Cheap Trick!

[merrily]

11. Thanks. "Tribal" may be a good word for it.

I use terms like "unconditional loyalists," and "apologists," but "tribal" is a good term as well.

Seems as though people will make excuses, rationalize and outright, knowingly lie. In fact, I just made a post giving an example of the outright lie. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5473940

I have no idea what a Democrat hoped to gain by knowing lying on a Democratic board that Reagan did something that Carter and a Democratic Congress actually did more than two years before Reagan's inauguration. I do know that she was a paid "columnist" on that board. (It was no secret that the board paid certain people to post. I think she had a weekly column.)

Whether getting paid by that board had anything to do it, I don't know. I just thought it was bizarre that she lied and also bizarre that, when challenged on the facts, she readily admitted she knew better. She could have replied, "Oh, I was not aware of that. Thanks for the correction."

Anyway, I don't understand a Democrat knowingly lying to other Democrats on a Democratic message board. I mean, she could have cited the pro-corporate "reform" of the Bankruptcy Act of 1934 without attributing it to either of the major parties. Had she done that, she would not have been caught in a lie.

But, LOTE voters, Republican or Democratic, are unhappy voters. They don't volunteer and they don't donate. They may not even vote at all (something I simply cannot condone). Maybe sooner or later, that unhappiness will have to be acknowledged somehow. i don't know.

"If you drop labels and don't try to change minds, USians poll liberal by something like 70%"

So true. So ignored by our political parties

Well, ignored by centrist Democrat and everyone to their right, anyway. It is more profitable for them to repeat again and again the false meme that this is a center right nation (or, for those to the right of Repubicans, a rightist nation). They know that they convince some that it is true, simply because they say it so much.

A lot of those they can't convince are or will be LOTE voters anyway, whether they think the lesser of two evils is the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. (As to latter, another meme is that "the left has nowhere else to go," which may or may not be true.) The rest will vote so-called third party, and will be guaranteed that the candidate for whom they vote will lose. Such is the reality of our current so-called two party system.

But someone will fill that vacuum. To paraphrase Richard Trumka, people have "had a snootful of that #%^*".

From your keyboard and Trumka's foul mouth to God's ears. Or the ears of whoever can bring about change.

Trumka has made noises but unions still back mostly Democrats with endorsements and $$, even if someone more left is running. So unions, too, are LOTE voters. They may back the Dem on the Working Families ticket. Worse, sometimes, they'll even back a Republican which utterly bewilders me.

Fact is, winning in this country takes gobs of money, influence and an organization even to be mayor of a sizeable city.And, currently those things are sitting with Republicans and centrist Democrats. I am not sure what anyone without at least 50 million bucks to throw at a candidate for a sizeable office and gobs of time to spend recruiting people to run in primaries can do to change that.