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I don't know. Should it? I say it must, or die.
Somewhere in my initial haze last night, I posted not a threat, but what I believe to be true: That if the Dem party doesn't reinvent and reshape itself around its progressive roots, we're going to see a mass exodus of disenfranchised Dems. Even the Greens voted (more or less) in lockstep with us with this time, and, if the figures I'm hearing are correct, so did the overwhelming majority of gay and lesbian voters.
I believe, however, this was the last free ride the DLC will get from these and other left-of-the-left groups if the party fails to make a concerted move back to the left. I'm not saying the Dems have to write legalized recreational marijuana use, polyamorous marriages, and public nudity into the platform, but we are talking major "paradigm shift" here.
And it's not that the average Dem is so different from the average far-lefty; I would challenge the most right-leaning Democrat and the most dedicated Green to compare laundry lists and discover how many issues on which they are not in general agreement. I guarantee that the similarities will far outweigh the differences.
This is the lesson we need to learn from the Republicans -- not how to fight dirty (we're not wimps; it's simply not in our nature, or we would not be progressives), but to find that common ground. Granted, that's more difficult for us, as we are far more diverse, and do not share a black-and-white world view. (And thank God for that.)
But -- contrary to what Senator Kerry just finished saying -- it is not the nation that needs to heal, half so much as it is the Democratic party that needs to heal. This "herding of cats" has got to stop. We spend so much time trying to mollify everyone, we please no one. (And take it from me, a lesbian who has nearly had a stroke trying to refrain from ripping the entire party on its mushy, meaningless, patronizing, half-assed "support" of equal rights for LGBT people. Support what is right, and to hell the paralyzing fear that you'll offend some soccer mom in Arkansas. The Civil Rights Act wasn't exactly popular, was it? And yet it was right.)
Finally, there is a lesson we need to learn from no less than our stellar neighbors to the north. Repeatedly, over many years, I have heard much self-deprecating humor from Canadians about the lack of a "Canadian culture." It's a joke, of course; there is certainly a Canadian culture, and Canadians know it. Where the humor stops and the irritation begins is when we USians, in our characteristic Yank-centric way, define what it means to be "Canadian" as "everything that's not American." How arrogant of us.
The lesson to be learned is this: We Democrats must stop trying to define ourselves by what we are not, and figure out just who and what we are.
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