US Person may have conveyed the impression that he is endorsing the Democratic Party as an alternative to suffering under two and possibly six more years of Hair Further. {27.09.28} NOT. Voting for a party that is only marginally less militarist and right-wing than the hopelessly sold-out Repugnants is not a solution to America's problems. A case on point is what the World Socialist Website calls the "CIA Democrats".
A significant number of Democratic candidates for the House have backgrounds in the military or intelligence community. If the Democrats capture the House of Representatives more than half of the incoming Democratic representatives will be former military-intelligence apparatchiks. This does not disqualify them ipso facto from supporting progressive politics, but it does indicate how status-quo oriented the Democratic Party really is. US Person doubts they would support such policies as slashing the Pentagon bloated budget by 20%, replacing the privately governed Federal Reserve with a centralized system of publicly owned state banks, or a constitutional amendment to overrule the century of horrendous legal precedent creating corporate personhood capped by the atrocious Citizens' United decision. Even Medicare for all would be a stretch for these establishment politicians. In other words, the business Democrats who dominate the party are not interested in fundamental reform to revitalize the working middle class.
According to the website, based on their published biographical details, one quarter of the Democratic challengers in competitive House districts have military, NSA, or State Department backgrounds. National security operatives outnumber state and local officials, lawyers, businesspersons, and wealthy individuals; it is the largest subcategory of candidates for Democratic congressional nominations. Ten of the twenty-two districts selected for high-profile support by Democratic donors have candidates with a military-intelligence background. How being a former assassin in Afghanistan qualifies a person to be a congressional representative is not immediately apparent, but perhaps politics in Washington is more dangerous these days.
A Democratic favorite is Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative who served three times in Iraq and then moved to the Pentagon where she specialized in security matters. Supported by the establishment Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), Slotkin is expected to win a key seat in Michigan's Eighth Congressional District. The seat is now held by a two-term Repugnant. Another former spy running for office is Gina Ortiz Jones in the 23rd District of Texas. She served as an intelligence officer in Iraq and as an advisor in South Sudan and Libya. The race there can be glibly called "spy vs. spy" since the other Democratic challenger has a national security background, and the Republican incumbent is a former CIA agent. Abigail Spanberger is running for a House seat n Virginia. She proudly claims her experience as a former CIA agent qualifies her for representing Virginia's Seventh District. The list goes on. 57 candidates for the Democratic nomination in 44 congressional
districts boast as their major credential their years of service in
intelligence, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at the State
Department, or some combination of all three.
This domination of political representation by the military-intelligence establishment is unprecedented in America's history, and is a frightening indication of just how far down the road to fascism the Republic has journeyed. It is beyond anything written about by C. Wright Mills in his classic social study, The Power Elite*. It also demonstrates that the Democratic Party has lost any legitimate claim to the sobriquet of the 'peoples' party'. Franklin D. Roosevelt was castigated for his reform policies during the Greatest Recession by his own capitalist class. Roosevelt contemptuously told his critics that without him, they would be pursued in the streets. Now, the widespread popular disgust with a corrupt, bigoted current occupant has no outlet for authentic expression in the popular vote. The latest crop of apparatciks represent corporate business, the military-intelligence establishment, and their wealthy donors, not the people. And they can be counted on to adhere to the party line.
*See particularly Chapter 9, 'The Military Ascendancy"