Ron Kirk

Congressional Democrats, just say no.

Yours is the country that long led the world in protecting high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs both against the exportation of that labour to un-unionised, child-exploiting sweatshops, and against the importation of those sweatshops themselves. And yours is the country that could until very recently say that she led the world in that she “[did] not seek for monsters to destroy”.

For yours is the country of big municipal government, of strong unions whose every red cent in political donations buys something specific, of very high levels of co-operative membership, of housing co-operatives even for the upper middle classes, of small farmers who own their own land, and of the pioneering of Keynesianism in practice.

Huge numbers voted Democrat this year because that country is their country, and they want it back. The name of that country is America. At the same time, they made it clear at exactly the same polls that (in Florida and California) they want back the country where marriage only ever means one man and one woman, that (in Colorado) they want back the country that does not permit legal discrimination against working-class white men, and (in Missouri and Ohio) that they want to preserve the country where gambling is not deregulated. The name of that country is America.

Their betrayal by Obama where appointments are concerned has already cost the Democrats a Senate seat in Georgia, and thus a filibuster-proof Senate majority. And now Ron Kirk, a man who, like Bill Clinton of old, will not rest until every good on American shelves has been produced in un-unionised, child-exploiting sweatshop, whether in America or somewhere else. Midterm meltdown awaits.

Congressional Democrats, just say no.