Caitlin Johnstone
01 Mar 2017
What America Needs More Than Anything Is An Anti-Corporatism Movement"Many of our viewers might not know this, but there are voting members on the DNC who are lobbyists. Someone who works for Goldman Sachs is a voting member on the DNC. So I want that to be clear, that this party decided on Saturday what side that they stand on, and it is obviously not the side of the everyday person in this country who is really depending on the Democratic party to stand up for the people. We had the power to do something about that... but they didn’t even want to do that in terms of how we raise money to forward the mission. And to not have the willingness and the faith to trust that we would be able to raise millions upon millions of dollars from everyday people in this country is a little disturbing. As somebody said to me, conservatives in this country have a party and a half.”
That was the indomitable force known as Nina Turner in her interview with The Real News on Monday, speaking of a vote that was cast at the DNC Winter Meeting in Atlanta on Saturday. At a glance you might guess that the unapologetic Berniecrat Turner was referring to the DNC’s election of the establishment-backed Tom Perez as Chairman, but in this case she was actually speaking of a vote that received much less attention: before casting their votes for Chair, the DNC voted down the re-institution of a ban on corporate lobbying that previous Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had repealed to benefit the Clinton campaign. Clinton would go on to spend an unprecedented $1.2 billion on her spectacular failure of a presidential campaign, much of it from corporate mega-donors.
Turner criticized her peers’ decision to keep the Democratic party one that is powered not by the donations of an enthusiastic and engaged voter base, as Bernie Sanders’ groundbreaking campaign showed in no uncertain terms could absolutely be done, but by the donations from extremely powerful corporations and banks.
But we all know why the corporate Democrats chose to take things in that direction, don’t we? It’s not just that the DNC has voting members who are corporate lobbyists, it’s that the upper echelons of the Democratic party are dominated by politicians who, like Hillary Clinton, have built their entire careers upon their ability to extract large donations from corporate entities in exchange for backing neoliberal policies that advantage them. It’s not even just that they don’t want to give up those lush fundraising cocktails and the teeny weeny baby hamburgers with the mini pickle and the baby lettuce — so cute! By handicapping their ability to rake in massive corporate donations, these career politicians would be essentially handing the keys of the party over to the progressives who actually represent the people, since no rank-and-file Democrat is going to hand their hard-earned cash to some phony-faced senator who has no idea how to relate to normal human beings. They’d be primaried out in a hurry by real progressives with a real vision and lose all influence over the party.
They'd rather suck at the tit of corporate mama than connect with real humans because connecting with real humans is something they are physically unable to do. I mean, imagine Nancy Pelosi out on the hustings. Imagine opening the door to Nancy one fine Saturday morning and not yelping in fright. One minute you’re deeply involved in some morning Facebook and a delicious bowl of cereal, and the next you’ve opened the door to the cold dead eyes of Nancy Pelosi. That’s enough to put anyone off their Coco Puffs.
Corporate liberal rag The Hill reported that the DNC struck down the resolution because they “feared it would limit donations from liberal activist groups at a time when the party is in the throes of a massive rebuilding projects,” but we all know that’s not true. They didn’t vote down the resolution ban because they care about “liberal activist groups,” they voted it down because they need their corporate lobbying like a fish needs water. They voted it down for survival.
Folks who’ve come to this essay following a link other than Facebook or Twitter might not be able to see this, but it’s subtitled “A strong anti-corporatism movement would unite the anti-establishment left and the anti-establishment right for everyone’s benefit.” A lot of lefties I interact with seem to be under the strange impression that being anti-corporatism is a position unique to the political left, but nothing could be further from the truth. The libertarians, the anti-globalists, a major portion of the alt-right and even some elements of the Tea Party, these factions have their roots in the discontent caused by corporatist corruption. A major factor in Trump’s election within the rust belt, for example, was his pledge to lay the smackdown on corporations which move jobs out of America. Whatever you think of Trump and his honesty or lack thereof, the idea of government pushing back against corporations is a movement in the opposite direction of corporatism, and that’s what these people voted for. They don’t oppose capitalism, they don't oppose corporations, but they absolutely oppose corporatism, and that's what's killing us.
“Drain the swamp” resonated with people for a reason. Nobody, be they the leftiest hemp-wearing pinko commie or the gun-totin’est, Bible-thumpin’est, right-wing nuttiest conservative, wants to live in a country where only the wealthiest of the wealthy have any meaningful say in what national legislation gets passed. Nobody wants to live in a country where you can only become president if you’re a billionaire or if you’ve sold your soul to Citigroup. Nobody wants to live in a country where a few wealthy elites have far more influence over the government than all the nation’s voters combined. Nobody.
It would benefit everyone if these things ended regardless of their political persuasion, but it would also happen to address every single one of the progressive agenda’s most pressing concerns, from America’s corporatist wars over pipelines and petrodollars and military industrial complex profiteering, to corporate giants’ ability to perpetuate the Walmart economy and repress a living minimum wage, to the way the powerful donors from the fossil fuel industry forward drilling and pipeline agendas, stave off a green energy push, and advance politicians who bring snowballs to the Senate floor as proof that global warming isn’t happening.
So maybe what is being called for here is a bi-partisan umbrella movement that aggressively calls out corporate candidates no matter which letter they choose to wear on their lapel. Whether that be D or R, or even L or G, let’s make corporate money the poison chalice from which they fear to sup. When we look at corporate donors, we’re looking at the corporatism artery, the mainline which corporates use to puppet the government at the expense of the will of the people. We’re looking directly at the thing that is killing us, whether that be by job loss, wage-slavery, denial of healthcare, or the slow death of ecocide. That funnel of money is the whole problem right there. Without the money, the politicians have no reason to vote in their donors' favor, and politicians are forced to look to us for financial support, which means our issues become their issues. Which is how it should be. Politicians are simply public servants, and they should be beholden only to the will of their constituents.
That’s not happening right now but we can change that simply by making a big stink about corporatist politicians across the spectrum. It’ll mean humbling ourselves and talking to those scary Republican people, but if we keep the conversation to only corporate money we can really collaborate and make something happen. It’s clear that the powers-that-be are not going to legislate out corporate money, but we can make it a political disqualifier quite easily by just doing what we do best — spreading information so people can make informed decisions.
The only people who still support the Democratic party as it exists today are the people who don't understand corporatism and the people who profit from it. Due to widespread internet access and populist unrest on both ends of the political spectrum, we can change this lack of understanding very quickly if we stop competing left against right and start collaborating bottom against top to take power away from these sociopathic corporate entities and give it back to the people. There's no point getting lost in debates over whose ideology is better until Americans can determine the direction of their own country anyway. Something to think about.
http://www.newslogue.com/debate/364/CaitlinJohnstone 
