IMO things are getting BETTER for liberals and progresives, not worse

[Armstead]

I posted this on anotehr thread, but thought it's put it up on its own too.

We do a lot of peeing and moaning these days about how things are getting worse. I do it myself at times. And there is certainly a lot of reason to feel that way.

But I do think liberals and progressives have a lot to take heart in too. We ought to appreciate the ways in which things have been moving in a better direction, and may well be part opf a pendulum swing back to sanity.

Here's how I see it.

Unlike some on this board, I see the 1990's as the REAL Dark Ages for the Democratic Party and the real cause of the cause of the mess we're presently in. That's when the Democratic Party fell down on the job. It had the chance to reverse the dark course of the 1980's, but instead, it was complicit in the GOP message and the same CON job with a nicer face on it. Democrats enabled the Conservative Revolution by echoing too many of the corporater CONservative assumptions and policies.

There was a liberal and progressive counter-movement in the 1990's, and some Democratic politicians who kept the flame alive, whether it was the liberalism of Ted Kennedy or the more progressive reformers like Wellstone and the House progressive Caucus. They raised valid criticisms of things like corporate consolidation, the undermining of workers rights, NAFTA, globalization, Clinton's handling of Iraq, the draconian nature of "welfare reform," the growing health care crisis, etc. They warned about the growing class divisions, erosion of the middle and working class and dangers of concentration of power and wealth.

But progressives and librals were marginalized and ignored and kept in a corner in the 1990's. They were treated by the Democratic establishment as a small nuisance. Even diehard traditional liberals like Ted Kennedy were treated like the embarassing crazy uncle in the closet.

That set the scene for the divide that erupted in the 2000 election, and the current fault-lines within the Democratic Party and the left in general. And it has been the backdrop of the problems and tussles today.

But, despite appearances, I believe things ARE finally moving in a better direction. Over the last five years, the progressives and liberals have grown from being a small mosquito into a growing political force that really has been putting the Democratic Establishment on notice that they can't take these things for granted anymore.

In other words, the issues that liberals and progressives were trying unsuccessfully to raise in the 90's have broken out to become part of the mainstream political debate and agenda. Even folks like Lou Dobbs on CNN, who was a big cheerleader for the corporate con job in the 1990's, is now talking on economic issues in a way that almost sounds like Paul Wellstone and Bernie Sanders.

That's not denying two significant problems. One is the obvious power and obnoxiousness of the GOP. The other is the calcified elements of the Democratic Establishment that continues to want to keep the lid on the kettle and perpetuate the same old, same old....Both of them also are in cahoots with the corporate machine and its media.

But as bad and intractable as things still often seem, I believe the forces of Good are on the ascendency, both within the political system, and in the larger society at large. The momentum is there, and we have to keep building on that at all levels with a positive belief that we can succeed, and are already succeeding in many respects.

[katmondoo]

1. I wish I could believe that.

The Vice president shoots a guy in the face and heart and he gets a standing ovation. This is only one of many WTF'S It goes on and on.

[Armstead]

3. To quote a great man "Keep your eyes on the prize"

Don't get distracted by the sideshows.

First of all, he got cheered by an audience of his homnetown cronies.

And what do you suppose would have happened if Cheney had done that on 2001 or 2002? There would have been none of the press hubub, and people would have been afraid to say anything critical or humnorous about Our Protector in public.

[raccoon]

30. self delete nt

[European Socialist]

2. Bush has been in the dumper for the last year, yet the ruling class....

agenda seems stronger than ever. It's almost like the GOP are thumbing their nose at popularity in favor of corrupt power. I think the outcome of this NSA issue will be the bellwether of things to come for the U.S.

[Armstead]

4. Compare to the 80's and 90's

There was nary a peep of audible dissent or opposition.

[Goldensilence]

6. it's not just corruption

it's in the name of class warfare.

[RandomKoolzip]

5. I'm with you.

I just don't feel the sense of panicky urgency I felt in 2003-2004. I mean, our problems are still serious, and we need to fight and fight hard, but I remember feeling, in the run-up to the Iraq War and the year that followed, terribly paranoid and beset by hopelessness. It seemed as if DU and a few other obscure websites were the only place in the whole US that liberals could be found. But it seems lately that the numbers are improving, and that the beast is ever so slowly re-awakening (the progress is so slow that many will choose not to acknowledge that they see it stirring).

There IS a resistance to the conservative takeover, and it's becoming more effective, even if its leaders in the actual legislative body of the US choose to ignore it. They will have to take notice, however, if they wish to remain relevant.

[Armstead]

13. And that's basically the point, IMO

We have to keep pushing so the "leaders" in bodies that translate social pressure into policy can't ignore us any longer.

[Karmageddon]

7. I agree, and I disagree....

In a lot of ways, the right wing is as strong as ever, and in a lot of ways, they seem to be flailing about in the final desperate throes.

However, in saying that, I recall rummy saying the same thing about the Iraqi resistance. It may be that the neo-cons are starting to get on the defensive, but that doesn't make them weak, and it doesn't make them less dangerous. If anything, it makes them more dangerous to the nation and the world, like cornered rats.

Over all, I see things finally starting to turn in the right direction. But we all have to remember that we're trying to change the direction of an aircraft carrier (or oil tanker - choose whichever metaphor you find more appropriate) moving at full speed. Thus far we've been trying to accomplish that goal by sticking our individual oars in the water - a slow, painful, difficult process - but one that, with patience, strength, and determination, can happen - hopefully before we hit the reef. It is, in it's own way, a rebellion, even a revolution. Dangerous, scary, difficult, and risky - just like anything else worth doing.

What I see as a good sign is that the revolution is finally underway. There is a long hard fight ahead of us, but the fight has finally begun. That in itself is a sign of progress. Yeah, we're still getting our asses kicked, but at least we're in the fight.

When I was a kid my older brothers used to beat the crap out of me on a regular basis, as big brothers will do.... then one day I was bigger than them.

Now that I think of it, the ones that used to beat me up are fucking republicans.

[Armstead]

8. To build on your analogy -- Enough oars equals an engine

That to me is the goal -- to harness all of the variuous shades of discontent about both CONservatism and Centrist Complacency so that the left half of the spectrum once again has a political engine to represent us. That should be a goal that everyone from moderate liberal to "left" progressives can and should agree on....And I think's it's starting to take shape.

But it will be a long slog, and the otehr side is not going to go away.


(BTW, I used to beat up my younger brother relentlessly when we were kids. Now he's about 6 '3 and 190 lbs and I'm about 5'11 and 140 pounds. I'm much nicer to him now. :) )

[Karmageddon]

12. Yup. and we're adding more oars to the engine every day.

[Doctor_J]

26. We are adding oars while the GOP adds superchargers

[lancdem]

9. I think the future is bright, too

[Armstead]

10. "The future 's so bright I gotta wear shades"

To quote the song by I-don't know-who.

I don't know about shade-wearing bright, but I do think the sun is poking out from behind the clouds anyway.

[Karmageddon]

11. Not sure about the shades yet, and I'm not sure it won't get darker before

...it gets brighter, but I see things finally starting to happen. Now is not the time to give up or back down. Now is the time to fight back harder than ever.

To use another song analogy (not sure by who the blues artist was),
"It ain't how many times a man gets knocked down, but how many times he gets back up."

By the way, the song you referrec to is by Timbuk3.

[snowbear]

14. Nice post Armstead! And it's great we JUST won races in NH, TX, VA, & KY!

This is a great post with reminders that we ARE making headway!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2463274

Texas ---- Kentucky ---- New Hampshire ---- Virginia ----

[Armstead]

15. "Slooooowly I turned-- Step by Step, Inch by inch......"

Didja ever see that sketch, I think it was Abbot and Costello? Niagra Falls.

Anyway, although we'd all like dramatic overnight change, the truth is we're going to have to settle for small, individual victories that accumulate until it becomes a pronounced trend.

"Niagra Falls....Slowly I turned, inch by inch...."

[snowbear]

16. Yeah, I did...

:hug: ~~ ~~ :hug:

[Douglas Carpenter]

17. absolutely agree

and the DLC did not invent the so-called "centrist" strategy. It has dominated the party in every single national election without any exceptions whatsoever since corporate-lobbyist Robert Strauss became DNC Chair in 1973 after the 1972 landslide defeat and threw away the small donor list, moved away from grassroots orientation and marginalized progressives and liberals.
see link: http://www.jregrassroots.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t12360.html

Only in the last few years have liberals and progressives started to pull themselves back together again.

These things take time.

[Armstead]

21. Yeah, I remember Sen. Fred Harris vs. Jimmy Carter

Harris was the progressive populist candidate for the Democratic nomination and Jimmy Carter was seen as the conservative candidate.

[Douglas Carpenter]

31. I think it took George W. Bush to get progressives moving again

as a force within the Democratic Party.. They have essentially been marginalized and in disarray since November 1972

[Lexingtonian]

18. yep

You can sort of tally up how wings of each Party burned out and were destroyed during the past 20 years.

Democrats retook the Senate and with it all of Congress in November 1986. There was the Bush Sr. moderate Republican wavelet in 1988 but with the end of the Cold War in 1989, they more or less flamed out in '90 and especially '92 against conservative Democrats. The S&L scandal was a part of it. Conservative Democrats got crushed badly by Gingrich's conservative Republicans in '94 and '96. The House Bank scandal played a role in it. Moderate Democrats in turn crushed Gingrich and a bunch of wacko conservative extremists in '98 and '00, in the wake of their Whitewater abuses and Lewinsky scandal overreaching.

Moderate Democrats got beaten by hardline Right Republicans in '02 and '04. There wasn't an ethics scandal, it's that they got elected in the late Nineties to squeeze out Gingrich and his bunch that wanted to turn the clock back to the Fifties. Bush and his hardliner Right buddies wanted to refight Vietnam and pick up the Nixon mantle of the late Sixties and early Seventies, and the moderate Dems' campaign argument in '02 missed the point and didn't really register well in '04 either. I'm not quite sure of how to account for the demise of the Left (i.e. union/labor) wing of the Democratic Party, maybe it was defeated in 1980 or 1984. But it wasn't a wing with potential to dominate its Party in the Nineties or since.

So in November '04 the Parties had one intact wing left each. Republicans had/have the hardline Right, and that in control of almost the whole federal government, but its power/sway is in decline. On the Democratic side the undefeated wing is the Liberals.

That makes for a literally bipolar politics at the moment. And you're right, the Party was a party run by a bunch of old white men whose best days were long over in the mid-Nineties. As they've faded away or were knocked out we've filled their places with people rooted in times closer to the present, people who are personally fairly comfortable with the liberal side of social issues and more energetic and more representative of the America of the present. Hillary Clinton replaced Moynihan, Nancy Pelosi replaced Gephardt, Obama replaced Fitzgerald, that sort of thing. It's a renewal process.

The politics of the present is that The People gave the radical Right one last great chance to prove itself in 2001, in the aftermath of the terror attacks. The electorate has, since then, diminished support for the radical Right by ~1% turning against it (and Dubya) per month. Nixonism has been given one last chance and a surprisingly large amount of it was latent within essentially the whole present populace, available for the Bush people to tap. Sixtyone or sixtytwo months into the Bush Administration, the 1% trend per month against them is starting to reach and cut into the 38% partisan Republican bloc.

Old conservatives die, young Gen Y people are replacing them in the electorate to a net Democratic gain of ~1 million votes per year, and Boomers/Gen Xers seem not to be crossing Party lines much. That amounts to a liberal trend in a lot of issues (death penalty, gay marriage, etc) of ~1% of the electorate per year.

Now we're down to a relatively few old politicians flaking out on us, e.g. Lieberman and Cuellar, and a lot of social issues of the Eighties and Nineties have burned out at the state and national level already. School prayer, flag burning, ex-felon vote disenfranchisement, the death penalty are all in retreat or dead. There isn't much left in most of the rest. The membership list of the DLC shrinks every year. The days of being the national minority party are coming to an end. Maybe this November, maybe in November '08 this long nightmare of a Right majority and near-monopoly of power will end. And the Liberal wing of the Democratic Party will be doing most of the hard work of cleaning up the mess Dubya and his Frist/Hastert-run Congress are going to leave behind.

Parties will always be very imperfect vehicles. We simply have to cope and try to keep on getting more and better people into the Party leadershop and offices. But the objective trend is in our favor. If our team succeeds at splitting enough moderate Republicans away from Bush and the like, it's all over for the Other Side. I think that enough will happen before November for that to occur, and then we're golden for a couple of years.

[Armstead]

20. Interesting analysis

A lot more specific than I was. :)

One thing though. One bright spot -- or it seemed to be -- in the 90's did seem to be the flaring out of the social issues. It seemed like the country had made peace over things things like Pro Choice, tolerance of gays and thuings like that. Despite a minority on the rabid right, it seemed like those issues were accepted by a significant enough majority that they were basically entrenched.

Alas, they rose up again in the last five years. We've even fallen backwards. Who would have thought that we'd be debating things like Evolution again?

But hopefully, that part of the GOP "divide and conquer" strategy will flare out, and we'll regain our sanity as a nation again.

[Lexingtonian]

32. it's burning out

One bright spot -- or it seemed to be -- in the 90's did seem to be the flaring out of the social issues. It seemed like the country had made peace over things things like Pro Choice, tolerance of gays and things like that. Despite a minority on the rabid right, it seemed like those issues were accepted by a significant enough majority that they were basically entrenched.

Alas, they rose up again in the last five years. We've even fallen backwards. Who would have thought that we'd be debating things like Evolution again?

Well...after the defeat of Gingrich's uprising in late 1995 all the Republican energy, as I recall, focussed on Clinton. And he got Breyer as well as Ginsburg on the Supreme Court before the '94 elections, making prospects there worse for conservatives than before. There was something of an armistice in social issues because of the Court and Clinton's veto power, and probably Reno's DoJ making some hard threats in back rooms come to think of it. That meant all issues turned on Clinton's power, and that made the Lewinsky matter all that much more of a fulcrum and Clinton's survival a Gettysburg for them. That's why the social issue wackos all lined up around and behind Dubya in 2000, despite all their hatred and differences, btw. Clinton made them realize they were running out of time and social trend was against them- with Dubya they coalesced into a wierd occultic group that believed they could create a kind of revolution or transformation. Occultism is always the last, and sadly murderous/suicidally militant, form in which dying belief systems resist their fate.

Abortion stuff was pretty contentious at the time, but federal power was there to stifle violence and the wingnut lawsuits. There was also the McVeigh bombing at OKC and the abortion doctor sniper stuff and the Atlanta Olympic bombing- the fruitcakes knew they had to keep a lot of distance from that. Operation Rescue also got that RICO verdict against it at the time, iirc.

The tolerance of gay people-- that perhaps had a lot to do with the stronger segregation then. Fewer gay couples lived in suburbia then, that really only began to the degree we have now iirc due to the Dot Com prosperity bubble, which gay folks benefited from disproportionately perhaps by being so concentrated in the particular cities (and it was a city phenomenon) that got most of that wealth and in IT. I followed gay rights initiatives at the time and the reason they seemed to do so well was, and this struck me as a bad sign at the time, on a logic of charity rather a logic of merit/duty/truly conceded equality. The gay people I knew were simply thrilled at the outcomes and didn't much ponder how these gains were obtained, it was a very facile and utterly untested assumption that these gains were permanent. I wasn't so sure. There was also a lot more internalized homophobia and insecurity and selfhatred in my gay friends then than I see now- it's somewhat generational and regional, too- and I can't blame them for just unquestioningly embracing everything that was conceded them at the time and avoiding any contemplation of whether it would last. But it led to an approach to the politics of their rights that was naive and contained both denial of and paranoia about the pragmatic situation they/we were really in.

If you followed the deliberations of city councils and other local government at the time, where most of the concessions came from, closely, things really were a lot dicier and marginal and done to a very large degree on benefit of the doubt and wishing to appear generous or making embarrassing news vanish (bath house raids, park raids, public lewdness complaints) from local media. When things backlashed in 2004 I can't say I was surprised at how flimsy and unsecured a lot of gay rights turned out to be. I had to explain to quite a few of them that, as I saw it, they had to let all the unsecured little incremental concessions lost go as irrecoverable on the cheap, let alone on their own terms. Gay marriage legalization is, as I see it, the legal capstone that secures gay rights, and without it gay rights are easily re-eroded. (Not only that, gay marriage legalization likewise critically secures the even larger structure of gender rights.)

Evolution was a settled issue in the Northeast and along the West Coast. I happen to be in biology, and teaching evolutionary biology in a lot of Bible Belt high schools and lesser colleges was as politically dangerous/punished then as it is now and as it was in the Eighties- lots of quiet firings and contracts not being extended and teachers being told to jump rather than get pushed out. Hardcore Creationists don't actually care about science or truth, they want their kids to stay brainwashed in certain ways between the ages of 12 and 25 in which they tend otherwise to get doubt about and shear out from The One True Faith. What's different now is that Creationism is weaker, not stronger- and now that it is truly on the verge of dying out of respectibility in the public arena, is getting hollowed out, activist wackos get militant and flee forward with nothing left to lose- and try to coerce people back to the old norms. In the early Nineties the gun fetishist sociopaths went into that phase, the Waco tragedy being the major outcome. Creationists took something of the same in Dover- that verdict is brutal and kills their last effort to smuggle their paganism into public schools, it dooms them to constant retreat and finally disintegration.

The good news is the present set of defeats the wackos are getting are incremental and definitive. Their small victories are plugs in a disintegrating dike. They can ban gay marriage in Idaho in as permanent a way as is available to them, it's not going to make any difference.

[Douglas Carpenter]

28. thank you for this. a good analysis

[Proud Liberal Dem]

19. Hopeful But Anxious

I'm a little more hopeful now than I was a year ago when Bush was basking in the "glow" of his "re-election" and crowing about his "mandate" and "political capital". The occupation of Iraq isn't going so well for us and he fortunately hasn't been able to convince most of the rest of us otherwise and (thankfully) he miscalculated the public's interest in privatizing Social Security, which seemed to eat up most of his "political capital". I am hopeful that between the various scandals, increasingly united Democratic opposition, and hopefully increased resistance by some Republicans to his extremist right-wing agenda, he will remain politically "lame" for the rest of his term. I am, however, concerned and upset at the fact that he and most of the GOP are still able to cram their agenda down everybody's throats through various sleights of hand and other "shady" means despite the fact that, at least according to most polls, they are not even governing with the support of MOST of the American public.

[Kolesar]

22. Kick Me, I'm a Democrat

http://www.slate.com/id/2134929/?nav=navoa

Kick Me, I'm a Democrat
The game politicians play.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Sunday, Jan. 29, 2006,
It seems to be time once again to play Kick the Democrats. Everyone can play, including Democrats. The rules are simple. When Republicans lose elections, it is because they didn't get enough votes. When Democrats lose elections, it is because they have lost their principles and lost their way. Or they have kept their principles, which is an even worse mistake.

Democrats represent no one who is not actually waiting in line for a latte at a Starbucks within 150 yards of the east or west coastline. They are mired in trivial lifestyle issues like, oh, abortion and gay rights and Americans killing and dying in Iraq, while the Republicans serve up meat and potatoes for real Americans, like privatizing Social Security and making damned sure the government knows who is Googling whom in this great country. Just repeat these formulas until a Democrat has been sent into frenzies of self-flagellation, or reduced to tears.

There is always a pick-up game of Kick the Democrats going on somewhere.
...continued...

[MadHound]

23. I think that you're irrationally optimistic right now

We are witnessing an incresing police state coming into being, with bipartisan support. The renewal, and expansion of the Patriot Act is a great example, as is the domestic spying issue, in which we witnessed a sitting president admit to spying on US citizens and daring the public to tell him it was wrong. Very few did, and the door is now opened for further continuation, and expansion of this very invasive policies.

Not one, but two quite conservative nominees were made to the Supreme Court, and were approved, virtually unchallenged. Even the man who publicly espouses the concept of increasing Executive Branch power, though faced with some token opposition, was in the end approved.

The Democratic party has been handed club after club with which to beat their opponents into the ground, yet they have yet to follow through. They don't want to appear unpatriotic or devisive or partisand, or whatever, but the result has become monotonously the same, the spectacle of the Dems rolling over and peeing all over themselves in an attempt to appear as much like the Republicans as possible. And the spectre of a two party/same corporate master system of government looms over us all.

Meanwhile the liberals and the leftists, while screaming to high heaven about high crimes and misdemeanors, are virtually ignored, but within the Democratic party and without. The anti-war faction of the party has been told to sit down and shut up while the party thrusts a pro-war candidate to the fore. And the same applies with every other issue that is brought up. And now are witnessing how the party will not entrust the choice of Senatorial candidates to the people, but will instead subvert the effort of the one that they wish to fail, while promoting those which they wish to see in office.

And meanwhile, the biggest issue that is going to effect all of us is the issue of clean and fair elections taking place, and again the Democratic party is remaining quiet. In an obviously rigged election in Ohio, it wasn't the Dems, who had to most to win/lose in the race who screamed to high heavens about dirty tricks, no it was the Greens. And it isn't the Democratic party who is addressing the issue nationally, and demanding reform, it is a relatively small band of activists who are having to work on a state by state basis to expose the corruption. Thus, with progress being made at such a slow pace, it is highly likely that '06 will result in another coranation of Republican leaders.

And all of this is taking place against the backdrop of an economy on the brink. War, tax breaks for the rich, outsourcing, and reckless porkbarrel spending has left the economy on life support. Record breaking budgets are matching by record breaking national debt. The average American worker has seen his real world wage slipping for decades now, yet his tax burden is increased, and the wealthy few are rewarded as never before. We are rapidly heading for an economic downturn that is going to make the Great Depression look like the Roaring Twenties, but that merry band of our so called "leaders" keep playing on, for all the world like they took lessons from the dance band on the Titanic.

You may be heartened by the very small minority of voices that you hear raised in protest, and the changing mood of the country, but don't delude yourself. Those voices that you hear are just faint echoes, getting little traction in the MSM, or in the corridors of power. And the changing mood of the country is a fickle beast, easily swayed by fear and demagoguery. Another "terrorist attack" will send them all chattering back to their basements, and begging to their glorious leader Bush to save them all, at whatever costs. And sadly, the price will be high, the total devolution of our country into a fascist state. This is coming friend, as surely as I can breathe. We crossed the Rubicon on 911, and all that is left now is the consolidation of power, which Bushco is well on the way to completing, while the Democrats sit by idly, not wanting to appear divisive, or unpatriotic, or whatever excuse they want to use for what is their ultimate objective, pleasing their ultimate constituents, their corporate masters who give them enough corporate lucre to keep them happy as they consign the rest of us to a fascist hell.

[Doctor_J]

27. Brilliant, Hound

I would like to nominate your reply for "greatest".

These people who keep saying they see hope on the rise are as dangerous as the ones who are subverting that hope. this isn't that complicated: pro-democracy, pro-peace, and pro-freedom americans now have zero voice in DC and on the airwaves. All that is left is the final stages of Mussolini's Italy - economic depression followed by purges followed by WWIII fought on American soil.

I guess it is comforting for some to pretend that "things are getting better", but it's a false hope, just like the mid-amercians who are cheering the galloping fascism, thinking that because they voted for the fascists, the result will never adversely affect them.

[Armstead]

34. Yawn.

Where have I heard all that before...Oh yeah. In the 60's towards LBJ, in the 70's toward Nixon, in the 80's toward Reagan...

Actually, I could bring you out newspsaper or otehr articles from the 19th Century and various otehr points early in the 20th Century that say the same damn thing you said.

[Doctor_J]

35. Oh, please

Check out post #3 at this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2472298

"OH indys still support Bush"

After 5 years of unmitigated disaster, in a state ravaged by Bushonomics, the lying coward still has overwhelming support of independents. tell me exactly how this compares to LBJ. Oh, wait - you can't, because LBJ was drummed out of office because of HIS disastrous war.

None of the people you mentioned committed one felony after another, boasted about implementing fascist policies, and completely ignored the citizenry the way Smirky does. Nor did any of them have the complete media control that * has.

Yawn if you want, but when you finally DO wake up, it's going to be quite a shock.

[Armstead]

36. I've been awake since about 1969

I'm well aware of all the darkness afoot in the land.

But I do believe that we're far from the conditions where such alarmism is necessary. Nor is dead-end cynicism about the prospects for change called for.

Let's see, Bush is down to what now? About 40 percent approval? That's about the percentage of boneheads that have always existed.

[Armstead]

33. Look beyond the Democrats

The position of the de,ocrats will onloy follow demands from the public. That's beginning to happen, much more than in the apathetic 90's. People are waking up and getting pissed. At the moment it's still in sullen surly dog mode, but they will not sit still for losing their standard of living indefinately. But there's still a long way to go before it actually gets into the bloodstream of the democratic Party.

Nor will they sit still for outright violation of the variety you mention. I think your romanticized visions of black helicopters and storm troopers is a bit too melodramatic. I hope to God anotehr 9-11 doesn't happen, but if it does, I think the reaction will be more like a replay of Katrina, not a return to the blind acceptance and acquiescence that followed 9-11.

[MadHound]

37. Damnit, I want some of your drugs

I would love to feel irrationally exuberent about our political situation just one more time in my life, just once, and you seem to have the drugs that will do the trick, gimmee!:evilgrin:

Seriously, what gives you the impression that the Dems are doing anything that the public wants. During the IWR, the calls and messages to Congress were running 268-1 against the IWR, yet vote for it they did. Same thing with Alito, the Patriot Act, etc. etc, the calls and messages would pour in, yet the Democrats would do what was in their own best interest, not what their constituents wanted, or was in their best interest.

And you can laugh about black helipcopters all you want(though I said nothing about such:shrug:) however the fact remains that survey after survey still show that if another incident like 911 happened, the majority of people in this country would welcome martial law with open arms, all in the name of keeping them "safe"

And you state above that you became politically active and aware in '69. Well, go back a little further, to '68. There you will find the spectre of both parties offering up pro-war candidates, though the country was decidedly against the war. You will also see the spectre of the Democratic party, embodied in Daley and Humphrey, standing high above the street in front of the convention, watching as the police they controlled went on a rampage against the peaceful anti-war protestors, protestors that were, until that moment, mostly Democrats.

And the Dems have been tone deaf to a greater or lesser degree ever since. They have consistently paid much more attention to their corporate masters than to their constituents. They have consistently passed legislation that is against the best interest of the average American, NAFTA, '96 Telecom Act, welfare "reform", the Patriot Act, the IWR, on and on ad nauseum. Yet you still honestly believe that they're going to to miraculously wake up soon and start listening to their constituents?

Like I said earlier, I want some of those drugs.

[Armstead]

38. You've found your own drug..

The drug of protective cynicism.

I would not call my post "irrational exuberance." I'm hardly a Pollyanna about these things. I didn;t say things are great, perfect or any such thing.

But I do, frankly think it's a cop-out and engaging in two-dimensional thinking to adopt the posture that things are so much worse than they've ever been. Or that there is no hope change for the better, except through some illusory insurrection.

I don't believe in such black-and-white thinking, because things are never all good or all bad. It's always a mix of positive and negative and things that fall somewhere in the middle. Most people fall into that category too.

The situation at any given time is always a mix of these contradictory and competing forces and instincts.

In that light, I well remember the conventions you refer to. (Maybe I should have said I started waking up in the mid 60's, although I was too young to have a very serious grasp of things.) Daley was an Old school Boss Hogg type. Nothing new in politics, then or now......Humphrey was a very good man caught in a rotten situation. But Humphrey was also a long-time champion of civil rights (going back to the 40's) and liberalism.

Right now, a lot of bad stuff is happening. A lot of it is chickens coming home to roost, from three decades. You are correct, though. The Democrats did become tone-deaf, which is one reason that things have been allowed to get so bad. I won't deny thast. Nor will I denty that they are still too often tone deaf and/or so intertwined with the corporate oligarchy that they no longer represent an alternative to the GOP.

But there are also corrctive forces at work, and my basic point was that those may well be on the ascendency.

[MadHound]

39. LOL, no friend, I'm just engaging in reality here.

But yes, humorous cynicism does help one cope with the ever increasing amount of tragedy that we see around us everyday.

And why is facing reality squarely a cop-out? C'mon now, read your history, the last time matters were this bad was during the days of the robber barons, you know, the first Gilded Age. Do you know how that debacle ended? Yep, that's right, with the Great Depression. And guess what friend, we are breaking an increasing amount of records that were set way back when, records concerning concentration of wealth, disparity of pay, cronyism of politicians, and on and on ad nauseum. And sadly, this record breaking binge started under Clinton. That right there should be a telling fact.
So since we're breaking so many records now, doesn't that tell you how this whole thing will end? Yeah, it will make the Great Depression look like the Roaring Twenties. Reality friend, reality.

And while I do hold out some hope for change, it isn't going to come through the mechanisms of the Democratic party, at least not the party in its current incarnation. No, it is going to have to come from the people as a whole, rising up finally and saying enough is enough. One good prospect I see for staving off the looming horror is through the push for publicly funded elections. Take the money out of the electoral equation and you will start returning government of, by and for the people back to the people. Another is the rise of new parties to sweep the old corrupted ones away, on both sides.

But short of these measures, we're in for some hard times. You may not agree with that, but that is indeed what history has shown us time and again. Yes, there is still enough time to prevent the fall, but it is running out quickly.

So I suppose we'll have agree to disagree on this one friend. And I really, really hope that your vision prevails, nothing would please me more than to be safe and secure in my old age. Sadly though, I don't think that will happen, thus I will continue to make my preparations for survival, and fight against the dying of the light in this country. And we'll have to wait and see whose vision was more correct. Hopefully we can all laugh about it on the other side of this looming tunnel.

Cheers.

[Armstead]

40. I've always believed grass roots is the real change

Although it doesn;t have the Titanic Drama of national politics, I've always believed that changes on the grass roots level are what ultimately msatter most.

That means poepe within communities fighting for the inyerests of their communities against the larger forces that would force everyone into one big box.

I guess I'm lucky in that sense, because i live in a region where that is a big deal. Hell we even have Republicans, liberals and hard core progressives who work together on issues affecting the community. That ultimately brings people like Main St. Republicans and radical leftys to see common interests -- or at least creates an environment where they ncan actually come up with compromises on things they may not agree on.

Such little sparks out here in the nation can collectively come together to force bigger changes.

[Doctor_J]

24. Wow, you must be on some really nasty meds

they're within a few months of spraying bullets into crowds of * protestors, probably without any repercussions. That's all I can think of that could be WORSE for us.

[iconoclastNYC]

25. I agree. Only due to the Internet

The internet has allowed true progressives to escape the mainstream media's propoganda effort to make us think that our ideals are dead and we should just roll over.

And more and more Democrats are realizing that a corporate cancer is slowly killing our party: the DLC.

[Douglas Carpenter]

29. let's look at how the right did it

Does anyone seriously believe that the right-wing came to dominate by their centrism?

I look how the far right working from the aftermath of the Goldwater landslide defeat of 1964 changed the big tent Republicans into a distinctly right wing party; so right wing that poor old Barry wasn't even welcome anymore. But, to do this the right wing did back in general elections candidates and Presidents who were clearly not their ideological soul-mates. Richard Nixon would be a socialist wacko by current Republican Party standards. But, it was the Nixon era that gave real rise to the long-term agenda of the right-wing.

______________

Borrowed from:
LynnTheDem

a super-majority of Americans are liberal in all but name
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051107/alterman
Public opinion polls show that the majority of Americans embrace liberal rather than conservative positions...
http://www.poppolitics.com/articles/2002-04-16-liberal.shtml
The vast majority of Americans are looking for more social support, not less...
http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/7/borosage-r.html

http://people.umass.edu/mmorgan/commstudy.html

Some more polls:

http://www.democracycorps.com/reports/analyses/Democracy_Corps_May_2005_Graphs.pdf

http://www.democrats.com/bush-impeachment-poll-2

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/US/healthcare031020_poll.html

http://www.cdi.org/polling/5-foreign-aid.cfm