Will the Democratic Party finally get back to its progressive roots?

[Sandpiper]

And start giving people a real alternative to the GOP?

For too long now, we've had positions like:

We support free trade too, just with a few more restrictions.

We support tax cuts too, we just differ over who should get them.

We're even tougher on national security than they are. Bad Saddam, bad!


How bout we get back to saying things like:

We support living wages, they support people working for $5.15/hour.

We support Universal Healthcare, they support a system that excludes 43 million Americans.

We don't believe in sacrificing American lives in furtherance of political ambitions.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. That would be nice...

But I have held my breath for a little to long, so I will just wait and see.

[mazzarro]

2. I doubt it since the big honchos don't get to feel the pain as much

as the little people on the street. We get to be valuable when they want someone to vote for their stupid a**.

[camero]

3. I would hope so

But I highly doubt it since the same elitists that run the Republican Party run the Democrats also. Gee, thanks DLC. A winning strategy indeed.

There will have to be a progressive party to take it's place I agree.

[Sapphocrat]

4. Will it? ...

I don't know. Should it? I say it must, or die.

Somewhere in my initial haze last night, I posted not a threat, but what I believe to be true: That if the Dem party doesn't reinvent and reshape itself around its progressive roots, we're going to see a mass exodus of disenfranchised Dems. Even the Greens voted (more or less) in lockstep with us with this time, and, if the figures I'm hearing are correct, so did the overwhelming majority of gay and lesbian voters.

I believe, however, this was the last free ride the DLC will get from these and other left-of-the-left groups if the party fails to make a concerted move back to the left. I'm not saying the Dems have to write legalized recreational marijuana use, polyamorous marriages, and public nudity into the platform, but we are talking major "paradigm shift" here.

And it's not that the average Dem is so different from the average far-lefty; I would challenge the most right-leaning Democrat and the most dedicated Green to compare laundry lists and discover how many issues on which they are not in general agreement. I guarantee that the similarities will far outweigh the differences.

This is the lesson we need to learn from the Republicans -- not how to fight dirty (we're not wimps; it's simply not in our nature, or we would not be progressives), but to find that common ground. Granted, that's more difficult for us, as we are far more diverse, and do not share a black-and-white world view. (And thank God for that.)

But -- contrary to what Senator Kerry just finished saying -- it is not the nation that needs to heal, half so much as it is the Democratic party that needs to heal. This "herding of cats" has got to stop. We spend so much time trying to mollify everyone, we please no one. (And take it from me, a lesbian who has nearly had a stroke trying to refrain from ripping the entire party on its mushy, meaningless, patronizing, half-assed "support" of equal rights for LGBT people. Support what is right, and to hell the paralyzing fear that you'll offend some soccer mom in Arkansas. The Civil Rights Act wasn't exactly popular, was it? And yet it was right.)

Finally, there is a lesson we need to learn from no less than our stellar neighbors to the north. Repeatedly, over many years, I have heard much self-deprecating humor from Canadians about the lack of a "Canadian culture." It's a joke, of course; there is certainly a Canadian culture, and Canadians know it. Where the humor stops and the irritation begins is when we USians, in our characteristic Yank-centric way, define what it means to be "Canadian" as "everything that's not American." How arrogant of us.

The lesson to be learned is this: We Democrats must stop trying to define ourselves by what we are not, and figure out just who and what we are.

[Lindsay]

6. Beautifully said, Sapphocrat.

Thank you and kudos to you.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. It damn sure better or just commit suicide and save time.

This lingering death of the party as it is slowly transformed into the moderate wing of the republican party is ruining the country and threatening the world.

[deutsey]

7. It may have been that the Dem Party became "progressive"

in the first place thanks to grassroots organizing and agitating that had taken root in America before the '30s.

These movements grew out of worker/farmer frustration and oppression during the Gilded Age (which we're returning to now, folks). That was the period between the 1870s and early 20th century when an aristocratic class came to own America and the rest of America was relegated to serving their interests.

Workers and farmers didn't wait around for any Party to save them. They formed their own parties and organizations and launched campaigns (both electoral and extra-electoral) that served their own interests and challenged and made demands on the ruling elites in this country. Things like the 8-hour workday, child labor laws, safe workplaces, etc.

That's where I'm heading. I may not live to see the day when a major Party in this country is influenced by genuine grassroots progressive activism, but the struggle isn't about me, per se. It's about my children, the future of this country, and the future of our humanity.