Democratic voters have an abusive relationship with their party, a party which takes and takes but never gives. This unrequited love not only forces Democrats to vote against the candidates who do represent them, but to destroy them for being a nuisance to their bully. Activist Ashley Sanders brilliantly sums up the idiocy of Democratic strategy in this video. She states, “[The Democrats] were silencing the movement, to get the votes, to put the movement forward.”

Since the beginning of this month, Barack Obama’s campaign officials have made it clear that he will NOT be participating in the Google Debate, yet have managed to address the issue ambiguously enough to leave “hope” for the chance that he will. The Google debate was not sponsored by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) so it didn’t meet Senator Obama’s standards. This man, who’s promised on a continuous loop that he will change the way politics are done, has vetoed the notion of a citizen-driven forum.

How can it be that a supposedly young and personable candidate like Obama would reject the Google debate when rival John McCain, a man who wouldn’t know a computer if it was right under his nose and removed by his doctor, agreed to participate right off the bat? Is there something I’m missing? Aren’t the Democrats supposed to be the party of the people (at least in comparison to the Republicans)?

With each election that gap between donkey and elephant has closed more and more until we now have a Democratic presidential candidate saying things even further to the right than the Republican president on issues such as Palestine. Time and again we’re told to shut up about these issues because they may harm the Democratic candidate, who will solve them once our silence gets him into the White House.

And when it comes to challenging ballot access and excluding independent and third-party candidates from debates, the main offenders are Democrats, not Republicans. In fact, 12 Democrats have been indicted for felons for keeping Nader off the Pennsylvania ballot in 2004. Drawing from my experience as a petitioner, I can tell you that the fascist mindset to get your candidate in office by any means necessary is much more prevalent amongst everyday Obama supporters than McCain supporters. The rationale that they must stoop to the level of the election-stealing Neocons in order to defeat them has led Democrats to accept a candidate who seems to be every bit as fascist as the man they’re trying to replace.

While Obama has rejected every notion of a citizen-run debate, it was rather easy to get him to agree to a MySpace debate. MySpace, a company owned by the adorable Rupert Murdoch, will be holding their debate in partnership with the CPD, and have not expressed any intention to allow citizens to shape the event.  If the constant rejection of the Google debate format and subsequent acceptance of the MySpace debate format is any indicator, Barack thinks we should simply consume politics, not partake in them.

The only thing Obama has is his image and the CPD will make sure not to shatter that fragile stain glass savior by hurling hard issues that people actually care about. All questions and answers will be carefully controlled and rehearsed. Allowing citizens to question a leader as if he’s your equal is unthinkable in an authoritarian dictatorship. In a democratic society however, executive power is supposed to be derived from a mandate of the masses. Rather than gain our approval, Barack has decided to bypass the whole democracy thing and go straight to the ruling elite for membership. The only constituency he answers to is them, not us. Democrats accept such illegitimate authority as simply the way things are. We socialists do not.