Vol. 71/No. 26      July 2, 2007

“The Honeymoon Is Over,” was the headline of an editorial in the June 18 issue of the Nation, a liberal magazine. “The slim Democratic majority in both Houses is not a progressive majority,” the editorial said.

John Walsh, a frequent contributor to Counter Punch—a liberal newsletter edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair—blamed the Democrats for the disarray of the peace movement.

“Democrats retreat before Bush,” said Stewart Alexander, the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for California governor in 2006, in a June 11 article in Banderas News, an online publication.

In his new movie Sicko, director Michael Moore, a Democratic stalwart until recently, slams Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ front-runner for next year’s presidential nomination, for being a leading recipient in campaign donations from health insurance companies, reported the San Francisco Chronicle. Moore also prominently posted on his web site a letter from Cindy Sheehan explaining why she could not support Clinton’s presidential bid. Sheehan has since announced her departure from the peace movement, explaining she came under harsh attacks by Democrats and their hangers-on after condemning their prowar stance along with the Republicans. Sheehan had staged sit-ins at Hillary Clinton’s office to protest the senator’s support for the Iraq war.

“Beyond ending the war,” the Nation said, “Democrats were elected because of popular rejection of corporate trade policies and the stench of corruption in Washington. Tom DeLay is gone, but the corporate lobbies just reloaded with Democrats.”

The editorial noted that senators from both parties came together to “deep-six” efforts to authorize Medicare to negotiate lower prescription-drug prices. Two bills that would remove a requirement that reproductive health-care centers also counsel abstinence to receive government funds have been stalled and have fewer sponsors this year than last.

The one bright spot liberals and labor officials point to is the first increase in the federal minimum wage in a decade.

Democrats attached domestic spending measures, including the minimum wage raise, to the war appropriations bill in a maneuver to gain Republican support. Democrats presented that bill as antiwar because it contained a time line to redeploy U.S. troops in Iraq out of combat roles. Bush vetoed it on May 1.

A second version that dropped redeployment time lines was passed with large bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by Bush into law just before Memorial Day. Many of the domestic spending measures were included in the legislation.

Sixty days after signing the bill the minimum wage is to increase from $5.15 an hour to $5.85. A year later it will rise to $6.55, and in 2009 it will be $7.25.

The minimum wage has not been raised in nine years. Today it is 31 percent of the average hourly wage in the United States, the lowest level since 1947. The real minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, has been declining for some time and is now 30 percent lower than it was in 1979, according to the Economic Policy Institute. With the $2.10 hourly increase by 2009, a full-time minimum-wage worker would still earn some $2,000 below the current federal poverty line for a family of three.

These conclusions, however, don’t seem to derail many disillusioned liberals and middle-class radicals from lesser-evil politics and their commitment to elect “better” Democrats.

“The new majorities aren’t the sterling champions some had hoped for, but they aren’t the knaves we booted out either,” said the Nation editorial. “The serial disappointments of recent weeks are but a reminder that we’ve got work to do.”  
 
 
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