A while ago I made a post about how the nationalization of policy over the last half-century has had the unfortunate effect of diluting the Democratic Party's attention to local issues and reduced its connection to its constituencies.
I think its fair to say that yesterday's Democratic Senate vote over the bankruptcy "reform" bill is a pretty clear demonstration of that effect. Most of these Democratic Senators are so divorced from any contact with the voters that they were either just plain tone deaf to any arguments besides those of the credit card industry or worse, were being openly contemptious of any potential negative response from the voters or from the party's more progressive grassroots.
On a somewhat related point, a political party with real community roots would strive to improve economic conditions and livelihoods so that the credit card companys' siren song to obtain more credit would not have the lustful appeal it has for individuals and families seduced by television and radio advertising to buy or replace products and services they don't need. This is the dark side of capitalism, a system that requires more and more production and more and more selling and buying, which requires increasingly more credit to stay afloat, a system that will ultimately crash and burn when the people can't keep playing the game.
While the credit card oligarchy can loudly bray about its victory, it's seriously hard to see how policy choices like these are not going to create some serious blowback at some point in time, when the whole deck of cards (no pun intended) that is the "new economy" comes crashing down in a heap of debtor ruin from the corporate shell games of inflated profits from nonproductive pursuits (i.e. the jobs and profits "gained" from exorbitant interest rate and late fee charges), exported jobs, national deficits and inequitable rule-gaming that allows the power elite to run amock.
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