if the Left and Center/Left can hold together for 2010

[27inCali]

Republicans will lose big time. The Senate will move just a little to the Left, but maybe just enough. What happens if we pick up seats in the senate this year? Would that not make the Public Option more or less inevitable and move enticingly close to achieving Single Payer? Doesn't it also put Immigration and Climate back on the table. It would mean 2 more years of milquetoast "reform" that doesn't go far enough, but helps out a helluva lot more than the big fat kick in the teeth that the Repigs have planned for America's working class the minute they get to power. That's not a rhetorical flourish., it's a cold appraisal: If the Left can't show up to vote, we go straight back to Bush Era Bullshit.

as a solid Liberal, Obama's Federal Surveillance stance pisses me the fuck off, watered down "reform" pisses me the fuck off, but the future of this country is more important than my anger. We should always be pressuring the Dems to force them further Left towards us. That's just how you get what you want in a democracy, but there are times when it makes tactical sense to hold your nose a little and work with someone who only gives you half of what you want and pisses you off rather than open the door to the guy who will take a sledge hammer to everything you care about.

It reminds me a little of The Lord of the Rings, when you have all the various factions who DO NOT want to get along and fight at each other's side but have been given no choice but to do so because the evil they face is too powerful for any of them to defeat by themselves. That is us guys: rife with disagreements and reasons to not get a long, but having no choice but to share one giant, noble cause that none of can ignore.

Fascism IS on the march in America. The Left knows this and is fighting back, the center/Left I think is still in denial but are starting the figure it out, as they do, they will become more "radicalized" like the rest of us.
ONLY THE LEFT CAN SAVE AMERICA! And how you ask? By working the Democrats for a few more election cycles until the threat of the GOP/Fascists has been defeated. By using pressure to force the Democrats to pass more and more meaningful legislation over the next couple years, to show the voters of this country how smart and just our Liberal goals are! This country is moving to the Left big time -whatever the polls say right now- and the Repigs are on borrowed time I think 6-8 years from now, the GOP will be dead, there will be a new Leftist party further Left than the Dems, and the Dems will float a little more to the center/right and become the de facto conservative party. Maybe it's just a dream, but doesn't it make a great goal? not just to defeat the GOP in an election, but to reduce them to a pathetic regional party, to dwindle their numbers in the Senate until the real argument over legislation is only between the Left and the Center/Left. This would be a very worthwhile goal, but it calls for much more patience on the part of the Left -a tremendous amount of sacrifice and focus- but if there is one group of people capable of sacrificing of themselves for the greater good, it's the Liberals -it's the very definition of who we are. That's why I am certain, for all the flaming arguments that take place here at DU, the Left will show up in 2010, because I think most of them like me understand, we and the Democratic Party are the only thing standing in between this world and Fascism -whatever our sense of letdown or disappointment is, we are just too decent a set of people, to stand by idly while tyranny takes root. NO!- We Liberals, we do not know how not to fight for what is decent, we will be there to check the powers of the indecent. We will not stand idly by.

[The Magistrate]

1. Hear Hear, Sir

Not pleasant, but it has to be done....

[OhioBlue]

2. K&R n/t