Democrats Have to Serve Two Masters

As the 2012 Presidential Campaign drags on into the dog days of Summer, I am starting to get the

feeling that I've heard a lot of the rhetoric before. From Republican Nominee Mitt Romney,

as one television pundit put it, It's “Blah, blah, blah The President has failed to lead”, all the while still refusing to put forth any grand ideas that will move the nation forward with him in The Oval Office. As for President Obama, while still pressing for Congress to pass his Jobs Bill that has been sitting on their table since last September, he and his charges have gone back into attack mode on Governor Romney and his time spent at Bain Capital.

In my best Sister Sledge voice, “Just let me state for the record”. I have no problem with the Obama camp going after Romney over Bain. As a Progressive I happen to think capitalism is the inherent link to the financial meltdowns that we have seen over the last decade and a half. Enron, Bernie Madoff, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers all stem from the Gordon Gecko “greed is good” culture. The other reason why I don't have a problem with it is Romney can't have it both ways. You can't say my time in the private sector qualifies me to be President, and then complain about people pointing out that less than stellar private sector record.

The one problem that exist in this post Citizens United world however, is that Democrats have to serve two masters. Dems have to be the populist party, the party that truly cares about the middle class and the working poor,a cause I think most elected Democrats truly believe in, but they also know that they can't piss off Wall Street. Campaign cash is more important now than it has ever been in politics anddon small donors and Hollywood Celebrities can only take you so far. That's why the Bain argument is tricky.

Wall Street was good to Bill Clinton, and why not. In 1992 Clinton ran on the promise of a short-term stimulus package that would kickstart the sagging economy, but once elected and in the presence of then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan he abandoned this theory for one called “the financial markets strategy” which called for raising taxes but also cutting spending in order to placate the markets. The markets did well, but the overall effect has helped lead to the rise in CEO pay and the stagnation of workers wages, also Democrats wound up losing their majority in The House in 1994 thanks in part to strategy.

That's why it was no surprise when the initial Bain attacks were unleashed by Team Obama, Clinton did his best Republican surrogate impression, Clinton bent over backwards to defend Bain and Romney because he sees very little about big business that we as Americans should be concerned about, he also knows that in order to get funding for the various pet projects that he is running in his post Presidency he needs Wall Street to open the checkbooks.

Also take the curious case of Corey Booker. Booker up until a couple of months ago was about as good an Obama aid as you could find, that was until Bain and then Booker did Clinton doing Romney. Booker is the Mayor of one of if not the toughest city in the country, Newark, New Jersey. It's next to impossible for Booker to get money from his State Legislature to keep his city afloat, so he basically has to make trips across the state line with bowl in hand to ask the big boys in Manhattan for donations.

On one hand it is tough for me to be critical of Clinton or Booker, they didn't set up this system, but they should get blame for embracing it rather than doing more to try and change it. We all know which way the other side is going.

Republicans love Citizens United and corporate money, they pay lip service to the middle class and the working poor by offering them a bogus trickle down theory that any objective person knows has not worked for the last 35 years. Yet the GOP doesn't have the same dilema facing the Dems, as long as they can keep getting Wall Street's cash they may be able to stay in power in Congress, particularly with gerrymandered districts and defeat the President by outspending him 10 to 1.

Here's to hoping real campaign finance reform and a Constitutional Amendment to repeal Citizens United is right around the corner, God knows the republic needs it.