I'm having lunch with a Republican friend today.

He's an "old" Republican, like I am an "old" Democrat. It's amazing how much we find to agree about.

I know that will surprise many DUers, who view me as a "purist," etc., etc., etc.; and, at the core of things, I am. I freely admit to being a purist on issues. That's just another way of saying I'm an idealist, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Here at DU, which is supposed to be a community of like-minded people, I don't soften my positions. I freely admit, and always have, that I am not a partisan. I'm about issues, and when my party is wrong on issues, I'm going to call them out on it.

So how can I have a Republican friend? It's not hard.

Believe it or not, underneath all of the political propaganda, we agree on almost everything. He's been appalled by his party in recent years, and the tea party terrifies him. He told me recently that he hasn't changed his registration because it gives him some political cred when he talks to Republicans, especially elected Republicans. And he does. He's quite active. He thinks it's important to reach any sane Republicans that might be left, to encourage them to take back their party. Still, he no longer votes for them.

It's funny; I can tell him all of my harder-left, socialist-leaning opinions on policy, and he isn't shocked, and agrees with much of it. Unlike some Democrats at DU, he is actually open to those ideas.

So, I'm having lunch with him today, and sprinkled in among the personal chat will be conversation about his current actions in our local community, and how I can help. I won't be proselytizing party or politician, and neither will he. I won't be going to lunch armed with all kinds of talking points that parrot the party line, and neither will he.

It's amazing how well things go when we leave political propaganda and party and personality defending out of the mix. It seems so much healthier and productive, at least to me.

I don't expect my politicians

to have the facade of gods and goddesses.

I expect them to work FOR me; win or lose, I expect them to stand up and fight for the issues I elected them to advance, tooth and nail, without reservation. I expect them to keep the end goals on the table at all times, whether or not they are achieved with this attempt, or the next, or the next.

That's what I expect. Those who do that are winning my support and my appreciation. Those that don't, aren't.

It looks like this week's attack is on "the left."

Who remembers, pre-DU3, when "About DU" identified as a premier left-wing discussion group, which is not a direct quote, since I can no longer find the old version of "about DU?"

"Left-wing" has disappeared in favor of "liberal" in the newest incarnation.

Are those on the left now the enemy? Assuming "the left" are those to the left of the current center-right Democratic administration, how many of "the left" are left on DU?

I'm going to work. I'll check on the poll when I get home.

Edited on 8/30:

After popping in this evening and spending 15 minutes on the front page of GD, it looks like this needs a kick.

The BOG jumps the shark.

I ask myself why

so many Democratic voters did not see this coming. Truly.

He campaigned on doing away with divisiveness and working with Republicans. Republicans are still gleefully attacking him on every front, while they gain concession after concession after concession, and divisiveness within the Democratic party grows.

He told us, among other things, that Republicans "got" education better than Democrats. And that he sometimes "gets in trouble" with teachers' unions. Not enough trouble, in this teacher's opinion.

He told us that Republicans were better on regulation of industry.

He left unilateral action in Pakistan open. That told me that he was not against the war on terror, and was willing to continue it.

He expressed admiration for Ronald Reagan, for the way he "changed the trajectory of America." He said, "He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating."

Look at those bolded words. Who could not recognize those "excesses" as the gains made by progressives? Who doesn't recognize "accountability" as code for privatization?

What self-respecting Democrat admires Ronald Fucking Reagan?

He also said, "And I do not consider Democrats to have a monopoly on wisdom."

Frankly, if he were a DUer, there would be some posters complaining that he was attacking Democrats "on a Democratic website!!!"

I saw it coming, and was attacked repeatedly here for pointing it out. I lost my sigline privileges until recently because I was blunt enough to use a sigline that said "I told you so" and link to an old post of mine predicting what would go wrong...which, incidentally, was correct. I guess that sigline incensed enough DUers that thought happy days were here again to get a bunch of protests, even though the post it linked to had not been, and never was, deleted.

I get that we couldn't wait to see the last of GWB. I get that it was exciting, and felt like progress, to put a black man in the WH. I don't get why so many people would let those things blind them to the obvious.

But I'm glad that some have taken the blinders off. I only hope they will stay off when it comes to '16.

Obligatory disclaimer: I was not a supporter of HRC in '08, and my pov has nothing to do with her.

Tony Bennett's Day of Reckoning Has Come: Is Corporate Reform Far Behind?

It can't come soon enough for me.


Bennett, Rhee, Rahm, TFA, the Waltons, Skandera, Gates...way too many to <snip,> but here's just a bit:

Obama wasn't picked by the DLC.

That was a huge talking point for Obama during the horrific primary wars here on DU, and elsewhere, during the '08 primaries.

It didn't matter that his policies were a great fit for the DLC, which was actually noted here by a DLCer and Hillary supporter whose DU name escapes me...wyldwolf? Maybe.

It didn't matter that he publicly identified with the "New Democrats," making him a centrist that fits the DLC.

He wasn't an official member, so he got a pass. And we got a neo-liberal president. Underlying the dlc/"new democrats"/"3rd way"/centrists is neo-liberalism. They're corporatists.

I want a nominee that is distinctly opposed to neo-liberalism.

So, when the primaries heat up, be on the lookout for a candidate who is "not" dlc/centrist/etc., but whose policies seem to be a good fit anyway. That's the candidate that will be pushed into a two-person battle, squeezing out any non-corporatist neo-liberal courageous enough to run early on.

Let's see how the primary voting schedule lines up. Note that it was set up to weed out most candidates early on in '08. My primary didn't roll around until Obama and HRC had been the only 2 left standing for 5 months.