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Good grief! What is it about corporate Democrats that make them such meek and weak Democrats?
Oh, yeah… I guess it’s that corporate yoke they wear.
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Take the party’s present front-runner for president, Sen. Hillary Clinton. Facing a hobbled and dispirited Republican opposition, she has a chance to stand forthright for America’s workaday majority, to rally ordinary folks to take their county back from the moneyed elites, and to move America forward with a bold vision of grassroots economics.
So, who has she turned to for an economic braintrust? Wall Street! Business Week magazine reports that a handful of investment bankers are meeting regularly to “refine” Clinton’s position on key economic issues.
This might explain the senator’s recent major policy speech in which she essentially promised to be a milquetoast, don’t rock-the-boat, cautious insider if she gets elected. She pledged to “work within the system” and to make “principled compromises.” Wow. That’ll really excite America’s hard-hit working stiffs, won’t it? Those are Republican-lite code words to reassure Wall Street – not to launch a resurgence of democratic progress.
Bizarrly, Clinton cited FDR and LBJ as her models of political pragmatism and accommodation. “They got big things done,” she declared, “because they knew it wasn’t just about the dream, it was about the results.”
Actually, no. They got big things done because they dared to dream big, dared to go right to the people with their big dreams… and dared to take on the power elites to realize those dreams. In fact, Roosevelt earned the bitter enmity of Wall Street with his populist proposals. But instead of trying to appease the bankers and speculators by waving the flag of compromise, FDR said: “I welcome their hatred.”
Come on senator, come on Democrats – it’s time to be Democrats again!
“With a New Speech, Clinton Lays Out Goals as President,” The New York Times, September 3, 2007
“The Candidates On Wall Street,” www.businessweek.com, April 2, 2007