That’s an overreaction. Eliminating all corporate PACs in the name of “purity” is just silly. And it’s cutting your own throat. You need to fight the republican assailants (who do take corporate money) and that takes cash.

Rather than this “cancel culture” outlook by Mr. Welder, the Democrats would be smarter to accept the money, use it wisely, but control the influence of the givers so as not to sell out to corporations.

It won’t be easy, but they can do it. Remember that the republicans unabashedly sell out to corporations – the Democrats have a lot of leeway to do it in a nuanced way.

@elbanditoroso “Democrats would be smarter to accept the money, use it wisely, but control the influence of the givers so as not to sell out to corporations.”

How do you propose they do that? Why would a corporation donate if they weren’t getting a return on their investment? Your statement reads as a contradiction. Corporations pay for influence, and so how can you “limit the influence” while still “accepting the money?”

“Eliminating all corporate PACs in the name of “purity” is just silly.”

I think Welder and others would argue that they’re not making this case for the sake of “purity” but because the corrupting influence of money leads to a political landscape where Dems will always be at a major disadvantage to Republicans, and that it suppresses the vote of many people who otherwise might vote Blue but are turned off by the corruption. They would argue that eliminating the stench of corruption in the party would be strategically advantageous because it’s attractive to voters and would help them win.

@gorillapaws I don’t know how. I’m not a politician and I’m not a corporate mogul. But it’s difficult to believe that there isn’t some sort of middle ground instead of being an absolutist.

People choose to be corrupted. It’s a learned effort. So let’s be smarter.

@elbanditoroso “But it’s difficult to believe that there isn’t some sort of middle ground instead of being an absolutist.”

Would you feel that way about bribes? Like if there was a customs worker who was taking big bribes to help child sex traffickers cross the border and one that refused to take bribes, would you argue that they should both take the “middle ground” position and only be taking medium-sized bribes and say only allow them to engage in sex trafficking with girls 13 and older? Would you label the guy an “absolutist” or a “purist” who refused to go along with it?

It’s a waste of time attempting to bar corporate money from political parties. No one is fooled by any pretense of either party rejecting the corporate tit. The dems are at a disadvantage because they are tied to the myth of resisting corporate dominance of the governmental agenda. The Republicans don’t bother with any such nonsense and openly frenzy in the bootlicking.

@stanleybmanly “No one is fooled by any pretense of either party rejecting the corporate tit.”

Aren’t the recent victories of populist left candidates who refuse big money in direct contradiction to this point?

“The dems are at a disadvantage because they are tied to the myth of resisting corporate dominance of the governmental agenda.”

Are you suggesting that voters who care about resisting corporate dominance over government should look to parties other than the DNC?

@gorillapaws Why would a corporation donate if they weren’t getting a return on their investment?

The reason any corporation exist is primarily to provide the maximum financial return to investors. Period. Any decision to invest donate money to any non-profit organization, political or not, ultimately involves the bottom line.

Any “quid pro quo” involved in such donations would be on the recipient of those monies.

It should be illegal in all politics, it’s just legalized bribery.

People are so disillusioned with government, that’s why many thought Trump, being an ‘outsider’, was a good choice.

@gorillapaws The fact that the populists promise to reject corporate money reinforces my claim. Populists can get away with it because their candidacies are footed on the rejection of the status quo. They are usually upstarts with no history of feeding at the trough. And such candidates are a particular threat to democrats and always have been. The immune system of the party is fine tuned to resisting actual boat rockers, much more so than the GOP. That a clown like Trump could slip through Republican defenses, while Bernie was stopped cold shows you just which party is up to derailing the upstarts. It is the party where simmering revolt is the tradition which is best at smothering insurrection in Presidential and Senate races. The House is another matter. And the incursion of folks who clearly “won’t play ball” is particularly threatening to the dems.

I’m saying that the Democratic party faces the threat of genuine usurpation from the left which threatens to compel it to live up to what it pretends to be.

@stanleybmanly “That a clown like Trump could slip through Republican defenses…”

Well the Hillary campaign encouraged the media to prop Trump up in the so-called “pied piper strategy,” because they thought he’d be the easiest Republican to defeat in the general. And let’s not forget how compelling Trump’s anti-corruption messaging was. As @KNOWITALL correctly points out, it was a big part of why he won. Anti-corruption is popular with all voters: Blue, Red, independents and also with non-voters.

“I’m saying that the Democratic party faces the threat of genuine usurpation from the left which threatens to compel it to live up to what it pretends to be.”

Can you give any examples of policies they’ve enacted due to this threat? I can think of plenty of examples of “no-brainer” policies (i.e. very popular) they’ve cut off, seemingly due to corruption however.

@stanleybmanly: “I’m saying that the Democratic party faces the threat of genuine usurpation from the left which threatens to compel it to live up to what it pretends to be.”

Wish I had that optimism. But the evidence shows that the Democratic party is always successful at fighting the left off. In fact, that is precisely their role. The Sanders challenge failed (twice), and that was the closest anyone came. Sanders was wrong. The Democratic party cannot be fixed.

If true, why would it be any different than the Republicans??

@kritiper “If true, why would it be any different than the Republicans??”

Isn’t it kind of the point for the Democrats to be different than the Republicans? Otherwise, why even have 2 parties?

@gorillapaws They’re not THAT different! You make it sound as though Republicans are normal people and Democrats are abnormal.

@gorillapaws Of course the dems would want Trump as the opposition to Hillary. Our legislators are plutocrats isolated from life on the ground. They expect reasoned behavior from a population where the reality is more like being trapped in a burning building to watch the flames advance. As for Trump’s promise to drain the swamp, how were the yokels to know any better? Who knew that he was Capone promising to clean up Chicago politics?

The hope is in those “recent victories”. They are the cracks in the house devoted to the nurture of the oligarchs.

@hmmmmmm I think the political parties are in fact being confronted by their own irrelevance. Trump is the greatest rejection of rationality in the history of American politics. The destruction of the GOP is at hand and the Democrats are faced with an influx of folks evidently not yet dedicated to fattening up at the public expense. Perhaps co-option won’t do the trick THIS time.

@stanleybmanly: “The destruction of the GOP is at hand and the Democrats are faced with an influx of folks evidently not yet dedicated to fattening up at the public expense. Perhaps co-option won’t do the trick THIS time.”

Again, I wish I shared your optimism. It seems the Democratic party committed suicide in order to resist even the slightest shift left. I don’t believe I have seen any evidence that there is an influx of people into the party. The numbers look fairly steady.

Have a look at @gorillapaws ‘ “recent victories” link above. The Republicans (as Bernie shows) are not the only folks pissed at their party. The current eruption in Democratic bastions portends serious consequences for a party burdened with so shabby a disguise of its shilling for oligarchs.

I don’t care. They can take money from whomever the fuck they want to as long as Trump and the Congress people who have orgasms over him get booted out of office.

@Caravanfan ”They can take money from whomever the fuck they want to as long as Trump and the Congress people who have orgasms over him get booted out of office.”

What if taking the money and packing the Party with lobbyists is helping Trump win?

^ It is the reason Trump won – or was even a thing. And the Democrats didn’t “lose”. They kept their funding model. The Democratic party has always chosen to remain a right-wing corporate party, even if that meant legislating from the minority. That’s not considered a loss. A loss would have been to allow the party to shift ever-so-slightly left.

So, @Caravanfan should care that the amoral call for “as long as Trump is out of office” is exactly what got us here, and will continue to make things worse for the future.

At this point, I’ll accept any line of reasoning that arrives at the conclusion we share as essential. Unload the jackass then we can fight over perceived inadequacies of the other malignancies.