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[h/t Geronimo]
Many of you who read my posts here won't believe this, but I agree with about 98% of this rant by Cenk Uygur, because he takes hard aim at the money in politics. Hard aim. He's right -- the key is to get the money out of politics.
I have lots of takeaways from last night's results, but one of the biggest ones is the money issue. The right has spent years building an infrastructure under their party, one that paid off handsomely last night. Yes, there was anger at Democrats and Obama. All of that is true. But make no mistake, it was fueled with combustible parts bought and paid for by every company on the Dow Jones Industrial Index and their hedge fund minions.
Lest you doubt, read this article from Politico, where they confirm what I wrote (and have continued to write) about last year: Campaign funding was coordinated between groups with Carl Forti at the helm.
Republican groups had never coordinated like this before, participants said, and backed by millions in corporate cash and contributions by secret donors, they were able to wield outsized influence on the results Tuesday night. The joint efforts were designed to spread the damage to as many of the majority Democrats as possible, without wasting money by doubling-up in races where others were already playing.
I call them Swift Boat Networks, because they're coordinated and funded by the same idiots who brought the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry.
We're going to be talking about last night for a long time to come. We're going to be talking about fighting, and how Democrats' failed, or President Obama's conciliatory stance or any number of things. But Cenk is right about the money. We can fight all day long but we're set up as patsies until we get the money out.
How many of us dug in and gave to Blue America, as much as we could, or MoveOn, or DFA? That money was well-spent, of course, but it shouldn't have had to have been spent. There's no reason for the 300 pieces of attack mail that came my way over the last 2 weeks, or the inundation of airwaves with attack ads. That inundation, by the way, gives the media permission to remain as entrenched in right-wing memes as they please, because it was a gravy train. A huge, major gravy train.
When all the numbers are crunched and we see the obscene amount spent on these campaigns, just remember that corporate America had plenty of money to defeat progressives and Democrats who weren't, but when it came to jobs, they had none. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
