I don't understand why some DU members show support for the FACTS that ...

[KingCharlemagne]

279. There's much of substance in your post and I'm afraid I may be too much of a

dilettante to do it justice. As a Democrratic Socialist, I prefer a hard-left Democratic Party and am willing to see us endure minority status in the interests of a far-left platform. However, I also recognize that I occupy the left fringes of the American poltiical spectrum and that some issues -- like preserving a woman's right to choose, for example -- are important enough to require me to make common cause with people who are much closer to the center than I myself am.

I did not follow the Landrieu saga as closely as it seems you did, so I am ill prepared to answer your hypothetical questions with any answer that would have the weight of plausibility behind it. Based on my limited and parochial understanding ot the Landrieu race, though, it sounds as though there was a nexus of dissatisfaction with President Obama's leadership and a reversion to the state's rightward nature. But I feel I am on shaky ground saying that and will gladly defer to your assessment.

I am eager to see whether Bernie Sanders decides to campaign as a Democrat in the primaries, b/c I think his voice might allow the members of the Dem Party to engage in the type of soul searching about its nature that this thread has so deftly illustrated. IOW, does the Democratic Party stand for the interests of the common working man and woman or does it stand for the interests of big business?