How did a group dedicated to discussion regarding a Democratic POTUS, on an ostensibly ...

[The Magistrate]

309. Now That, Sir, Is a Sound Position

I am, personally, not inclined to view the Democratic Party as an ideal medium for securing a variety of progressive and left-rooted measures.

It is, however, and however unfortunately, and however imperfect an instrument for it, the only tool available at present, in our political system as it is actually constituted.

Accepting that there is an imperfect fit between the Democratic Party and the furthest aims of left and progressive people, several things must be accepted.

First, it has to be acknowledged that left and progressive people really do not have solid ground to proclaim they and only they are true Democrats, or are the real base of the Democratic Party, and that people who are left of center or center-left or even centerists are not really Democrats.

Second, left and progressive people need to consider whether the tactic of attacking people who are perhaps a bit to the right of them, though generally well to the left of a national average, or of the average in the local where they reside, as rightists who do not belong in the Democratic Party, is likely to expand and increase their influence in the Democratic Party, and advance the prospects of actually getting laws and regulations they would like to see adopted come to pass.

Accepting the sound distinction you draw requires debating pragmatic questions, and accepting facts of contingency. It highlights that the real debate is not so much over what should be done, as what actually can be done, in present circumstances. Obviously, views will differ concerning what is or is not possible at present, over what a practical and achievable goal might be, and over what the best means of getting the best possible result would be. Put bluntly, it is here, and most particularly in the last of these things, that most of my disagreements with our President center: I would prefer a more combative attitude, prefer a staking out initial positions much more in advance of what an acceptable final compromise would likely be, and suspect more could be got than his brain-trust seems to suspect, or even seems to desire.

Argument by hyperbole is fun, and used sparingly, can be quite effective in getting someone to see, and take, a point. But taking argument by hyperbole for one's principal means is like serving a dinner composed of mounds of spice and little else; it will not be palatable and will not fulfill the purpose of a meal. People who habitually argue by hyperbole tend in time to lose consciousness they are employing a rhetorical device, and come to take what began as deliberate exaggerations for effect to be statements of fact, accurate descriptions of people and events. When they do, to put it bluntly, they come to appear as clowns as best and as demons at worst, and in either case, forfeit all credibility with people who do not already agree with them, and lose any ability to sway people to come to agreement with them from a neutral, or even a hostile, view.