The D Party Needs Revolution/The D Party Needs Evolution

[stopbush]

I hear a lot of DUers calling for a revolution in the D Party. Most of that feeling seems to be a yearning for the Ds to get back to their old fightin' ways, real or imagined. The revolutionaries aren't happy with the present-day D apple cart and want to see it upset. Kill the Bill and Obama/Congress is a sell-out are some of the feelings expressed. This country started with a revolution, and the Ds need to launch a new revolution if real D principles are going to have a chance in this country.

The other option seems to be that the Ds need to evolve and adjust to the times. The idea that compromise isn't bad if you get part of the way there, and that we're better off taking an incremental approach to winning. The evolutionists think that times have changed, that history shows the old way of doing things the D way has become too big a dose of vinegar for the country and that little gets done, and that more D objectives will be met if Ds evolve from their old feisty selves and play a more-strategic political game. Ds need to evolve today, just as they evolved from being the Party of the Dixiecrat racist South to becoming the Party that championed minority rights.

I know the above is broad brush stuff, but that's the best I can do with my limited imagination...and it is my poll, after all.

So, what do YOU think the Party really needs? Revolution or evolution?

Vote below.

Comments welcome.

[Ken Burch]

1. giving up "feistiness" has been the approach of MOST Democratic ticket since 1976

Our candidates have mostly run since then as people who act as if it's actually somewhat embarassing to be the nominees of a party that opposed Reagan and Nixon. They've acted as if defending the few progressive aspects of the average Democratic platform, let alone the notion that liberalism has been a positive force in this country's history, is the political equivalent of publishing child pornography.

We haven't had trouble because our party was feisty. We've had trouble because our party is shame-based.

Reagan won being feisty. So did Bush. If Palin(God help us)wins, it will be because SHE looks feisty. Voters like it when a party feels good about what it stands for and is unafraid to defend it and to push it further. Everytime we take the path of timidity, of being "more-strategic" it reads to the voters as weakness.

We'd have done a lot better if our party's nominees had gone out and said "hell yeah, we're liberals. If it weren't for folks like us, we'd all still be stuck in the McKinley Administration. I'm proud that our party works for change and progress".

[Jamastiene]

7. Perhaps we need to start a fund drive and pay scientists to

grow some of these:


in a laboratory to send to our Congress and other Democrats who lack such a critically necessary tool for survival. So many of our Democrats in Congress literally act like lap dogs.

[laughingliberal]

2. Evolution is one thing. Total capitulation is what we've seen nt

[Edweird]

3. "Adjusting to the times" seems to mean accepting perpetual corporate assrape. No Thanks.

If our 'leaders' place the wants of corporations over the needs of the citizens, then something has to change. That change will NOT be me saying it's 'ok'.

[laughingliberal]

4. Yeah, that's what I was trying to say. Lol nt

[Ozymanithrax]

5. All systems evolved. The "D" party is evolving, but it isn't directed.

Since 1776, Americans have an abysmal track record with revoltuion. It took generations to get Unions accepted, and most of that revoltion has been revoked. I don't think we have a snowflakes chance in hell of revolution or directed evoltuion. What people should do if they want those is create a new party, but it won't be easy. The laws have been writen to make creating new political parites very dificult to impossible.

[Sebastian Doyle]

6. If DLC corporatism is considered "evolution"

Then we're in some desperate need of REVOLUTION.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imb4tYOk8GE

[Union Yes]

8. Other: If our party evolves leftward, I'd consider that revolutionary! recd. nt

[notesdev]

9. The evolutionary path

is evolving us right into the utopia so intelligently and vibrantly described in the classic novel 1984.

[LWolf]

10. Revolution, because I don't like your version of evolution.

Evolving to the right, becoming more and more like the enemy by the day, is not the evolution I want to see.

I'd like to see the D's evolve into a strong socialist party, myself. Failing that, revolution is the only other viable option for me.