Bedding Down With Billionaires and Pitchforks
by digby
Don’t miss this must read post by Adele Stan at Alternet about the billionaires funding the tea parties.
This conclusion just breaks my heart though, since it shows how badly the Democrats have fumbled the populist moment:
If there were any missteps made in the execution of the billionaires’ weekend events, it may have been the appearance of Koch himself at his Americans For Prosperity Foundation banquet and the selection of George Will to receive the organization’s George Washington award.
As I composed a blog post in the hotel lobby after the event, I overheard an attendee talking to her friends. “Michele Bachmann, now she’s real,” the woman said, speaking with a Southern accent. “You would never know that she’s an attorney. But George Will and that other guy — these people have never had real jobs. They don’t know what it’s like to sit in a broken office chair because your job can’t afford for you to put in for a new one.”
She seemed unaware that “that other guy” was the one who was going to get her to the big rally, and rake in a windfall — likely at her expense — if the agenda she signed onto through her activism ever came to pass.
Of course she was unaware. Nobody bothered to tell her.
This is, of course, the natural outgrowth of continued DLC influence in Democratic politics, as Howie devastatingly lays out here. They made their pact with the devil and don’t know how to do anything else. So, there’s no one left to tell the people.
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