The GOP Systematic Hostility Toward Working Class
While more & more working-class advocates are rightfully jumping on the GOP for opposing the auto bailout from the Senate as a party politics play over the country's best interest and also pointing out the GOP's long-standing desire to crush the unions ... There is a more fundamental problem that exists in the GOP that effects many, many more working Americans that needed to be hit harder by the toothless Dem leadership. We can all help to drive this message home more now:
The GOP ALWAYS opposes benefits for workers!! I am speaking specifically about GOP opposition to the national minimum wage. And while we are there, we can also bring up their opposition to equal pay and civil union benefits. This is systematic in the GOP platform and brings up this interesting fact:
The GOP believes that these ideas STILL WORK and will win elections! All they have to do is be a little more conservative and religiousy, ya see?
I think you're right--they don't give a damn about the worker, they just want big business on their side so big business can give them a big check whenever they want it. The GOP will do anything big business wants, that's their meal ticket. They're corrupt to the core.
December 15, 2008 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes they do. Be sure to catch up on SleepinJeezus on his three part (so far) historical analysis of exactly how this was done.
But your point has got to be rammed down the working man's and working woman's throat. Everytime they vote for these patricians, they lose.
December 15, 2008 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is all true, but it is also true that many Democrats bad mouth unions and the UAW particularly. The Democratic Party is supposed to be the party of the working people, and while few Democrats are openly opposed to the interests of working people, there are precious few who stand up and defend with real tenacity the interests of working people. Our side needs to improve on that is all I'm saying.
There certainly is no equivalency between the two parties in question, but the average worker in this country needs a working people's party that does more than not hate them. They need a party that fights for and defends them. While there are a few Democrats who actually do this, if we are honest with ourselves, there simply aren't many of them anymore.
December 15, 2008 11:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Too many Dem pols and commentators buy into (or have been "purchased" to believe) the false Common Wisdom that "free market" economics require workers to be "competitive." It is simply an automatic assumption that we workers must never ask for more from our own economic system than what is offered to the most impoverished laborer in the market. To insist otherwise, we are told, is to risk losing jobs as the free market capital ultimately moves offshore to avail themselves of the cheapest labor. "Oh, the horror!" these fools say "Jobs will be lost forever as these free market capitalists pursue their righteous self-interest by getting the cheapest labor available."
The correct response to such threats instead is to say "Screw you! Just how many cars (or washing machines, or T-shirts, or armchairs) can you eat, mr. manufacturer? 'Cuz you won't be bringing any of your offshore crap back here into this market."
Protectionist? You bet! It's about protecting OUR rights as owners of this economy in partnership with the investor/owners toward maintaining an economic system that disallows exploitation of any class of people while ensuring the economy works in everyone's interests.
Fortunately, we do not live in an absolute free market society. A purely Libertarian world is simply unsustainable, although it can wreak significant damage to the working class while providing obscene profits to the monied class over the short term if it is so allowed.
Instead, our system works best when it is regulated in ways that preserve the interests of labor and bosses together. The labor movement struggled for too many years to show how this can best be acccomplished for it now to all go away as a victim of corporate greed and corruption.
And you are right that the GOP has ALWAYS been fundamentally at odds with any sense of fairness in this market. They will conveniently insist that Libertarian "free market" principles be applied when it serves the corporations' interests (as in the case of labor "expense") but will otherwise welcome government assistance when necessary to "protect our economy," which they more closely define as corporate profits. Thus, they argue on one hand that GM should go to bankruptcy unless the Unions agree to become a non-entity while insisting on the other hand that our capitalists on Wall Street are too important to allow them to fail.
As bluebell said on a post elsewhere in TPM, the trick now is for the Dems to get some backbone. Rather than run away from the notion of serving the "angry left" within their party in an effort to be "bi-partisan," they better gain proper perspective and understand it is the angry middle class within the party that is pushing their representatives to defend against this increasingly dire assault launched against them by the GOP and its monied class constituents.
December 16, 2008 6:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
A majority of Democrats (as well as GOPers) are opposed to an auto-bailout. A majority of mid-westerners are also opposed.
These people see that Detroit is broken and it needs to be fixed. But the Left likes to say that this has nothing to do with fixing Detroit but just is an attempt to kill unions. If the Big 3 weren't hemorrhaging so much money I might feel differently.
December 16, 2008 9:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is both about fixing Detroit AND protecting the Unions.
I become livid everytime I hear some pundit or other expert sniff that Detroit is solely responsible for their problems. Meanwhile, they complain about the fuel inefficiency of the SUV they are driving - which was bought when fuel was under $2/gallon and alternative vhicles were available for purchase. See my post on this topic here
Bottom Line: We cannot collectively afford to lose any more family-supporting jobs in the manufacturing sector. We especialy cannot afford to reduce the earning capacity of the very consumers upon whom we now rely to spend $$ and get the economy going again.
I invite you to read Reich's recent blogpost and my response as an expansion of my comments here. Meanwhile, I put little stock in polls taken of people who have consistently shown a propensity to vote against their own self-interest due to their reliance upon very faulty "Common Wisdom" propogated by "selectively free market" capitalists.
December 16, 2008 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wrong. I'm sorry but we can't bail out just because "we can't afford to lose any more family-supporting jobs in the manufacturing sector."
I lose my job earlier in the year. Why should the government bail out GM but not bail out the company that fired me?
December 16, 2008 8:17 PM | Reply | Permalink