There is an arc to history, and there is an arc in the development of American politics. It can be seen in the differential integration of varying immigration groups, and how they gained political power.

And gaining political power has always required the ability to raise a lot of campaign contributions.

Jewish immigration before World War Two, came in two waves. The first wave was of German banking and merchandising classes. Their wealth and business savvy allowed them to integrate easily and to find their way into the halls of power. The second wave involved Eastern Europeans, many of whom were experienced in the garment trade. This second group was able to tap into the some of the established lines of their predecessors, but they also resorted to some gangsterism and racketeering. Meyer Lansky is probably the prototype for the criminal element in the second wave.

The Irish immigrants did not arrive in this country with much wealth or business savvy. Their rise to political power was through pure political and religious patronage. Once Irish numbers in the northeastern urban centers reached a certain threshold, they were able to elect their own local politicians. In return, those politicians showed remarkable favoritism in awarding city contracts, especially on the waterfronts, in construction, and to a lesser degree, in trucking. The Irish also dominated the Catholic Church. (In the 1950’s there were twenty-one American bishops, and not one of them was Italian.) For the Irish community, gangsterism was never romanticized, but gangsters were used as enforcers on election day.

The Italians had a rougher road. Most Italian immigrants were of peasant stock, and upon their arrival they found the Irish already entrenched in local big-city politics, the police departments, the judgeships, and the Church. Even into the 1930’s (prior to the election of LaGuardia) it was hard to find a single Italian in any position of power in New York City.

Blocked out of power, and the traditional avenues to acquiring power, some Italians turned to illegal activities. The most effective of them was Frank Costello.

After his release, he began dealing in the underworld, and teamed up with Lucky Luciano. Together, they prospered in such business areas as bootlegging, gambling and slot machines (Prohibition in the U.S. was from 1919 to 1933). Costello was considered by his fellow gangsters as an important link between the Mafia and politicians, judges, and the police, and he earned the respect of many of his gangmates, including Luciano, as a man who could pay off anyone. He had particularly strong links with Tammany Hall, a Democratic Party organization, and with “Big” Bill Dwyer. Costello was responsible for having Abe “Kid Twist” Reles thrown out of the window when he became a witness against the mob.

When Luciano went to prison in 1936, he was sent to Dannemora in upstate New York, almost at the border with Canada. Luciano attempted to rule his crime family from jail, but, being so far removed, he had to name an acting boss, and so chose Costello, with Vito Genovese acting as Underboss. The period that Costello ruled as a boss of Luciano’s family was the most profitable one. Costello was a cash register with rackets from coast to coast (slot’s in New Orleans with Carlos Marcello, Florida gambeling with Lansky, The Racewire with Bugsy Siegal in L.A., National bookmaking with Frank Erickson) aside from running the family and had more political strength than any mobster in history. After Genovese fled to Italy in fear of a murder prosecution, Costello had the whole operation under his control, and he expanded the crime family’s operations, the casinos in Las Vegas and Cuba happened under Costello’s rule, he even owned buildings on Wall Street.

Italian entree into political power was also facilitated by the election as New York mayor of Fiorello H. LaGuardia in 1934. But LaGuardia was not a typical Italian. He was an Episcopalian who had grown up in Arizona, and his mother was Jewish. He also ran as a Republican on an anti-corruption platform.

When FDR came to power, these immigrant power structures (machines) were already in place and running urban politics throughout the northeast and Chicago. They would supply the financing (and votes) needed to make the New Deal possible. With Wall Street appalled at the ‘communist’ reforms that FDR was proposing, there was nowhere else to turn for campaign financing but the traditional Jewish, Irish, and Italian power brokers. Without them, the New Deal would have been dead in the water. At the same time, the New Deal put a new focus on national politics, and Wall Street sources of contributions began drying up for local pols. Dirty money became increasingly important on a bipartisan basis.

Yet, urban politics remained largely progressive, and the marriage of progressive politics with big-city corruption was not all that convenient. In 1950, Senator Estes Kefauver began investigating organized crime and its connections to politicians. The revelations were not pretty.

Throughout the fifties and early sixties the public was slowly made aware of the influence of organized crime in the operations of unions, police departments, the courts, etc. And RFK, as Attorney General, would famously try to clean the mess up.

Forty years later the efforts to clean-up urban politics has been largely successful. The mafia’s back is broken, and the big-city machines are substantially weakened (Philly and Chicago, largely excepted). But, at the same time, progressive politics has been in a long slide. Without their historic sources of campaign contributions, Democrats have had to turn to Wall Street. And in turning to Wall Street they have turned away from the little guy. That is what the DLC is all about.

In terms of concrete policies, the DLC’s centrism is illustrated by the Welfare Reform Act, President Clinton’s expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the creation of AmeriCorps. Currently, the DLC supports expanded health insurance via tax credits for the uninsured and opposes plans for single-payer universal health care. The DLC would like to address the education crisis with universal access to preschool, charter schools, and school choice (but not school vouchers), and supports the No Child Left Behind Act. The DLC has argued for reforms of Social Security, including privatization. The DLC supports both NAFTA and CAFTA. link

The DLC was created, ostensibly, to moderate the Democratic Party on social issues so it could sell better in the south. But, in reality it is just a more corporate friendly version of the traditional Democratic Party, designed to attract corporate campaign contributions on a par with the GOP.

The new Democratic Party, if it is too be successful and represent true progressive values, is going to need financing. We don’t want to, and cannot, return to the days of relying on organized crime and urban machines. And we don’t want to rely on corporate bundling. There is only one way forward, and that is from thousands of small-donors making small contributions. In the future, we must find, finance, and promote our own candidates. This may have to be done in competition with the candidates recruited by the DCCC and DSCC. It’s the only way to fix what’s wrong with our party and our country.