What a bad joke of a column by a Democrat sycophant.

The problem is that with the Dems, you can never listen or give any credibility to their words. You have to watch their actions.

This party is a party built on a lie. They pretend to care about ordinary Americans, but in power they only take care of their big contributors. But if they only had the support of their big contributors, they could never win an election. So they have to lie. They have to con ordinary Americans into believing the Dems will work for them. But if you pay attention to their actions, the lie becomes evident.

The very first example in PD's list is very telling. He tells us these candidates want 'health care reform'. But the health care reform they actually propose is far more geared towards protecting the profits of their big contributors in the insurance, HMO and pharma industries. The notion of a national single-payer system like any other civilized nation is considered insane by these Democrats and not to be proposed or mentioned. In fact, Hillary's latest health care reform con is actually to help the insurance industry by making it illegal not to have health insurance. Does she really think that the reason 50,000,000 don't have health insurance is because they haven't been forced to get it by law before?

The rest of the list is equally telling. Look at actions, don't listen to the words. For instance, what actions have the Dem majority in Congress taken to repeal Bush's tax cuts for the rich? None that I know of. As a campaign issue, it would be a wonderful act. Have Congress pass a bill that raises taxes on the rich but provides a tax cut to the vast majority of Americans. Then, when Bush vetoes it, you've created a wonderful political issue for the campaign. Why haven't the Dems done this? Probably because they really don't want to repeal those tax cuts. Because the big money that funds their party comes from the same high income tax brackets that fund the Republicans.

And so it goes, right down the line. Remember, it was Al Gore and the Dems who talked the rest of the world down to only a 5% emissions cut at Kyoto, and then put in all the carbon credit\carbon trading loopholes that made that a joke. And Obama's idea of a plan to reduce greenhouse gases is to build more nuke plants. No surprise since a major nuke power utility is one of his biggest funders.

The only way you could write a piece like this is if you were extremely naive and you actually believed what the Dems say. And to do that, you'd have to be ignoring the last 20 years of ACTIONS that the Dems have taken.

Folks, you have to quit talking about "electing" anyone. Bush was not elected in 2000 or 2004. In 2000, through election fraud in Florida, he was selected by the Supreme Court and in 2004 disenfranchisement on a massive level in Ohio handed him the presidency. The 2002 "election" was skewed; e.g. Max Cleland's stunning defeat when his poll numbers had consistently been high. 2008 will be the same thing with different faces.
How many races in 2006 were lost to the Republican fraud machine we will never know. The Democratic Party refuses to address these skewed elections and moves as if it is business as usual. They are self-delusional and not by accident--that too seems Party policy. Even with a "win" in 2006, Pelosi and Reid sleep walk through Congress blithering about "bi-partisanship" and voting Bush everything he wants. Republicans use every parlimentary trick in the book and then some to jerk the hapless Democrats around and they meekly comply.
The Republican Party has worked since the 1930's to undo Roosevelt's New Deal and they are close to achieving their goal. Only Social Security is left to dismantle. The Party of toxic sludge will NEVER allow the control they have lied and schemed to gain slip away via an honest election.
When this is all over in November and another right wing lunatic is president, the illusion will be complete and the American people will continue to slumber on.

Pierre, get real! These are the same DP clown polis as always running in Stupor Tuesday. They hardly change from generation to generation.

From my view -- this is on the mark -- and provides an insightful perspective of how the forces of collective life swing back and forth. Cynicism aside (which is also hard for me), I am hoping the results of today -- more than anything -- inspire all of us to reclaim the truth that despite all these inferior, partisian wizards who claim "to be" the answer -- that the true answer resides within all of us -- joining together at the democratized table of problem solving.

I feel as if most of the US population has given the country away. As our civic education deteroriated and as mass culture took over, the lack of the ability to think critically imploded the nation. What we have now is debris

"The Democrats' knack for self-destruction remains stronger than the state of the Union. "

I believe this applies to the current crop of Presidential Candidates too. Our system of government has outlasted it's capability and anything short of a revolutionary constitutional convention to make needed democratic changes is doomed to failure despite good intentions. The architecture of the federal government is outmoded and cannot sustain its democratic ideals. Citizens seem too disconnected to take meaningful peaceful revolutionary action absent an economic collapse. I cannot foresee a resurrection of Democracy in America after an economic collapse. Fascism is the most likely outcome. A Fascist nuclear America is frightening. A Fascist domestic America spells death for any remaining liberals and their ideals. You will likely be locked up in the massive prisons now being constructed and left for dead. Things are far more serious and bleak than people realize. Bush is attempting to bankrupt America and bring on the collapse and democrats are complicit. We were gifted a Democracy and WE are turning it into a Facist State.

The writer says of the Democrats, "They're talking about doing things that matter tangibly to most Americans' daily lives". That's completely untrue. They have done nothing to address the problems that the voters overwhelmingly pointed out in 2006. There is only one party in D.C. today. The Uncle Buck Party with its two right wings. They work with corporate America and use mainstream media as their public relations department. In fact, this article sounds like it is mainstream media.
Hoa binh

"They're talking about doing things that matter tangibly to most Americans' daily lives: reforming health care, ending the gerrymandering of the tax code as a subsidy to the rich, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, resuming federally supported stem-cell research, ending a war that should've never been started."

Yep...they've been TALKING about these things for a while now. Where's the ACTION? Until I see some I'll be voting for Nader or the like :)

The truth is, no candidate can achieve ascendency in our political system without making it clear that s/he will continue with the American Empire project, through war, diplomacy, or whatever means are neccessary. If you think Obama, Clinton or any other "mainstream candidate" will buck the system on our behalf, you need to wake up.

"I have no doubt Obama, who can't wait to bomb Pakistan — as U.S. missiles did last week, to the inexplicable silence of the American press — would have cast his vote for the war had he been in the Senate then. But at least the Democrats..." blah blah blah...

At the MOST, the democrats have offered token resistance to the establishment agenda, which fulfills their roll as the opposition party. Their job?...to sound progressive enough that progressives will continue to participate in the rigged political game instead of rebelling. Make no mistake! Democrats by and large are ON BOARD with and IN FAVOR OF the corporate empire project, and will not stick their necks out for us the people under any circumstances.

This was a fun game today on Stupid Tuesday but I think the really important event is yet coming... from the refuse that petrocollapse will wreack on the U.S., we will have a constitutional convention and decide collectively how we will move from there. OTOH, in that refuse, we may also see that very phoenix the Xtian whackjobs fear, a Facist leader... and he'll be wrapped in a flag draped cross, supported by those same Xtians.

This article raises good points. Right now we are having an intelligence test (instead of a real election). Will we go with Hillary (and flunk the test, lose the election) or the possibility that winning an election MIGHT result in some change. Obama may be as bad as Hillary but couldn't be worse and is better compared with the Republicans he could beat but she probably won't. We should take what we can get instead of sulking about how wonderful things would be if they weren't all screwed up.

All it will take is for the Senate Leadership (Reid, if you can call him that) to buckle again on FISA and immunity for the telecoms (tomorrow is the vote, actually) and the many of us will continue to become more disilusioned and the Democrats will manage to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. Only Reid and Pelosi could manage this!

If only it was so. I don't see any bold vision that embraces all, perhaps it is the limited vision imposed by a profusion of little primaries. Considering the anti human era of the republicans surely one of those contenders would bring a "human" approach to the race. You know that old saw "government for the people by the people", still a good formula, and to flesh it out.. There is a deafening silence.

I'm surprised at Tristam. He ought to know better. OK, the Dems are still marginally "better" than the shameless fascists, but that's been true since Reagan's misrule. But to favorably compare Hillary and Obama with RFK and MLK is absurd. Maybe Obama's at least as promising as JFK at his very best, which wasn't much (he's mostly a movie-star myth wrapped in an enigma), but Hillary is more like McCain than she is any substantive Democrat of the 20th century. The useless Party marginalized and finally exiled Edwards just as it did Kucinich, for actually sounding like a real Democrat for a change. Edwards began to seem uncomfortably serious about actually doing something about poverty and going after corporate control of the entire world, so the cooler heads at Dem HQ decided it was time for a curtain call.

What will Tristam be saying in 3 years or less, if Hillary gets elected? Wow, what a fantastic job she's doing rolling back 8 years of Bush's totalitarian militarism? Health care might be a tiny bit more accessible for those 47 million who currently don't compute, but we'll still be wrecking Iraq daily and have our noses in several other countries' affairs, and most likely our bombs dropping on their disobedient heads. Taxes will remain about as they are now, with the super rich paying nothing and the shrinking middle class paying for their interminable wars. Liberals will then have Hillary to bash, and we won't be hearing nearly the mea culpas we should from journalists like Tristam.

Jeffrey Courion, thank you for your comments. I appreciate your courage to state that the true answer does indeed reside within all of us. While I think that the "politically illiterate and politically indifferent" are deadly for our country, the hopelessness, condescension, and smug narrowmindedness evident daily in the comments can also be poisonous. Please reread glenn goodman's post , and most of all, put your energy into something more productive than sulking.

The USA is no longer a democracy. Hard to believe at this point anyone can still claim it to be one.

Jeffrey Courion February 5th, 2008 12:33 pm:

"Cynicism aside (which is also hard for me), I am hoping the results of today — more than anything — inspire all of us to reclaim the truth that despite all these inferior, partisian wizards who claim "to be" the answer — that the true answer resides within all of us — joining together at the democratized table of problem solving."

I was shocked when Bush the younger became president. I was disappointed when he was returned with around half the votes from those that bothered. I can't, however, see myself being surprised if Americans elect another right wing nut job.

I don't think the structures are there, nor the inclination, for Americans to do more than tinker with the ruling party's plan for America. Is it cynicism to think that the erosion of the US civil discourse has gone to far and must run its course before Americans can rebuild?

"No longer"? When were we ever a democracy? From 1776-1862 the majority couldn't even vote. And perhaps it wasn't until after 1920 (women's suffrage) and the civil rights era that genuinely allowed the majority the right to vote.

To this day, we are technically a Constitutional Republic, with a "democratic tradition". That is not the same as a modernized parliamentary democracy.

So I take issue with "no longer" and "still". When was this great heyday of democracy in our history?

The great heydey of Democracy in the country was largely before the revolution. That was when we had much more of a town-meeting style of democracy. Maybe the end of that era was with the passage of the US constitution late in the 1780's. The earlier 'Articles of Confederation' had a federal goverment with very limited government and kept power at the state and local levels. And even then you had to be a wealthy property owner, male and white to participate. But that was still probably the hey day of American 'democracy'.

For fun, find a book on what is called the 'anti-federalist papers'. In school, you may have seen the 'federalist papers'. That was the supporters of our current constitution arguing in favor of its adoption. But there was a counter argument in newspapers and pamphlets of the day. A book on the 'anti-federalist papers' are those counter arguments. Some ring very true and telling today. These people were very afraid of the concentration of power at the federal level and what it would mean to the democracy that they had created at the local level and just recently fought a long and nasty revolution to secure.

the Dems don't object to Republican fraud because they have their own package of dirty tricks and rigged elections. They've been doing it for years. Read about the first mayor Daley of Chicago and his machine.

Also, I'd rather suspect that some of the reason why Nader didn't get to his 5% numbers that he wanted in the 2000 election was because of some tricky vote counting by the Dems in places. And some states the Dems won narrowly in 2000 and 2004 stink about as much as the ones the Rethugs won narrowly.

There's this constant myth that the Dems won't fight. But they will. And they are just as capable as rigging an election as the Republicans. They are certainly capable of rigging the system to keep the Greens or a third party off the ballot.

So why don't the Dems object to Republican dirty tricks. I've always thought its because the Dems didn't want their own dirty tricks exposed as well.

"I don't think the structures are there, nor the inclination, for Americans to do more than tinker with the ruling party's plan for America."

Depends on what people do.

-- People could learn that the candidates on corporate TV are the ones who will always screw them. They could learn that the candidate with no money and no corporate TV coverage is actually the best candidate for them.

-- For an election, tell everyone who votes on your side to then gather at a central place. Make it obvious that there are so many people there that any phony vote totals that make it look like the corporate candidate won are obviously phony. When 70% of the electorate is gathered outside the state capitals and city halls, then that's a clear statement as to how the election really went.

-- General strikes can always be effective. You don't need a 'structure' to do that. Just the will for many people to say something like 'the war ends today or we don't work tomorrow'.

You don't need a 'structure' for people power. You just need to educate people to the fact that they have power when they decide to act. In this country, a great deal of effort goes into hiding the fact that people power has worked before, and into hiding how it really works. The goal is to create a feeling of powerlessness. We need to do just the opposite.

We have to develop and demonstrate political power. Supporting Obama doesn't do this. He's a phony who's backed by the same corporate money and the same standard Dem advisors.

Political power means being able to defeat politicians. We need to develop the political power that tells and demonstrates to politicians that claim to be on the left that we can end their political careers anytime we want.

When we continue to vote Dem, we fail to do this. The result is that they lie to us, take us for granted, then collect our votes. Once in office, we can't hold their feet to the fire because we've failed to develop and demonstrate political power. They laugh at us and call us 'idiot liberals' and then do what their corporate backers want.

When we can end some political careers, and then march into the offices of other politicians and say "listen to use or you're career ends next", then we'll be listened too, consulted and able to have an effect.

We develop political power by leaving the Democrats and supporting candidates who believe what we believe. That's a win-win for us. Not only do we get to build a movement, and to have candidates who talk about our issues and beliefs, but when the Dems lose because we've left them, we can put their head on a pike and carry it through the halls of power. Then we say listen to us, do what we want, or its your head on this pike next. We can make the threat of a solid independent candidate running against a Dem as a threat that would end that political career. Then we'd have politicians willing to end the war, or give us single-payer health care, or whatever else we want. Because if they don't, they'll be out of office next.

But if we just keep voting for Obama because that's the best we can get, we show no political power at all. And the best we can get slowly gets worse and worse.

"Instead, MacGregor Burns writes, "three of these leaders were killed; the other was politically disabled. Who would — who could — take their place?""

So Mr. Burns wrote that? It's true, isn't it? Do you, Mr. Tristam, actually think that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or ANY of the current crop of democratic candidates could actually take the place of the people Burns was writing about? Do you? Really?

Well, maybe Kucinich could have, but he was politically disabled.

"Democrats look not only incomparably more qualified than their opponents, but more compelling as leaders"

yes, and polio is vastly superior to cancer...

"To this day, we are technically a Constitutional Republic, with a "democratic tradition". That is not the same as a modernized parliamentary democracy."

Yup, but the illusion must be kept alive.

On top of that, we have a David Broder piece in the Washington Post stating that we're down to 4 candidates. Gravel and Paul and Huckabee are now persona non grata. They don't exist now! They have been disappeared just as was Kucinich.

So, we started with a lie and have built layers of illusions around it.

And we used to call the USSR a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. We can't see that we're living in one as well.

Fashionable as it is to gloomily predict the Democrats will again find a way to self destruct in this, the Presidential race that's theirs to lose, I agree with Pierre that the Democrats of 2008 indeed do look "not only incomparably more qualified than their opponents, but more compelling as leaders."

Rather than attributing this development to some sort of 40 year Darwinian process that gave us Barack, Hillary, John Edwards (and Bill Richardson and Christopher Dodd and Dennis and Ralph) to choose among all at once, I think it has a lot more to do with the stark reality jolt the American electorate has received, courtesy of six straight years of one-party ideological Republican rule.

If you really do believe in tax cuts, unlimited spending for military adventure abroad, unfettered corporate capitalism, and limited federal domestic involvement in people's lives in every sphere except when the Old and New Testament can be invoked, then the Bush/Cheney years were your grand moment in the sun, the culmination of all that Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan ever dreamed about.

But is America really richer, safer, more entrepreneurial, or behaving anywhere in a more Christ-like manner, as a result of letting the compassionate conservative branch of the GOP run rampant on Little George's watch, merrily making up the rules as they go?

Sexism will no doubt galvanize the Republican base if Hillary is the nominee, just as surely as hard line white racists will come out of the woodwork if Obama gets the nod. So be it.

My money remains on Barack.

He's the leader least likely to betray the antiwar base, and most likely to bring young people, and the politically indifferent, together into the mix.

Those are distinctions and achievable accomplishments worth fighting for.

Bill from Saginaw

The US Mint should remove " In God We Trust" and replace the motto with "What's In It For Me?"

Huckabbee autographing bibles? I didn't even realize he had written it....someone shoul;d tell him to loose the prologue, and move the guy on a stick to the last act....

Ah the realism here on CD, it warms the cockles of my heart to know there are others who have not been fooled!

Bill from Saginaw February 5th, 2008 8:21 pm:
"My money remains on Barack.

He's the leader least likely to betray the antiwar base, and most likely to bring young people, and the politically indifferent, together into the mix."

Yea Bill, we shall see, first he has to get the nomination, then he has to withstand a good sound swiftboating, then he has to begin to live up to the monumental expectations of his supporters. And if he does all that, and manages to escape the assassins bullet that is likely waiting for any real agent of chancge, well Bill that will be a friggin' miracle.

Was that agent of chance or agent of change?

What chance do we have of real change?

Mr Tristan,it seems to me that you must have been waterboarded to have written such a ridiculious article,or perhasps you were thretened with an anthrax letter??????

To IAMMYSELF: in response to David Broders We are down to 4 candidates all of whom are AIPAC puppets - Those are the only ones we are allowed to choose from in what we laughingly call the USA today.

The money should say in God we trust - but not the guys who claim to be his associates but act like the devil would.

Claiming Hillary and Barack are "liberal leaders" makes Kucinich and even Edwards sound like radical freaks.

This is an example of correct thinking, comrades!

Three cheers for the media droid Tristam and his corporate programmers!

Jacob Freeze - This is the big problem with centrists posing as liberals. Bill Clinton did more to move this Country hard to the "Right" than any of his Republican predecessors. Of course the Right wingers and their media lap dogs just love to help with that. A kinder gentler fascism is still fascism!

This is one of the best arguments for Progressives to abandon the Democratic party. Leave then to drown in their wishy washy centrist politics. If true conservatives, are there any still around?, would likewise abandon the neocon dominated Republican party, they could all drown together!

I read this above: "We were gifted a Democracy . . ."

When? When has the United States been a democracy? Answer: Never. It has ALWAYS been run by the Few. Even with Andrew Jackson, the "white male minority" were in control.

And if you're telling me that there's been something like a democracy in the twentieth century, I think you need to do some reading of history. Howard Zinn's work is a good place to cut through that myth.

So the Left has a choice between the Democrat (who might listen to us, a little bit), and the Republican, who makes political hay demonizing us, with which the capitalist media is happy to assist. The two-party system precludes democracy -- that's why the Big Bucks prop it up.

What a storm of epithets! It's hard to find any hope amid the spite, anger, hatred, cynicism and pessimism above. Voicing these sentiments commits us to them and blinds us to what we have not yet realized, permanently for most.

We have to see the players as human beings like us, first, and try to discern what sort of character they have. I find that most contenders have a personal achievement agenda as their first priority ( if not their only one ) where others have a service-to-their country agenda ( these are rare ). We don't always have enlightened candidates to choose from, though the lineup does include a nice helping of them going back to GW.

I once thought the " issues " the best way to measure a candidate. I now see the character ( foibles and all ) as the better measure, and humility, gentleness toward detractors and steadfastness as paramount.

It were better to employ ourselves for actual good than to render blogs of idle chatter... " For thee the world at work has been, that thou at ease might vent thy spleen." ( Voltaire I think )

"We have Democratic leaders again..."

Pierre's easily confused, apparently. He mistakes the appearance of leadership for the fact of it.

Man oh man! How much of the joy juice has Tristam been drinking lately - and where can I get some?