honors these agreements and as such, they apply to all.

(because I had to put something in the subject line. :) )

" Borosage and the other organizers of this conference, however, are not leading a shift to the left. They are making every effort to control the popular radicalization and subordinate it to the Democratic Party. That is their overriding political concern. "

That's very similar to what Howard Zinn has said about The Roosevelt Democrats of the early 1930s. It worked then, at least in part, because the US had the financial ability to go into debt to provide WPA programs and such. We're not, yet, into a deep depression, but we also don't have the capacity to go even more deeper into debt to rebuild the infrastructure required to put this country back on a healthy footing. Too much has been hollowed out, too many resources used. Other than that, we seem poised on a nearly identical brink to the one of about 1928.

" The corporate-financial elite sets the agenda on all critical issues for the Democratic Party. The eventual Democratic presidential candidate in 2008 will be someone who has been carefully tested, vetted and given his or her marching orders by powerful sections of the American oligarchy. Those orders include, of course, the ability to tack to the “left” when necessary, to play the populist card. In that sense, the ability to maneuver and manipulate the audience at the “Take Back America” conference, not all that daunting a task, is merely one of the tests that the candidates must pass to qualify for the nomination. "

That doesn't bode so well for Mrs Clinton, since her appearance has received the most press attention for being booed.

Americans want out of Iraq, but not right away. The problem with that, is that the Left wanted out of Iraq in 2004, and moderates counseled to wait (the "precipitous" withdrawal meme). The Left still wanted out in 2006, and moderates still counseled to wait. The Left will want out in 2008, and the moderates will still be counseling to wait. So how many years have we waited because of the moderates wanting us to wait?

Democrats voted for the Iraq oil law which was part of the supplemental war funding bill, a law that will give Western oil companies an unchallenged monopoly over Iraq's oil resources. The leading Democratic Presidential candidates, Hillary and Obama, have spoken of keeping an occupation footprint in Iraq (the so-called "residual force") to, according to Hillary, fight Al-Qaeda, protect the oil, and defend Israel.

I get the feeling that the American people are being set up to be betrayed by "liberal" politicians who are indebted to the same powerful business interests that put Bush is power.

"Sister Souljah moment" - I'm so glad I have the internet now; I know so much more than I did in 1992. :)

I've no doubt the American people are being set up to be betrayed. It really isn't that different than the post-1929 crash and depression which brought Franklin Roosevelt to the White House. He did do some actual good for the nation, but it was much less than a vibrant, angry populist-socialist party would have done.

Then, people became destitute en-masse, and socialists were a stronger group, and better able to directly reach people, on the streets, and in meeting halls.
Now, people are (so far) slipping from the middle and lower classes into poverty a few here, a handful there, and there isn't really anything comparable in place to bring the dispossessed together and give them a voice and cause.