Why the Democrats may Actually be even Worse than the Republicans

[NOTE: The following was written on January 17, which was two days before the Massachusetts special senate election.]

This senate race in Massachusetts is a scrap between two right wing parties. You have on the one side the Republicans, an ultra right fundamentalist party which truly worships the free market and which wants to maintain right wing economics at all costs, except that since they have demonized the government for decades, they can not fully accept the idea of using the government to implement right wing policies and can not accept the idea at all when it's the Democrats doing the implementing.

On the other side you have the Democrats, who became a true right wing party during the 1980's, which started with Jimmy Carter losing reelection to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and was marked also by Mondale being demolished by Reagan in 1984. The Democrats, who after Mondale's loss became a full scale corporatist, right wing party, today want to implement right wing policies (or at least a mixture of right wing and center-right policies) partly by using the power of government, which means of course that they are flirting with fascism.

Since both parties fundamentally agree that the rich should get richer even if the poor and the middle class have to get poorer as a result, the scrap in Massachusetts is fundamentally about which techniques to use for implementing and maintaining a right wing economy, one that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer for as far as the eye can see. But since the techniques themselves can sometimes seem to be end results, and since the techniques are in fact very different, an illusion is created among the general public that the argument is about results. But when all is said and done, both the Republicans and the Democrats want the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer, which mathematically means that both of them want the middle class to shrink.

So it is no surprise that Republicans and conservatives who speak of Democrats being "left wing" have, as is so often the case, completely missed the boat. The Democrats are not to my knowledge implementing or trying to implement a single solitary non-right policy that could be described as sweeping or national in scope.

Although there are a few progressive elements that should be passed by themselves, the health insurance laws the Democrats are promoting are, overall, right wing and regressive in character and in effect. It simply is absurd to say "there are a few good things" so we have to put up with the fact that on balance this new health insurance law will make the rich richer and the poor poorer, despite the fact the economy is already ruined due to the rich already being too rich and the poor already being too poor.

Not to mention that there will be more than 50 million without health insurance once again, by 2025 at the latest, even if this law is implemented. All the law does is buy about 15 years of lower uninsured numbers, a gain remarkably small compared with all the costs to achieve it.

Again, what is fooling the public and especially the conservatives is that the Democrats want to use mechanisms that are used in all modern, successful countries for implementing non-right policies to implement right wing policies. Thus, the Democrats are guilty of using powers that are supposed to be used for progressive ends for ultimate objectives that are very right wing indeed.

Requiring the purchase of private health insurance contracts without real cost control and without real regulation is the right wing policy in the bright lights at the moment, but the Democrats have been busy implementing other right wing policies while not being shy about using the powers of government to do so. For example, there are the endless subsidies and other rewards to huge banks, investment houses, and other huge corporations under the guise that those beneficiaries of taxpayer money are too big to fail. (News flash: most non-right people are not opposed to even large private companies going bankrupt when they ruin the economy on a greed binge.) There is also the continued support by Democrats for privatized utilities, schools, media outlets, and more.

In case it isn’t already obvious, I say unequivocally that using the government for implementing right wing policies and for achieving right wing objectives is even worse than going for those objectives while mostly refraining from using the powers of government to insure them. If I lived in Mass. and I was forced to vote for one of the two main parties, I'd vote for Brown on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, non-right people don't really have a dog in this fight; we can only look on as outsiders. The best hope for the non-right at the moment is that gridlock be established between the two right wing parties. Then maybe the non-right can get serious about getting a marketable party going and winning some federal elections.

The above was in response to this article.
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