Spitzer's Bipartisan Appeal

Judy and tb had posted comments in response to the Sanders post. I tried to address tb's understandable lack of faith in the U.S. electorate in the comment section, but I think the reply, amended slightly, warrants an actual post. Here goes:


If it's any comfort (and, one hopes, some inspiration), Spitzer was the only Democratic politician who consistently polled higher with men than with women, based largely on his tough, law-and-order position on white-collar-crime. That may indicate that Americans were never as hypocritical, prudish, or stupid as the corporate-controlled media would like them to be. The trick is circumventing the media's obsession with sex scandals to get the message out about the reforms Spitzer actually accomplished as New York State Attorney General. 

Spitzer's formidable accomplishments in that role may be an increasingly strong motivation for voters amid the ongoing corruption of the banking sector. Even motivation among Republicans. 

Ironically, Spitzer's work as Attorney General in New York makes an intriguing conservative argument for the efficacy of State governments over the ineptitude of the Federal Government. In the late-trading case against Canary Capital/Bank of America, Spitz accomplished in a matter of months what the Feds would take years to do - if they did it at all. Which, as we all know, they didn't. 

Full disclosure: I have quite a few conservative friends who genuinely respect and appreciate Spitzer's work as Attorney General. They're not about to support him for a presidential bid, but we all agree that he should at least have an essential role as the head of a new Pecora Investigation or as a candidate for U.S. Attorney General. 

There is common ground between ordinary people on both right and left when it comes to bank reform. I always suspected that, but I would never have known if I had not reached out to "the other side" and tried. 

The problem is, whenever we find "real" bipartisanship (e.g., bipartisanship that works for ordinary citizens, rather than the malefactor banks) we get shouted down. It has, sadly, given bipartisanship a bad name. I've occasionally taken a good deal of heat for continuing to seek said common ground, and the effort itself hasn't exactly been a picnic or necessarily successful (understatement of the year), but I'm still trying. 


Why? Because I think one way the malefactor banks have been able to exploit their advantage is the media's desire to split the electorate into "right" and "left" orthodoxies. But when it comes to Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, et alia, there have been many, many voices on both right and left who desire the exact same reforms.