Cenk Uygur has a fantastic post today about how bipartisanship is used as a foil to enable the Democrats to sell us out just like the Republicans sell us out to big corporate interests.  For those of you out there that thought the Democrats were different, this article goes a long way to explaining why their differences are not manifesting themselves now that they are in power.

What happened when Democrats compromised with Republicans in the Senate Finance Committee and conservatives in their own caucus on health care? They got rid of the public option. And Medicare buy-in. And drug re-importation. And the ability to negotiate with the drug companies. Every one of these measures was supported by progressives and every one of them would have saved hundreds of billions of dollars from the budget and hence should have been supported by the conservatives.

Conservatives would attack health care as adding to the deficit and then fight like hell to make sure it included no measures to reduce the deficit. That’s partly because they wanted to make the bill worse, so they could fight against it later if it passed. But it was mainly because their corporate sponsors told them to take out those provisions.

Everyone that follows politics even a little bit should be wondering these days why when the Republicans were in power you did not hear much about bipartisanship.  Now all of a sudden it has become a mantra for the Democrats.  Cenk explains why.  Since everyone knows the Republicans are the party of big corporate interests, they do not need to hide from that fact.  But the Democrats have to pretend they are for the people so “… they need the political cover more when they give the lobbyists what they want”.  Ergo, the Democrats must use bipartisanship as a subterfuge.

This is what worries me the most.  Voters must choose between Democratic politicians who say they are working for the people and Republican politicians who are working for corporate interests and do little to pretend otherwise.  So voters are left with the following two choices.  Vote for politicians who pretend they are working for the people.  Or vote for politicians who do not pretend they are working for the people.  And when faced with these two pitiful choices, it is pretty obvious what will happen.  Voters will either vote against the politician that is deceiving them or not vote at all.  And this means the Democrats are heading for a huge electoral train wreck.

How can this train wreck be avoided?  Democratic politicians must “bite the hand that feeds them”.