So what happens to the Democratic Party when many on the left leave?

[Walt Starr]

The Democratic Party has no other choice but to move to the right.

It's simple. When Progressives leave the Democratic PArty, the only choice for the party is to appeal to those coloser to the center on the other side. Otherwise the party dies.

The only way to stop any movement to the right by the Democratic Party is to fill the thing up with people on the left.

People don't realize it, but this was how the Republicans moved so far to the right. People in the whacko realms of the right moved into the GOP and moved overall party philosophy closer to them until you ended up with what you have today, and only the most radically and violently right people are not a part of the GOP today. Hell, even some of them are "good Republicans".

It's been hard for me to take this fact because my rebellious nature screams, "SO, I can always vote third party!"

The fact is, as those on the Left abandon the party, the party moves to the right. And thus, the Left ends up doing the bidding of those on the Right by splitting the only political apparatus available.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

Some folks on the Left should look at how the the Left ended up enabling a Nazi victory in Germany.

[mattclearing]

1. Who's leaving? n/t

[Walt Starr]

2. I've seen many on the left decry the DLC (which I loathe) and determine

that the Democratic Party is not left leaning enough.

[Larkspur]

4. I'm a moderate and see the DLC as the "left wing of the Repuke Party"

It's not just those on the Far Left who see the DLC as Repuke worms seeking to destroy the Dem Party from within.

[Walt Starr]

11. I'm probably moderate to a bit left of moderate

due to my stances on a couple of issues.

And your assessment is correct. They are the left wing of the Republican Party.

The beauty is, the more left leaning people we can get into the party, the less relevent the DLC becomes.

[GreenArrow]

12. I'm nominally "leftist"

and I see the DLC as the left wing of the Corporate Party.

[mattclearing]

5. I loathe the DLC as well.

But I'm not going anywhere.

[bloom]

20. More people need to know about the Congressional Progressive Caucus

They claim to have more members than the DLC.


http://www.congressionalprogressivecaucus.org/


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5019481&mesg_id=5019481

[Larkspur]

201. Thanks for the link

I definitely support this Caucus.

[Boredtodeath]

3. So now it's threats, huh?

Sorry, I owe my political allegiance to no one. They earn it or not.

[Walt Starr]

8. It's no threat. It's political reality

Without left leaning people driving the agenda of the party, the party has no choice but to appeal to a cross section of people in the center and (sadly) to the right of center.

The more left leaning people you have driving the agenda of the party, the more to the left the party will lean.

[nvliberal]

130. The thing is the party will never go much to the left

in the sense of the McGovernite left, a view that tends to predominate here.

It won't ever happen, for they represent only a tiny percentage of all voters.

Only about 20 percent of the voting public consider themselves "liberal," and the fringe left is much smaller.

[democrank]

151. Ah, yes, the "McGovernite left"......

George McGovern. Recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroic service during World WarII.

[Douglas Carpenter]

189. 33 years later -- and they never miss an opportunity to slime

a great man.

With this kind of disloyalty, no wonder the Dems became a minority party.

Could you imagine the right wing constantly degrading Barry Goldwater?

[serryjw]

170. Sadly, It is NOT left or Right

It is supporting Corporate America which I did for the last time in 2004. Either I get a progressive nominee in 2008 or I will write in DK's name. Everything I believe in is gone for the rest of my life when THEY win SCOTUS. NOW, I vote my conscience. Maybe if we are lucky I can set the grown work for taking back this country in 20 years( after the revolution)

[Bridget Burke]

14. Why do you feel threatened?

Walt Starr was just stating his opinion.

[Bridget Burke]

6. I'm not leaving.

My personal beliefs are somewhat to the left of center, but the USA is currently a 2 party system.

So I'll stick with the Democrats. Some of the Green/Progressive/Populist crowd are hopelessly idealistic. Others are Republican stooges.

[sandnsea]

7. Attracts liberal Republicans

Who are pro-choice, pro-environment, pro-gay rights, pro-sensible government. Which leaves the left that left fighting the corporatism battle, which is equally important. And leaves the Republicans with the fundies and racists, which is all they deserve to have. There's a blueprint in there, if the Greens care to see it.

[marions ghost]

196. "Liberal Republicans"

...are not a group with the will to rejuvenate the Republican party any time soon: they will protect corporate interests regardless of their position on values issues. These "moderate" Republicans are well-off people who don't buck the status quo. They certainly are not EVER going to vote Democrat. At best, we can hope that they might abstain from voting for Neo-cons. I think they DO now (at least) get the picture on that. Maybe some of the younger ones will fall off the bandwagon, but the entrenched older generation will never change in a big way. They are ossified, congealed, set in their ways. They'll just keep voting tax cuts.

We shouldn't worry about winning over this group--we should worry about the group at the other end--the people who never should have been R in the first place--blue collar workers, small business owners, low income wage earners. --And the large no. of Liberals who've been sold the Big Lie that they aren't "liberal." --And the Apathetic Majority, who might get more involved if they could see any reason to. We have a much better chance of winning over these groups than those Repubs with so-called 'liberal' values.

[Finder]

210. Liberal Republicans are trying...

to fix the party and many are voting democrat and letting the conservatives know about it.

[marions ghost]

222. Can you give an example

of Liberal Republicans trying to fix the party? Even if a few see the light, I'm not sure they have the power to make a dent in the cynicism and corruption. As sandnsea said above --the left will be the ones 'fighting the corporatism battle.' (Conservative Democrats will not do it either). Are you saying that you believe the Republicans have what it takes--creativity and vision being sorely lacking--to save themselves from digging the rut even deeper?

[Finder]

223. Here is a good example...

I call them the house cleaners.lol

It’s My Party Too PAC or IMP-PAC is a political action committee dedicated to supporting fiscally conservative, socially progressive moderate Republican candidates at all levels of government. Additionally, we will work to advance the issues that help define moderate members of the Republican Party.



http://www.mypartytoo.com/html/Strategic_Partners.html

[marions ghost]

226. thanks for the link

Ok I looked at this website. I had heard of this group but didn't know of the website "It's My Party Too" begun by the former EPA head, Christine Todd Whitman. The group has several Republican congressional sponsors on the "advisory board'--John McCain, Arlen Spector, Susan Collins, etc.

But what is this group really doing? They make it clear that they are "fiscal conservatives and social progressives." The website discussion does contain a few worries about the deficit and some ambivalence about outsourcing--but really no vision for cleaning up the corruption and corporate exploitation of the country. This website primarily UNDERSCORES my assertion that the moderate Republicans will "protect corporate interests regardless of their position on values issues." I maintain my opinion that Liberal Democrats should not bother appealing to this group. We have enough DLCers among us as it is. If some Liberal Republicans vote our way out of desperation, fine--but I don't think they have a hope of rehabilitating their party any time soon after the damage done by the Neo-con wing. They don't have any credibility on that quest without a stronger more meaningful opposition and a real alternative vision. They went to bed with the Neo-cons and woke up with fleas.

[acmejack]

9. Did I miss something, Walt?

I don't think progressives are being purged-yet.

[Walt Starr]

13. Nope, but many are leaving of their free will

which they can do, but I just wnated the consequences of such actions to be known.

[Bridget Burke]

15. Are they really leaving, though?

Or just threatening to do so online?

[Walt Starr]

16. Well, either way

the consequences of such actions are now known.

:)

[Lerkfish]

19. ok, then, but what do you suggest?

continue to hang around while the DLC drags the party further rightward, AGAINST the will of the majority of dems?

[Walt Starr]

26. Get more left leaning people into the party

The DLC has been becoming less relevent every year since 2000, mostly due to Bush.

And the less relevent they become, the louder they scream.

[GreenArrow]

10. a vicious circle, then,

for as the party moves further to the right, more left leaning members flee it.

[Neil Lisst]

21. Third party voting cost us the 2000 election

We lost 2000 because (among other reasons, but most particularly) Nader syphoned off so many votes in key states. Why did they vote for Nader?

Because there was allegedly no difference in Bush and Gore. After all, didn't they both accept corporate money?

I favor achieving majority status in at least one venue before we start purging people for lack of dogmatic purity. At the end of the day, it is unreasonable to expect any elected official to reflect views not held by the majority of his constituents.

The most difficult thing for some Dems to accept is that the majority of Americans simply disagree with them on key issues. It's not something for which there is an easy answer. If you know where you sit on the political spectrum, you should also know how many of your beliefs do not and will not enjoy majority support.

[endarkenment]

199. Uh no - we didn't lose that election it was stolen, plain and simple.

Not Nader's fault.

[mestup]

17. I'm more interested in where the non-voters stand today.

They're the largest block of voters. Who knows if they consider the Democrats too far right / too far left.

[Pepperbelly]

117. They don't stand. They don't give a shit one way or the other.

That's why they don't vote.

[mestup]

146. "Politicians don't give a shit."

I know tons of non-voters and I hear this all the time.

They've been brainwashed for so long to think "politics are evil!" "They have nothing to do with the real world!" "Why vote? It's not like politicians are talking about jobs or wages." "Screw em!"

[endarkenment]

200. I don' tthink that is fair.

I believe a considerable number of people don't vote because they do not see any difference in the programs and policies of the two parties. That analysis is not completely wrong. For example, there was no discernable difference between Bush and Kerry with regard to Iraq. A voter who might have been motivated to vote on this issue was demotivated by the choices offered.

[Pepperbelly]

213. I disagree ...

that there are a significant number of people fitting the description you wrote.

My suspicion is that if they even thought about it, for the most part, they'd see Kerry as that big-haired, horse-faced dude from Mass and saw Bush as the asshole monkey from Texas.

Some don't vote because they don't feel invested in the system enough to participate.

[MadHound]

18. Let's see here.

On the one hand, I can stay, and try to change the party from within, and watch as my support, work and effort are wasted as they have been for the past thirty years as the party continues its pro-corporate, ever rightwards slide. Or I can go to a different party that actually better typifies my beliefs. Now you are saying that if I leave, that leaves the rightists in charge(as they are now). But if a good portion of the leftists within the party leave, the Democratic party will wither on the vine, because as it has been demonstrated the past five years, when presented with the choice between 'Pug and 'Pug lite, the voting public will go for the real deal every time.

Thus, with their leftist base gone, and chronically unable to pick up enough 'Pug lite votes, the Democratic party withers on the vine, and a true left leaning party will come in to fill the void.

Sounds good to me friend.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

22. How about being positive for a change?

Leftists and far leftists in the Democratic party are certainly entitled to their opinions; you don't have to love the DLC anymore than they have to love you.

But you do have to be positive. Believe me, that's more appealing to voters than regaling them over and over with what you hate: the DLC, unproven accusations of voting fraud, the DLC, Bush (who will be gone in 3 years), the DLC, anyone who doesn't agree with you 150%, the DLC, anyone who won't leave the Democratic party, the DLC, anyone who can be civil to the opposition, the DLC, some Republicans, and, oh, yes, and the DLC.

Far be it for me to tell you what to do, but you'd be ten times as effective in moving the Democratic Party to your point of view if you did that.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[longship]

25. DLC is not the Democratic Party.

Repeat after me. The DLC is not the Democratic Party.

The Dem party is a bigger tent than liberals, centrists, and DLCers. We respect a diversity of opinions and all are welcome. If the DLC insists on "being the Dem party" to the exclusion of all other opinions, they will reap the whirlwind and will never again win a national election.

DLC needs liberals more than the liberals need the DLC. That's a fact. Driving off liberals from the Dem party would be suicide.

Whether or not you agree with the above, you must agree with the following. The DLC's positions, ideas, and issues are very welcome in the Democratic party, but not to the exclusion of others'.

Say no to appeasement and division. Say no to the DLC PAC.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

53. No one said it was...

But the DLC is a legitimate part of the Democratic party, and leftists who focus on nothing but anger and negativity against everything - including their own Party - are helping no one but Republicans.

Voters are looking for something to vote FOR - not for something to vote against.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

p.s. Nothing makes the cognitive dissonance of the Democratic left more clear than the juxtaposition of your last two statements: "The DLC's positions, ideas, and issues are very welcome in the Democratic party..." "Say no to appeasement and division. Say no to the DLC PAC."

[longship]

100. Bzzzzzzzzt! I'm sorry.

Thanks for playing. The DLC is a political action committee. Not at all a legitimate part of the DNC. It has absolutely no association with the DNC other than its claims, which are just that, claims.

Note that I have not said that the people in the DLC do not have a seat at the table, nor do I say that their issues are not an important part of the dialog. However, that is *precisely* what the DLC says when they *label* people with pragmatic progressive views as "extremists". One should note the parallels to the current ideologues of the Republican party.

The DLC acts like the Christian Coalition did in the early 1980's. They are a fringe faction attempting to turn a diverse party into an conservative, ideologically pure, political movement. During the last five years we have ample evidence where that takes a party. It's not a pretty sight and it has nothing whatever to do with representative democracy.

You'd think that people would learn.

The DLC could play fair and meet at the table with the rest of the Democratic party, but that isn't good enough for them. They are a power-hungry cabal, just like the Repugs. They cannot stand that anybody would disagree with them. I am sick to Hell of their divisive tactics, their equivocations, their power grabbing.

Just say no to division and appeasement. Just say NO to the DLC PAC.

on edit:

Furthermore, their Rovian tactics in what they've done to Paul Hackett is absolutely inexcusable. The DLC are turning into a bunch of thugs.
:rant:

[ConservativeDemocrat]

143. Don't embarrass yourself, Mr. Longship

> The DLC is a political action committee.

From the DLC website:
"Organization: The DLC is a nonprofit corporation exempt from tax under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. It is not a political committee and is not organized to influence elections."

More colloquially, the DLC would be termed a "Caucus" of the Democratic party: unlike a PAC, you must be a Democrat to be a member of the DLC, but not all Democrats are DLC.

> It has absolutely no association with the DNC other than its claims, which are just that, claims.

The officers of the DLC...

Chairman: Governor Tom Vilsack (D-IA)
Vice Chair: U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-DE)
Chair of the DLC's American Dream Initiative: U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)

...are all endorsed by the DNC. Yup... no connection whatsoever.


> However, that is *precisely* what the DLC says when they *label* people with pragmatic progressive views as "extremists".

Except that they don't. Go google some of your favorite attack phrase "extremist liberal" with the DLC - nothing comes up from them. No quote. No nothing.

The truth is that the DLC is attacked far more often than it ever attacks anyone (actually - the DLC itself never attacks anyone - only some of its members do). Still, hatred of the DLC has gone so far that it verges on psychosis. You guys start acting like Republicans - making things up because the actual facts don't support your beliefs.

The funny part, is that I've been drifting away from some of the DLC's strategies (their real positions are hardly any different from mainstream elected Democrats). But the one thing they're dead right on is their dedication to sounding and acting like adults -- something that many leftists (and half the D.U.) seem incapable of.

I mean really, do you think that throwing pies in Republican faces, screaming, being uncivil, actually helps our cause? Do you think calling people "Repugs" makes wavering Republicans, many who now have buyers remorse about supporting Bush, likely to switch votes or switch sides in the next election? Is the DLC right that people who do these things are help Democrats, or actually hurt us?

I'm sorry you feel all put out when the DLC points out the obvious answer, but as my teenage daughter puts it... build a bridge and get OVER it.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

p.s. "Rovian tactics in what they've done to Paul Hackett"? Do tell. There's nothing on the blogs about any incident, other than the DLC website praising the man for his "near miss".

[longship]

153. Hmmph

Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

Huh? Just what might this reality be?
I call it hubris.
How completely typical.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

186. It's ironic...

...that the one thing I crib from unapologetic liberal bloggers like Atrios - "Proud Member of the Reality Based Community" - is what you call "completely typical" hubris.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[longship]

198. That's correct.

A conservative ideologue staking a claim on "reality" pretty much an exemplar of hubris.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

203. Reduced to name calling...

...because you have no substantive facts, and have been embarrassed by the facts I presented that directly contradicted your assertions.

*Sigh* With friends like these.... who needs Republicans? I mean seriously - just like the "Top Ten Conservative Idiots" does a great job recruiting new Democrats, this kind of behavior does the opposite.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

p.s. I am Conservative for a Democrat. In other words, on the Conservative end of the Democratic spectrum, not some blind psychotic right winger. That's blatantly obvious to just about everybody who isn't buried in a far-left echo chamber.

[longship]

209. Please, get your facts correct. Not name calling.

Name calling would be if I called you "buttface" or something sophomoric like that.

No, I was labelling you, not name-calling you.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

214. Well...

Calling me "buttface" would be sophomoric, but "exemplar of hubris" is no better. You've resorted to ad-hominem attacks because you have no facts.

I have a thick skin, but I'm tired of this conversation. People who are so emotionally wedded to their beliefs that they can't defend them in the face of external reality are fundamentally uninteresting to me.

Maybe we'll talk later when you get a little maturity.


- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[eridani]

164. "Unproven" assertions about fraud? Real cute.

Keep the evidence that would prove it one way or another secret, and then say that you can't prove it without evidence.

[longship]

23. Dems cannot win w/o liberals.

And certainly not by moving more to the right!!!

Look at the demographics and the public opinion polls. There aren't enough voters in that demographic to elect a dog catcher, let alone a Senator, Governor, or President. (Well, maybe a dog catcher and a seat in the House here and there.)

If Dems drive off liberals and move to the right, the repugs and dems split the right wing vote while the liberals take the rest and probably do okay. Result, liberals and repugs win; dems lose.

[Pepperbelly]

119. and liberals cannot win without the Democratic Party.

It's kinda ironic that way.

[hippiegranny]

24. We need to become the party

we know it should be. Forward thinkers need a place to organize and since the Dem party does have structure, what better place? The DLC is becoming more and more irrelevant and nobody I know is going to go right or third party because of them.

[LoZoccolo]

27. Good observation, Walt, but I think your intended audience...

...is likely to be the type of people who first gloss over the immediate concern, that of getting a bunch of Republicans in office in 2006. If they can't understand or won't acknowledge the damage done by that, they're unlikely to see this overarching danger to their goals that you present here.

Part of why I think they do this is just to get someone to listen and do something about what they're complaining about, but when you think about it, that's really pathetic. People who won't get up off their computer and come up with or be part of a workable plan to get what they want come here to complain in hopes that someone else who does have such initiative will hear them, panic, and affect the change for them. You see why I'd think that's pathetic?

[welshTerrier2]

42. those with the views you criticize ...

are not a monolithic group ...

i will not be voting for those Democrats who have enabled bush's right-wing agenda ... i will continue to work for progressive Democrats as i always have ...

for you to believe that my actions and the actions of many who think as i do end at my keyboard is an absurd generalization ... the truth is that many of the Party's most active members are disgusted with the continued support by our elected officials for bush's insane war in Iraq ...

the goal should be Party unity, but to achieve it, the Party will need to be more responsive to the views of its membership ... i say these things to you as an elected activist in the Party ...

[LoZoccolo]

77. In Massachusetts, I really don't care who you vote for.

See how my actions are tailored to getting things done? Arguing with a person who's vote isn't going to change things (and is the only thing you mentioned you're going to do to affect change) would be an unprofitable use of my practical time as far as changing who's in office.

[welshTerrier2]

91. ah, but you are arguing with me ...

you see, LoZoccola, my efforts go beyond Massachusetts ...

i have worked for and contributed to candidates nationally ... and i have written to and spoken to people nationally ...

but i wouldn't want to take you away from the profitable use of your time ... keep up the good work ...

[sellitman]

28. The Democratic party has left us.

Us Liberal didn't leave.

Democrats are historically Liberal. If the party continues moving right it will doom itself with or without phoney voting machines.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

72. Define Liberal

"Democrats are historically Liberal"


and they were also fiercely anti-communsist and pro military ... i would assume they would be fiercely anti-terrorist...

oh, i'm not saying that Democratic icons like Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy would have fough terror as ineptly as Bush*

[newswolf56]

29. Denouncing the Democratic Leadership Council for functioning as...

as a Republican Fifth Column within the Democratic Party is by no means the same as "leav(ing)" the Democratic Party. In fact most of the discussion on what to do about DLC treachery -- the fact the DLC shares the corporatist/Republican (fascist) agenda of maximum concentration of wealth and genocidal destruction of the social safety net -- is focused on taking back the Party from its DLC betrayers rather than abandoning the Party entirely.

Indeed I hear very little about abandonment save in retrospective commentary on the 2004 election: blue-collar and rural Democrats who said, "these days both parties are just for the Fat Cats, but at least the Republicans will let me keep my guns." Can't count the number of times I heard that here in Washington state, where so many Democrats voted for Kerry but also -- largely because of the (Seattle-dominated) state Democratic Party's venomous opposition to the private ownership of firearms -- for Rossi (the GOP gubernatorial candidate).

It will be especially interesting to see what happens to DLC dominance given that capitalism achieved its ultimate all-time triumph in the Bush presidency and is now ever more defiantly exposing its intrinsic fascism and shedding all pretense of being anything but infinitely greedy, murderously savage and genocidally racist. Will we progressives be able to take back the party? Will the DLC succeed in its obvious clandestine purpose: forcing the Left into political oblivion and thereby furthering the DemoPublican march toward Sweatshop Amerika? Or will a truly Leftist third party arise?

What makes these questions all the more relevant -- and pivotal for U.S. history -- is the fact the electorate is clearly awakening. Poll after poll shows the electorate overwhelmingly favors progressive solutions: universal single-payer healthcare, a crash program to build public transport, restoration of the New Deal by landslide-class margins. Here is one such link:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050103/sirota/2

Most progressives want desperately to take back the Party, and the public is increasingly supportive. The ultimate question then is whether the DLC and its corporate masters will allow the expression of progressive values: my suspicion is they will not -- whether in the Party or without.

[marions ghost]

68. U say newswolf:

"Most progressives want desperately to take back the Party, and the public is increasingly supportive. The ultimate question then is whether the DLC and its corporate masters will allow the expression of progressive values: my suspicion is they will not -- whether in the Party or without."
-------------

So you believe the DLC will not give an inch? I would agree that so far they have done nothing for progressive values, so why should we ever expect them to? Will they just sucker us into voting for candidates who spout empty rhetoric? If the electorate IS awakening --but there is no party responsive to this, where does that leave us? It would seem that you favor 3rd parties, but they have no hope of winning at this point.

It's seriously depressing to think how much we have been used and betrayed by the DLC.

[newswolf56]

120. Actually I don't favor third parties: I favor taking back...

the Democratic Party (as the FDR progressives did c. 1930-1932). But I question whether the DLC will allow it. I also question -- assuming there is genuine likelihood of a progressive victory in 2006 and/or 2008 -- whether the ruling Republican/DLC (corporatist/fascist) coalition will allow elections at all. Nevertheless I believe we have to try.

(And I absolutely agree with you about the magnitude and consequences of our betrayal.)

[nvliberal]

131. Actually "progressives" didn't rule the Democratic Party.

What you are talking about are the McGovernites, not FDR/Truman/JFK/LBJ liberals, who were strong on defense/foreign policy issues while supporting liberal domestic programs.

McGovernites were seen as soft on foreign policy, and they damaged the party for many years.

[newswolf56]

145. Not sure what your objection is: there were no "McGovernites" in...

the years I cited. Prior to about 1930, the Democratic Party was dominated by its corporatist/racist element (the people who would later be called "Dixiecrats.") The people I called "FDR progressives" -- an accurate reference given the Robert LaFollette roots of many of their principles and proposals -- managed to take over the Party, resulting in the sweeping New Deal victory of 1932. The term "progressive" thus has a fine and appropriate etymology dating back to the first Roosevelt: Theodore the Trust-Buster (last of the radically liberal Republicans) -- also the antithesis of a pacifist.

The present-day confusion comes from the fact that riding on George McGovern's coattails in 1972 were a hoard of pacifist absolutists who tried (1) to build on anti-Vietnam-War sentiment to convert the entire Democratic Party into an exclusively pacifist party and (2) to obscure the issue by making the terms Leftist, progressive and socialist all synonymous with pacifist -- this to the ruinous detriment of the entire Left. This is what "damaged the party for many years."

But I don't think the pacifists succeeded -- most people I know, myself included, use "progressive" in its LaFollette/Henry Wallace sense: essentially as a synonym for "socialist" (which is basically what I am). And a "socialist" is, by definition, anything but a pacifist: Google "trotsky on pacifism" for the supportive logic.

I hate to waste energy on semantic quibbling: precisely one of the distractions that obstructs consensus and delights the oppressor. Nevertheless, terms must be defined -- and if necessary reclaimed. Hence if my reference was unclear, I surely apologize.

[newswolf56]

158. Just caught my misspelling in the second paragraph above:

should be "horde" (as in mob), not "hoard" (as in Scrooge). Once again, haste (and too much dependence on SpellCheck) makes waste -- and stupid mistakes. Grrrrrrrr.

[eridani]

166. McGovern's support was not at all "pacifist absolutist"

They were against a pointless war of imperial domination, but most thought WW II to be justified, and they didn't spend any time at all thinking about Korea.

What is "pacifist" about thinking that waging war on populations that are no threat to us whatsoever, just to prove that we can kill anybody we want whenever we want, for no reason at all has nothing to do with the actual defense of our population?

[newswolf56]

183. Read my post before you reflexively denounce me for my opposition...

to pacifism. I said nothing even remotely resembling what you claim I said.

For the record, I was not only against the Vietnam War -- as were most Americans -- I was also a PC at the time and was therefore an actual part of the McGovern campaign. Thus I am painfully aware of the causes of McGovern's defeat: the tiny pacifist contingent (whose numbers were wildly exaggerated by corporate media) but who were also part of a much larger coterie of bourgeois elitists -- a group that alienated much of the traditional blue-collar Democratic constituency. But the pacifists dealt the party the worst blow of all: their presence enabled Nixon to completely discredited the McGovern candidacy. The aftermath burdened the Democratic Party (and the Left in general) with a false reputation for appeasement it bears to this day: a big part of the reason George Bush occupies the White House today.

[eridani]

191. Who were we supposed to be "appeasing"?

People who wanted to run their own country? The elitist problem was real enough, but it had nothing to do with pacifism, and everything to do with the fact that working class kids did the dying, and middle class kids could find lots of ways out, plus have all that good fun with sex 'n' drugs 'n' rock 'n' roll.

And you are neglecting the fact that many of the top people in the Democratic party were actively undercutting McGovern and working for Nixon.

[newswolf56]

211. Sorry it took me so long to respond:

I'm working against a deadline on a $-making project as well as carrying on this DU conversation, and (at my age) I gotta sleep sometime.

I'm also not certain why you keep trying to portray me as the enemy -- perhaps because I'm a relative newcomer you don't know me very well. So here are eight points in response to your one "who?":

(1)-Note carefully I never said the appeasement charge was true -- especially not for the whole Party. At the time in question it took various forms: "soft on Communism," "weak on national defense," "dovish" etc. ad nauseum -- remember the McGovern Campaign was in 1972 and not only at the height of the Vietnam War but also the peak of the Cold War: capitalism pretending to be humanitarian (precisely the Big Lie disguise it has brazenly dropped since the collapse of the Soviet Union) but doing everything to obstruct the aspirations of working people, especially to subvert and destroy their various (necessarily revolutionary) overseas efforts to achieve economic democracy. In this context Nixon was the commnophobia candidate and he played on the national "better dead than Red" paranoia: the Red Army would make us give up all our trinkets, the KGB would guarantee we remained trinket-free, and life without trinkets would just be too horrible to endure. Nobody with any sense believed this of course but at the same time to speak out against it was taboo, and the taboo was enforced with dire consequences: note the huge bravery of McGovern and the debacle he suffered as a result of his unspokenness. Frankly I have always believe McGovern's loss marked the ultimate triumph of the McCarthy Era witch hunts -- an intellectually suicidal, culturally self-destructive triumph from which America has yet to recover (and quite possibly never will).

(2)-The pacifist element that injected itself into the Democratic Party during the power struggles that followed the 1968 Chicago convention was tiny but insufferably loud, astonishingly well-publicized and therefore infinitely damaging. It was also not infrequently suspected (especially by those of us who had been RFK partisans) of being led by agents provocateur, whether Nixon men or actual government spooks the opinion always varied. I believed, as did many of my colleagues, there was a clandestine active-measures operation to guarantee that the public face of the Democratic Party was always -- given the context of (1) above -- the worst possible public face.

(3)-People who complain of biased media coverage today have no idea how good they've got it: today's mainstream media is merely distantly hostile, while the mainstream media of yesteryear was aggressively, relentlessly venomous. From about 1967 onward, let one episode of egotistical stage-hogging "guerilla theater" nonsense occur during a 100,000 person demonstration -- or worse yet somebody wigging out on acid flinging off clothes and dancing naked until busted or even some dunderhead publicly firing up a joint -- whatever, if it was useful for defamation, it was all over Page One the next day, and as far as the so-called "silent majority" was concerned, that was the Whole Story. In New York City where I was at the time this deliberate trivialization of the anti-war movement and demonization of its participants had pretty much stopped by '69 or so (except for The Daily News), but everywhere else in the United States it continued with a vicious intensity that would have made Josef Goebbels smile -- a huge factor in the landslide defeat of George McGovern. You can't get Americans to take a candidate seriously if they've been brainwashed to believe his supporters are all dope-crazed hippos -- or "unpatriotic dirty rotten Commie rats."

(4)-As far as I am concerned the greatest single failing of the U.S. Left today (the very direct legacy of the pseudo-revolutionary media stars of the '60s) is its defiant indifference to media imagery. Americans terrified of economic collapse or bitter over the deaths of their children in unnecessary wars will NOT mobilize behind an Abbie Hoffman, who defines "leadership" as it might be defined in an insane asylum: Revolution for the Hell of It and the ability to utter ever-more-absurd non sequiturs -- Steal This Book. Nor will Americans mobilize behind a pacifist: even the most benighted illiterate understands that pacifist ideology criminalizes the very war dead so many Americans mourn -- precisely the reason (however dimly articulated) such a huge majority of Americans regard pacifism with such animosity. Together, the emergence during the '60s of the Bent-Bozo mode of leadership and a defiantly pacifist element (artificially grafted onto the Left) handed the forces of reaction one of its greatest triumphs of all time. Now not only could the Left be demonized as "subversive"; it could also be ridiculed as "crazy" and scorned as "cowardly."

(5)-Lest I (again) be demonized myself, let me make it very clear I believe pacifism has a vital role in the national dialogue: the restraint it imposes on the war reflex is invaluable, particularly given the doomsday potential of thermonuclear weapons. But pacifism allowed to follow its logical course in 1940 would have us all in the (former) U.S. today speaking Japanese in my part of the country and German east of the Rockies -- and all of us waiting desperately for what the slaves of the Old South called "the Jubilee": liberation -- in this instance not by our own people but by alien-tongued soldiers with red stars on their caps: the only "liberators" that would have been left on the planet.

(6)-For further clarification, note the necessity of distinguishing between pacifism as an ideology and pacifism -- aka non-violence -- as a tactic. Pacifism as an ideology is ultimately suicidal; pacifism as a tactic is (perhaps paradoxically) a vital component of liberty and the democratic process: witness the Civil Rights Movement (in which I was an active participant).

(7)-I never saw anyone in the Democratic Party "actively undercutting McGovern and working for Nixon," though I don't doubt it happened. What I did see was a tremendous amount of passive resistance to McGovern: for example, an "impeach Nixon" resolution tabled by the local Democratic leadership or pro-McGovern precinct-committee folk obstructed in their (vital) ability to address neighborhood problems such as the need for a stop sign or a crosswalk. The tensions were obvious: not so much Hawk versus Dove, but much more elemental: corporatist(fascist) versus Leftist (socialist) -- thus "all war is good for the economy" and "it is the nature of Third World peoples to be exploited" versus "this war is a capitalist/imperialist atrocity."

(8)-I was one of those "working-class kids (who) did the dying." Too impoverished to attend college, I nevertheless managed to put myself through two quarters of university classes before I completely ran out of money and then (assuming I was embarking on a lifetime career as a soldier), enlisted for three years in the Army. My overseas service was in Cold War Korea during the (alleged) armistice, extended to nearly two years by the Berlin Crisis. It is only luck-of-the-draw I missed Vietnam, whether as an active-duty Regular or later as a reservist. Thoroughly indoctrinated, I remained hawkish for several years; then -- particularly after publication of the Pentagon Papers -- I became convinced we were fighting the wrong war; still later -- hearing the stories told by an increasing number of Vietnam combat veterans (a couple of whom became close and dear friends) -- I began to suspect we had been fighting on the wrong side.

I hope my position is now clear. It certainly is clearer to me -- some of these matters I have not thought about in a very long while -- so for that impetus I thank you.

[eridani]

215. Not complaining about your analysis, just your terminology

I think that the linkage of McGovern to the counterculture was harmful, but the counterculture was not really pacifist. I associate the latter word with a very committed and principled small minority of people who are non-violent tactically and will not participate in warfare.

pacifist ideology criminalizes the very war dead so many Americans mourn

It's not criminal to throw good money after bad on the grounds that you have invested so much already, or to treat lives the same way--just stupid.

The counterculture was to some extent about spoiled middle-class kids, but not entirely. Granny D has some comments about that--


http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101105E.shtml

Where authority and power flow down from above, from heaven to the White House to husbands and ayatollahs, the free and joyful living of people can be quite the enemy. If you will remember the free spirit of those flower children who grew up in the 1960s, for example, you will also remember the harsh attitude that attended to their joys from the more traditional, often more rural, elements of our society. Those political leaders who rose from this time, who lived in this more open and free way - less constrained by the rules of authority - were especially vilified by the authority clan. You need only to think of the special treatment given to the Clintons, who were of this generation and climate, to know the truth of this. And it fits the international pattern, of course, that the woman, Mrs. Clinton, would be singled out for the cruelest stones.

What attracted such hatred? It was their freedom, their sense of equality, and their joys.

Here it is: those in the clan of authority are not given the privilege - the natural right - of living their own lives. They do as they are told, say and think what they are told. Smothered is their curiosity and their healthy skepticism, and also their imagination, joy, freedom, and lust for life itself. When they see others actually living lives, they react with anger, as if someone had cut to the front of a line that, for them, never moves.

<etc.>

[newswolf56]

217. Truthful (and therefore almost poignant) simile -- were the...

fascists it described not so hateful: "When they see others actually living lives, they react with anger, as if someone had cut to the front of a line that, for them, never moves" -- damn well said.

As to the Counterculture, that is a whole 'nother discussion. Best quick statement I can make (I'm still under that deadline and will be for the rest of the week) is that the Counterculture truly was what its more aware participants described: "a revolution in consciousness" -- a vision-shift without precedent in the last approximately 5000 years of history, something that so transcended its contemporary politics, its lasting expressions -- feminism and environmentalism -- of necessity could evolve only beyond the confines of an increasingly hostile (patriarchal) social order. I'm not certain McGovern (or anyone else) could have co-mingled its inputs with conventional politics -- especially since by 1972 the federal spook-effort was already well underway to keep the Counterculture from developing the analysis that would have enabled it to perpetuate itself if not actually prevail.

Probably needless to say I was part of the Counterculture too, active both in the underground press and as a Cascade-mountains communard in the blessedly wonderful but tragically aborted Back-to-the-Land Movement: in the True Country that I knew, there was far more acceptance of the Counterculture than I ever encountered in any city, including Manhattan (where the Counterculture's budding spiritually was as reflexively scorned as its secular politics were accepted) -- though in True Country there was also a genuine war with Fundamentalist Christian vigilantes that in every sense prophecied the present effort at Dominionist takeover: armed communes survived, pacifist communes were burned out. Whether in urban or rural realms I saw both the spoiled bourgeois-brat faddists (who later devolved into yuppoid brat-worst) and the real Counterculture folk, some of whom -- those who have not already gone to the great Midsummer Festival in the sky -- remain my heart-and-soul comrades. As it says in an old poem of mine:

But I can do no more than testify
In gratitude and awe...

That I have seen the women
Bring to life such choreographies as
Once were mirrored only on
Minoan artifacts:

That I have seen the women dance
Bare-breasted in the sunflowers,
Have seen them lift their arms and
Swirl their hair amidst the rye,
That I have seen the women dancing
Naked in the meadows,
in the orchards, in the corn,
that I have seen the women
celebrating resurrection
Round a fire beneath the Moon.

Too bad the archives are off-line and I cannot link to a truly astounding dialogue Omega Minimo and I had some weeks go about the Counterculture. I think you would find it interesting to say the least. Meanwhile any inferences you make from the above italics -- particularly inferences about my metaphysics -- are probably correct.

[eridani]

220. Dang--do you publish your poetry anywhere?

Do link the discussion when the archives come back. I think that the revolution in consciousness is in part about the obvious fact that we end the 5000 year old form of social organization known as imperialism, or it ends us as a species.

Given your advocacy of labor issues and your connection to changing spiritual consciousness, you sound like someone who might have caucused for Kucinich in 2004.

[newswolf56]

233. Sad to say, I wasn't a DU member them -- didn't even know about DU.

As for Kucinich, he was portrayed in all the media to which I then had access as an out-and-out pacifist. Knowing history -- which includes nearly 1400 years of Jihadist aggression (including two near-conquests of Europe by the Ottoman Caliphate) -- I regard the Jihadist threat as very dangerous and very real, something that has got to be countered. The question is, how?

Bush's manipulation of circumstance and truth -- deliberate imposition of theocracy disguised as "blundering" -- has obscured this aspect of the situation almost beyond recognition; theocracy (whether Islamic or Christian) is the corporate Right's ultimate prescription for the protection of capitalism: just as we've seen for years in the South, brain-slave Fundamentalists make the most easily exploitable workers.

In Iraq, setting things "right" (whatever that might be given the new circumstance) is undoubtedly the most difficult foreign policy question the U.S. has ever faced. Short-term, as I said on another thread, I think the only solution is a U.N. peacekeeping force -- and that is surely not without its problems given the Shiite/Sunni madness. Long-term I don't think there's any hope: Fundamentalism (always linked with murderous anti-unionism and savage racism in the South) is -- just as the plutocrats believe -- the one sure suppressant of progressive thinking.

The Soviet experience in Afghanistan is instructive, but for it to make sense you first need a little vital historical background: immediately after the Russian Civil War (approximately 1917-1923), the Soviets began their program of collectivizing Russian farms. This was fiercely resisted by the mujiks -- the peasants -- chiefly due to anti-Soviet, Communists-are-devil-worshipers agitation by the Russian Orthodox Church, which owned unimaginably vast tracts of rural land and did not want to give up so much as a square arshin. The struggle continued back and forth until the mid-1930s when Stalin (in fury and frustration) abandoned all of Lenin's policies of compromise and gradualism: Stalin not only liquidated the clergy but deliberately starved the mujikii into submission. Literally millions died, but collectivization was successfully imposed. (It is an aside, but what really killed Soviet agriculture -- at least as I understand it -- was NOT collectivization but centralization: because of centralization, the collectives could not adequately respond to local conditions.)

Returning to the immediate topic, the relevance of the Soviet collectivization process is that the Soviets sought to apply very similar tactics in Afghanistan. In the largest cities, where secularism had taken hold, the Red Army was often greeted as a liberator and protector: even then the Imams (with the savagery that is ALWAYS the identifying characteristic of Fundamentalism whether Christian or Islamic) had already been attempting to reduce all Afghanistan to theocracy. But the Imams' real power lay only in the desert, where Fundamentalism already ruled -- and the KGB, the Soviet General Staff and the GRU all believed the harsh tactics that had succeeded in the collectivization campaign (extermination of the clergy and starvation of all peasants who refused to submit) would also succeed four decades later in Afghanistan. The Soviets' long-term motive was protection of themselves against Jihadist terrorism; probably -- at least as I understand it -- they would have withdrawn from Afghanistan had their implicitly Marxist effort to exterminate Fundamentalism succeeded as it did during Stalin's collectivization campaign of the 1930s.

(Much of the Soviets' hard-line policy -- maybe all of it whether internal or external -- was the direct result of the fact the Soviet Union was literally from its birth onward the target of global capitalism's most relentless hostility: nothing -- absolutely nothing -- is more terrifying to the oligarchy than the prospect of economic democracy, and the campaign against the U.S.S.R. was conducted with an intensity that is truly without historical precedent. China has avoided much of this enmity by appearing to embrace capitalism while yet remaining Marxist. It will be interesting to see if this is what I suspect it is: deliberate application of the doctrines of Sun Tzu -- using your enemy's strength to defeat him.)

In any case, enter the United States, which once again (as almost always since World War II) immediately aligned itself with the forces of reaction, fascism and ultimately theocracy: nothing new (Diem's attempt to impose Roman Catholic theocracy on South Vietnam was a major factor in convincing the National Liberation Front to unleash its military organization, the Viet Cong). By supporting the Jihadists in Afghanistan, the U.S. would throw another monkey-wrench into "the Soviet Plan for Global Domination." The Chinese -- then at the height of their hostility with the Russians -- surely saw the same opportunity but had sense enough to decline. We all know what happened next: to use a Chinese metaphor, the dragon turned on the very people who had conjured it up -- 9/11.

It is astounding to me the Jihadists' motives remain a matter of debate when they themselves have repeatedly made their purpose undeniable: a religious war to impose a global caliphate and exterminate all "infidels." What makes the issue so confusing is that in truth we are beset by two enemies: not only the Jihadists (who hate us because of who we are, especially when we are at our very best), but also Bush (and the oligarchy he represents) who clandestinely favor the Jihadists -- this for precisely the same reason the oligarchy is increasingly brazen about its favoritism of the Ku Klux Khristians in America: Fundamentalism is "good for business" -- from the perspective of the boardroom, the more oppressive the better. In this context, the fact that Bush allowed bin Laden to escape and the fact that Bush's policies facilitated the imposition of theocracy on Iraq become not "blunders" but logical expressions of clandestine policy: the global imposition of theocracy, whether JesuNazi or Jihadist it matters not.

I think a few Democratic leaders -- though only a very few -- are enough subtle (and learned in history) to understand what obtains. I think Gore and Edwards are among them: both men, having grown up in the South, have seen the horrors of Fundamentalism first-hand and have intimate knowledge of how it functions hand-in-glove with capitalism to opiate and oppress the workers. And I have no doubt this is a big part of what Gore was talking about last week when he said liberty is now more jeopardized than ever in U.S. history.

*********

Complete change of subjects to poetry: thank you! The "little magazines" in which some my work appeared are all long dead. The lines I posted are the conclusion of a much longer piece I've been working on since the late '80s: an odyssey -- a lament for the Back-to-the-Land Movement and the Counterculture in general.

[eridani]

234. Given your analysis of all fundamentalisms as different faces--

--of the same thing, why single out Islamic fundamentalism? I don't think of it as any more of a threat than Hindu, Christian or Zionist fundamentalism. All are socially dangerous, but the latter two are armed with nukes, and the Hindu fundies with nukes were just recently voted out of office (and they could conceivably get back in). The cure for it is secular democracy, including the economic kind, where people of any religion or none are equal participants.

Also, the ruling class doesn't really like fundamentalists (who have a very different agenda), however willing they are to subsidize it in order to promote class and other divisions among the rest of us. Whether it's German businessmen backing Hitler, Israel funding Hamas, or the US funding the muhajeddin, they keep being shocked, SHOCKED!! when their fundie tools turn on them.

Arundhati Roy has a good analysis of the relationship of the Hindu variety of fundamentalism and its ties with the neolib globalizers--

http://www.kucinich.us/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=6578

In those parts of India where there is heavy left wing influence and a tradition of women's empowerment, the situation is much better.

http://www.kucinich.us/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=8932

The reason why jihadism is not a threat (at least as a potential empire) is because of the Sunni-Shi'ite split. Iranian mullahs are not about to tolerate being dominated by Wahabists, and vice versa. Also, the primary strategic reality of the 21st century is that domination is very expensive, and FSU (Fucking Shit Up) is very cheap. That remains the case even in the unlikely event that there ever would be a new caliphate.

I would certainly put Kucinich way ahead of Gore or Edwards, both of whom supported the Iraq invasion. I do like the Edwards "One America" approach, though, and whenever I hear Gore speak these days, I feel like saying "Who are you and what did you do with that guy who ran for president in 2000?" Only Kucinich is uncompromising on fair trade, real universal health care, and a complete end to wars of choice. His was the only candidate website to use the term "prison-industrial complex" and advocate a harm reduction approach to drugs. (I think he could stand some education on different needs in the gun control area between urban and rural areas, though.) The change in consciousness he is calling for certainly allows for self defense. In fact, the most successful practitioners of non-violence are people with a real warrior ethos.

http://www.kucinich.us/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1597

**************

OK, back to poetry. You should consider publishing hand-made chapbooks. There are many elegant options for home bookbinding these days, and it could be a small project on the side for sharing with friends rather than a profit center.

I was only loosely affiliated with the counterculture myself. When people who took going back to the land seriously started doing it, I was taking grad school seriously (Dare to study! Dare to pass!)

[newswolf56]

235. Again hard-pressed for time due to deadline but five fast points:

(1)-My impression (this from every one of the highly educated/secular/professional East Indians I have known) is that Hindu "Fundamentalism" is entirely a reaction to Islam's thousand-year onslaught against the breathtakingly ancient Vedic/Hindu culture of India. The mythological evidence -- specifically the presence of the variously-named goddess in Hinduism versus her (murderously imposed and savagely enforced) absence in Islam -- supports this claim despite the former practice of suttee and various other ugly manifestations of male supremacy in present-day Hindu culture. Remember that the major consequence of the Islamic attacks was to so weaken the Vedic/Hindu societies that a tiny band of mercenaries calling itself the East India Company -- about 225 officers and men -- was able in the 1700s to conquer the entire Indian subcontinent for England.

(2)-You are correct in your assumption that in theory I oppose all Fundamentalism, which however I define as do all the credible historians with whom I am familiar: as a malignancy singular to the Yehvehistic (aka "Abrahamic" or "book") religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. In fact I go further: I absolutely agree with the old classically Marxist/Soviet (Chekist) stance that Fundamentalism is the true expression of these three religions -- that however "liberal" their adherents may claim to be at any given time, the genuine true believers will always revert back to Biblical or Qur'anic savagery given the opportunity simply because their doctrines allow them no other alternative. Furthermore I believe that history demonstrates unequivocally this murderousness is unique both in its extent and in its doctrinal basis: a singular viciousness shared by no other religions in human history. (This is not to deny that other religions have spawned murderousness: they surely have, occasionally in spades. But only the mandates of Genesis {and their enthusiastic repetition in the Qur'an} specifically demand genocide as an extension of belief.)

(3)-My own belief is emphatic agreement with the Jeffersonian (also Unitarian, American Aboriginal and Neopagan) principle that the only truly valid expression of the religious impulse is the individual spirit quest: a right that even at the apex of American liberty was not fully recognized -- nor ever protected nearly enough. My view is of course the antithesis of Fundamentalist authoritarianism and is one of the main reasons I am so vehemently opposed to -- and utterly terrified by -- Bush's intensifying effort to impose theocracy on America.

(4)-Many thanks for the Kucinich links. I have bookmarked them and will peruse them in depth as soon as I have time.

(5)-Would love to discuss poetry (and the publication thereof) with you further. Have read much of my work to (notably bohemian) local audiences, invariably to substantial applause -- though not for almost 30 years. But for various reasons (chiefly bitter experience that my socioeconomic status, the many delays attendant upon my completion of college, and especially the content of my education -- mainly history/sociology/mythology rather than literature -- all exclude me from "literary" circles), I have never pursued publication beyond so-called "little magazines," always bohemian (and therefore limited circulation) by definition. If you're so inclined, PM me and -- next week when I'm out from under this damn deadline -- I'll respond.

[IntravenousDemilo]

206. Pacifism good, bellicosity bad. Repeat. n/m

[omega minimo]

109. Could you be more specific?

:rofl:

"...given that capitalism achieved its ultimate all-time triumph in the Bush presidency and is now ever more defiantly exposing its intrinsic fascism and shedding all pretense of being anything but infinitely greedy, murderously savage and genocidally racist."

"Will the DLC succeed in its obvious clandestine purpose: forcing the Left into political oblivion and thereby furthering the DemoPublican march toward Sweatshop Amerika?"

Good Goddess, Newswolf56, can't you just call em up and and set em straight and save us all a whole lotta bother? :kick:

"What makes these questions all the more relevant -- and pivotal for U.S. history -- is the fact the electorate is clearly awakening."

IMHO this is key. If the Democrats are sincere about appealing to voters, why do they ignore the fact that the general public is prime for a "real Democrat" approach? Non-voters, non-rabid Republicans, Independents, etc. are ready and waiting to hear from the Democrats some clear language and to see some clear leadership. Where is it? People are ready for a return to "real" Democratic issues and values-- because traditionally they were the values of The People. What used to be "radical" is now common knowledge.

That is where I have difficulty with comments on DU that seem to describe some imagined target audience of potential voters. Are they real-- or some Luntz-ish MBA focus group Power Point fantasy?

I appreciate that you mention the people you talk to in WA. I don't see that much on DU. Often seems to be some abstract charicature of the elusive voter--- Suppositions about how those folks think seem to pop up here frequently.

The OP hints at it:

"It's simple. When Progressives leave the Democratic PArty, the only choice for the party is to appeal to those coloser to the center on the other side. Otherwise the party dies."

I understand the OP's point. Yet this is the sort of vague "those closer to the center on the other side" concept that these arguments depend on.

The people I talk to ARE "those closer to the center on the other side" who are NOT "on the other side." They're on OUR side. What is "the center"? These sort of loose descriptions get tossed around DU unexamined-- and if they were examined, the assumptions about who we're talking about may not hold up.

So..... the other question is, if the Dem leaders are NOT sincere about about appealing to voters (and being honest about who those REAL PEOPLE are and how to reach them)-- the question is: Why not?

Have we gone in a circle?

"Will the DLC succeed in its obvious clandestine purpose: forcing the Left into political oblivion and thereby furthering the DemoPublican march toward Sweatshop Amerika?"

not edited for clarity :evilgrin:

[Cults4Bush]

30. Nah uh, fuck the centrists if they dont like me they can get the hell out!

They'll leave a slithering morass of poison in the party by the name of Zell, then they damn well better put up with the rest of us. If they dont like it, then I will laugh in their general direction. Tough!

We have to put up with right wing appeasers, then they have to put up with our militant pacifists.. or whatever.. you know what I mean.

My party as much as theirs. If they want to fight it out then that my friend is what we'll do. Leftists are not wimps and we are least of all not afraid of empty threats.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

75. Zell Miller Wasn't A Centrist Dem... He Was A Right Wing Dem

There's a huge difference between a centrist Dem like my senator Bill Nelson and Zell Miller...


The Zell Miller vote is forerver beyond our reach...

[Skidmore]

81. Zell Miller was a turncoat.

And you are right, only Rs adore the Zello(u)t.

[IntravenousDemilo]

207. He HAS been formally expelled from the party, hasn't he?

If so, good, and if not, why not?

[Cults4Bush]

116. Apologies but my statement was in regard to the fact that he got to hang

that D on his name even though he was a right wing lust slave.

If that shit head can be in this party then so can I and all my leftist friends no matter what the DLC or Centrists or Moderates say or how badly they wish we'd just go away (until its time ot vote or donate that is;) ).

Further if they bring anymore of that "pull your punches or you'll hurt the party" shit, I will personally step all over their collective little dicks. That kinda crap works in peace time. Not now... we are at war for the heart and soul of not just America but maybe the world, the time for footsies was over when Little Boots was selected by the Supremes.

Everything else that has happened since then serves to violently reinforce that idea to the rest of hummanity and I see no reason why it shouldn't to the entire Democratic party as well.

Again though, I realize there is a difference between Zell and your Bill Nelson but if your Sen. Nelson starts mouthing off about how I damage the party I will lay into him so hard that he will disticntly know that he is not dealing with some granola head hippie pacifist (even though thats exactly what I am, or maybe used to be).

Sorry but Ive had it being demonized by the repugs because Im a flagrant Liberal and to have that view substantiated over and over again by members of my own party leaves me with the feeling I have a seven inch poisoned blade in the small of my back.

My message is again if the Centrist and the Moderates and the DLC'ers dont like it they can get the fuck out. I am not going anywhere, I am going to ride this damn donkey straight back to the left where it belongs.

[Pepperbelly]

122. sounds reasonable altho Zell was not. A centrist, that is. nt

[Cults4Bush]

140. Wow I must have really gotten silly with my wording there.

My point was that if Zell can stay a Dem and they didn't kick him him out, then they damn well better accept the fact that the left wing of the Democratic party is not going anywhere. We will also begin fighting for this party much much MUCH more harder than we did before.
DLC, Centrists and self styled moderates better know that it is not amtter of want for the lefties anymore, its pure unadulterated need. After all they aren't stuck with being labeled Liberal and all the threats that go with such a label.

Thats all Im really trying to say... sorry to be so longwinded about it.

[Pepperbelly]

154. wouldn't want you to go anywhere although I confess I do not miss Zell.

He was a real turd in the churn.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

31. The Dem "leadership" missed the Opposition part of "Loyal Opposition".

Now they play echo to the Repubs - the dominant half of the Capitalist Party.

If they continue to play goodcop/badcop with the Repubs I, for one, will be voting Green.

[Skidmore]

32. If it takes the choice to move right, then they should just

join with the Rs. And I don't want to hear any whining about enabling an R victory. It is a CHOICE. You choose to live in an R world, then you have no room to whine. You had your chance do make a difference and be catalyst for change.

[Walt Starr]

34. A Party has no intelligence to make any choice.

For somebody on the left to simply leave the party, the party moves to the right de facto. Thye members of the aprty determine the overall philosophy.

The person who made the choice to move the party to the rightwas the Leftist who chose to leave the party.

[Skidmore]

36. As I said, don't sit around and whine because some of us choose

not to join in the choice. You assume that there are way more Rs out there than I think there are. The Ds are just too lazy to go out and cultivate those likeminded individuals who live in this nation. It's not just packaging either, it is content as well. And content needs to reflect a difference, not more of the same. If I effin' wanted to be a Republican, I would register as one and vote as one. But I DON'T and I DON'T choose to be Republican lite either.

[Skidmore]

49. So the party platform is not based on the intellects of its members?

The people who choose to tack to the right also have a choice. It is not just the "leftist" who has the ability to choose.

[LoZoccolo]

80. No, the people who remain in the party have a choice.

If you hand it to them, you hand it to them.

[Skidmore]

83. They choose to become R-lites.

[LoZoccolo]

87. Nope. n/t

[Skidmore]

105. Explain how helping * engage and maintain an illegal war

is not R-lite. Explain how approving bills written by lobbyist isn't R-lite. Explain how supporting incumbent candidates that engage in these practices is not R-lite. Explain how it is not R-lite to tell the little guy take a number, stand in line, and vote electronically is not R-lite. Explain how mild trickle-on doesn't have the same effect as major trickle-on.

[LoZoccolo]

114. You're not even talking about Walt's argument anymore.

It seems like you don't get it.

[Skidmore]

123. Oh, I get it alright.

In pursuing so-called "centrists" now you are actually pursuing old right wingers since the Rs have shifted so far to the right they are no longer recognizable as conservative. I'm not screaming down that path OR endorsing incumbents who are browbeaten or bend to the will the Republican party. How does making the party over to resemble the Republican party make the Democratic party stronger or more meaningful in its policies?

[mzmolly]

125. Here here!

:toast:

[Chan790]

139. That's a dangerous assertion

as it carries with it the inferred fact that the best way to move the party leftward is to purge those in the rightmost sections of the party (the "Zell"ots (yes, although you'll never see them on DU, they do exist, i've seen them, and they're scary.) and DLCers), something the average DUer doesn't seem opposed to.

[meganmonkey]

33. I think the people who are threatening to leave are those who are seeing

for the first time that politics is ugly business, and that just because there is a (D) next to someone's name, it doesn't mean they will do the right thing, vote the right way, be honest, have integrity, etc.

Whereas those of us who are coming into this as progressives/far-left - Greens, independents, etc - we are very aware of the reality of politics and are entering the realm of the Democratic Party knowing quite well what the reality is. When 20 or 30 dems in congress vote with the repugs to renew the Patriot Act or some such bullshit, I am not surprised. But, like you say, if people like us don't get involved and stick with the Dems they will NEVER represent us. Our only hope is to become the party and make it represent us. So that is why I am here, and I am not going anywhere despite the Liebermans and the CAFTA votes.

:shrug:

[Walt Starr]

35. The sad thing is, a Rightwing Democrat is better than a Leftwing Repub

because of the numbers game for who sets the agenda.

I'd rather have eight Zell Millers than the eight most left leaning Republicans in the Senate today because that would give the numbers to the Dems and that would give the control to the Dems.

Without the numbers, you cannot set the agenda.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

78. I See Your Point...

If there were eight Zell Millers we would control the Senate and the agenda....


But don't fall into the Zell trap...


He's the bogeyman; an eccentric, and a traitor to the party...


He's far from a centrist Dem....

[meganmonkey]

92. And that is one of the things I despise most about the 2 party system

but I have given up on the idea that my decision to vote 3rd party/indy will magically fix our sham of a democracy. I convinced myself in 2000 that a vote for Nader was a revolutionary statement on what democracy should be - yeah, I got over it :blush:

I don't know how to fix the party system, but in the meantime, the repubs have got to go, and the dems need to be held accountable for their complicity and pressured to actually represent us. :shrug:

[Skidmore]

62. Megan, the Dems don't really represent us now.

When they give in or they protect the corporate interests in their states at the worker's expense or sell out to lobbyists at the expense of the disabled, the ill, and children, then they don't represent the people. The only time they seem to get a clue is when the get a note telling them to not solicit money. Then you see a flurry of activity which lasts until they've had their next lunch with a K Street lobbyist. They are corrupt. And corruption should never be confused with compromise.

[meganmonkey]

88. Absolutely right - and I think that is why the progressives

and even the more 'moderate' Democratic voters need to stick with it and try our damnedest to make them accountable, and to make them represent us. Having voted for Nader in 2000 (in a safe state, fwiw) and having to think about the consequences (even though I fully believe Gore won Florida, I have still been forced to discuss the Nader element), I think reigning in the Democratic party is our only hope.

At this point in our deMOCKracy, there is no way to get a viable third party in there. In principle I believe deeply that we need more parties, because there are more than 2 kinds of people in this country IMHO. I used to believe that by voting for 3rd parties I was helping the process, and by acting like we REALLY have a democracy we would suddenly have one. But now that I have seen the rapid destruction that a couple of terms of a psychotic administration can wreak on our nation, I am torn, but I am participating in the 2-party system now.

I have no illusions about the Dems, but in theory they have a platform pretty close to what I think. And my biggest hope is that the Greens and other progressives get more involved with the Dems and maybe have some sort of coalition, which would bring in more voters and make the party more about people than corporations. I am quite certain the Greens would be happy to do so, it's just a matter of convincing the Dems that it will actually help them win elections. I am pretty sure at least most of them want to win elections, although sometimes it is hard to tell ;)

Anyway, that's where I am coming from. I totally see your point, and it is a dilemma for me. But I made the decision to vote for Kerry last year, and get more involved with the Dems (thanks mainly to what I saw here at DU) - and I plan to stick with it for awhile.

[eridani]

168. What the hell was wrong with the CAFTA votes?

95% of Dems voted against, and 95% of Repubs for. That is one hell of a lot better than the NAFTA vote 10 years earlier. I think it's because fence-sitters were intensively lobbied by lefty progressives who decided to stick with the party after Dean and Kucinich didn't win.

[newswolf56]

190. Apparently you don't understand the concept of solidarity,

which makes me wonder about your support for unions. ANY Democrat who voted for CAFTA -- and there are three such traitors from my state (both senators and one representative) -- all spat in the face of the labor movement and aligned themselves solidly and irrevocably with the corporate oligarchy against the working class: especially since a vote for CAFTA is a vote for outsourcing and the sort of wage-slave exploitation always characteristic of the Third World and increasingly characteristic of the United States.

CAFTA was therefore among the most symbolically important votes this year.

One of the chief differences between the AFL/CIO and the breakaway Change to Win coalition is response to such betrayals: the AFL/CIO accepts them with bowed head, downcast eyes and tail between legs, but Change to Win promises to retaliate, not only by withholding support but actively campaigning against the betrayers. As it says in the old song, "which side are you on?" Patty Murray, Marie Cantwell, Norm Dicks, the other seven senators and the 14 other representatives -- DLC sellouts one and all -- have answered that question beyond any doubt.

[eridani]

192. Yes, but 10 years ago with NAFTA so did Smith and McDermott

--and I forget who else. We are doing better than we were, and will certainly do better yet if we can get more progressives in the local office pipeline who can pick up street cred as officeholders who can actually take on some of the DLC sellouts on and win.

[newswolf56]

212. The measure of legislation is its impact. Thus what matters is not...

how many alleged Democrats voted for it but the repeated instances in which deliberate Democratic betrayals of working people, minorities, low-income elderly, the disabled and the poor in general have handed all national power (and indeed most local power) to an increasingly savage corporate oligarchy. That fewer Democrats voted for CAFTA than NAFTA is merely an expression of the fact their votes were not essential to its passage -- not of any change of heart among the forces that dominate the Party today: both measures further concentrate wealth, further disempower workers and further ravage the environment. Had there been any true repudiation of the bourgeois elitism that has infected the Party since the late '60s, there would have been methodical Democratic denunciation not only of Clinton's NAFTA and his unprecedented assault on the social safety net but widely publicized vocal outcry against Bush's further depredations: not just CAFTA but indentured servitude disguised as "bankruptcy reform," the giveaway to the Oil Barons in the energy bill, the Medicare Prescription Drug Lord Benefit and most of all the obviously genocidal aftermath of Katrina. But instead of parliamentary obstruction and vigorous protest there has been inactivity and silence: guilty acquiescence in the worst atrocities an elected government has ever committed against the American people.

[eridani]

216. If you have them by the short hairs, you can do without their hearts

And we did. We pushed several fence-sitters in WA state on the bankruptcy bill as well as on CAFTA--successfully. And we would have actually won on CAFTA if a few Repub cowards whose constituents were solidly against it had not pulled that "the dog ate my vote" crapola. We just need to keep pushing and get more pro-labor people in local offices, where they can acquire the street cred to take on our current holders of higher office that are not on our side.

Face it--us lefty/greenie/laborites have disdained electoral politics for 30 years because Dems were selling out, which accomplished nothing but further sellouts. And during that time whackjobs took over the Repubs. Socialist Bernie Sanders has been running for some local office or another since 1975. What if more of us had done that? I'll bet the current political landscape would look much different if we had.

[newswolf56]

219. I think the reason for the disdain is that none of us -- not even...

the darkest pessimists (of whom I am probably one) -- imagined how savage things would become. It is easy to throw your vote away when you assume that economic reality will not change no matter for whom you cast it: the biggest reason for many so-called "single-issue" votes -- especially Democrats who vote Republican to protect their right to own firearms: THE major factor not only in Gore's loss of Southern electoral votes but in Rossi's near-victory in the 2004 Washington gubernatorial race.

[Rainbowreflect]

37. I see your point, but on the other hand if the Dems know they

have the votes of the left they will cater more to the center.
I am tired of "my leaders" being just a little to the left of the republicans. I want them fighting for me & liberal issues.

[Walt Starr]

38. "cater to the center"

Absolute must during campaigns. Both sides have to do it because the center decides the elections. Elections are funny businesses because more times than not, the rhetoric used in a campaign is meaningless the instant they finish counting the votes.

[Rainbowreflect]

43. So I guess they just never stop campaigning, is that it?

I just don't see many of them moving back to the left after they win, if anything they are moving more to the right.
The Republicans have no problem moving further & further to the right.

[Walt Starr]

45. A lot of the elected Democrats are closer to the center than the left

and their stances should eb expected.

Tell me the districts where you can get somebody incredibly leftist elected?

[Skidmore]

46. Who told you that?

Perhaps the views of the left don't get aired as much. Perhaps people are afraid now to acknowledge how the believe. I think people byin large are more to the left of center than the media and politicians would have us believe.

[Walt Starr]

48. Then get left leaning Democrats elected.

The proof is in the pudding. Get left leaning Democrats elected and you will prove your point.

[nadinbrzezinski]

64. the machine will not let them run and you know that

and you still need the support of the party... it is a far more complex problem than saying elect them.. I wish it was that simple, quite brutally honest

[Skidmore]

66. Bingo!!!

Walt Starr, go talk to Paul Hackett about this now.

[Walt Starr]

136. The Hackett-Brown issue is different

One of the keys to generating interest in a General Election is to make sure the candidate's stances are well known to the general public. Generally, there is no coverage of a candidate on one side of the aisle when that candidate is unopposed in a primary election. That's why so often you will see some form of token opposition in primaries by Republicans because that will generate enough media interest to get a few stories about the candidates in the primary.

Where this goes wrong is when there is a contentious primary and it can backfire big time, which is what I feaar from the Hackett/Brown mess.

And yes, I lay this mostly at the feet of Brown if he did indeed tell Hackett he would not run and then went back on his word.

Hopefully, it's a ruse to generate interest in the race and get the stances of the person who will be a candidate in the general election out there in front of the media, but I fear it will be contentious which will mean that DeWine will probably hold onto his seat.

[eridani]

169. A contested primary could be a good thing--

--if it puts both candidates in the news a lot more than they otherwise would be, and exposes more people to the issues they are discussing.

[IntravenousDemilo]

208. The saying goes, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating", goddamn it,

not "the proof is in the pudding" -- that makes no sense at all. If you're looking for alliteration, you might as well say, "the proof is in the petunias". The saying really means that you can't tell if the figurative "pudding" is any good until you try some.

It's one of my "things reminiscent of fingernails on a chalkboard", along with "I could care less" in place of the proper "I couldn't care less"; "Welsh rarebit" for the proper "Welsh rabbit"; "chaise lounge" instead of "chaise longue" (it means "long chair" in French); qualifying "unique" with words like "very" or "more"; and ninnies who grunt "uh-huh" back at you when you say "thank you", when they really should say "you're welcome" or "it's my pleasure".

Anyway...

[marions ghost]

155. Agree --an IMPORTANT point, Skidmore

you have to factor in the systematic repression of liberal views over several years-- before you can draw conclusions about the people being primarily 'centrist.'

U said: People are "more to the left of center than the media and politicians would have us believe."

--I believe this is absolutely the case.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

70. Harlem. Berkley, Greenwich Village,South Central LA

Districts like that...


If you or I got the Democratic nomination we could represent those places...

[Skidmore]

44. So where is the incentive for the nation to move left?

If we go any further to the right, we'll fall off of the flat earth they've created.

[Walt Starr]

47. As long as tose on the left leave the only political apparatus open

the nation will move farther to the right.

You have two choices in this political system, the democrats or the Republicans. Anything other than those two means you weaken the stances of one or the other.

Those on the Right have been well disciplined to accept that they will not get their way all of the time and thus, the Republican Party has made huge strides and moved everything to teh right.

Those on the Left whine and moan and complain and vote for Nader, thus they help the Republicans move everything to the Right because they take strength away from the Democrats.

[Skidmore]

50. Perhaps the corrupt political apparatus needs to be

weakened on both sides and broken. Then there will be some ray of hope for something new to rise from the ashes. I sure as hell didn't vote for Nader and have no use for the man. The Dem political apparatus is taking strength away from itself. It CHOOSES to be the party of "me, too".

[DerekG]

54. Those on the Left voted for Kerry in overwhelming numbers

What did Nader get? Two percent? Three? Do you still hold a grudge against the Leftists who voted for Benjamin Spock in '72?

No, I agree with Cindy Sheehan: supporting a pro-war candidate was a grievous mistake. Had we been confrontational, we might have been able to bend Kerry to our will. As it stands, we are no closer to ending this bloodbath.

[Walt Starr]

55. And had those on the Left not voted for Nader in 2000

there would have been no chance for a pro-war Democratic candidate in 2004.

You get what your actions dictate you get.

[DerekG]

60. Al Gore wasn't exactly Tolstoyian

At what point did he express moral disgust with Clinton's Plan Columbia? Or the Iraqi sanctions that starved anywhere between 100,000 to a million civilians? I confess I don't recall him articulating the need to cut military spending.

[Skidmore]

59. Nader is not a leftist. He is a provaceteur--a spoiler--

who trashed the left and took monies from the right.

[DerekG]

Of course he's a spoiler--why else would he run?

There have been quite a few leftist provaceteurs: Eugene Debs and Henry A. Wallace being two of the more prominent figures. They knew the system was bought and paid for, and decided to act as barnstormers. Indeed, if I were in the position to give the Democratic Party a black eye, you'd better believe I would do it.

[eridani]

171. Debs won something, though

He got a lot of his programs co-opted by the Dems.

[DerekG]

184. Precisely. Debs was a legitimate threat; they *had* to co-opt his vision

Which is why I would support any progressive third-party candidate who could scare the living hell out of the Democrats.

[nadinbrzezinski]

188. So was the whole of the Populist party

:-)

[Az]

39. I'm not going anywhere and I am about as left as they come

This is my party and I am going to fight for it. Just try and make me leave.

[Walt Starr]

40. BRAVO!

You've kept the Party from slipping even further to the right! Well done!

[DerekG]

41. I washed my hands of this party after pulling the lever for Kerry

Let me be blunt: Any party that put more effort into quashing a third-party candidate than they did exposing BBV is fucking worthless. Do they even want to win?

I'll continue to support principled ground-troops like Kucinich, Conyers, Lee and few dozen others, but I waved bye bye to this pitiful Vichy organization on November 3.

If we were smart, we'd train our sights on pro-war Democrats. But that won't happen--we'll be living with "lesser-evilism" for decades.

[LoZoccolo]

86. That's not a very good argument.

Quashing a third-party candidate being propped up by the Republicans was clearly a more advantageous priority both for getting a Democrat in office, and for ultimately ending black-box voting. Quashing Nader was something that took less effort, a greater chance of success, and would have had a bigger impact on the 2004 election results. Fighting Nader was the logical choice. Trying to end BBV with a Republican congress in a few months time would have, at best, ended BBV before the 2008 election maybe. Which still would have been nearly impossible with a Republican congress and President. Getting the Republicans out is pretty much a necessary condition for doing anything about BBV anyways.

[nadinbrzezinski]

95. Good luck in getting rid of BBV by this logic

won't happen, for they will MAKE SURE they remain in power

[LoZoccolo]

113. I don't understand your objection. n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

115. If you don't make this subject public for you are afraif of being

called a freak, you will never get rid of BBV...

[LoZoccolo]

134. I don't think that's why they didn't pursue it much. n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

160. I do, and it is called fear and intimidation

and that has pissed the base as well

[DerekG]

124. The Democrats will never achieve majority status so long as BBV exists

They were robbed of electoral victories in 2002 and 2004; it stands to reason that they'll (deservedly) lose in 2006. Since the leadership hasn't made a peep about this fraud, I assume they don't want to win. I thus leave this charade to the starry-eyed loyalists.

[mzmolly]

126. "The differences make a difference in the lives of ordinary Americans."

~ Paul Wellstone (the guy in your avatar) said this to Ralph Nader when he was discouraged and claimed essentially that "Gore = Bush."

Might I suggest that you're not just washing your hands of the party, your washing your hands of the poor, the working class, the environment, education, etc ... when you refuse to acknowledge the very real consequences of Republicans in power.

I hope you'll consider all that Democrats continue to fight for -before demanding that they all agree with you on everything.

Also, not all Democrats believe there is PROOF election was stolen (that's the beauty of touch screen theft - no paper trail) however both Edwards and Kerry are working to change current laws essentially addressing BBV. Both are addressing the "paper trail" issue.

[DerekG]

133. Robert Kennedy Jr. asserted that 70% of Democrats are corrupt

And I agree with this estimate. It is not difficult to wash one's hands of a party which--by and large--has absconded from fulfilling its obligations to the impoverished and the weak. The Bush junta's murder of Paul Wellstone (yes, I am one of those kooky conspiracy theorists) was demonstrative of the fate that awaits those principled individuals who actually wield political power. So I now pin my hopes on an anti-war movement which will hopefully see the aforementioned 70 percent for the corporatists and warmongers that they are.

If you want my help in a battle against the DLC, you'll get it; but make no mistake, it will take one hell of a conflagration to remove these politicos from power. We will have no progress until "lesser evilism" is eschewed, working instead to expose these neo-liberals.

[mzmolly]

142. I agree with every word. And, I think corruption in Washington is one

reason to stay and fight.

Incidentally I'm in Minnesota and my husband and I were doing volunteer work for Paul Wellstone when he died. Tragic beyond words. BTW, you can add me to the list of kooks who don't think the plane carrying Wellstone - and a few others crashed accidentally.

[nadinbrzezinski]

161. Me and my brother in law

when the story broke we both said, they killed hiim...

So taht makes what four now?

[mzmolly]

172. Man, if you go back to the Kennedy's and MLK, I think were at

more than four. I belive this kind of "corruption/murder" goes back decades.

[nadinbrzezinski]

177. Yes and coincidentally

the bush's have been involved in some day... curous that Senior has no clue where he was the day Kennedy was assasinated... I'm just saying ok.

[EFerrari]

51. Third parties do the real grunt work for the progressive movement

and it took me 'way too long to understand that.

I'm a Green. I get notices every day about whose strike needs support, about legislation, about civil rights cases, about tabling.

From the Dems, I get asked for money.

I'm not recruiting for the Green Party. In fact, I work far more for the Dems than for the Greens. Because that's another trait: we work the issue, not the orthodoxy.

"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." - George Orwell

:shrug:

[mzmolly]

127. You need to register for different Democratic groups.

;) I get activism notices all the time from the groups I belong to.

I think it's great that the Green Party does so much in terms of activism though. Thanks! :hi:

[EFerrari]

137. I will work with anyone anywhere who has a clue.

:hi:

On edit: I guess that means, I'm a progressive first and a party member second. Oh well.

[mzmolly]

147. I'll take it.

I'm a progressive first and a party member second. :)

[EFerrari]

157. Thanky Ma'am.

:)

[bleedingheart]

52. Actually I find that more progressives are becoming more active

by our numbers we will take back the DNC

[madfloridian]

56. I will not be liked for saying this....

but then I am not much liked here anyway...not my goal. A lot of what is going on here is from the primaries last year. It is coming from groups who are not willing to work with the party for change. It is based the utter dislike of just a few toward the chairman of the DNC. I will further say that we are discovering that a lot of it is coming from Nader and Kucinich supporters. That is their right, so don't jump me.

I further realize that they are going to use this forum to advocate 3rd party just as Dean is trying to change the financial base of the DNC. The goal is to undermine.

I feel sorry for the mods here because here are the DU rules for such things...it is a fine line, and if I were a mod I would pull my hair out.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules_detailed.html

Democratic Candidates and the Democratic Party

Constructive criticism of Democrats or the Democratic Party is permitted.
When doing so, please keep in mind that most of our members come to this
website in order to get a break from the constant attacks in the media
against our candidates and our values. Highly inflammatory or divisive
attacks that echo the tone or substance of our political opponents are not
welcome here.

You are not permitted to use this message board to work for the defeat of
the Democratic Party nominee for any political office. If you wish to work
for the defeat of any Democratic candidate in any General Election, then you
are welcome to use someone else's bandwidth on some other website.

Democratic Underground may not be used for political, partisan, or
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activities in political races where there is no Democratic party candidate.

Do not post broad-brush smears against Democrats or the Democratic Party."

[nadinbrzezinski]

58. And I will repeat once agin

Dean is caught in the cross fire, and the DLC wants to get rid of all progresives, including Dean. this is where this talk is coming from, the DLC does not play well with others and they have pulled the party to the right, increasingly.

As to the OP. walt history will tell. We have gone down this road repeteadly in our history, and usually triangulation brings these people back and ... pulls the party to the left... I expect the same is ongoing right now by organziations such as PDA and very frustrated Democrats who will NOT vote for DLCers who are just aa bad, actually worst, than the RNC. At laest with the RNC you know you are gonna get screwed, with the DLC... it is just genlter.

Oh and is PDA making mistakes? Absolutely, so has dean and thankfully so have the DLCers, human nature we make mistakes.

(better duck now)

[madfloridian]

61. We are all caught in the crossfire, not just Dean.

I think you are being realistic that we all have something to work on, but my gripe is that a few just won't let up. It is hard to regrow a party with two sides battering.

If the battering were deserved, it would be one thing.

There is a hatred toward Dean from too many in that group to ever be overcome. I am not sure why, but I see it on many forums today. The good part is that I see people who are willing to talk about it rationally, like you, instead of just calling names.

One person stated that he would rather attack other Democrats than Dean because the Deaniacs were too annoying. So why does he not work with us instead of sliming.

Puzzles me and thanks for trying to point out the obvious, we all have things to work on.

[nadinbrzezinski]

63. Yeah but the point is I do believe the whole problem

(for dean) is the DLC... as well as the party... and we need to stop supporting these hacks,

I have stated repeatedly I will not vote for a DLCers, which actually is a step in the right direction, vote for democrats who are NOT DLCers and avoid the DLCers, if they loose enough elections they will finally loose the power that they have, which is exaggerated. As to the PDA after much thinking, they think Dean got in bed with the DLC... he did not, but impressions are everything.

So that is why he is in the cross fire

[madfloridian]

67. One or two people are saying that.

Like David Swanson and Kevin, I think. There should be accountability on all sides.

They are thinking what they want because of the tensions among the PDA factions. It is going to be dangerous to rebuilding the party, and I think Nader, the Greens, and many Kucinich supporters are involved.

Dean is not in bed with the DLC, he is doing his job, trying to keep from getting kicked out.

[nadinbrzezinski]

73. I'll repeat, impresion is everything

as to the factions, yes there are many and quite frankly we may need a temporary split, (why I keep going back to history) and that may do it

As to the Greens and Nader after doing much readying, Nader was given money et al not as a disruptor, the RNC was far more cynical, a patsy

the 2000 Coup was going to go on regardless and nader did not even consider that possibilty, quite honestly most people did not in 2000... so Nader or no nader Bush woudd have gotten his behind into the people's house.

[eridani]

174. Pulleeze, Louise!

Criticizing Dean on some issues or policies, or statements is not "hatred," ferchrissakes. It's what happenes when the grassroots gets more active and vocal, and last I heard, Dean very much wants that to happen.

[GreenArrow]

65. turn back the clock

to the 2004 Democratic Primaries:

<snip> And when supporters of Dennis Kucinich--looked to by many activists as the antiwar candidate among the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination--arrived at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) last summer, they were surprised to find out that the “big tent” of the Democratic Party was a little too small for their antiwar views.

Antiwar signs were immediately confiscated by convention officials--who Kucinich delegate Charles Underwood called “the Kerry enforcers.” “I am just very disappointed that there is no ability to express any hope for peace on the floor of this convention,” Underwood told Amy Goodman in an interview on the Democracy Now! program. “We’ve had our signs confiscated...We’ve had people that tell us to sit down and be quiet. We’ve got no particular points for peace in the platform. This is becoming an extremely narrow Democratic tent.”

He added, “It’s just that we are off message when we talk about peace. It’s that simple.” And this is how the Democratic Party treats fellow Democrats. According to a poll by the Boston Globe, 95 percent of delegates to the convention opposed the war in Iraq, yet the party adopted a pro-war platform.

<snip>

95 percent of the Delegates to the DNC favored anti war language in the platform. Not just Kucinch or Dean supporters, but 95 percent of ALL delegates. They of course did not get it, even if their position, both at the time, and in hindsight, was the correct one. In spite of that, most on the left voted for Kerry, for all the good it did.

edited to add link. http://www.counterpunch.org/schulte04232005.html

[Kralizec]

57. THEN LET IT DIE!!

That would force us to come up with a party that is actually useful.

Peace.

edit: dumb typos

[DemocratSinceBirth]

69. In Another Fifty Years When Most Of Us Are Gone A New Party Will Rise In

It's Place

[nvliberal]

132. I doubt it.

More likely than that will be the prospect of one-party rule.

[LoZoccolo]

79. Probably get a lot of people killed in a flood and a war too.

Oh wait, for a second I thought I was back in 2000...oh shoot, that stuff's already happened at the hands of party-destroyers!

[LittleClarkie]

84. Who are you willing to sacrifice on the way there

More Katrina victims and the like?

[LoZoccolo]

89. Also, you open the door for your own torture.

Only Republicans voted against the anti-torture bill; no Democrats did.

When you let a Republican win, you open the door for torture.

[mzmolly]

149. And let how many PEOPLE die in the process?

Sorry letting "it" die means Republicans have even MORE of a strangle hold on this nation. We may enter a point of no return. Don't people have a grip on the damage they've done in 5 1/2 short years?

EGADZ! Progressive is as progressive does.

[Kralizec]

150. Want to start counting lives?!

Want to count how many are being lost now because of these people. If you really want to start counting lives then I would say that more lives would be saved if we stopped wasting our time having hope in the Democratic Party and START DOING SOMETHING NOW ON OUR OWN.

And I don't mean just let the right wing have power, to just give up and roll over. What gave anyone that impression that's what I meant? No, something that will actually fight these people is what we need now!

Lives? Wow....

:mad:

edit: added second paragraph

[mzmolly]

152. Yes, lets count the lives.

Let's count the lives of people who would be alive if Bush hadn't taken the oval office in 2000.

Let us recall who is responsible for starting the war in Iraq, failing us on 911, and lying to America on a regular basis.

We have to maintain perspective - while fighting the good fight.

Peace

[Kralizec]

156. All of what you mentioned could have and should have been stopped

by the Democratic Party. Gore shouldn't have given up, as we all now know. The Dems gave complete power to Bush which he used to attack Iraq. And at every turn, though it has improved slightly lately, they have backed down. It's like a bad marriage where the husband treats his wife terribly, but the wife doesn't want to leave even though in every sense she should.

Word.

edit: closed italics

[mzmolly]

159. Give me a break!

Gore did not give up, he battled in court for months and did everything he could legally do.

The Dems did not give complete power to Bush. Bush stole power, and progressives who consider themselves to pure to vote for Democrats GAVE COMPLETE POWER TO BUSH. 149 Democrats voted against the war, and all but a handful - urged inspections - not war.

Now, I ask - what about YOUR responsibility? Do YOU have any responsibility to your fellow man?

Love that sigline by the way. :hi:

[Kralizec]

163. Oh mzmolly, mzmolly... the best i can do is a kit-kat bar...

Look, we've come a long way since Gore 2000, and definitely don't want to get caught up on a point of view of that point in history. I think Gore messed up in a lot of instances, one of the most important being challenging only certain counties in florida rather than the entire state, like they recently did in washington. the result, needless to say, was positive to the so called left. as to him giving up when the obviously biased and overrun Supreme Court made it's ruling... yes, that was legally the last place he had to go. And look where that got us. He could have rallied the people, peacefully, mind you, and truly demanded a complete recount, if not an investigation.

as for blaming "hard lefts" who didn't vote for gore, well, power to them. we're in trying times, and i wouldn't risk a vote, whether it was counted or not, to go to make nothing more than a statement. not now at least. but i don't speak for anyone else, certainly.

You say Bush stole power. At what point? Once again I point to 2000... only because that's when he took over, no? And whether they voted for or against the war, the most important vote, the vote to give the president military powers, is where they failed (all but a handful, namely Kucinich).

Thanks, I love Floyd.:hippie:

[mzmolly]

165. Gore pressed for an entire state recount.

Bush would not agree to it, thus the battle in court. And, as you know it came down to 500 votes. An independent candidate who said "Gore = Bush" got about 10,000. He lied, and people don't seem to want to hold HIM accountable for that? If he got votes without equating Gore to Bush, I'd have forgotten the akward little man existed by now. ;)

I realize that Gore could have better articulated HOW he fought but he did not want to be *ehem* "divisive."

But that's beside the point, and I tire of debating it really.

I hope you will do what it takes to return this country to the people and back toward democracy again in 06-08.

And, as for Floyd, I'm there!

Peace.

[Ksec]

71. My problem with the Dems

IS there exclusiveness.

Its like because Im a white guy who is married I must be a fkin freeper who caused this mess. Its time to stop this idiocy, I am as mucg a Democrat as anyone on this planet.

Only left leaning gays and abortion advocates need apply. The rest of us are here to carry their water.

[OnionPatch]

74. I think the whole system just stinks

I just don't see a good answer to these problems you're all talking about except to overhaul the whole system. From now on I plan to work toward two things:

1. Instant runoff voting. This will make it possible for third parties to have real chances to win. People won't have to feel they're transfering their votes to the GOP if they vote third party. It will also tend to take some of the nastiness out of campaigns because candidates will not want to alienate opponents supporters in the hope to at least get their number two vote.

2. Clean money campaign. Publicly funded campaigns. Get the money out of politics.

Until we do these things or something else that would work as well, it's my opinion that we're stuck with these kinds of conundrums so I'm focusing on these reforms.

Meanwhile, I remain a loyal Democrat and hope to change the party from the grassroots.

[GreenPartyVoter]

76. At this point all of us who aren't standing with ** need to

fix the election system. Starting with states that have been DIEBOLDED.

[LittleClarkie]

82. The vicious circle

Progressives leave so the party moves to the right so progressives call the party Republican lite, so more Progressives leave and the party moves to the right, and so on.

[welshTerrier2]

138. the other vicious circle ...

progressives vote for and work for Kerry although they wanted Kucinich and the Party moves to the right ... so progressives vote for and work for Hillary and the Party moves to the right and progressives vote for and work for ...

when all we see is a Party that continues to move right and we don't believe we have any voice in the Party, and we've tried "going along" to build credibility, what then??

for now, most of us continue to work for change WITHIN THE PARTY; for later, seeing no change, many will leave ... fool me once, shame on me ... i'm still here trying to initiate a dialog but for how long ??

the "big tent" is a lie if many of us are not represented ...

[LittleClarkie]

141. Kerry, the 11th most liberal Senator. Not exactly moving to the right.

Work for who you want. Vote Kucinich. Head for the Greens. Unlike Walt, I don't see it as a bad thing.

But I do agree with him that if progressives leave, then they won't be in the party working for the change they want. You can only work to change the party from within.

Is it that Kerry was to the right? Or because Dennis, bless him, wasn't as viable a candidate? I'm sorry, but I don't see it as left/right, but I do see that Kerry was more qualified, with a more rounded career.

That doesn't always count for much, but I don't think too many people pictured having a beer with Dennis either.

[Ksec]

85. Its solved by including those who are the heart and soul

The Labor people leaving the party has been our downfall. Weve lost millions of them. They believe we have abandoned them and are using us for votes. Thats why I think populism will work. If we dont use it they will. You need to include everyone, especially huge groups. I would be willing to bet the one group weve lost more than any other is the white middle class male. Why? Because we forgot about him,and his needs.

[madfloridian]

93. That is what Dean is doing....bringing back the base.

Dean is a strong believer in unions...he says they are the reason for the middle class. He works with them, DFA works with them.

All this crap about the party leaving people out is what he is trying to change.

I just hope the left, some of whom support anarchy, will realize their best interests lie here right now.

[dretceterini]

94. My views are more libertarian

People like Kerry and Boxer are too far left for my taste, and I view Hillary Clinton as self-righteous and dishonest as the nuts now running the show. Who does that leave?

[nadinbrzezinski]

96. propaganda is a wonderful thing

why are tehy too far left? Please do tell us

and by the way there are libertarians on the left, we call them liberals, which comes from teh word LIBER, which happens to mean FREE... so liberalism = freedom

[dretceterini]

103. Both Kerry and Boxer

are to socialist for my particular taste. I believe in humanism, but not socialism, and the left wing of the Democratic party seems to be turning further left. I dislike having to continually vote on the basis of "what choice do you have"?

[nadinbrzezinski]

118. Ok do define socialism here

(trust me when I say this, they are not socialists, and a real socialist is in the US Congress right now, Barney Franks... he is the real deal... but let us get back to basics...

So tell me what is a socialist? Lets start deconstructing the propaganda ok

[dretceterini]

148. OK

Socialism is an ideology with the core belief that a society should exist in which popular collectives control the means of power, and therefore the means of production. In application, however, the de facto meaning of socialism has changed with time. Although it is a politically loaded term, it remains strongly related to the establishment of an organized working class, created through either revolution or social evolution, with the purpose of building a classless society.

1) I have no desire to build a classless society. I have no problem with a system of classes built on abilities. I have far less concern for needs and wants.

2) In a society of "from each, according to their ability; to each according to their need", everyone claims to have plenty of need and no ability.

[nadinbrzezinski]

180. What you just gave me was the CLASSICAL definition of

Marxism.. and I mean CLASSICAL MARXISM... and I was amazed to find that you copied and pasted from Wikipedia, which is forgetting the nuances or flavors of it.

Modern socialism means better control of the commons for the benefit of the majority. In socialist societies things critical for the function of that society or the social net are controlled by the state, but this does not preclude classes or class structure, or for that matter, a class system

Look at Sweden which is the best example of a modern socialist soceety

Their health care is nationalized single payer system, so are the roads and the schools. You telling me that the government owns Volvo? No, no they don't. The workers and the employer pay service fees that go into the commons that are far higher than they are in this country. In return they have health care, a safety net, and the security that nobody will starve to death, or freeze to death.

They believe that this makes them a stronger country, but the control of the means of production is NOT in the hards of the state... but in private hands.

I will argue that NONE of our politicos, the ones you mentioned, are Classical Marxists, of for that matter Leninist-Socialists, or Stalinist Socialists (yes there are differences)

Now you have a problem with national single payer health care? This is the most lefty position Senator Clinton ever took. She made the argument at the time that it would strengthen us as a nation... and given the stats from national health trends, she was right. Chew on this... our child survival rates are LOWER than in Cuba, as well as our national vaccination rates. Our outcomes in most medical conditions are almost the same as Canada's, (they trade back and forth) but we spend double per person than the Canadians do.

Oh and I will ask the question, is it moral for a nation as rich as the United States for 45 million of its citizens to have the ER as their main means of health care? If you say yes, you are expressing your calvinist views...

Oh and one more thing, you think we live in a capitalist society? If you said yes, no we don't, not at least as defined by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations, and what we have is CORPORATE WELFARE. Oh and if you want we can discuss these issues in detail... among the many things I had to read, in school included: Adamn Smith, (the whole book), Marx and Engels Das Kapital (fortunately not all seven volumes), Ricardo on teh economy, and Keynes, among others.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

194. These words have no meaning anymore..

But Sweeden is not socialist... It is a very generous welfare state that uses the riches capitalism provides to fund it....

[dretceterini]

202. As is...

Italy, France and many other countries. I don't believe in ANY form of welfare, be it for corporations or members of the public.

[nadinbrzezinski]

204. Which is what many in this countrry equate with socialism

which is NOT pure, but neither is our capitalism

Get it now? Why I gave Sweeden as an example? IF it was a pure socialist nation, as the person believes by Wikis definition, Volvo should be in the hands of teh gov;ment, right?

;-)

Of course there is this thing called pure theory and practice, they usually don't look like the theory at all

[eridani]

175. You meant Bernie Sanders, right? n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

181. Right I was going damn!

he is a good man

[DemocratSinceBirth]

193. I Don't Think Barney Is A Socialist*

I put an asterik next to the term because nobody agrees what these terms mean anymore....



E-mail Congressman Frank's office and ask him then pm me the results...


Barney's a garden variety liberal but not a socialist...

[Ksec]

98. Now when I say this I am NOT saying to abandon anyone

anyone or leave any group by the wayside. Im saying to include the labor sect and that doesnt mean by ignoring any other part of our big tent.

[paineinthearse]

90. Work locally

There is absolutely no excuse for every member of DU not to be at least a member of their town or ward committee, if not an officer.

With that, I am off to my town committee meeting.

Keep up the good fight.

5th nomination.

[NAO]

97. The Democratic Party AND those on the left who leave will be defeated

that's what happens.

Imagine how wonderful it would have been if the nut-case-hardcore cons had left the Republican party after Goldwater's defeat in 1964. We could have taken down the two splinter groups (moderate Repubs and hard-right repubs) and had a Left/Liberal field day!!!

And that's exactly what would happen if anyone on the left leaves the Democratic Party. They'll get creamed by the Repubs, and so will the Democratic Party, whether it chooses to move hard left, move to the right, or stay where it's at right now. If a group leaves it, we're all doomed.

[sepia_steel]

99. i see a lot more people coming than going.

and if it does go any further right, I'm outta here. And so are many others.

This 'time to move right' BULLSHIT, no offense, is really pissing me off. It's an insult. The only place I'm movin' is more left - everytime someone posts shit like this.

edit: okay, sorry for blowing up. 'moving to the right' is just an idea that sickens me.

[Ksec]

101. Do you think including labor is a move to the right?

[sepia_steel]

104. No, I think moving to the right is a move to the right.

If by taking care of the working people we are protecting their rights and doing it fairly, than I consider that to be in keeping with Democratic values. edit: Taking care of every day people, not the RICH, is part of what we're about.

[Ksec]

106. I agree

Can you tell me where the party is going right? Are we ignoring or dissing people ? Im not being sarcastic or anything, I seriously would like to know and maybe I can work to fix it. My opinion of including labor is NOT saying at the expense of any other area. I simply believe this is an area where we have lost huge voting blocks and thats been part of our move to the minority.

[sepia_steel]

110. The party is going right

where we have people like Hillary Clinton pandering to both sides, and anytime an injustice occurs that Dems don't speak out about. I am proud of them lately, but there is all-around TOO MUCH SILENCE.

Also, count me in on the DLC Sucks wagon. :)

I think people get lost between policy and principle. Watching out for the working class isn't a Right-wing thing to do, it's watching out for the working class. People associate the POLICY of LABOR with the right wing, though. If we truly represent the PEOPLE, they will see it and they will come.

[Skidmore]

111. Labor is moving anywhere. It's standing still

and shooting itself in the foot.

[Ksec]

121. I think alot of labor has moved to the GOP.

Not the Unions per say, but the union members and labor in general.
Its that segment thats left the party more than any other, and its because they believe we left THEM.

Look it up. The number one segment to leave this party is middle class workers . In my opinion thats why weve become the minority, more than any other reason.

Im not saying go right, Im saying to start working on this group. Its huge. Highlighting Workers rights will do wonders for this party. Putting attention on how outsourcing is hurting middle class Americans, those are the things that bring victory back to us.

[onenote]

102. another way to ask the same question

So what happens to the people on the left when they leave the Democratic Party?

The answer, as Walt has explained, is that they folks on the left will get fucked over.

onenote

[sepia_steel]

107. i just don't see very many leaving.

If anything, all events seem to be helping to enforce their ideals. That's the way it works for me. I'm not planning on going ANYWHERE, because I don't want to see it go to the Right.

[GreenArrow]

108. so I guess that the answer

is that we are fucked coming and going.

[Skidmore]

112. Wait till the BFEE

serve you Jebbie on a platter. Think you're experiencing pain now?

ha!

[bunny planet]

128. Totally agree. Don't take DINO for an answer. We are the Democratic party.

Let's make it happen, don't desert the party, change it from within.

Are you going to run for office Walt? I read a thread where you mentioned it the other day.

[nvliberal]

129. I can't argue

with this reasoning.

There IS no option in a two-party system to go third party. It's a wasted vote and only helps the fascists.

[Just Me]

135. Rephrase, Walt. What happens to the left/liberals if they abandon,...

,...the Democratic party.

At this point, it's not about the Democratic party, it's about our survival.

[Cults4Bush]

144. Liberals? I know you were asking Walt, but I hope you don't mind my

thoughts on this.

First off I agree with you somewhat the world is counting on the Dems to win something because America is turning every other country into its chamber pot.

As far as what happens to Liberals... well look at it this way the Moderates, Centrists and DLC types did so little to protect us from the ravages of the right that we are basically left with nothing to lose other than humanity. Leftists tend to have humanity in spades as far as I have seen.

So we wont be leaving the Dems and I think those of us staying and recruiting have every intention of making our wishes and fears heard and acknowledged and not ridiculed to the point where any rightwing hack can call us traitors, america haters, terrorist supporters and encourage not only our incarceration but our deaths.

Liberals not moderates are the ones who have been threatened with physical harm and had false accusations launched over and over again with little or no back up from the "new middle" Dems. That new middle is far to the right of where it was 5 years ago and all Centrists worthy of that label should be screaming blue hell to get it back there before these freaking psychos on the right start doing some awful things to those Centrists fellow Americans and supposedly fellow party members.

[lonestarnot]

162. Now I think this is crap Walt Starr! Worst post I've ever seen you post!

[eridani]

167. I just got here, and I'm not going anywhere

Like most issue junkies, I pretty much ignored electoral politics, and have come to believe that Greens and Libertarians really aren't serious about organizing to win on a national level. (I have no problems with them if they focus on local races with a clear strategy of winning, though.)

[MojoXN]

173. "...how the the Left ended up enabling a Nazi victory in Germany."

Good fucking point.

Reichstag Fire = 9/11

"We need breathing room!" = Iraq + Afghanistan + soon to come Iran.

I would continue, but preaching to the converted has never been a hobby of mine. We need to push the Democratic Party firmly and finally to the left, or abandon it. It's almost to the point that we're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. My $.02...

MojoXN

[question everything]

176. That's how Nixon came to power in 1968

according to an excellent program about the Sixties on PBS the other week.

So many Democrats were demoralized after RFK assassination, after the Chicago convention that they just stayed home, even though toward the end Humphrey did talk about getting out of Vietnam.

This is one lesson from history that we need to learn. We don't even need to go that far. Look at all the Naderites in 2000. Has any of them even showed a sense of remorse?

[ourbluenation]

178. when many on the left leave? Simple - The Rethuglicans win again...

Havn't we learned the Nadar lesson yet?

[cry baby]

179. I feel like I must vote Democratic to save my America.

If there is a split in this party, we are doomed to whatever the repubs give us. We can't save the country if we don't win the elections.

I'll be holding my nose and voting for any Democrat (even DLC, if I have to).

[Oilwellian]

182. If the Dems don't react to the crimes of this administration..

they are complicit. Period. I better hear some yelling when the indictments are handed down.

[Skidmore]

195. Hear! Hear!!

[WilliamPitt]

185. *cough*

www.pdamerica.org

[Selatius]

187. The problem is corporate campaign dollars

It doesn't matter how many voters there are. The point is in an election system where candidates must solicit money for their campaigns, the ones with the most money always have a competitive advantage. It takes thousands of working class folks to outraise a few millionaires capable of buying ad space on radio, tv, and newspapers for the corporate-dependent candidate they bankroll. It takes too much discipline to rally that many people for such a sustained period of time. The only reason why the Democrats outraised the Republicans was because of Bush and the damn war. If this were any other Republican president, I doubt it would be the same case as far as outraising them is concerned.

The reason why the Republican party moved so far to the right probably has more to do with the network of think tanks, institutes, and foundations established to buttress the party and shift it to a more corporate agenda. The financiers of this network, this "labyrinth" have been, in large, wealthy industrialist families such as the Bradleys or the Koch family. Even the Coors family is in on this.

They were supremely intelligent on playing on the religious right to curry their votes. The religious right may think they have the power, but the reality of the matter is that they were simply used as a decoy to divide the country on social issues, while the power of corporations is being combined with the power of the state. They were used the same way Christianity and the Jews were used by the Nazis to distract the population away from the fact that the corporation was becoming their master.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

197. Half the eligible electorate doesn't vote.

Probably because American politics aren't conservative enough. :eyes:

[DemocracyInaction]

205. You absolutely right. Want to fight?? Try standing firm.

Your message just hit home for some reason. We are always in a tizzy about the right, the wingers, the Freepers, blah, blah. But our fight must be to keep our left flank strong. Walt is totally correct that if the more liberal leave, the party has no where to go but to the center/right. And, he is absolutely correct that that is just how the take over the the Republican Party came about. Fight for that flank, strengthen it and let the rest of this party know we are here defending their butts. I would now like to see that left flank become the aggressive, take the fight to them, brigade.

[PowerToThePeople]

218. If I remember correctly...

You threatened to leave DU not too long ago after seeing a poll here where many DU'ers were socialist and/or anti-capitalists. I think this place is full of far-left leaner's. Therefore, it looks to me as if, they are becoming more of a political voice in this country than the days they had to fear for their lives. I would like to thank Al Gore and his invention of the internet for that.

The extreme left won't do anything but get stronger in the future, for it is the most humane in its thinking and ideology.

[Perky]

221. Here is the likely scenario

Lefties leave in droves to let say a New progressive party or even the greens. Impacts:

1) Lefty party and their leadership get 25% od the the national vote but pick up Massachusetts elecotrall.

2) The Democrats, no longer tied to the liberals cast itself as the party of the middle. And winds up attracting lots and lots of disaffected Republican in the Burbs and the south.

3) Without that base of support, the GOP moves harder to the right and becomes the party of Neo-Consd social constructionists (some would call them fundie whackos) They would pick up a few staes in the Deep SOuth plus Utah, Idaho , Montana and Wyoming.


Bottom line is that it would very likely put a Dem in the WHitehous becuase it makes the Democrats a reasonable alternative to the Pinkos and the Zealots.


Now having said that it would never happen... Liberal leaders realize that the electoral math gets pretty whcked if they do this....

[converted_democrat]

224. Most of the upset Dems I know feel abandoned..........

Not only do they feel the Dem party is moving right, they feel the Dems have abandoned them for corporate interests. In my county we have a monthly get together for all Dems, where we meet and share ideas. After the Bankruptcy Bill was signed, 7 members just stopped coming, and have not been back since. Our biggest (in our county) selling point has been that we are the party of the working man, or the party that stands up for the little guy, and this is now a hard point to sell.

[confludemocrat]

228. That is right on the money

the bottom, baseline fact of the party's reason for being is no longer guaranteed with that vote, and for those of us who were farther left than that there is really very little left otherwise
The last reason I had to stay in the party given it's retreat on civil rights, the war, was the supreme court and with Leahy's capitulation, I am through with this bunch of liberal, always-positioning, calculating-based-on-fear bunch of white male suits

[Pryderi]

225. Working Families Party

The Power of Fusion Politics

by ALYSSA KATZ



snip

The volunteers knocked on doors street by street; in the housing projects, hall by hall. The day John Kerry lost, the Working Families Party helped Soares take the job of Albany District Attorney away from a machine Democrat notorious for condemning drug offenders to extreme prison terms. With the rallying cry "Reform Rockefeller Drug Laws Now," the Soares campaign got voters to the polls by tapping into public outrage at seeing lives destroyed and billions wasted by the justice system. Soares had won the primary as a Democrat. In the general election he was still a Democrat, but on the ballot he was something else, too: the candidate of the Working Families Party.

A few months earlier, the WFP operation hit Westchester County. Volunteers trawled suburban streets delivering the message: "We're telling State Senator Nick Spano that New Yorkers need a raise in the minimum wage." A few residents cursed and slammed doors. But more often than not they agreed, and received a sheet of paper, a pen and a chance to handwrite a plea to the Senator. "It's about time!" exclaimed an expensively groomed woman as she took a clipboard.

That wasn't the first or last time Spano, a high-ranking Republican, heard from his constituents--and the greeting wasn't always so polite. A few weeks earlier, Spano had endured an "accountability session," a public event community organizers use to extract commitments from elected officials. In a YMCA hall packed with some 150 union members and other activists, filled with cries of "$5.15 is not enough!" Spano expressed surprise at the turnout--and, knowing he had little choice, signed a poster-size pledge to push legislation raising New York's minimum wage to $7.10. "I am on your side," Spano declared. "I will deliver this personally to the majority leader."

snip

In exchange for the endorsement of Spano and other Republicans in a tight race, state Republicans relented after years of opposition and hiked the minimum wage, which raised pay for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050912/katz

[confludemocrat]

227. typical covert pro-kerry, clinton, biden, lieberman spew

"you must stay with us because if you don't think of how much worse things can get"

this is the 2005 version of what was said during te campaign last year with "vote for Kerry inserted in there after "must"

[Greyhound]

229. If we assume your premise is correct, it seems to me that it will lead to

the democratic party becoming less relevant and less effective (as if it could be less effective). This will cause a vacuum into which another party will rise. About time I say. Who is this generations Huey Long?

[Marr]

230. Yeah, they'll move to the right. And they'll lose.

Better to keep the left from leaving the party to begin with, yes? And that means marginalizing the DLC.

Sorry, but that "pinch your nose and take one for the team" shit doesn't fly with me anymore. Kerry was the last beneficiary of that idea. No more. If the Democrats decide to let the DLC to continue steering the ship, they'll get what they deserve: continued failure.

[Marr]

231. What happens to the Democratic Party when the DLC leaves?

It gets better.

You tell me who's arguing from a position of strength. The DLC is meaningless, and their agenda and opinions should be marginalized. If they don't like it- hey- they can always go join the Republican Party. The DLC has more in common with the Republican Party than progressives anyway.

[LittleClarkie]

236. Yeah, but, the DLC ain't threatening to leave

but some in the leftmost part of the Dem party are threatening to go Green or somesuch.

Why would the DLC leave then, seeing as some folks are being kind enough to give them more elbow room and all.

[Marr]

237. Why would they leave? They're steering the damn ship.

They demand the right to lead, of course.

[LittleClarkie]

238. Well that's the point, isn't it. So why did you ask the question

if you knew the answer?

[KnowerOfLogic]

232. I guess the dem party better stop moving right and driving libs away. nt