The Importance of Zephyr Teachout

by
Robert Borosage

"Zephyr Teachout is slated today to lose the New York Democratic primary for governor to incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Many voters will be seeing her memorable name for the first time when they cast their vote. She has run a shoestring campaign against a powerful, lavishly funded governor who refused to debate her. But whatever the outcome, her campaign has already had dramatic significance for progressives across the country.

Teachout is a law professor at Fordham and a national expert on the deeply corrosive influence of big money in our politics. Her new book, “Corruption in America,” provides a probing analysis of the history and concept of corruption in American politics and law.

Teachout is a new-generation political activist. She cut her teeth in national politics as the head of Internet organizing for the 2004 Howard Dean presidential campaign. She was a lead organizer in the battles around curbing Wall Street’s abuses. She provided legal help to Occupy Wall Street. She’s an ardent advocate of net neutrality, champion of renewable energy and opponent of fracking. Yet she is steeped in the core traditions of the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt, when Democrats were the party of the people, standing with workers and the poor, arguing in FDR’s words that “government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.”

Andrew Cuomo is the antithesis of that politics, a New Democrat 2.0. The original New Democrats argued that to win presidential elections, Democrats had to distance themselves from socially liberal causes – affirmative action, choice, gay rights – while championing “market-based reforms” and a muscular military. In the age of Reagan, they tacked right to ride with prevailing winds. New Dems 2.0 realize that the Obama majority is socially liberal. Cuomo has championed gay marriage and gun control in New York, while adhering to the economics of the Wall Street wing of the party – cutting taxes on the rich, cutting spending on education, and blocking populist Mayor Bill de Blasio’s attempt to raise the minimum wage in New York City, leaving the government, as The New York Times concluded, “as subservient to big money as ever.”"

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http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/09/09/importance-zephyr-teachout

MUCH more of an Excellent read at link...