Has Wall Street Subverted Either the Democrats or Liberals?

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In a recent post in Salon, Bill Curry (a former aide to Bill Clinton) charges that the Democrat party has come under the influence of what he calls "Wall Street Democrats".  While many of the details of his post are difficult for me to follow, not being an insider to the history of the party, he certainly seems to have some good points.

His post takes as a unifying theme the relationship between Ralph Nader and the Democrats.  Initially, when Ralph Nader originally came to national attention in his denunciation of certain Ford cars, he worked with the Democrats to get certain important pieces of legislation passed, despite the enormous influence of the automobile industry lobby.  Since then, however, it has become more convenient for a certain type of Democrat --precisely those Curry terms the Wall Street Democrats-- to cooperate with Big Business than stand up against Big Business, whereas Nader has continued to firmly oppose anything Big, including Big Business, and (surprisingly) Big Government.

These days, the only way I can make sense out of a closely argued political piece is to copy it out, delete all the references I don't understand, and all the advertising, and then give it a try; until them I'm not going to give an opinion on the entire thing.  However, there are some major points that I think I understand.

• Deregulation (of the Media, of Communications, of Banks and Lending and Investing) has caused enormous damage.  I don't get all the details, but it certainly seems as though something has hastened the demise of newspapers, and deregulation seems as good a culprit as any.  The same is true of Banking, though Curry says that Bill Clinton continues to claim to support it.  I don't know why Bill Clinton does this, and even whether he does this, and he usually has good arguments for things he claims to support, even if he secretly doesn't.
• Small businesses, (Curry claims that Nader claims,) hate Big Business.  Big Business is not on the side of small businesses; they want to swallow them up, or destroy them.  Bill Curry (perhaps picking up on something Ralph Nader says) remarks that Small Business has not been completely grabbed by the GOP even now, and if the Democrats can show themselves as supporting Small Business, they could find a staunch ally there.
• Barack Obama has not yet delivered on a large number of election promises, especially those about openness of government.  To Curry, this is evidence that Obama is a populist.  I'm suspicious of these labels, which are political insider terms, and often mean something different to specialists that they do to us amateurs.  It appears, judging from how Curry uses the word, that the word describes politicians who make false election promises (of a particular sort).  I thought it described someone running for office who was for the rank and file against the inner political circle.  I guess I was wrong, and they were right.

[To be expanded]

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