Reply #58: You are assuming that the left wants a progressive majority, [View All]

[MadHound]

While that is nice, we recognize that is probably an impossibility. What we would like is a bone thrown our way now and again. The public option was to be one of those bones that would satisfy the left and keep us wanting to stay in the big tent. But, much the same as the past forty years, we had the ball yanked away at the last minute.

FDR, LBJ, and other successful presidents of both parties have long recognized the political wisdom of keeping everybody happy and voting for their party. FDR was a master of this. Socialists were threatening to siphon off votes from his first reelection bid, so what did he do? He went and took a couple of planks from their platform, made them his own, and led his party in the fight to implement those planks into law. Good thing too, otherwise we wouldn't have Social Security or Unemployment Insurance. And the left was happy, and kept voting for FDR and Dems for generations.

But the left hasn't gotten that kind of treatment over the past few decades, and that lack of love has driven more and more people away from the party. Would it be so damn hard to get Obama and the Dems to go to the mat for a campaign promise they made to the left? Actually force a talk all night, pee in a cup filibuster and show up the obstructionism of the 'Pugs? Instead, time and again Obama talks bipartisanship and the Dems fold like wet cardboard.

You want the support of the left, well them you've got to keep them happy, just like any other part of this big tent coalition. Hell, Dems have thrown more bones to Republicans and conservatives than they've thrown to the left. It's about damn time for us to get fed as well.

We're not expecting miracles, but we are expected the same level of care and consideration as other groups in this coalition. What's so wrong with that?