I’m with kos. I’m sick of reading all of this divisive bullshit around here about “identity politics” from the progressive purists. It’s about time someone called them out. Let the purge begin!
I suggest we kick it off with the asshole who has written this:
The Democratic Party and its coalition of single-issue groups and its consultant class continue to act as if the party holds a majority. There is no move underway to rethink and develop a core set of governing principles to persuade the American public. Progressive-issue groups — pro-choice, environmental, civil rights, minorities — continue to operate much as they have for the past several decades, apparently undeterred by their repeated failures, refusing to acknowledge the changing media and political landscape that has made many of their efforts, at best, ineffective or obsolete, and at worse, counterproductive.
So here we are with the harsh reality of a Republican Party run amok, a midterm election looming, and a Democratic Party that’s ill-prepared to win elections. If progressives want to win now, it’s up to the new people-powered movement to get active.
And this:
The Democratic Party stands for everything, yet stands for nothing. It’s a gaggle of special and narrow interests, often in conflict with each other, rarely working in concert to advance their common causes. Members of each issue group... promote their agenda above all others and show little to no understanding of the larger progressive values they share with other groups.
…
These single-issue groups not only hurt the Democratic Party in its search for a common identity, but they also help provide the Republicans with a treasure trove of attack opportunities. While the Democratic Party Party should be the party of the people, it has become, with a lot of help from Republican framing, a party of “immoral” abortionists, “extremist” tree-huggers, “corrupt” labor officials, “greedy” trial lawyers, “predatory” homosexuals and “anti-white” minority activists. After all, these are the loudest and most influential voices in our party — pro-choice groups, environmentalists, labor unions, trial lawyers and identity groups. So it’s not a stretch for demagogic Republicans to paint Democrats as a loose collection of selfish people who are fanatical about their specific cause and have no larger concerns — for the economy, the military, or the country.
This stuff about Heath Mello, the anti-abortion Dem Omaha mayoral candidate, really pissed me off:
But on our side, the issue groups and the identity groups are the Democratic Party. And the problem is not just the categories and the segmentation, but the mind-sets they represent — there is too much emphasis on what the party can do for them and not enough on what they can do for the party.
…
We want an America where a woman, not the government, has control over her own body. We want a world where a woman’s doctor, not the theocons, can care for reproductive health. We support the party that has enshrined abortion rights into its platform, not the party that has vowed to criminalize it. And who is in a better position to protect those rights — a lone pro-choice Republican or two within a governing party hell-bent on destroying those rights, or a lone anti-abortion Democrat or two determined to protect those rights?
Just throwing away abortion as an issue of an “identity” group marks this asshole as “not progressive,” as kos noted with the example from the Weekly Standard in his diary:
Would you trade aggressive immigration restrictions and enforcement for single-payer healthcare?
Okay, so can we start this guy?
Oh…
All those quotes are taken from my autographed copy of kos’ and Jerome Armstrong’s (remember him?) 2006 book, “Crashing the Gate.”
kos signed the title page thusly:
Bob,
Thanks for providing the laughs at dkos! Keep fighting!
- Markos Moulitsas
I hope he gets a chuckle out of this post!
Oh, and that last bit? It wasn’t really about Heath Mello.
It was about Jim Langevin, an anti-abortion Democrat who was going to run against Lincoln Chafee in 2006, and, according to early polls, had a good chance to defeat Chafee. NARAL Pro Choice and NOW backed Chafee over Langevin and Langevin dropped out of the race. Chafee won re-election. [Correction: Chafee ultimately lost that cycle to Sheldon Whitehouse.]