If only -- and it's a big if -- if only the party can liberate itself from the stranglehold of Big Money. For off camera, out of sight and (for the moment) out of mind, one could sense the corrupting presence of the lobbyists of corporate America, the bag men of special interests, and the mercenaries there in Philadelphia with hefty infusions of campaign cash eager to bring the Democrats down from the ramparts of Les Mis and back to cold, cynical earth.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire on July 12, 2016.
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Monday, we saw spirit and passion, ideas and aspirations, inspiring language, diversity (1,182 black delegates -- as opposed to the GOP's 18 -- and 2,887 women), values, even the tears of Bernie's supporters and yes, the willingness to join forces to defeat Trump.
But those progressive voices ringing out so beautifully that night are the very ones fighting to free their party from the grip of millionaires and billionaires while at the same time the Clinton forces embrace the one-tenth of one percent represented by the multi-billionaire and former Republican Mayor of New York Mike Bloomberg. He spoke at the convention on Wednesday night, part of the Clinton effort to give moderate members of the GOP another reason to dump Trump. Nonetheless, the optics are less than great.
We took time from the grace notes of unity and collaboration sounded at the convention to look over those Democratic National Committee emails dumped on the eve of the convention by WikiLeaks, communications that reveal just how low party fundraisers will stoop for cash, promising contributors access to the White House and other higher-ups in exchange for their donations.
In The Washington Post this week, Matea Gold wrote, "The leaked emails reveal the relentless art of donor maintenance that undergirds the system: the flattery, cajoling and favor-bestowing that goes into winning rich supporters. It's a practice that the party fundraisers themselves often find dispiriting."
To which Nicholas Confessore and Steve Eder at The New York Timesadded, "As is common in national politics, Democratic staff members kept detailed track of every dollar contributed by targeted donors, aiming to get each of the wealthiest givers to 'max out,' or contribute the maximum legal amount to each party account. The biggest national donors were the subject of entire dossiers, as fund-raisers tried to gauge their interests, annoyances and passions."
Avarice is bipartisan, as has been seen at both this year's Republican and Democratic conventions. For the first time, both parties received no public money for their conventions so they were completely beholden to private funding. What's more, Democrats reversed previous policy and lifted a ban on corporate and lobbying dollars to pay for their big soiree.
"After those limits were lifted," Matea Gold noted, soon-to-be-former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz "and other top party officials showered corporate lobbyists with calls, emails and personal meetings seeking convention support and PAC contributions to the party, according to a spreadsheet logging the contacts." This year's sponsors include Lockheed Martin, Home Depot, AT&T, Xerox, Twitter, Microsoft and Facebook.
While in Philadelphia, according to Confessore and Eder, "Donors who raise $1.25 million for the party -- or who give $467,000 -- are entitled to priority booking in a top hotel, nightly access to V.I.P. lounges and an 'exclusive roundtable and campaign briefing with high-level Democratic officials,' according to a promotional brochure obtained by The Times."
And then there's this report by Megan R. Wilson at the Washington paper, The Hill: "Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has accepted more than $9 million in bundled donations from registered lobbyists, while the DNC has rolled back the lobbyist bans that Obama put into place.
"'In 2008 and 2012, there was no integration with the [Obama] campaign,' said Al Mottur, a senior Democratic lobbyist at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, adding that he would have liked to have helped. 'Now, the campaign is welcoming -- they're open to us. That's why I've done as much work for her as I've done on her behalf.'"
It's an old story. Candidates seek the votes of citizens only to turn around and promise the only real access to donors. And once again representative government is disrupted because the winners so rarely govern as they campaigned. They can't, because they are tethered to the demands, claims and tendered IOUs of the rich and privileged.
That the system is so rigged has been a major theme of the Sanders campaign, and on Monday, it was reiterated by both Sanders and Warren as each called for the overturning of Citizens United and other court decisions that have flooded politics with money at a level beyond imagination.
In her acceptance speech Thursday night, Hillary Clinton doubtless will say similar things and praise the progressive gospel of campaign finance reform, professing to shun the appeasement of Wall Street -- the big banks, hedge fund managers, and private equity oligarchs.
All well and good, but if her actions and her party's continue to prove otherwise, the rousing rhetoric of this week -- and the historic nomination of the first woman as a presidential nominee --may fade to insignificance as an angry, disillusioned, and despairing public opens the door wide for the phony "I'm so rich I can't be bought off" gospel of Donald J. Trump. Caveat emptor.
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