Reply #23: I think it was in about 1860. [View All]

[sofa king]

Back then the Democratic Party was the place where disaffected racists could go. There was a little dust-up about that, you may recall, and it effectively bought the South for the Democratic Party until the last Civil War veterans died in the 1950s.

Then, in 1960, the Republican Party lured away the racists with a fresh new combination of racism and fear and militarism (just like the Democrats in 1860). But the Democratic Party was still heavily influenced by the Scoop Jackson conservadems.

Until the Scoop Jacksons (except for Zell Miller) all went over to the precursor of the PNAC, and the Republican Party, in the 1970s.

Then, in 1985, the DLC came into being and asserted a conservative position so that the Democratic Party could still have a share of all that evil money lying around, in return for shitcanning every decent and well-meaning idea the Democrats ever had.

So what the Democratic Party winds up being is a centrist party with heavy conservative leanings, which actually works fairly well since most Americans aren't all that bright or interested in politics, and imagine themselves to be "centrists" when in fact they're two lightning bolts shy of being total pricks. Most American liberals are really centrists, too, but please don't tell them I said that.

The problem is you have to be smart to be a progressive, and you have to be smart enough to teach others to be progressives at the same time that the other side is doing everything it can to keep others confused and indifferent. There's just not enough of that going around in the United States, and certainly not in American politics.