Thom Hartmann: And greetings my friends, patriots, lovers of democracy, truth and justice, believers in peace, freedom and the American way. Thom Hartmann here with you, and the day after the victory of Scott Brown and also his offering his daughters to all of us, I guess -- kind of reminded me of Lot, for those of you who have a Biblical background.

But in any case this election – what is the meaning of this? In the Wall Street Journal, Lanny Davis, a former White House Council under President Clinton, wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that "the left" is to blame for the Massachusetts results. He wrote, and this is a quote from Lanny – keep in mind, Lanny Davis – he was the lawyer – he was Bill Clinton’s lawyer in the White House, right. "Bottom line: We liberals need to reclaim the Democratic Party with the New Democrat positions of Bill Clinton and the New Politics" – these are capitalized – “N”, “P” – "/bipartisan aspirations of Barack Obama". End of quote.

I gotta tell you – Lanny Davis is no liberal. He’s a lawyer for hire who has worked for and promoted the interests of right-wingers in Honduras, supported a military dictatorship in Pakistan and did so because both paid him to do it. He is a proponent of the new Democrat wing of the Democratic Party, those who think that the Democrats should become more like Republicans and more in bed with big business. Obama has been listening to this kind of insane advice ever since he first took office and it’s destroying his presidency. America voted for change in 2008 – not for corporatism and what we got was a year of corporatism.

Martha Coakley’s campaign, for example, or big campaign fund raiser: "Coakley in trouble? Pharma and HMO lobbyists to the rescue" is the headline in the Beltway Confidential piece. When Democrat Martha Coakley was in trouble in the Mass. Federal Election, Democrats, blah di blah di blah, "an army of lobbyists for drug companies, health insurance companies, and hospitals has teamed up to throw a high-dollar Capitol Hill fundraiser for Coakley next Tuesday night. The invitation is here."– 22 names on the host committee--meaning they raised $10,000 each for her -- 17 are federally registered lobbyists, 15 from health-care clients. So it’s like, okay. More of the same, right?

Lanny Davis should disclose his corporate and anti-Democratic connections when he writes or is interviewed. And if the Obama administration continues to take this kind of advice, they will get exactly what they deserve for being so stupid, and that is a continued defeat at the polls of the Democratic Party. This was a referendum – this election – make no mistake about it. You’re going to hear a lot of BS coming out of the so-called “Democratic consultants” out there who also make most of their money working for big corporations – or for, as in the case of Lanny Davis, or in the case of James Carville, foreign dictatorships.

You’re going to hear a lot of bloviation from these people about how the– “This should be a wakeup call. Democratic party needs to move to the center.” I’m sorry – the Democratic Party has been in the center way too long. It’s not even the center. It’s what used to be called the Republican Party. In the election of 1946, let’s step into the Way-Back Machine, World War II is over, the New Deal has done well. The country is on a course to recovery. The soldiers have come home and the election of ’46, a number of Democrats kind of wimped out. And they started going corporate and they lost the House and Senate in the election of ’46 to the Republicans. And Harry Truman came along and said, you know, and in ‘47 Taft-Hartley was passed which ripped the guts out of the National Labor Relations Act. And by ripping the – and Truman was president and he vetoed it and they overrode his veto. And this is what Harry Truman had to say to a group of Democrats about what happens when Democrats start behaving like corporatist republicans.

If the congressional elements that made the Taft-Hartley law are allowed to remain in power, and if these elements are further encouraged by the election of a Republican President, you men of labor can expect to be hit by a steady barrage of body blows. And if you stay at home, as you did in 1946, and keep these reactionaries in power, you will deserve every blow you get.

There you go. Harry Truman, President of the United States.

Now he was basically at that time saying, you know labor didn’t show up in the election of ’46 and vote for Democrats, but there were some problems by that point in the Democratic Party. And so I’m going to at a certain level disagree with Harry Truman and say this was not the voters. This was a confluence of things here.

Number one, Scott Brown did not run as a Republican. His colors were blue. His website was blue. Blue is the Democratic color. He kept using the word “Independent.”

Number two, he came out of – the big money, the national – a series of national large organizations, the Chamber of Commerce in particular, dumped a pile of money on him in the last minute. I mean, just, just a money bomb for Scott Brown. And the Chamber of Commerce issued a news release last night bragging about the fact that they were the ones who paid for his television ads and they basically delivered him the election.

So you've got a candidate who is a chameleon candidate, but the main thing about Scott Brown’s candidacy is that he was running as a “change candidate.” In 2008, America voted for change. America said “Yes, we are sick and tired. We have looked at George W. Bush and Henry Paulson” come in with – Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary - come in with a three-page bailout that basically said, “Give 800 billion dollars to the banks and don’t ask any questions.” And that’s honest-to-God what he offered in the beginning. And Americans were horrified – even Republicans were horrified. But that’s what they ended up doing, the Bush administration and the Democrats in congress. And then Obama comes into office as president with a solid majority in both the House and the Senate and what does he do? He continues doing the same thing.

We have had Matt Taibbi on this program several times – he’s written about how the Obama Administration has been baling out the banksters left and right. Well, the financial services industry was one of the major contributors. Barack Obama, President Obama, has now a choice.

He is the head of the Democratic Party. He is President of the United States. He still has a solid majority in the United States Senate and a solid majority in the House of Representatives of Democrats.

1923 was the last year that the Republicans had 60 votes in the Senate and yet they have managed to get a hell of a lot done since 1923, never once having 60 votes in the senate. 60 votes—needing 60 votes is nonsense.

Having a spine – having the courage of your convictions, being willing to fight for what’s right, being willing to go to the American People, being willing to sit down every week and have a fireside chat. Being willing to say, “This is what I care about.” Being willing to promote a progressive populist agenda.

You know there’s just a few of us out here who are saying this. Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation -- "The Massachusetts Lesson: Go Populist Now" Ezra Klein of the Washington Post talking about this, he’s quoting Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy in 1980 after he failed in his attempt to beat Carter for the primary and then as Carter was going down in defeat to Reagan, Ted Kennedy said, "If the Democrats run for cover, if we become pale carbon copies of the opposition, we will lose -- and deserve to lose. The last thing this country needs is two Republican parties." Ted Kennedy.

President Obama can choose now to back off from the New Democrat agenda which all the pundits out there are saying he should be doing. And their voices are going to be amplified a thousand times by the corporate media in this country – it’s all you’re going to hear is the Lanny Davises of the world and all these so-called New Democrats, the Clintonians, and they’re wrong.

...

Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody knows
Leonard Cohen

Thom Hartmann: “Everybody knows” – You tell ‘em, Leonard. We have a comment line and people call in and leave comments and we occasionally play them as mailbag alerts. Here’s one from yesterday that is a classic demonstration of the position that the corporatist Democrats are taking. That we should be lockstep with the Democratic Party and their lobbyist friends, like the ones who are supporting Martha Coakley – we should be lockstep with them, come hell or high water.

Here you go:

Recorded caller: Hey Thom, I hope you’re happy now. Your constant bashing of Obama from the Left has now created a situation where the Democratic agenda is kaput.

Thom Hartmann: From the left am I? The Democratic Agenda, huh?

Recorded caller: 41 Republican senators now. Our credibility destroyed. Obama ...

Thom Hartmann: Credibility NOW destroyed?

Recorded caller: … and so there’s no health care, no agenda. Hope you’re happy. He came in with two wars, worst economy in 80 years with Republicans attacking him in every way possible and what did the Left do? They attack him as well. You couldn’t give the guy a few months to try to, you know, define himself…

Thom Hartmann: We certainly gave him a few months – we gave him 12 months.

Recorded caller: … and destroyed him before he could get started. In your effort to purify Obama, to get you what you want, now you get nothing. I hope you’re happy.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah, see this is the kind of pathetic perspective that is being put forward by the corporate Democrats who are saying, [in a high, fearful voice] “Ooh! Look the Republicans are winning! We need to crawl into the corner! We need to be so careful! We can’t say anything critical of the President, oh my God!”

Thom Hartmann: [Normal voice] Here’s what’s actually happening in the real friggin’ world. In the midst of huge and massive economic crisis – with millions of people reeling from job losses, home foreclosures, evictions, cuts to education and social services – as all of this is going on, the traders and executives at the top 38 Wall Street banks took in nearly one-hundred-forty-five billion dollars. This is paychecks. The top executives and traders. A hundred and forty-five billion. A billion is a million dollars a thousand times over. That’s like winning the million dollar jackpot a hundred and forty-five thousand times at 38 Wall Street banks just this last year, following the biggest bank bailout in history. This is up six percent from the previous record of 137 billion set in 2007 during the bubble year of the Bush economy. J. P. Morgan’s profits up 11.7 billion dollars last year – almost double its best profit of 5.6 billion in 2008. Despite Obama’s tough talk against Wall Street, abuses – banks used bail out money – our money! – to acquire failed banks at bargain prices and post record profits giving out giant bonuses while working people see no relief. Everybody knows it.

Over 45 million individuals lack health insurance coverage of any kind during 2008. And it took a year of dithering and single payer advocates were dragged off and put in jail for trying to speak out in front of Max Baucus’s committee. We all watched the corporate take-over of the so-called Democratic agenda. I’m sorry, buddy, but if that’s the Democratic agenda, if this Senate bill is the Democratic agenda, you can have it.

One in five working age American men right now don’t have a job. The Federal Mortgage modification program collapsed. Instead of declining, the number of foreclosed homes in the United States last year rose to a record 2.8 million. A 21 percent rise over 2008. 120 percent rise over 2007, according to Realty Track. Foreclosures in the first quarter of 2009 jumped 18 percent over the same period last year.

Now, given this, consider, Franklin Roosevelt in the second week of his presidency – people say, “Oh, yeah – you’re not giving Obama enough time” – if you listen to this program regularly, you have heard me probably a thousand times say, “I’m still hoping. I’m still waiting. Let’s just give him a little more time.” Particularly during the first six months. In the second week of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, he had up and running a Civilian Conservation Corps which ultimately hired several million people to plant trees all over the United States and basically make the government the employer of last resort.

And what did the Democrats do? The New Democrats? In kowtowing, you've got a bunch of progressive – there are some good and progressive Democrats in the Senate, but because they thought they had to have 60 votes, they had to kowtow to Joe Lieberman, they had to kowtow to Ben Nelson. They had to do the Mary Landrieu dance. Right. Because they had to go along with Blanche Lincoln. Because they thought that maybe, maybe, maybe they could get Olympia Snowe’s vote. A third of the 800 billion dollar stimulus bill was tax cuts, which produced almost no stimulus. But you know, they help millionaires and billionaires. You think the average American realizes that they actually got a tax cut from Obama? I don’t think so.

The Obama White House has not been marketing the things that they have done – as tepid as they are – and the things they haven’t done are increasingly infuriating Americans right across the board. It wasn’t that Democrats didn’t show up yesterday in Massachusetts — a lot did, although only about half of the registered voters showed up, so you could argue, you know, Scott Brown was elected with about a quarter of the electorate, but still. That’s how elections just go. It’s an off-cycle election.

But it’s not that the Democrats didn’t show up. It’s that the Independents – the people who don’t have a party affiliation – the people who – you know, Lanny Davis was talking – I think it was Lanny Davis was talking about, “We need to get the Ross Perot Democrats!” I’m sorry – the Ross Perot supporters voted for Ross Perot in the election of ...1992. They voted for Ross Perot – almost 20 percent of the electorate.

People had been fed up with the corporate takeover of America ever since Ronald Reagan put it into place.

Bill Clinton ran as a progressive and then governed as a so-called “moderate”, as a Republican, and he kind of got a pass because people were still hoping he’d change things. Didn’t quite work out.

We have run out of passes.

Transcribed by Caleb Burns, Portland Psychology Clinic.