Maryland Democrat
So what does it mean to be a Democrat? The party’s charter has skittered across the political landscape in the past couple of decades, but I think one thing remains constant: Democrats want to be the voice to the individual. To stick up for the rights, the security, and the well-being of everyone, not just everyone who can afford it. That sounds incredibly corny, but, at least in the abstract, I think it’s true.
The Republican majority in congress will claim the same mandate, of course, but the work they’ve done, or have tried to do, during the long dark age of their reign says otherwise: the successful elimination of the estate tax, the attempt to kill social security, the lickspittle obeisance to Corporate America, the determination to cut social services to the bone: these are not populist policies, no matter how much they may try to doublespeak their way out of admitting it. Eliminating the tax on dividends does nothing for people struggling beneath the poverty line; cutting Medicaid funding does nothing to help people who can’t afford their own insurance; eliminating the bankruptcy bill does nothing for men and women caught in financial quagmires not of their own making.
I’ve always thought of Maryland, my adopted home, as a sort of oasis of sanity in a desert of capitalism-run-amuck, but that faith has been sorely tested of late. My representative, Albert Wynn, was one of the 73 House Democrats who voted for the vomitous bankruptcy bill, which effectively removed the right of individuals to declare personal bankruptcy. I was completely blown away when I found out: this bill is an obvious gift to the credit card companies, who have lobbied for it for years. How can a person calling himself a Democrat actually support a bill like that? How can a person I voted for support a bill like that?
It gets worse: we have a Republican governer, now, and he’s just finished vetoing several worthy measures that would have done much to improve the lots of the people of this State: one that increases the minimum wage by $1, another that forces Wall-Mart to provide healthcare to its employees, a third that heightens oversight over our juvenile justice system. He even threw in with the hetero-fascists, nixing a bill that would have given homosexual partners the same rights as married people. It would have interfered with “the sanctity of traditional marriage,” he said, echoing the Robertsons and Dobsons and Bushes of the world.
My oasis is shrinking.
Update: Dug up this kos article quoting a House Democratic staffer on why so many Dems voted for the vile Bankruptcy bill. Long story short: for various reasons, the left is very close to the big companies in the financial sector; those companies wanted this bill to pass very badly; and the Democrats knew it would pass anyway, so figured why not throw their biggest contributers a bone.
This doesn’t make me feel good or anything, but at least it explains things: moneygrubbing, rather than moral treachery. Bleccch.
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