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In reply to the discussion: When a Centrist Independent is a more reliable vote for Democrats than, well, some Democrats... [View all]Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)The Patriot Act? Check.
The War in Iraq? Check.
DOMA? Check.
The Bush tax cuts? Check.
The bank bailout with the crooks still getting their gazillion dollar bonuses? That was a Bush initiative (one that aroused strong opposition from every stretch of the political spectrum) that Obama actually implemented, saying that the white collar gangsters deserved their bonuses because "contracts are sacred." (Yet shortly afterwards, he made the auto workers concede wages and benefits. I guess some contracts are more sacred than others.)
You name whatever horrible Bush initiative you can think of, and Dems voted for it and even supported it in large numbers.
I've been on DU since February 2001. I'm like the 1600th person to have joined, and you know what?
Every time the Dems handed Bush his wishes on a platter with a bow and a flourish and a "Look how bipartisan we are!" and the traditional New Deal Dems complained, the Third Way Gang would come out with
"It was going to pass anyway."
"We did it in the spirit of bipartisanship."
"Your opinions are too far left."
"It's useless to vote against Republican bills because a) we don't have the House, b) we don't have the Senate, c) we don't have the White House, d) we don't have a veto-proof majority, e) we don't have a filibuster-proof majority."
Then in 2009, we couldn't have single-payer or even a public option because:
"The Republicans will never vote for it."
"The Blue Dogs will never vote for it."
"The insurance companies won't like it." --Wait a minute! Who else gets to CHOOSE which laws to obey? Not real human persons, that's for sure.
Do you know that most of the people I talked to in 2009, whether for or against what the right wing calls "Obamacare," believed that the proposal was a single-payer program?
The Democrats talked about it because that's what most of them wanted. The Republicans talked about it because Rush and company were feeding them horror stories from British and Canadian tabloids.
Oh, yeah, it was easy to fool people because there was no easily accessible way to find out what the plan actually consisted of. I know. I looked long and hard and finally found an executive summary by the Kaiser Foundation. That's when I found out that it was actually an extension of Mitt Romney's plan, an insurance company corporate welfare plan with a few tidbits for consumers.
When I objected, I was told, "We'll fix it later. Social Security and the Civil Rights Act evolved gradually." Yeah, like Social Security required people to invest in the stock market and the Civil Rights Act required African-Americans to be vetted by private companies to receive civil rights...NOT.
See, here's what's wrong with the Third Way approach. If you never object to Republican proposals, if you vote for them, even advocate them, you're telling the voters, "There's nothing wrong with the Republican approach. It's so great that I, a Democrat, am supporting it."
That evokes a number of responses:
1) "Both parties are the same," (Frankly, most so-called mainstream Democrats these days would have been Republicans in Nixon's day, and the Blue Dogs would have been comfortable in Reagan's Republican party, and both parties are awash in corporate cash, sometimes from the same corporations) so either a) I'll stay home, or b) I'll vote third party in protest.
2) "If the Dems think the Republicans are OK, I may as well vote Republican."
3) "That Democratic candidate is a corporation ass kissing sleazeball, but the Republican is freaking nuts. Sigh, I wish I could eagerly vote FOR someone instead of against the greater of two evils."
What the OP is saying is that we should settle. That we should just accept the rightward drift. That the Dems can't do better. That the Dems can't stop making excuses for all the stealth right wingers in their party. That the Dems can't show a little party discipline on a left-wing issue (as opposed to forcing the Progressive Caucus to vote for the ACA without a public option). That the Dems can't fix the filibuster once and for all. That the Dems can't do this. That the Dems can't do that.
And that anyone who expects the Dems to act like a real opposition to the Republicans is:
1) Too far left
2) A hater of President Obama
3) A Naderite who secretly wants the Republicans to win
4) Naive
Get it through your heads. The point of having two political parties is for them to be noticeably DIFFERENT from each other, to present different visions of what America should be like. The Dems talk a good game about half the time (when they're not saying "me too" to Republican proposals), but they wimp out when it comes to actually fighting.