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Playing the Class Card
As long as Hillary Clinton, and now Gloria Steinem, has chosen to play the women's card against the race card, let me throw in a third one: the class card. Clinton claimed in the New Hampshire primary debate that she is the unmistakable agent for change because she is a woman and her election as president would send a strong signal of a new day aborning to America and the rest of the world. It is hoped that it would be a more progressive message than the one sent by Margaret Thatcher's ascent in England.
Steinem put a finer point on the argument in her New York Times commentary, published Tuesday, New Hampshire's primary election day, arguing that women get wonderfully more "radical" as they age, and therefore older women are more inclined to vote for Clinton, Steinem's preferred candidate, as opposed to Barack Obama, whom younger women went for in Iowa. Maybe those younger women were more worried about how to pay off college loans or swelling mortgage obligations than gender identity.
What is radical about voting for a corporate lawyer who, in defense of her Arkansas savings and loan shenanigans, once said you can't be a lawyer without working for banks? Steinem boasts of Clinton's "unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House" without referencing the Clinton White House's giveaways to corporate America at the expense of poor and working Americans, the majority of them being women. Sen. Clinton's key election operative, Mark Penn, was the other half of the Dick Morris team that recast populist Bill Clinton as the master of triangulation.
I am not trying to play the class card here by claiming that because Obama grew up black and middle-class he will therefore inevitably be that rare politician who remembers where he or she came from. Bill Clinton, who came from a poor family, disproved the notion about remembering. To his everlasting shame as president, Clinton supported and signed welfare legislation that shredded the federal safety net for the poor from which he personally had benefited. He faithfully served big corporate interests by signing off on Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the Financial Services Modernization Act, which, as a gift to the banks, insurance companies and stockbrokers, reversed consumer protection legislation from the New Deal era. Thanks to Bill Clinton, those pirates were allowed to merge into the largest conglomerates the world has ever witnessed and, adding insult to injury, to "data-mine," thus sharing your most intimate financial and health information. Bill Clinton's next biggest concession to the fat cats was the Telecommunications Act, which ended what was left of public control of the airwaves and permits mega-media corporations to grow even bigger. No wonder Rupert Murdock and Hillary Clinton now get on so famously.
Yes, Bill Clinton was a very good president compared to what came immediately before and after, and his wife has many strong points in her favor, not the least of which is her wonkish intelligence. What I object to is the notion that the perspective of gender or race trumps that of economic class in considering the traumas of this nation. That is because the George W. Bush administration engaged in class warfare for the rich with a vengeance that has left many Americans hurting, and we desperately need change to reverse that destructive course.
John Edwards deserves credit for putting this issue of the growing division of American society front and center, and certainly Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has related his politics to growing up in abysmal poverty. As Kucinich has pointed out, a permanent war economy in which more than half of federal discretionary funds go to the military leaves no room for needed social programs. Question the honesty of any candidate who continues to vote for war funding while talking up all the wonderful domestic programs he or she claims to favor. At least Ron Paul is consistent in saying he would cut both. Obviously, coming from an impoverished background does not ensure a social conscience, and there is no better example that the contrary can be true than Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the scion of a wealthy family, who, as president, was a god in my Bronx home for expanding federal poverty programs that put food on our table when both my parents were out of work.
Yes, it is important for the health of our democracy to break barriers that have held back a majority of our citizens, and for that reason it would certainly be an advance to have a black or female president. But that alone is not enough to justify a vote. What we need far more than a change in appearance is one of perspective. Otherwise, Condoleezza Rice would make the ideal candidate.
Robert Scheer is editor of Truthdig.com and a regular columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle.
© 2008 TruthDig.com
60 Comments so far
Show AllThere is a class war raging in America! It is being fought from the top down on the people, and most of the American sheeple don't even know it's going on! Join John Edwards if you want to fight back against corporate greed and start taking apart the Corporate-Military-Media-Industrial-Complex.
EDWARDS '08
You're damn right it's class warfare!
When 1/10th of 1 percent has as much wealth as the bottom 50%, it is clear that all economic reports are skewed and unintelligible to the average American. Get me right: 300,000 people have as much wealth as the bottom 150 million people. If that isn't class warfare, I don't know what it is.
All averaging skews the trickle-up economics.
If Bill Gates walks into a bar, the average wealth goes up immeasurably, but if he doesn't pick up a round, everyone at the bar is just as poor as he or she was before Bill walked in.
The wealth inequality has been camouflaged by such averaging. We are well into the new gilded age, and as Paul Krugman noted in his 2001 NY Times ("For Richer" piece, not even J.P. Morgan had his own Gulfstream.
What's more, fascism is largely about economics, that is, it's the collapse of state power and economic power into one machine. Forget the brown shirts, the jackboots, and so on, and remember the phrase "Arbeit macht frei1 (work makes free. Well, try out EAW as a synonymn!
Almost all reports of economic growth speak to the overall wealth, not to its distribution. That would bring down the house! It might even spark some protests.
Trickle down (or "vodoo" economics) is really a strategy for pissing on, not trickling down!
Where's the outrage?
right, MikeB. in fact, whenever somebody points out the wide and growing gulf between income groups, that in itself is labelled "class warfare."
we can't begin to solve a problem if we can't first acknowledge and establish its existence. it seems the full-time job of the corporate media is to prevent any discussion of this issue, by any means necessary.
The narrow margin of victory that Hillary Clinton achieved in the NH primary is more a function of dirty tricks than it is about class. The media has been silent about the fact that the Clinton campaign engaged in a last minute distortion of Barack Obama's pro-choice record. The fact that so many women went to the polls on Tuesday with a false impression of the progressive views of Barack Obamas was a deliberate attempt by Hillary Clinton to get a win at any cost.
Yes, Robert, it's not right to play the race card, the gender card, or even the class card, as you note --- because some wealthy folks like FDR are fair-minded, and also because the media 'blow-back' on the class card can so easily be turned against us as 'class warfare' (despite the fact that real class warfare is almost always a form of warfare waged by the other side).
So, if the race card, the gender card, the class card, and all other cards that divide us, and unfairly or inaccurately portray the human condition in our society and political economy either shouldn't or can't be used without blurring reality and truth, then what card can be used?
The Empire Card!!!
No one, under any circumstances can mis-interpret, feel slighted, attacked or unfairly judged in the card game of democracy if we simply start our fair game of democracy by removing the joker from the pack.
By removing the joker of the Empire Card from our pack before we play the game of democracy we may finally get an honest and fair play in both the political realm and the economic realm ---- rather than being played as the rubes in a 'Three Card Monte' scam that 'changes' the shills, but always comes out with the same fixed sting.
Calling-out and culling-out the joker, the Empire Card, is never offensive or unfair in the game of real democracy --- it is only rational.
And it would be a strange situation, never seen in history, for any race, gender, nationality, or class to be offended, and defend its rights by openly saying, "Hey, buddy, don't cut out that Empire Card, taht's my card and it's unfair to me."
or perhaps Hillary's win was... something else. A little gift, maybe.
From someone who sees here as the most friendly to them.
Someone... some corporation named.... Diebold?
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0801/S00057.htm
Why not play the class card, since class is what's it's always been about since the beginning? Race and gender are red-herring issues -- something for the MSM to natter about while the parties' elites manipulate to get their preferred candidates in place. The only thing that surprises me is that the Clinton vs. McCain combination emerged so early in this process; I thought that Obama and Huckabee would be allowed to continue narcoticizing Blacks and Evangelicals before the real winners emerged. Clinton vs. McCain is the only combination acceptable to the party -- the ruling party that pretends to be two parties -- the only way for making sure that "trickle down economics" continues to be a "sucking up" phenomenon. How else could the US hope to continue as the American empire, what with China breathing down its neck?
In opposing the oligarchy's drive to appropriate all the resources, it would be advantageous to attack that mythic creature called the "free market," which has been used relentlessly as ammunition by the oligarchy in the class war.
Ignoring the details of what constitutes a "free market," and ignoring the arguments with regard to how utilitarian one is or how much it is in accord with so-called "Natural Law," it may be useful to point out that in a capitalist society the capitalists with the greatest power and with the greatest ability to influence the business environment, who certainly would hold to the capitalist preference for following self-interest, would inevitably choose to rig that market in their favor. And of course they always do. So a "free market," because of that need to follow self interest, which capitalists always remind us is fundamental to human nature, will always remain elusive, as we may chase it but never catch it, and we will always live with a market rigged to favor the elites.
So since we can never have a "free market," the policies of the oligarchy must be justified on the basis of the value of a rigged market that favors the oligarchy. And this I think the oligarchy would find difficult to do, and so it would lose the use of its most powerful weapon in the class war.
It is clear from both the voting in Iowa and New Hampshire that the American people have not yet awakened sufficiently to make the necessary changes in Washington to improve their lot in life. They are still blinded by a lifetime of propaganda from making the decisions that benefit them the most. So it appears that the real changes needed are a long way off. The greater liklihood now appears to be the old scourges of economic collapse, starvation, and disease. Hmmmm, I think I'll turn off the radio news and eat a few more pancakes.
There is nothing whatsoever wrong with playing the "class" card, because the "at-risk" class in this country has grown to encompass more than 90% of the people, thanks to the new high cost of health care.
If you don't have a spare $200,000 to spend (that wouldn't derail your retirement) for the list price of the two-week hospitalization with surgery or chemo that you'll likely need sometime in life, plus another $200,000 for the same for your spouse, plus some statistically lesser amount for the health care of each child, YOU ARE IN THE 'AT-RISK" CLASS, AND YOUR ENTIRE FINANCIAL FUTURE IS AT RISK OF BEING CONFISCATED BY THE HEALTH CARE CORPORATE COMPLEX--SUBJECT ONLY TO THE DISCRETION OF CORPORATE PLAYERS IN THE "INSURANCE" GAME COMPLEX. This group now includes most people, and there is no "poor" stigma whatsoever for most all of us to proudly state that we're in that massive lower class. The problem is that half the people on the health care ledge do not know they are teetering there, yet. Some others found out, after they fell off.
It is time for the "class" card to be front and center. Our election is not about who was "raised poor" or not, or even about who (like, say, John Edwards) has some personal money exceeding that owned by most of the rest of us. It is about who will help put up a social safety railing to keep all citizens from randomly falling off the health care ledge. This will be done by Democrats or not done at all. John is best on this. Barack is next. Hillary is last, BUT ALWAYS, ALWAYS better for us than any Republican.
"Class warfare" is not something we should shrink from as though preferring not to admit we're poor---just because we have some job that gets us by. The new class war is about health care, and citizens ought to loudly declare that war--then win it.
As Robert McNamara showed, wonkish knowledge is useless without a moral rudder, and neither of the Clintons have ever shown sign of having one. If Clinton is Prez, '09 will be '96 all over again, but at least we won't be starting wars that get 500,000 innocents killed. (Well, that is, until Africans start slaughtering each other again, then we'll see if Clinton is any different than her hubby.)
re 1:43pm
kucinich has a bill pending which would establish a true single-payer health care system in the u.s.
what are the other Ds doing about it?
As John Edwards reminded us Tuesday night, only one-half of one percent of Americans have cast a ballot so far.
The significance of Iowa and New Hampshire has been grossly exaggerated by the news media. They have become a spectacle staged by the corporate media to create an opportunity for THEM to tell us who should be our next president.
This is the first year in which the big states have early primaries. I can't say what effect that will have, but I will say that "it ain't over yet".
D n G -- ¿ Could America's long losing (lost) battle for healthy weight, be glimmer of a premonition of the starvation pending upon us ?
Survival of the fittest has engineered (some) humans with both insatiable rapacious hunger, and ravenous wolf-like eating speed. These are clearly not healthy (nor socially appealing) skills in times of plenty, but then again, nature's refined these tendencies for those other harder living times (like famine).
¿ Perhaps nature has also provided some with the ability to see when it is time to start packing on the pounds ?
Actually, you don't have to vote for Condi Rice to get an African American woman. Cynthia McKinney is running on the Green Party ticket, and she is anti-war and pro-freedom.
She has it all. If you believe that voting means anything, (and I have my doubts), vote for your class interests, not for the corporate candidates.
The class card is the hardest of all for them to play, since an increasing number of politicians must be millionaires, or have friends with deep pockets. If the former case, they're not credible. In the latter, they might disenfranchise their friends or send the MSM running.
We're going to see some good changes - regardless of which one gets in the White House. I'm still hoping
it will be Dennis Kucinich.
================
What makes Dennis run?
Paul Jay (of The Real News) talks with Dennis Kucinich
Tuesday January 8th, 2008
http://therealnews.com/web/index.php?thisdataswitch=0&thisid=778&thisview=item
Sock it to 'em Bronx Homeboy Bobby!
Dysfunctional family, dysfunctional family–say it 10 times–that's the Clinton's. But what else is new: there are so many dysfunctional families: the Bush's, the future Sarkozy's, the Robotic Romney's…
It seems that only crazies want to be leaders. Best bet: don't vote for them.
My choice for this election cycle? Dennis the K. or Ron Paul. Humdrum, borderline boring, but smart enough to take the testosterone out of this Viagra mad country with delusions of grandeur. We need to become more like Great Britten after the sun stopped setting on their empire.
Dr. Wu, the last of the big tine thinkers
As nearly as I can tell, Hillary squeeked out a win over Obama in New Hampshire because she got the "pitty" vote.
Apparently, Hillary's tantrums during the debate in New Hampshire (in which she was reported by the news media as "shouting") and her tearful performance at a coffee shop somewhere in the Granite State pulled at the heart strings of some New Hampshirians.
This reflects badly both on Hillary and on New Hampshire. Let's start with Hillary.
Hillary has been talking about how this election is "personal" for her. WTF? Sorry Hillary, this election is not about you. It's about the future of the United States. I for one don't give a rat's ass how hard you have worked and about the fact that you're a woman and all of the hardships you have endured. It was your decision to run. What matters here is that the right person is chosen to the the next President. That Hillary admits she is running for "personal" reasons simply shows that all of her critics are right. It's also a new low point in American politics. Unbelievable.
Secondly, the fact that she became so frustrated as to shout at her oponents and the media during a debate (or anywhere in public for that matter) shows that she is at the end of her rope and can't take the pressure. I realize it's a lot of pressure. But again, she's the one who wants the job.
Having one tiny state under her belt by a margin of 3 points, Hillary is now parading around like she's Queen of the USA. I suspect she will be essentially out of the picture by Super Tuesday. Some advice for you Hillary - do it with some dignity.
And now to figure out what happened in New Hampshire that Hillary received as many votes as she did. I have never been to NH, but I have always perceived it to be state with a population of people of above average intelligence. I don't understand what you were thinking. Was it the tears that won you over? Please tell me. I really don't get it.
Thank you, Robert Scheer, for stating what I have been trying to say for months! And in such an agreeable-yet-supported/balanced way. TruthDig.com just moved up to the top of my favorites list.
And thank you all for your well written comments, valid opinions and usefull information: hazmat, Lavins, good2go, zoya, kivals, Daniel David, RichM, jjohnjj, and greenerthanthou.
My fellow 'liberals' refuse to listen when I start saying Bill clinton wasn't as great as you'd think, and they just roll their eyes when I go into class issues.
Do not give into predjudice/emotion, establish your needs and beliefs and vote accordingly, and if no one is filling the bill, then run yourself.
And Tom Donohue, President of the National Chamber of Commerce, is prepared to spend $60 Million bashing candidates like John Edwards, who are willing to speak about corporate greed. Check out this article over at TruthOut -
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010808L.shtml
wpblake,
It is confusing to some the way Hillary used the word "personal" because the corporate media refused to provide the proper context. John Edwards in the Saturday night debate repeatedly said that the fight for the middle class and the poor was "personal" to him because he had grown up in a working class family and he identified with hardworking Americans who could barely make it. Hillary was clumsily trying to copy Edwards' rhetoric and the best interpretation of what she said was that her presidential campaign was something she had strong emotional connections to. The news media protected her from ridicule by neglecting to mention the obvious and clumsy attempt at copying Edwards.
As stated above, the race, gender, sexual identity, gun ownership, school "reform", etc. cards are political red herrings.
For example, one reason affirmative action has been a divisive issue was that it was not related to social class. Instead, it was related to race, ethnicity and gender regardless of social class.
It has functioned well as a divide-and-conquer tactic for the plutocrats.
What a wonderful way of coopting the minorities who are members of the upper- and upper-middle classes!
Part of the reason for the Democratic Party's support of increasingly right-wing policies is that its connection to US unions has been severed.
The Democratic Party has not focused on expanding and protecting labor laws that contribute toward making unionization convenient, effective and promoted.
Even FDR's administration made unionization convenient and effective by promoting and protecting organizing efforts.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has slipped into identity politics. Such politics goes as follows: My identity is significantly affected by my being an African-American, Hispanic-American, Asia-American, Woman, Sexual Orientation,etc.
The above is similar to nationalist, anti-imperial struggles. I identify with my nation, or people, as we fight for liberation.
However, when the typical nationalist movement takes power, social class rears its ugly head. The leadership cadre tends to be from the upper- and upper-middle classes (or they are wannabes. As a result, the new ruling class functions as did the deposed ruling class.
The combined campaigns of the one-party-with-two-subdivisions will spend as much as $5 BILLION, most of which will be provided by the tiny, wealthy elite.
Of course, said tiny wealthy elite only care about the plight and future of the other 299,800,000 fellow Americans, especially those kids who can't afford children's Tylenol and their parents who are being kicked from the house to the curb and the tens of thousands of troops with TBI and PTSD and missing body parts - and who better to bring "change" than their favorite shill, HRC?!!
Hopefully, the first thing she'll do is push to make not having health insurance a crime - to help the poor folk, natch - and then maybe lob a few hundred missiles at Iran so she can be a "war" pres, too!
Don't stop thinkin about tomorrow! It's better to just stop thinkin altogether...
Excellent.
Spartacus, you nailed it. The dysfunctional personality of those con artists--"exploiters"--you describe such as politicians (Tom Delay & Randy "Duke" Cunningham), dictators (Bush/Cheney & Hitler), most capitalists (neoliberals), neoconservatives (fascists), many military and 'religious' leaders, and inhabitants of both Wall Street and 'K' Street has a name, psychopathy.
The others you describe, the exploited sheeple, are the easily and intentionally distracted American masses, most of whom haven't a clue about the ideals of this country's founding as an enlightened, secular nation that honors the rule of law, ethics of process, and individual civil liberties to protect against the tyranny of either a minority (plutocratic oligarchy) or a majority (unenlightened, nativist masses). Because of their apathy and ignorance, they are ill-equiped to combat the streaming manipulations that cause them to support often corrupt people, institutions, and policies that are never in their self-interests. As pointed out above by RichM, Marxism shows us that our perception of the rules are those shaped by the ruling class. As the updated Golden Rule explains, "he who has the gold, makes the rules." It's a cycle of societal class abuse that has being going around for centuries.
I truly believe nearly all Americans suffer from a combination of narcissism, American exceptionalism based on constant government/media propaganda, and Stockholm Syndrome: a dyfunctional symbiotic relationship between an abuser (US government) and the abused (American masses). Stockholm Syndrome is the only explanation I have for why seemingly rational people would bend over, grab their ankles, and allow their sensibilities to be repeatedly assaulted.
Must read: Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Dr. Robert Hare, PhD.
When the rich victimize the poor, that's life. Get over it! Boo hoo!
When the poor resist, that's class warfare. You're not offering a positive message! You're a demagogue! You're a tyrant!
America was founded to protect slavery, its borders expanded through genocide, it made its mark on the world through empire. America tried to change its ways in 1933, but it died in a conspiracy on November 22, 1963.
Class wars have been the only real game in town for decades. Race and religion are popular distractions that the media has cultivated ruthlessly, seemingly forever.
MikeBinSD, thanks for the link to Donohue's Chamber of Commerce threat.
Looks like the global corporatist "Empire Strikes Back".
Bring em on.
Just making this anti-democratic threat by that fascist nut, Donohue, is going to do more to help ignite an Anti-empire movement in America than his worst nightmare, and my fondest dream.
Studs Terkel named race as the national obsession, and he is right. The MSM only analyzes race at the individual and institutional levels, but racism is systemic. It has been the primary tool for divide and conquer, keeping poor White people from considering class struggle. Just look how average White southerners have voted against their economic interests in recent decades.
Sexism, too, has become a focus to the exclusion of class. The feminist movement has been dominated by women with race and class privileges.
I hope Edwards will play the class card with greater boldness. I'm afraid, though, that we'll have to find out the hard way how a person of color or a woman as president does not mean a progressive agenda will follow.
Hillary Clinton grew up in a wealthy white Republican Methodist family. She went to private schools and grew up to be a corporate lawyer. Then the Clinton's became founding members of the DLC and worked hard to destroy the old working class coalitions that used to define the Democrats dating back to FDR.
I know damn well whose side she's on in a class war. And she ain't on my side.
"Hopefully, the first thing she'll do is push to make not having health insurance a crime "
Actually, she's proposed just the opposite. She wants to make not having health insurance an actual crime, just like car insurance. Its a part of her insurance industry profit protection plan that she misrepresents as a health care reform plan.
"And now to figure out what happened in New Hampshire that Hillary received as many votes as she did. I have never been to NH, but I have always perceived it to be state with a population of people of above average intelligence. I don't understand what you were thinking. Was it the tears that won you over? Please tell me. I really don't get it."
The interesting me to thing is the difference between Iowa and NH. The Iowa system if very public, open and transparent and impossible to hack the results. People publicly declare their support for a candidate by standing in groups, and everyone in the room can count the numbers in each group.
So to me, its very interesting that as we move back to our more typical voting machine and vote counting computers system in NH, that suddenly we see results that differ significantly from the polls that were done. And that it was both of the candidates that were supported by corporate money and the party establishments that suddenly resurrected their campaigns with 'surprise' victories.
Did Hillary really get this vote? Or is it just what the computers were programmed to report?
The masses have common sense and ethics on their side. The elites are obsessive-compulsive and tend to drive the society into the ditch. Elites are overwhelmingly evil, destructive, and stupid. For example, today 90% of US economic activity is completely wasted - serving only to addict the masses to unsustainable consumption.
Elites have to be corralled and controlled. The masses accomplish this by shifting individual exchange/association away from elitist elements and toward the local community. Win the class war, people, and the race and gender wars will be won in the process.
Here Hear for Robert Scheer:)
What I never understand is why if anything progressive that is attempted is attacked as being a class war, then why not just go full tilt and wage a class war? If you are going to be accused of it anyways, why shy away?
Of course, this fits the typical pattern of the Evilcrats. They want to pretend opposition to the pro-big-money, pro-corporate agenda, but they really don't want to oppose it. So the Evilcrats shy away from anything that could be called class-war, but not because they are scared off by the accusation, but because they essentially represent the same class as the Republicans. If anything that would benefit the rest of us causes angst amongst the rich elites, the Evilcrats won't do it.
Evilcrats ... they freely admit that they are evil and claim we should support them because they are marginally less evil than the Republicans. So lets just call them what they are. :)
i think it's funny that gloria steinham still thinks she's relevant.
"It's class warfare stupid!"
Progressive candidates are getting wiped out by corporatists. After Bill's caving to Wall Street, Hillary now embraces the insurance industry that crushed universal healthcare.
And Colin Powell endorsed Obama recently. That can't be a good sign. Colin Powell lost his credibility some time ago.
The antidote for an oligarchy is direct democracy.
Can't you do any better than "Evilcrat"? I'd never admit to coining that one. Sounds like a pathetic W-ism. How about some play on demolition or demode or--I've got it--doo-doo?!!??!!
Why thank you, RichM. Cordial welcomes are most welcome!
Gore Vidal once wrote "There is one party in America, the property party, and it has two right wings."
Let's try to make it simple. Race, Gender or class, is not the major issue. The major issue is CHANGE. There will be NO change in our government, our way of life, the future of America, until there actually is just a single MAJOR change in the political arena in Washington DC.
Our president, our Congress DO NOT run this country. We the people, do not rule. Big business and major corporations do rule. We all know that and we want it to cease, for it truly is Fascism and the average citizen suffers because of that. __ The elite do not.
With Fascism, we will NEVER have fair and affordable health care. With Fascism, we will NOT have a viable social security system, we will NOT have affordable colleges, we will NOT have truly clean energy. We WILL continue to have wars, because war is profitable for big business. Our Infacstructures WILL continue to decay, prices of ALL necessites, fuel, food, health care and shelter WILL continue to rise, as will taxes. Our freedoms WILL continue to be eroded. ___ That is how Fascism works.
There is only one reason this has happened over the years, LOBBYING. The lobbyists for major corporations and big business rule DC, beause they buy most of our congress members. That is how it is.
To keep it simple, elect John Edwards, the ONLY candidate who has pledged that he will fight to put an END to lobbying in Washington. He says he will, and I believe he will and can win that battle. He knows how to do that type of fighting and win. Not one other candidate even addresses that major issue and that single issue, is the root cause of ALL of our major problems. The press of course, does not mention it either.
Steinem said tonight on NPR that all the Dem candidates are pretty much the same.
It is sad that a woman of her stature is so uninformed, especially about the policy differences that matter so much.
Obama and Hillary have much in common, but Edwards and Kucinich are actual Democrats as opposed to DINOs.
It is the lobbying that is destroying this country, it's truly that simple.
You are absolutely right Kem, and yes formernadervoter, Obama and Clinton HAVE ALREADY SOLD YOU OUT on all the major issues like corporate lobbyists, the war, and single-payer health care!!
Give your votes and support to someone who is really fighting FOR YOU, JOHN EDWARDS! John can win with your support. Send him some love for having the courage to speak the truth, and for forcing Obama and Clinton to start talking about the issues that matter to working people.
EDWARDS '08
It's hard to support any of the Democratic candidates. I mean none of them are promoting the wholesale slaughter of all who hold to western ideals. And I get the feeling that Obama and Clinton (deep down) care for the U.S. Until we get a candidate that stands for a platform of real change- the destruction of the U.S. and the torture of its people... I'm not going to register.
I don't want to see any of them promote wholesale slaughter. If that is what you wish to see, don't just not register to vote, move in with a group that does promote that BUNNY.
John Edwards will fight for change and the major change required has been fully explained and is unarguable. He also does not promote wholesale slaughter, so guess he won't get your vote.