Here’s the tweet from Sen. Lee (R-Quarantine) that set off Twitter:
True Sen Lee did not mention oligarchy but that’s what we have on our hands. Take it from someone who’s run a few times and been a neutral observer at elections throughout the world, former president Jimmy Carter:
Consider Sen. Lee’s last sentence, after he drifts briefly into high minded purposes. “Rank democracy can thwart that.” Rank democracy? What is that? Is there good, under-control democracy and rank democracy? And who controls good democracy? Democracy should afford each citizen a roughly equal opportunity to affect their government. From sea to shining sea, from presidential politics to Massachusetts ballot questions, America doesn’t do that. I think I want to be with the rank democrats.
The answer comes from looking at what the Republican Party is up to and has been for some time. Take voter suppression aimed at African Americans but also at all people of color and indeed, the less well off. Because if those people vote in big numbers they are going to vote for candidates and policies that will help them improve their lives. That is going to involve public programs—K-12 and higher education, health care, environmental, protections for workers, higher minimum wages, benefits like retirement, housing—programs that cost money, and that money comes from taxes.
Taxes on the rich. Oligarchs.
This is exactly the program of the Koch network (now rising in Massachusetts): crush democracy in order to defend wealth. See Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for Democracy; Jeffrey A. Winters, Oligarchy. (Buy them from you local independent book store, not Amazon; you know why).
I also apologize for those staunch defenders of the Republican Party who think I’m letting off the Democrats too easily. You’re right too. Look at self-proclaimed “progressive” dark money operations like Massachusetts Parents Union and National Parents Union (sister fronts), and Democrats for Education Reform. I’ve often taken DFER to task for the gobs of money they’ve taken from “progressives” like Rupert Murdoch. But education journalist Alexander Russo estimates that DFER MA raises up to a million dollars in Massachusetts each year. A lot of that money comes from local wealthy Democrats. And MPU/NPU? Somewhere sprinkled in among the millions invested in those fronts by the Waltons and Charles Koch, there is some Democratic money. Some of these same people provided the dark money millions underwriting the charter schools campaign in 2016. It was funneled in secretly because you can’t be trusted to see who is giving the money. Could lead to rank democracy.
Still there is not equivalence between the parties. This is one reason the Republican Party, the true and fast home of oligarchy, is a minority party.
Finally I apologize for not making this clearer but I’ll keep trying: the threat to democracy is not Republican money or Democratic money, it is Oligarchic money.
We must make our choice. We may have rank democracy, or we may have oligarchy, but we can’t have both. Vote.
“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money.]