I'M DONE WITH DEMOCRATS

We have one democratic-leaning national news station and that's MSNBC. Here's why they can't be trusted. Or you at least have to sift through their pro-establishment propaganda.

Yesterday, several news anchors reported on Democrats in the Senate squashing Obama's TPP trade deal--or at least they rejected the fast track authority Obama was seeking to pass without much discussion of the secret deal and no chance to amend something which governs 40% of the world's trade. MSNBC's anchors from Sharpton to Chris Matthews to Chris Hayes all claimed that "progressives" had won out over Obama. While this suggests quite rightly that Obama isn't progressive at all, "progressives" did not vote the fast track down. Democrats did. Democrats who could not return to their constituents and tell them "We killed your jobs because Obama wanted to serve multi-national corporations' interests at the expense of yours " and get reelected.

Let's remember that most Democrats aren't a very progressive bunch. If they're representing a largely catholic state like Louisiana, then they have a hard time supporting abortion rights. (See disgraced Mary Landrieu.) If they hail from a state with a large rural population, they want less gun control just like Republicans. (See Gaby Giffords, who supported more lenient gun laws before she was shot.) Democrats from oil-producing states have no interest in addressing climate change. (See disgraced Mary Landrieu again.) Many Democrats like Hillary Clinton are ready to buy trumped up evidence to jump into a war because they make money from the defense industry. Many Democrats are corporate cronies like Ben Nelson, who held up the passage of Obamacare and former senator Chris Dodd just broke his promise not to become a lobbyist after he left office.

So for MSNBC to call the senators who stood up to a president of their own party with a stinging rebuke on the TPP "progressive" is just nonsense. They were acting like Democrats! The way Democrats used to act. Democrats who stand with workers--as Hillary claims she does now that she thinks that what we want to hear. Democrats who stand with unions, the traditional democratic voter base which has been lost. Who stand for civil rights whether those be gay rights, ending police brutality against blacks or protecting women's abortion rights. Who would never, as Obama has, attempt to sabotage the very popular Social Security program. Who recognize the importance of addressing climate change and not just paying lip service to it as Obama does, while simultaneously green lighting new drill sites in the Arctic which has environmentalists howling. Democrats used to be the more peaceful party--the Republicans were the hawks. But now we have a Democratic president extending the wars we're already in and fighting secret drone wars we don't even know about. And a presumed Democratic presidential nominee who is more of a hawk than Obama.

Democrats like Obama and Hillary have driven the party so far to the right that we need a new option which is truly progressive. Based on policies like the TPP and Obama's proposed chained CPI budget cuts to Social Security, again and again Democrats are acting like Republicans. Obama has continued many of Bush's policies--NSA spying, government secrecy, not making corporations or the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes and not spending to invest in jobs or our infrastructure. The list goes on and on, but there's been little real change. Obama griped constantly about how the extreme right tea party wing of the Republican party forced him to constantly go to the middle ground in negotiations. But the truth is on many issues--he was already in the middle. Certainly further toward the middle than many Democrats like the ones who just rose up together against his sleazy trade deal. I think Obama liked the tea party because it gave him a great excuse to not be progressive. And then you see him try to screw workers en masse with the TPP and getting support from only Republicans on it. Was he reaching across the aisle or was he already there in the middle?

Then you see a centrist candidate like Hillary taking pages from the playbook of the great liberal hope Elizabeth Warren in order to sound more progressive to get elected. If elected, we'll find out how progressive she is. Just as we found out how progressive Obama wasn't. Time for a new party. Democrats have cooked their own goose by turning against core principles they used to have. I'm sorry if you feel trapped by a two-party system but if this country still is a democracy, it's government by the people. We call the shots. They work for us and it's our job to boot them out when they've proven again and again that "us" is the least of their concerns.