Prior to Reagan the Democratic Party was the party of Civil Rights, the poor, the middle class and The People. After the Reagan Revolution the party changed and instead of trying to compete with Republicans by being their antithesis it tried to compete by being a kinder gentler version of the Republicans.
That was 35 years ago and now most Governors, Congress People, State Legislatures and even lower offices are held by Republicans. Now we have Democratic Presidents keeping on high level cabinet positions from Republican administrations, and joining forces with a Republican Congress to pass legislation the Democrats are against. We have a Democratic President fighting to get his own party to support a diplomatic agreement to keep nukes out of Iran. Clinton pushed NAFTA, Bush pushed CAFTA and Obama is pushing TTP. The lines have become too blurred.
Its a failed strategy that has proven empirically that it does not work. The Democrats are a far weaker party today than they have been in decades. The party is killing itself from the inside out and its a time to put an end to it. The reason someone like Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat is because he represents the Democrats of old, FDR, Truman, Kennedy and LBJ, but the party of today is nothing like that. Its not that those of us on the left are leaving the Democratic Party, but that the party left us.
Its time to put an end to all of that and bring the party back to where it was most successful as a party of The People, the lower and middle classes, of minorities and not its current incarnation as the socially liberal wing of the big money party. This is not a pie fight over Edwards, or Dean or Obama or Clinton or Biden. its fight over what do we want our party to represent.
Bernie Sanders is for the first time in decades offering us a chance to bring the party back on track and the people are responding. For the first time they are excited for a chance to vote FOR someone and FOR something and not just against the others, and the people are responding. This is a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, for who it represents and what it stands for, and the people are responding.
There are two Democratic Parties today one is its current incarnation and one is what we want it to be. Is this a Democratic site? Yes it is, but because there are two Democratic Parties we have two different world views. One is to maintain the current status quo, the party as it is, and one is to change the status quo to remake the party as we think it should be.
Was Bill Clinton a Democrat? Yes, but he is a president who shamed welfare, pushed Nafta, ended Glass-Steagall and pushed the party to the right. One can be critical of Clinton while still being a true Democrat because like patriotism, you can be for your country right or wrong or you can be for making your country right when its wrong. There are those who support the Democratic Party because its the Democratic Party and its right even when its wrong, and then there are those of us who are critical of the Democratic party and want it to be right where it is wrong.
That is what this primary is about! If you support the Democratic party right or wrong then vote for Clinton, or Biden or O'Malley or any of the other mainstream candidates that differ only in slight degrees. If you support making the Democratic party right where it has been wrong and remaking it into a better party of the people then vote for Bernie Sanders.
We are all Democrats, even if you don't like it or want to admit it, but where we differ is in what we want from our party. Some of us just want our party to win with very low expectations of what will be delivered from that win and others want our party to win because it actually represents us. That is the choice we have been given for the first time in decades and all of us will have to decide if we care more about our party just 'winning' over our needs being represented.
So enough of this bull shit, we are all Democrats, even those of us who are critical of the unDemocratic actions of our Democratic Representatives. We want a better Democratic party and millions of non voters and previously non party affiliated citizens are rising up to join us in this fight.
When you look into the soul of the Democratic party what do you want to see? Though a better question is are you actually willing to look into that soul, or do you avert your eyes afraid of what will be revealed? Many of us have looked into that soul and we don't like what we see, but instead of turning away to hide that vision from ourselves, we are starring it down.
The time has come to remake the party into what we want it to be and those of us fighting the status quo are not your enemies, we are your friends asking you to join us!
3:15 PM PT: Anyone arguing semantics is doing so to avoid the main point of the diary. Just ignore anyone asking what 'soul' means or pointing out that every great past president did things wrong too. The main point of the diary is very clear and all these kinds of arguments are purely meant to obfuscate it.