Democrats used to stand for principles

[whereisjustice]

100. lmfao - Let me translate your tough guy sound bite to what you really mean:

"If you don't like Goldman Sachs running the Democratic Party, then start your own investment bank and buy your own candidate"

Why not? Because this is what happens

It is well known that Wasserman-Schultz supports Republicans Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen over their Democratic opponents, although lately she has been pressured into giving belated and grudging support to Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez who are opposing the Diaz-Balarts. I always figured that she was just afraid of the Hispanic backlash in her own district. What I hadn’t considered is that she is just afraid of all incumbent Republicans in Florida. When I met her in Denver, she immediately told me that she couldn’t support me, saying I hadn’t raised enough money. I told her that I had raised $100K, that I was a military retiree, that my family is living on my wife’s Air Force E6 pay, and that I wasn’t able like other “viable” candidates to drop a quarter of a million dollars into my own campaign. I then told her, “Congresswoman, I am one of those working-class guys that our party claims to represent.” Her response was “Don’t pull that populist stuff with me.” I thanked her for her time.

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2008/09/debbie-wasserman-schultz-to-florida.html

America’s anti-liberal myth: Why Dems learned the wrong lesson from 1984

Your calendar says it’s 2015, but it’s always 1984 in mind of the New Dems. These are the economically conservative Democrats that include centrists like the old Democratic Leadership Council, Third Way and financial sector-centric elected Democrats (plus Robert Rubin, the Rubin-launched Hamilton Project and associated advisers on the policy side). As always, they are again invoking 1984 to conjure images of a grave danger to Democrats’ ability to win elections in the form of ascendant progressive populism.

The New Dems’ scare story goes something like this: In 1984 Walter Mondale lost 49 states because he ran as a Super Liberal. Democrats would have kept losing if the New Dems had not formed to take control of and steer the party. In 1992 Bill Clinton ran as Centrist Man and Democrats started winning elections again. Now, economic progressives who prioritize other things before Wall Street’s approval are causing trouble. If these progressives Democrats represent the party it will again be banished to the political wilderness and forced to relearn the lesson of the ’80s and ’90s.

This premise is not only wrongheaded, in important ways it’s backwards. The temptation not to relitigate something that is, after all, over 30 years in the past is obviated by 1984’s continued role as the go-to cudgel against progressive Democrats. The New Dems’ reliance on the ’84 cautionary tale is illustrative of an under-appreciated dynamic in the struggle between the progressive/populist coalition and the Wall Street wing: there never really was a big, public “fight for the soul of the party” in the 80’s and 90’s. While Bill de Blasio’s election in New York and Rahm Emanuel’s unexpected struggle in Chicago, along with the prominence of Elizabeth Warren, may seem like a lot of gained ground in short time, it’s not Too Much Too Soon. It’s long overdue.

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/14/americas_anti_liberal_myth_why_dems_learned_the_wrong_lesson_from_1984/