A Cynic’s Call to Action

This past week, Cory Booker got raked over the coals by progressives for opposing a measure that would supposedly have allowed the government and citizens to save money by importing medicines from Canada. Booker was one of twelve Democrats who voted against the measure, and someone created a meme showing how much each of them received in donations from the pharmaceutical industry. Booker was singled out among this group because he is the only one who is considered to be a presidential hopeful in 2020. No one thought to ask, but if Cory Booker was a pariah to progressives for opposing this measure, does that mean Ted Cruz is a now a progressive hero for voting for it? Of course not. Which means it is time to talk about how to channel political cynicism to get as much of what we want as possible under the actual conditions in our country now.

First, understand that the Klobuchar/ Sanders amendment that Booker voted against and Cruz supported was never going to have any real effect, nor was it supposed to. It was pure symbolism. Mike Enzi, the Republican senator from Wyoming who heads the Budget Committee, would have gained the discretion to pass a bill to import drugs from Canada as a means of lowering costs to consumers, by reallocating funds approved for his committee. It’s every bit as convoluted as it sounds, and Enzi signaled with his no vote that he never would have used this power. Booker came up with the lame excuse that he opposed the measure over concerns about whether medicines from Canada were safe. Maybe he just thought that he could not explain to his constituents that he wanted to hold out for a measure that would actually do something. Considering some of the blaring headlines I saw on this vote, that makes sense to me.

It is time and past time to stop demanding it all from our politicians. Over the next four years, we will learn how much we have lost in the 2016 election. The election of Donald Trump and a Republican majority in the Senate means that Citizens United is with us for another thirty years at least. Trump will appoint justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia, and the Senate only needs a simple majority to get them approved. Filling Scalia’s seat will restore the 5-4 right wing majority, and Trump might get the chance to replace both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer as well. This also means there is no chance of restoring the Voting Rights Act. If you want to talk about constitutional amendments, look up the history of the Equal Rights Amendment and how it was defeated. So that means that someone like Cory Booker or Hillary Clinton has to take dirty money for their campaigns, or risk being outspent into oblivion by their Republican opponent. They can not count on the minority vote, because voter suppression tactics like those used in the 2016 election will go unchallenged by this Court. Booker in particular must take donations from the pharmaceutical industry. Booker is from New Jersey, as I am, and pharmaceuticals are our major industry. Bristol Meyers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson have their corporate headquarters here, and many other big pharma companies have a major presence in the state as well. So does that mean Booker is influenced by big pharma? Probably, but the better question is would we be better off if his Senate seat fell to a Republican? I hope everyone can tell by now that there are vast differences between the corporate Democrats and the insanity that is today’s Republican Party. If not, the next four years should be very instructive. For starters, we can not hope for any meaningful check on Trump’s conflicts of interest until and unless the Democrats win a majority in either the House or the Senate. That would give them all of the Committee chairmanships, which are necessary to start any meaningful investigation. In the Senate, a majority would also give the Democrats the power to oppose at least the most extreme Trump choices for the Supreme Court.

All of this means that we can not afford the luxury of ideological purity, especially not over the next four years. If Trump is to be opposed, we can not undermine someone like Cory Booker for taking corporate donations, when the alternative is a second Trump or Pence term. By extension, we are that much further away from universal healthcare, but our present concern is to save as much of the Affordable Care Act as we can, and hope the next Democratic president and Congress can improve it. Likewise, we can not hope to see a $15 minimum wage over the next four years; instead, we may be fighting just to keep a minimum wage at all. Our first task must be to attack the cancer of gerrymandering, and that means voting in large numbers in the local elections in 2017. The governors and state legislators we elect now will control the redistricting process in 2020, so we vote this year to improve the chances of seating more progressives in the House then.