“I think that it would help the quality of the debate and she may win, but even if she doesn’t, I think she’d make Hillary Clinton a better candidate.”
So Ellison says, but it isn’t the nature of the candidate, it’s their willingness to govern the way they campaign that’s the issue. Obama made lots of great sounding promises, but he knuckled under to the nutjob Repukes as soon as they challenged him. In the midterms, the rest of the Dems ran away from what he was able to accomplish when he did bring the fight. If we Dems run another R-Lite we’ll be as toasted as the R-Nuts…
Exactly which great sounding promises did Obama make during the campaign only to “knuckle under” to Republicans once they challenged him? And promises he made during the imaginary conversations “progressives” had with him in their heads in 2008 don’t count.
Isn’t it strangely but predictably perverse that in the Democratic party there are people like Manchin and other DINOS who so readily rail at the Democratic agenda and vow not to support the president but I don’t believe we see that sort of opposition with the R ranks.
I would not equate DFA with the progressive wing, they have endorsed a lot of progressives, but also non-progressive non-corporatist non-blue dog democrats (e.g. Barack Obama) in the center of the party. As for their impact on elections, when Howard Dean was DNC chair, Dems retook the Senate and House in 2006 and all three branches in 2008.
As for progressives supposedly tearing down the party by advocating for a public option, get serious. The real progressive preference was for single payer. The public option was a second best alternative, designed as a backstop for the somewhat jury rigged exchange model. At this point, the major weakness in ACA (and it is not so much a weakness as one of those practically invisible hand holds on the Dawn wall) is the design of the exchanges, or rather, the inconsistent language concerning exchanges resulting from the concession to the blue dog/corporatists of having state exchanges.
I’m with you. It’s encouraging that the Progressive wing is stepping up. I would hate to see the damage to the country of a complete party takeover like some of the states: Wisconsin, Kansas, etc.
Actually, what I’m saying is that there’s no actual content to this story. It’s just a narrative that wrote itself with a couple of quotes dropped in after it was written to simulate substance.
You’ve got a quote from a single progressive member of Congress basically batting away at a strawman–(because last time I looked, the DLC was disbanded and Third Way was generally acknowledged to be a thoroughly discredited tool of the kleptocrats that hasn’t had a single idea that’s been enacted into legislation or even seriously considered since 2010), and then you’ve got highly predictable repetitions of the same fundraising purity trolling platitudes from Adam Green and Jim Dean have been spouting for years.
Adam Green and Jim Dean and their organizations have this in common with Third Way: the only people who give a rat’s ass what they say or think anymore are the ones who give them money and journalists who need a quote for a story they already wrote, because neither organization has had any noticeable positive impact on moving people from the R to D column in elections–the only thing members of Congress truly care about.
Granted, prior to 2012, PCC played at least some role in a handful of successful primary challengers to incumbent Democrats who then got beaten by Republicans, but that’s not exactly the stuff that influence is made of; indeed, it’s like the antimatter version of the stuff influence is made of.
Blue Dog Dems have always been a point of contention within the Dem party, but were always taken with a “at least they vote with us most of the time” type philosophy. Clinton was a master at this sort of coalition with the Blue Dogs and the more centrist-leaning Repubs. He really knew how to co-opt Repub issues and put them in a position of looking bad if they didn’t go along with his “tweaks” to their plans.
I believe a rough Repub equivalent to Blue Dog Dems would be their Tea Party wing. I would qualify that by saying that the Blue Dogs are nowhere near as extreme as the Tea Party, but definitely cause a lot of internal turmoil.
I have been a registered Democrat since 1966. I have never voted for a Republican. If I don’t like the Democrat like Moynihan I pass. But I reserve the right to choose where to stand on any issue. Ideologues of the right or left should never lead a political party.
The Democrats have been losing ground since they went to the centrist DNS, DSCC mode. The attempt to be Republican light has been an abject failure, as Harry Truman warned it would be. Go LEFT if you want to retake both Houses of Congress.
Only because there isn’t a R in the White House not to support. Just take a gander back at the past 4 years and look at how many times the TP have publicly gone against leadership, to huge embarrassment for all involved. Republicans are vastly more in tune with their reactionary wing than Dems are with their progressive wing, though…and the TP carries a bit more clout in Congress than Progressives do.
Hell, the 2012 GOP primary was basically an exercise in the TP saying they didn’t want Romney…ANYONE but Romney…thus the rise of so many “Not Romney”'s over the course of the primary.
And one (just one) of the reasons for this is due to the fact that Dem leadership can’t always count on getting that base out to vote. If the so-called progressive base is less than happy with the candidates that are running, Dem leadership knows they’ll stay home.
The GOP knows that teabaggers will come out to vote. Period. Yes, the teabaggers have gone against GOP leadership at times but they “usually” fall in line. And vote Repub. Because the teabaggers know that they can use government to achieve their ends. If the progressive wing isn’t sufficiently enamored of Dem candidates, they just withhold their vote. Or they sabotage the viability of certain candidates.
I’m all for a progressive turn for the Democratic Party. What I am not on board with is every side-issue on the left vying for attention. Jobs, wages, civil rights, healthcare, education, renewable energy, public transportation, shifting the budget away from the Pentagon siphon and towards things that help people – this is what should be concentrated on. I don’t need the latest loudmouth on the left to say that the party sucks because their pet issue isn’t being paid attention to. Yes, I’m sure sustainable mushroom farming in Nebraska is an exciting thing, I just don’t give a fuck.
Yeah, imaginary public option, favored by two thirds of Americans and three fourths of physicians.
The wind was at the Democrats’ back, with supermajorities in both Houses and overwhelming support, but Third Wayer DLC toad Rahm Emanuel, afraid of being called a “socialist” by Fox News, advised Obama to let the insurers write the bill they want and declare victory, and that’s what happens. So you’ll just have to excuse us pajama-wearing retards for having an issue with that.
Moreover, after so-called “banking reform,” banks are now bigger than ever. The Justice Department will prosecute no one; at least when the S&L debacle occurred, there were hundreds of prosecutions.
And, after this last budget was approved by the Congress and Obama signed it, pension protections were gutted, as was whatever shred of regulatory aspect remained from so-called “banking reform.”
Oh, then there’s this: while we’re distracted with Keystone XL, a negligent State Department has looked the other way while Enbridge is shipping tar sands to the Gulf in quantities that rival the pipeline’s capacity. And in the wake of the BP disaster, Obama’s own independently commissioned study indicated that blowout preventers simply do not work, yet the Feds have approved drilling as fast as they can possibly rubber stamp the applications.
Now, people are actually having to sue to see the contents of the looming Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that evidently corporations are seeing (in fact, crafting) but Congress and the media isn’t.
The FDA, ostensibly there to protect us, is now being run by big Ag and big Pharma. In virtually all regulatory matters, the foxes are occupying the hen house.
Green lantern ring my progressive buttocks. The Democratic Party is overrun with corporate toadies from the top down, and the pre-ordained next candidate for our highest office is the queen bee of DLC Third Way corporatist by lineage.
And this idea that it’s all OK because Democrats have to compete with Republicans for the miniscule quarter of the electorate brainwashed by Fox News— repeatedly ignoring the fact that three quarters of the people don’t vote because they feel it’s meaningless — is precisely what’s enabling this nonsense. I’m just not going to unite behind that, whether you capitalize “Real Progessive” or not.
So Democrats, as far as this goddamned “Real Progressive” is concerned, you can either work for us, or I really don’t give a flying fuck if you work at all. It’s really just that simple. I’m not participating in perpetuating this depravity from corporate ass kissers.
If we fail to make our positions known, and if we fail to impose consequences for misbehavior, then elections really don’t matter much. Always being forced to choose the lesser of two evils is nonsense. And spare me the lectures about President Romney – I’m not going to fuss over whether the middle class is officially declared dead a couple of measly years later or sooner.
But the good news for the party loyalists is that since “Real Progressives” had nothing to do with electing the corporatist in the White House and his minions in Congress, I’m confident you’ll all do just fine without us.
Fair enough point. I would say that my reasoning behind (loosely) comparing the Blue Dogs to the Tea Party is the ability of the Blue Dogs to have more of an impact within the party than the progressive wing. There always seems to be a willingness of the Dems to court the Blue Dogs to help keep coalitions while the progressives get taken for granted (if you will) that they’ll always vote with the Dems.
