Nothing wrong with liberal! It's the "wing" of liberalism that causes Democrats problems. Anybody read,
What's The matter With Kansas?Michael Lind wrote a great piece that was re-printed in the latest issue of The Progressive Populist. It was originally in Salon:
The Newer Deal: The path to a Democratic supermajorityToday's Democrats and Republicans bear little resemblance to the pre-1968 groups of the same name. The pre-1968 Republican Party was based in the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast -- the very areas that are the base of today's "blue state" Democrats. The pre-1968 Democrats were the old Jefferson-Jackson alliance of white Southern Protestants and Northern urban Catholics, plus a big chunk of Northern Progressives, many of them former Republicans. Today the Republicans are a white working-class party based in the South and much of the West with a libertarian Wall Street wing. The Democrats since the 1970s have been an alliance of college-educated white professionals from the North and West with blacks and Latinos.
Between 1932 and 1964, the Roosevelt Party won seven of nine presidential elections, losing only in 1952 and 1956. Between 1968 and 2004, the Nixon Party won seven out of 10 presidential elections, losing only three times, to Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Was this because red-state Rooseveltians were won over to supply-side economics, while blue-state blue-bloods suddenly became enamored of abortion rights and separation of church and state? No. Today's red-state Republican children of New Deal Democrats still like Social Security, and the Republican grandparents of today's blue-state Protestant Democrats were in favor of birth control -- for the Catholics, in particular. The values of these voting blocs didn't change. The issues that defined national politics changed.
The Roosevelt Party ran on economic issues, and didn't care whether voters were in favor of sex or against it on principle as long as they supported the New Deal. The McGovern Party, by contrast, has made social issues its litmus test. Economic conservatives have had a home in the McGovern Party, as long as they support abortion rights and affirmative action, but social democrats and populists who are pro-life or anti-affirmative action are not made nearly as welcome.
MORE:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/08/15/newer_deal/print.htmlThink Governor Brian Schweitzer. David Sirota calls him the most astute politician of our era. If we (God FORBID) lose this election - it will be THIS MESSAGE that will be the ticket back to the White House - maybe with Schweitzer himself leading the charge.