Just to enter an objection to the increasing tendency of the mainstream media to equate the Tea Party on the American right wing with supposedly “angry” activists on the left wing of the Democratic Party. And moreover to point out that the Corporate Media pet narrative of the Rise of the New New Right and the decline of the Democrats was not borne out by the primaries held on Tuesday. The Dems kept Murtha’s seat. The left of the party defeated Arlen Specter and forced Blanche Lincoln into a run-off. But the Tea Party in Kentucky will get all the press.
Are the people who elected Sestak as Democratic candidate for senator in Pennsylvania really like the Tea Party that backed Rand Paul for the senate in Kentucky?
When is the last time you saw leftwing Democrats taunting disabled people, or weeping, or shouting that “their” country had been stolen by “those people”?
What did the Democratic left want? Universal health care with a public option. That is angry? Isn’t it just common decency? But the Tea Party opposed both measures, largely because they feared that some white money might get spent on minorities. (It is apparently not enough for them that the economic gap between blacks and whites has quadrupled since the Reagan administration.)
The Tea Party leader came on Letterman and decried an “anti-business” atmosphere in the country. The Democratic Left wants the lack of regulation and oversight that led to the bank meltdown redressed.
The Tea Party is secretly corporate-sponsored, whereas the Democratic left wing is independent and penniless.
The Tea Party largely supports Arizona’s ‘papers please’ law requiring racial profiling. The Democratic left opposes such a) Big Government interference in our lives and b) making race the basis for initiating a search.
There isn’t a moral equivalence here.
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