Reply #14: Heartily disagree [View All]

[magellan]

This country is more progressive than the Dem leadership thinks (or wants to believe) it is. That's because the Dems have been letting the right control the message for too long, and people will parrot what seems reasonable when they aren't being told the whole truth.

But dig deeper -- give Americans the unvarnished facts -- and you find a nation that overall is as progressive as anywhere else in the world.

This is where the Dems have fallen down. Instead of doing the hard work of countering the Repub propaganda machine they've taken the easy route and kept silent. Instead of calling the GOP on its thinly veiled imperial agenda and its anti-worker, pro-corporate schemes, the Dems have slowly shuffled over to stand near them so they can share the misguided love.

Instead of courting the progressive base of the party, the Dems listen to the faux outrage from the right's minions and cuddle up to conservative Dems, who by any stretch of the imagination would have been card-carrying Repubs 15 years ago and who do nothing but further stymie what this nation wants and needs.

I'm sad to say that it's the policy of compromise with the right and in many cases the proximity of the two parties that will let the Dems down, much as it's screwed the Labour Party in the UK. As you pointed out yourself, November will be more a rejection of the GOP than an embracing of the Dems, when by all rights the GOP should be off licking its wounds for at least a few election cycles. And they would be if the Dems had done any number of things differently.

As it stands, I fully expect the GOP to be back in power in 2012. And the Dems will have only themselves to blame for it.

Don't take the tough love lesson if you don't want to. But mark my words. The Dems are cutting off their noses to spite their faces by believing this isn't a progressive country. And it WILL catch up to them.