Weiner-Gate; A Symptom of Flaccid Democrat Syndrome

The Democrats only serve to squander and dampen the energies of those seeking real change.  Platitudes and “flaccidity” are therefore inevitable.—Eds

By Rob Kall

It’s hard not to get sucked into the swirling Weiner language. So I’ll go with the flow.

Here’s are the two primary definitions of FLACCID from dictionary.com :

1. soft and limp; not firm; flabby: flaccid biceps.

2.lacking force; weak: flaccid prose.

I think that both definitions apply to the Democrats, particularly the leaders– Obama, Pelosi, Reid… They are pathetically flaccid and fail to stand up for fellow democrats or for democratic principles. They are flaccid in the face of conservative criticism. But they do seem to stand up when corporations sing their siren call. Of course, the story of the sirens teaches us that captains who heed the voices of the sirens bring their passengers to bad endings.

Let’s start with a few non-Weiner flaccidity cases.

Dick Durbin is suggesting that the congress should authorize the Libyan war. His weak, flaccid reasoning is that if the congress authorizes it, then congressional powers will be confirmed. This is weak, impaired convoluted reasoning. You don’t vote to give permission to someone who did something without permission and then claim that you still have power of authorization.

A few years ago I was talking to John Conyers and it was caught on video . I got the clear impression that the reason he was not, as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, not going after Dubya for impeachment was because Nancy Pelosi and the other flaccid Democrats were afraid of what those nasty people at Fox News would say.  Back then, the general consensus was that Pelosi was keeping impeachment off the table.

We’ve seen the Democrats cave and fall, operate in weak, FLACCID ways for years. Obama’s chronic punt-on-the-first-down negotiation strategy is painfully flaccid, when he’s not actively stabbing the constituents in the back with his deals with banksters, big pharma, hospitals and energy companies.

So now we are faced with a situation where the weak, flaccid Democrats who lead the Democratic party have all failed to stand up for a fellow Democrat. We have a situation where they actually went the other way, helping the right wing attack machine.

“Democrats have not only refused to hold Republicans accountable for the double standard, but they have joined with Republicans in piling on with the demands that Anthony Weiner had to resign even as David Vitter stays in the Senate,” Maddow said.

Maddow finished her comments on Weiners resignation saying, “Congratulations, Democrats, in an era of unhinged, ideological, big money conservative media that is wholly and admittedly divorced from the precepts of journalism, in hounding Anthony Weiner into resigning … you have just fed and unleashed this beast onto yourselves, probably for a generation.”

More and more people are saying that there is little difference between the Democrats and Republicans. Oh, sure, there are some– abortion, some social justice issues– but the leaders of the Democratic party just helped the GOP drum out one of the strongest further left voices in congress. Alan Grayson is gone. Dennis Kucinich is being gerrymandered out of his Cleveland district.

We are seeing a purging of diversity, an elimination of strong, independent voices on both sides of the aisle, since the teagbaggers (yes I know what the word means. Yes it is intentional. Yes I hold teapartiers is contempt) are driving the moderates out of the Republican party.

Does that make Democratic leaders who drive out progressive voices the teabaggers of the Democratic party? After all, it’s been the declared goal of the DLC– the Democratic Leadership Council, which Bill Clinton helped bring to power, which Hillary Clinton was a leader of, which Obama sourced most of his appointees from– to move the Democratic party further and further to the right.

Okay, so, flaccidity also represents sexual impotence or lack of arousal. These are two metaphoric ideas that also seem to apply to the Democrats. They were profoundly impotent when they had the House, the Senate and the Whitehouse. You could attribute their condition to either metaphor– impotence or lack of arousal. The flaccidity diagnosis applies. It’s no wonder the voters were turned off in November 2010. If the Dems want to win in 2012, they better figure out how to turn on the voters and that absolutely involves developing, at the least, stiff spines. I’ll leave the rest of the imagery to your own imaginations and the comment sections

On the other hand, maybe it’s not flaccidity. Maybe it’s outright sabotage of true Democratic values. Now, some Democrats are trying to extract big money from corporations so they can take on the Koch brothers (or so they say). It won’t work. The corporations know where their bread is really buttered. Sure the Dems will get some money– enough to keep them selling out the people who vote for them– their constituents.

Let’s be clear. Politicians no longer represent the interests of their constituents– the ones who vote them into office. They represent the donors who give them the money to run for office. The ONLY way to make the members of congress accountable is to get the money out of elections. That will not happen through legislation. There is only one way to force it and it will require the kinds of action that got equal rights for women and blacks– civil resistance and civil disobedience. There’s an action in October 2011 that aims to change things. Be there. I will.

Author’s Bio:

Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com