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I want to share with you something of my general sense of how things are going on the left side of the aisle--a place I have inhabited for these past forty years, after having, like you, come in from the cold, heartless world of conservatism. In my case, it was the Vietnam War, which I had some up-close and personal experiences with as an Army grunt, that provided the main impetus in unseating me from a sort of proto-Libertarian conservatism and dropping me into the political cauldron of the University of Wisconsin in the late-60's.
Anyway, I've been watching the shifting fortunes of the left these many years, and I have a few things I'd like to mention to you. First of these is that many of the problems we are now facing have their origins in the Reagan years, and even the Nixon years, when the repeal of human decency started happening in earnest. I don't mean to suggest that LBJ was any angel; in fact, I cheered from my foxhole when I heard he was pulling himself out of the '68 race.
For all the talk about the Libberul Dummycrats you hear around, by my standards I don't think there has been a true liberal Administration since FDR. Kennedy somewhat, and LBJ ditto, but they were both cold-war saber rattlers, while they admittedly did do much good domestically, especially Lyndon, with the 1964 civil rights legislation, Medicare, etc.
I have a fondness for Jimmy Carter, largely because of what he did after leaving the White House. I see his administration as basically decent and honest, but irreparably damaged by runaway inflation driven by OPEC (which had been unleashed as a result of deals made by Henry Kissinger in the Nixon/Ford years), and by the hostage crisis (which we may never know the truth of--remember the "October Surprise"). Carter really was no liberal. Nevertheless, he had an engineer's mind and displayed some vision about alternative energy and the environment.
Clinton? Clinton was certainly no liberal. NAFTA, Welfare "reform," and a few other things made that perfectly clear. Nevertheless, he did manage to stop the hemorrhaging of the Treasury. He was also luckier than Hell in that regard, in that he managed to be President during a thoroughly exciting time of technological and social innovation.
And that brings us to the present.
There are no liberals left in the race. You have Hillary and Obama, both of whom I see as "corporation-safe" candidates. The real liberals were starved out of the race by a mass media who gave them no space to breathe. It was kinda like "failure to thrive" in a neglected infant.
Because there are no liberals, there are only watered-down, milquetosty solutions to our major problems. Any campaign position held by any candidate, of either party, has to pass a test of corporate-friendliness. Anyone who neglects this fundamental principle will find his air supply immediately cut off.
That said, I still see either of the Democratic candidates as infinitely preferable to a McCain. I see myself as without a dog in the Primary fight, but I will cast a Democratic vote in the fall, because either of the watered-down, corporate-approved, SAFE candidates with a chance of winning is a better alternative than any Repubican. The wimpy Demcrat will buy us some environmental time, will somewhat cushion the coming economic blows for the poor, will get more people covered by health care plans, will roll back the stacking of the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary, and will allow us to rejoin the world community and start a long, slow process of recovery from our recently acquired reputation as a collective mob of axe-murderers.
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