Hm. Looks like someone never quite grasped the concept behind the phrase "big tent."
For similar dunderheadedness, take a look at this piece by David Lindorff: "Democrats Face a Shock in November '08: They Could Lose." Well, duh. For months now, I've felt that a loss is a near-certainty. Of the Dem candidates, Lindorff writes:
In fact none of them fares particularly well against Republican candidates...Again, I've made the same point many times. If the Republican candidates poll surprisingly well after seven years of Republican mis-rule, what conclusion do we draw? The answer is obvious: The electorate is simply more conservative than those enmeshed in the progressive ghetto care to admit. Not even a surgical operation can dislodge from the American mind the insane belief that lower taxes on the rich will translate into higher government revenue and balanced budgets.
Yet Lindorff makes the bizarre argument that the popularity of conservative candidates means that Democrats should ignore the center and court that all-important 2% Kucinich vote!
Progressives have gone nuts. Totally fucking nuts.
Added note: Here's Lindorff again, announcing that impeachment is "back on the table." His sole piece of evidence: The Scottie McClellan quote that everyone now agrees did not mean what progressives initially thought it meant.
4 comments:
If given half a chance, even the lowest common denominator voter can understand the differences that separate Republican policies from Democratic policies. Unfortunately and probably tragically, everyone only gets the branded versions and the personalities that match or don't match the abstractions of 'progressive', 'liberal', 'libertarian', 'conservative', and of course, 'Democrat' and 'Republican'. And also but not limited to: tax and spend, law and order, national security, privatize, welfare queens, forced bussing, national debt, federal deficit, trade deficit, illegal aliens, e. coli, school prayer, health care, health insurance, health coverage, health care insurance, health insurance coverage, health care coverage.
Democrats vote for tax-supported public roads and highways, and they realize that individuals can't build them or maintain them. Democrats ensure that mail can be delivered anywhere much much cheaper than an individual can deliver it. Democrats make possible police and fire departments that protect everyone and realize that everyone has to pay for them with taxes. Democrats voted to pool the tax-based resources to put communication satellites in orbit because no individual could do it. Democrats and Republicans alike believe the Hobbesian notion that without society and order, the life of mankind is nasty, brutish, and short. But only Democrats vote to regulate our social and public services, to guard against disease, disaster, and catastrophe, which requires tax money. Democrats voted for public education and promised that society would pay for it, and that included the land-grant state colleges and universities more than 100 years ago, and the community colleges more recently. Yeah, sure, America was built and subsidized by slave labor, indentured servants, and miners who owed their souls to the company store. Democrats voted to outlaw those nasty and brutish practices and voted to replace them with a progressive tax system and laws that granted rights to workers. Republicans are nasty and brutish child molesters, and Libertarians prefer only to watch as long as they don't have to pay admission.
The United States of America of our imagination, and the world's, has been a Democratic experiment, and became a success story beyond anyone's wildest imagination. Voting Republican is always antisocial and for most Republican voters is suicidal. And also nuts.
Why is it that the Republicans win?
While it is true that they cheat, that can only account for victory in races that were extremely close to begin with, and when you look at the registration figures, Democrats far outnumber Republicans.
Republicans however, have discovered where the base of their voters live and how to motivate those voters to get to the polls in large numbers. They suck up to leaders of far-right religious groups, claim to support the "Christian" values agenda, and use all the code words and symbols to let voters know they are racist. And it works.
Democrats, on the other hand, while knowing who forms their base and which voters need to come out in droves to give them victory, often take those voters for granted rather than demonstrate commitment to their concerns. It doesn't work.
There are various rationales put forward to explain this. One suggests that Dems need funding from wealthy and corporate interests and can't go too "lefty" on the issues for fear of losing that funding. Another suggests that the mainstream media will unrelentingly attack any Democrat who sounds too "populist". Another suggests that Democrats must run centrist campaigns to be successful, although that theory is running out of steam because it isn't working.
Ultimately in our Electoral College system, the winning candidate MUST get out every possible potential voter in the crucial swing states. To do that, the core constituencies must be motivated not merely by fear of the bad Republican but by desire for the good Democrat. I don't see how that desire can be created by bland, centrist campaigns and equivocal stands on crucial issues. Emulating Kucinich may not be the answer, but at least someone should be asking the question.
It seems as if Lindorff has lost his mind. Which is sad, really, since up until a year ago he was one of few voices making an honest, reasonable arguement for impeachment.
But this, along with his recent love letter about Ron Paul (the standard "Ron Paul will end the war in Iraq! So what if he wrecks the social saftey nets at home? The Dems all suck!"--notice not one stab at the Repubs...) has made me angry at him. He seems to be taking out his anger at only the Democrats, while leaving the Repubs alone...which is the standard behavior of the Purist.
The sad truth is that there are more moderates and centrists, period. They make up the majority of the voting block. The purists out there who call for the elimination of them from the Democratic Party have obviously forgotten the ugly truth from the defeat of McGovern and the victory of Clinton.
Here it is...America is not going to go all the way to the left. America will not go all the way to the right. The majority of voters are IN THE MIDDLE--ie, MODERATES AND CENTRISTS. You don't like that? Tough. That's how it is, and it doesn't look set to change anytime soon. The candidates who can reach out to them are guaranteed victory. Clinton did that, and won twice. Gore did that, and won (until Bush stole Florida, and also due to the stupidity of the "They're all the same" crowd that ran after Nader).
The base of the Democratic Party--the true-blue liberals--is only around 25% of the voting population. Of that, the PPs make up only 2% at best. We cannot win with that.
Joe is right, sadly, that there is still a conservative mood in the country. It comes from the very successful effort to ram the message home through the MSM and other venues that Dems are tax and spend, are vile hippie wanna-bees, that they want to take all guns away--in short, all Dems are immoral bastards. It doesn't help that we Liberals never matched that media machine.
AitchD, you were right in your post about what the Democrats really stand for, and the utter callousness of the Republicans and Libertarians (which is why I say screw Ron Paul). Sadly, you are one of the few lone voices of reason in a field of nutjobs.
Marc, thanks for the good cheer. I tried to distill the 2 parties into their pure essences. I am a purist and a progressive beyond boredom.
Mind if I disagree about Clinton's victory in 1992? He didn't win so much as Bush lost. Bush didn't wage much of a campaign. It's my belief that he expected to win by electronic ballot switching, which had been field-tested since 1987 (Google "Ronnie Dugger" and try to find his 1988 New Yorker piece); but Perot's last-minute decision/switch to re-enter his candidacy upset the Bush apple cart, which depended on an either/or ballot, and depended on Perot's disappearance -- which had been accomplished earlier, temporarily -- because Perot understood well the intricacies of computer fraud since he owned the lion's share of the health-insurance industry's software proprietary rights. Cannon says I'm insane for all that, he thinks if it were at all true, then Perot would have gone public. I didn't point out that there's a reason Perot is wealthy beyond counting and Cannon is independently poor.
Aside from my silly theory (for which there is overwhelming evidence), the pop version for Clinton's victory and Bush's defeat was reduced to these two oversimplifications: the MSM failed to acknowledge that the 1992 recession had abated, and more destructive, Bush had been caught with his foot in his mouth for having to 'raise taxes' after giving his "read my lips, no new taxes" speech.
I'll say again, the Nader-hater bandwagon is misdirection and always was. It's beyond me why otherwise reasonable people can't see Karl Rove's stinky ink behind the canard that "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush". Jeezuz! 250,000 Democrats in Florida voted for Bush (or were counted as such). That dumb motto certainly appealed to independents and Republicans who liked Ralph Nader and subliminally voted for Bush because of the coded message -- not because of the strained, illogically implied 'strategy'. They heard "if you like Ralph Nader, vote for George Bush". I don't know, I don't know, I really don't know. But I'm not gonna believe that the typical American voter is savvy, intelligent, or well-informed because the typical American voter is the opposite.
That's why I want the differences between the parties to be reduced to their simplest terms in any campaign for persuasion.
It's okay. When the campaign really begins after the conventions, only child molesters will want to vote for the Republicans. Really, whenever there's a Republican candidate holding a rally and giving a speech, latex gloves will be passed around to anyone who'll shake that candidate's hand.
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