Gordo of Appletree has joined the list of those among our friends on the left who have bemoaned the attempts of Democratic politicians to claim the political center. In his article, The Rise of the Democratic Left, Gordo used a photograph I found both very interesting and far more telling than he might have thought.
That’s real great. The woman (?) in the picture is pro-”choice,” (a handy phrase to cover up the fact that she means pro-abortion) and she riots. She also protests in safe anonymity, behind a mask. What she doesn’t represent is respectability and responsibility. Would you trust this lady with any real authority?
Gordo’s rather long article calls for an abandonment of what he calls:
- (T)he de facto mission statement of the Democratic Party (which) was, “Co-opt enough of the Republican agenda to win the next election.â€
One of the immediate causes of Gordo’s ire was the absolutely stunning (for its timidity) proposal of Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid on which Democrats would/could/should run in 2006. Other liberal bloggers, from Oliver Willis to Kos, have been pushing, hard, for a further left Democratic platform, for the party to unite behind ideological goals which they believe are truer to the party’s nature and people.
In one way, those calls are refreshing: they are, in effect, calls for the Democrats to run their campaigns on honesty, to say precisely what they believe and intend to do, rather than try to mumble and hide (and run on, say, a middle class tax cut when you plan to raise taxes).
And I absolutely agree. One thing about the GOP’s 1994 Contract With America was that it said precisely what the Republican leadership planned to bring to a vote (though not all of it passed) in the 108th Congress — and the voters believed that the Republicans would do just what they said they would do. The left wing activists are calling for the Democrats to move further to the left, and be honest about it, and put it before the public for their votes.
I think that’s a great idea — because I believe that the public will see the far left activists as too irresponsible to be trusted with the power of government. But even if I’m wrong about that, even if the public would approve of such a program, hey, that’s democracy for you, and it will be a pleasant surprise to see the Democrats run honestly, on their real intentions.
I thought it looked like a guy.
Would I trust that woman with any real authority? No, and I’m pretty sure she’s not running for office.
My problem with the Democratic leadership is not that they’re running a stealth campaign, it’s that I think they’re really telling us the agenda: raise minimum wage, negotiate drug prices for Medicare, and reduce interest on student loans. Pretty weak stuff, and I don’t see much evidence that they want to go much beyond that.
The thing about the Conract with America that made it successful wasn’t its honesty (we never did get the term limits and campaign finance reform that it promised), but its boldness. It offered a distinctly new direction for government.
Because let’s face it: if the people are happy with the status quo, they’ll just vote the Republicans back into office. Offering a new direction really doesn’t have a downside for the minority party.
The Dems in Maryland have taken some bold steps to institutionalize vote fraud. This must reflect some concerns about the political future. Their bully-boys in the General Assemply pushed for ‘early voting’ in precincts where voting early and often has been a tradition for over a century.