Broken Promises & the Minimum Wage We continue to perpetuate the myth that the Democratic Party is the party of the people. Yet, over and over again they fail to fulfill their promises. Until we recognize that most of these senators and congressmen are themselves wealthy and have a vested interested in maintaining the status quo we will never achieve meaningful change. They identify with their elite bosses and have more in common with them than with us. We need a party that truly represents us, Below are excerpts from an article by Bruce A. Dixon of Black Agenda Report that assesses the current political scenario. Progressive Sheepdogs, Democrat Sheep: Broken Promises & the Minimum Wage Bruce A. Dixon As a presidential candidate back in 2007 and 2008, Barack Obama promised to ram a hike in the minimum wage through Congress by 2011. Like the presidents promises to renegotiate NAFTA and enact labor law reforms to make union organizing possible again, it wasnt one of those high profile pledges he repeated at every opportunity in front of every audience. He didnt have to, thats not the way it works. If youre a right-leaning Democrat nowadays, heres how it works: you make those kinds of promises before small audiences of labor and poor folks. From that point, its the job of your sheepdogs, the Democrat “progressives” campaigning for you to keep the herd of your base voters in line by putting those words in your mouth a lot more often, and with a lot more emphasis than you actually place upon them. Inevitably, once in office the corporate Democrat (is there any other kind?) breaks his or her promise to his poor and apart from their votes which theyve already given away, powerless constituents. At this point, his other sheepdogs, the “pragmatic” Democrats wisely bark at the herd about how naïve and foolish they are, that they dont really understand how politics works, that this one president or mayor or whatever cant save them or change the world, or do much anything really. With President Obamas popularity at an all time low, the president has rediscovered that something like 80% of the US favor not just a significantly higher minimum wage, but a minimum wage indexed to some kind of cost of living formula. Even a big majority of Republican voters are in favor of this. So the president has muttered his traditional few words about the minimum wage, and from MSNBC to Huffington Post to labor and the nonprofits, the chorus of presidential sheepdogs are baying – the president cares, the Democrats care, they want to raise the minimum wage, but the evil Republicans will want to thwart them.... The problem with this of course, is that whenever Democrats are in charge of Congress, they never try to raise the minimum wage. Its a promise they make to get elected, and something you never hear about again until theyre safely in the minority again and need something to blame the evil Republicans for blocking. Lets be clear, evil Republicans did not block efforts by President Obama or Congressional Democrats to raise the minimum wage in 2010 and 2011, when they controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. During that time, there were no bills introduced to raise the minimum wage. There were no presidential speeches or off the cuff presidential remarks mentioning raising the minimum wage. There was no pressure from the White House or Democrat leadership in the House or Senate to raise the minimum wage, despite the importance placed upon the presidents promise by his sheepdogs, the “progressive” wing of the Democratic party. Leading Democrats have always known that overwhelming majorities of Democrat voters want an increase in the minimum wage. But its a campaign issue, and Democrats only campaign differently than Republicans, not govern differently.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 15:26:38 +0000
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