All rights reserved. First, because politics is a business. Campaigns for any office of consequence are million-dollar corporations with large staffs, marketing committees, advertising budgets and about as much soul as General Motors. That's why we hear a lot of kids and senior citizens, and very little about the working people, farmers, homeless folks, inner cities or anything else that can't be summed up with a soundbite that even Hallmark would reject as too sappy to reprint. And when it comes to building movements of conscience, well, forget it.
Most candidates see political parties as nothing more than vote-pulling machines.
They could care less about turning them into crusading coalitions for environmental protection, social justice or economic democracy. That's why Madison lawyer Ed Garvey's campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor this year has been so refreshing. Throughout his campaign, Garvey has asked more of the Wisconsin Democratic party than it tends to ask of itself. The party, once a bastion of progressivism, has drifted in recent years, losing first the governorship, then the state Assembly and most recently the Senate. As part of that drift, the party has too often mirrored the Republican opposition in its deference to special interests and the insider politics they orchestrate.