Party of the Poor? "That would be a bad thing"

I was reading my LAT online, perusing the writings by the like of Jonah Goldberg and co to see if anything interesting caught my eye. I found what I was looking for in Joel Stein’s Grand Old Party animal. It is all about trying to register new American citizens to vote. That is a laudatory goal and one I think we all support. This is what I took away from the article though.

Then stupid Bishop Mendez started talking about how the Republicans are the party of the poor. I countered that it was actually the party of the filthy rich -- people she wanted to be around. I told her that Republican country clubs are way better than Democratic ones. "I don't think Republicans are the party of poor people," she said to Mendez. "That would be a bad thing." She finished her cookie and filled in the GOP bubble.

The article includes traces of humor, used in a self-deprecating fashion, acknowledging the idea that trying to recruit new citizens to the GOP during that moment might be taking advantage of them. They way that they went about recruiting these people though gives insight into what the republican party has become after two Bush presidencies. The article is upfront about the Republican Party. It is not the party of the poor and down trodden.

I have to wonder how many of these new citizens would actually benefit from the Republican policies. My guess is not many. Look at the example that Joel uses of a successful recruit, someone who thinks it would be bad to be the party of the poor. Recruited because the GOP is the party of the rich? Not the best statement of a Party platform and not one that many of its small town voters would likely embrace.

It is the difference between the party in it for everyone and the party in it for themselves. You want to be part of the club because it pays benefits to you and not others. I am happy that the Democratic Party at its core is dedicated to the advancement of all including the down trodden. Being the party of the poor should not be a stigma it should be a badge of honor. We as Democrats rely on the idea that our policy ideas and philosophy are what bring people into the fold. The Republicans as they acknowledge in the piece are shameless recruiters using any gimmick they can including the now common expoitation of 9/11.

They were a happy bunch, 27 well-dressed people sitting at a table covered with a cloth decorated with a subtle pattern of the firefighters raising a flag at ground zero.

Now this might not have had anything to do with politicization of that tragedy. That evocative image may just become a symbol of America and our ability to rise from the ashes of tragedy like the Phoenix of legend. Unfortunately, I am too cynical for that and tend to think it is exactly what it seems.

That display is one of the things that make me so unhappy to see the pandering in the dem primary. The scoring of cheap political points is something I had hoped we could leave to the republicans. I really wanted to claim the high ground on that one and say, as we used to about torture, we don’t do that. That was probably unrealistic, this being politics after all.

Another thing that stood out to me when I read this.

My biggest challenge, I was told, was that a lot of people from Latin America were going to think that "democracy" and "Democratic Party" were synonymous.

If only more people in America thought that, we might be getting somewhere. At this point, given the numerous documented instances of voter suppression perpetrated by the GOP and its operatives as well as the total destruction of our Constitution, I think that the Democrats have a better claim to standing for democracy than the GOP. It is a sad state of affairs for our country when one party represents the subversion of Democracy in our country.

If you read the piece, the humor shines through and you might take things differently than I did. For my own part, I think that it is only funny because it is true. Stein might present the recruiting trip like its all in fun but I doubt the people he mentions were being so light hearted. They seemed in earnest to grab that growing share of the market.

Did the dems act the same way? Maybe. Maybe even probably, but I think there is a clue in the piece that leads us to believe that our recruiters tried to act with honor and integrity. We tried to keep their registration honest at least. I can always hope we did it out of principle and not partisanship.

The Democrats, who sat 10 feet away at a table covered with no cloth, had accused my new Republican friends of being overly helpful in filling out the registration forms for these new voters -- most notably the box for party affiliation.

Notice the jab about the no cloth? Party of the poor again, I think. Democrats need to stand for not only the poor but the rest of the oppressed in our country. I just read the diary on the WWII veteran who committed suicide outside a VA Clinic in South Carolina after being denied benefits. We need to return to office if only to have people who think government can work and prevent tragedies like this from occurring.

The overall point of this was simply to remind people that we are in the end Democrats. No one should vote for McCain. I can’t imagine anything Clinton could do that would let me live with a vote for McCain. After all, we are the party of the down scale, the party that represents Democracy and the party dedicated to a better America and a better Earth for all, not just some. And no, that would not be a bad thing.