General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: In 18 years since Naders run, what has been accomplished by attacking the Dem party from the left? [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Our nominees all ran as bland, passionless technocratic centrists who refused to defend the word liberal or any progressive ideals.
They all stressed balanced budgets...Dukakis promised a 6% annual increase in the war budget.
And there were no candidates further to the right of Mondale or Dukakis who'd have had any greater appeal in '84 or '88.
There wasn't even a single such candidate who managed to take most of the "Super Tuesday" states in that era.
And the bleeding wasn't stopped.
Congress was lost and bigger cuts in social services happened in the Nineties than under Reagan. Which was unforgiveable.
The one thing any Democratic president has an obligation to do is to protect and defend the poor when they are under attack from the right wing and the wealthy. Once you desert the poor, what else do you stand for that even matters?
I'm glad we got RBG, but ANY Dem, running a strong, confident campaign that defended the Democratic base, could have beaten #41 in 1992 and appointed her. We could have beaten him by nominating Jim Hightower(who had been repeatedly elected to statewide office in otherwise "red" Texas and who was only beaten in '94 because it was a GOP "wave" year and because he was smeared by ads implying he was soft on flag burning, of all things), or Harkin, or even Brown. We didn't have to repent for ever significantly disagreeing with Reaganomics.
Besides which
If it had been, the Eighties and Nineties wouldn't have seen the election to the Senate of some of the most progressive Dems in U.S. history-Paul Simon, Paul Wellstone, and Tom Harkin,