Republicans seem to have convinced the average American that what is good for billionaires, oil and gas companies, pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, banks, chemical companies and defense contractors is good for them. With this midterm election, we gave the country over lock, stock and barrel to our new corporate overlords.
We watched this disaster approach in slow motion over the last few weeks, but in fact it's been approaching for the last few months and even years. The problem wasn't just that the Republicans purged their moderates; the problem is that the Democrats purged their principles.
And that's what did us in.
Corporate America is not dumb; it's worked hard to sew up both political parties in its nefarious schemes to place their short-term economic interests before the health and well-being of the average American. One major party was more than glad to go along; the other one went along with all this angst and agita in the background perhaps, but it still went along.
And that's what did us in.
The Republican corporatists are worse than the Democratic corporatists, but only to a degree. And Republican corporatists are at least true to their principles, however abhorrent those principles might be to some of us. The Democratic corporatists, however, are the real culprits here. Having sucked the soul out of the Democratic party, they have leeched out of it whatever moral authority it had left. Why weren't they able to activate the base?? Because they decimated the base!
And that's what did us in.
It's time for the Democratic corporatists to move over now, and let people who actually stand for something take it from here. Yes, the corporatists won some short-term power but at the expense of long-term viability. A funny thing happens when you act against your own principles: karma gets 'ya.
The Democratic party needs its soul back, and if the midterm results prove anything it's that people aren't impressed by its current corporatist formation. The Republicans have the elite policies but in a strange way a more egalitarian relationship to its own constituency. The Democrats have more egalitarian policies but in a strange way a more elitist relationship to its own constituency. You're not really a party for the people if you're not a party of the people. Corporatists have led the Democratic party for twenty years now, but this midterm election should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that the Democratic leadership needs to change. Real progressives within the Democratic party are ignored as voters, and marginalized as leaders.
And that's what did us in.
Our mid-term elections this year marked the end of one era and the beginning of another. What has ended? Any illusion whatsoever that big money doesn't rule this country. What's begun? Hopefully, the retrieval of the revolutionary spirit that is core to who we are as a nation. Because that is what we need now. We need a massive movement -- a peaceful, non-violent rebellion against the new corporate order of things. We need to give up the illusion that the Democratic party is the nurturing mother who will balance the excesses of the critical father. Like hell it is. It's become the silent mother who stands in the hall just wringing her hands while Daddy takes his whip out and wallops us. We can't just wait for Mommy to stand up to this anymore. We ourselves simply have to grow up.
The new era begins today, as the Democratic corporatists start lining up for the presidential nomination in 2016. What can we do? Make it clear -- make it really, really clear -- that hell no, we will not support a corporatist nominee. He or she would do as well in 2016 as the Democrats did this midterm. Why? Because we will not go along anymore. The only hope for the Democrats, and the only hope for America, is to nominate someone who tells it like it really is, reclaims the principles that the Democrats historically stood for and shows the bravery and courage we so desperately need to see right now.
Democratic strategy this year was to arouse people's anger at what the Republicans were doing. It didn't work. What they needed to address was how depressed people are at what the Democrats have been doing, and not doing, to live up to its own principles. The mid-term is over, but the 2016 presidential race is on the horizon. And the new revolution has only just begun.
Marianne Williamson is a best-selling author and lecturer. www.marianne.com