The imminent backlash of the Democratic Left.

[kentuck]

It's coming.

The Democratic Party had a chance to keep them in the fold but they blew it.

No amount of threats of Republican takeover will change the direction the Left is going. If the Republicans take over the House, Senate, and the White House, then so be it. The alarm bells no longer work. The fear-mongering from the centrists will fall on deaf ears.

They have not left their Party - their Party has left them.

Most Democrats do not want to hear this and refuse to accept that it will happen. After all, anything is better than having the Republicans in total control. Well, no, it isn't .

It is worse to be deserted by your own Party. It is worse to have your ideals destroyed and replaced by Republican ideals. Winning the next election is no longer the most important thing for these beaten-down supporters of the Democratic Party.

If you think this is only a lone voice expressing dissatisfaction with the Party and , in the end, we will all unite behind Hillary to keep the White House, I think you are tragically mistaken.

The Democratic Left will either take back the Democratic Party or they will start their own Party. They will suffer no more under the illusion of being represented by the Democratic politicians in Washington.

I'm sorry I feel compelled to say this.

[rpannier]

1. No Problem stating it

Lots of people agree
The saying goes, "Better to be stabbed in the stomach than in the back. At least you see it coming."

[No Elephants]

2. I don't understand. It was not long ago that you wanted so much to devise

to devise a successful 2012 campaign strategy for Obama.
What happened since then that we did not and could not anticipate a little over a year ago?

As far as Hillary, I do not see much difference between her and Obama. The pundits, strategists and politicians (except for Biden) were all talking about the nomination being hers a couple of months before the 2012 election. The "tell Hillary you want her to run" stuff started around then, too. If not then, then very soon after the 2012 election.

I've never seen anything like it before. Maybe that was part of the deal for her doing her best to keep the PUMAs from voting for McCain? Anyway, I assumed from then that she would be the nominee.

If it isn't Hillary, it will be someone like Hillary, just as in 2008, except that this time, I won't be fooled. But, I think it will be Hillary.

Of course, Hillary as nominee may mean President Christie. Benghazi is nothing compared to all the stuff from when her husband was President. And Christie has proven crossover appeal in a blue state. I don't know that Hillary can do the same in a red state. We'll see, soon enough, I guess.

This will mean two Presidential election years in a row that the Party did not even attempt to pretend Democratic primary voters matter. (I don't think they mattered in 2004 or 2008, either, but there was at least a show put on. Come to think of it, the primary didn't matter in 2000, either. Gore was clearly the anointed that year.

Anyway, I don't think the problem is a lack of third parties. Over thirty national parties already exist, exclusive of state and local parties and the majority of them are to the left of the Democratic Party as it has been since at least Carter.

The issue is that Democratic politicians and pundits keep saying the left has nowhere else to go and Democratic voters believe them and vote accordingly.

[Enthusiast]

4. If the Democrats want to preserve seats in 2014

they will have to adopt economic populism as a message. Unfortunately that subject is almost verboten with the party elite. We have had enough of the Republican policies.

[No Elephants]

5. Obama is not up for reelection in 2014. The Democrats who are will

say anything to get re-elected. But, many of them have been in office and in the majority since 2006. Why would you or anyone believe their campaign message of populism?

[Enthusiast]

3. I'm sorry you feel compelled to say it too.

But the Party seems to have left us. I will not unite behind Hillary because she represents more of the same Third Way corporatist bullshit with a dose of supply-side and TPP thrown in for good measure.

Let's see, exactly what is the platform? Allow the banks to do anything with no legal repercussions. Promote austerity measures like Chained CPI. Promote destructive free trade deals. Keep the entire nation and allied nations under full time, full coverage surveillance. Continue the obscene levels of military spending. I'm sure there is more. More stuff that I want nothing to do with.

[No Elephants]

6. It's not Hillary, anymore than it was Obama. That's where the party is now.

Maybe that's where it's always been, except when terrified by things like the prospect of violence after the crash of 1929 and the prospect of violence raised by the civil rights/economic rights/peace movement of the 1960s. That's when we got the New Deal and the Great Society (but not an end to the Vietnam War--"defense" being maybe the one federal jobs program on which Democratic politicians and Republican politicians can agree).

But, they started backpedaling on the New Deal before FDR even got out of office. Social security was what was left and now they are after that, just as George Carlin predicted.

We got the Great Society in the Sixties and all that is left of that were food stamps, head start and medicare.

Unions are a shadow of what they once were. They've cut food stamps again and again and an even bigger cut is predicted. I predict Medicare will disappear into some combination of Medicaid and Obamacare. And, as stated, they are after Social Security.

Some day, it'll be welfare (which Clinton bragged about ending), Medicaid and maybe Head Start and some kind of school meal program for needy kids, who will be humiliated over it even more than they are now.