[btw, there was a "Look at what an asshole Bush is" item I wanted to post a diary entry about, but as it's mainly a short commentary on a published article, I was mindful of the post discouraging this practice in diaries and didn't. Check out my blog, though, if you want to see it!]
Zell is going around delighting Republicans by trashing the Democratic Party and the nine presidential candidates he calls the "naive nine". His new book is called something like A National Party No More as he bemoans that the Democrats are a "regional, special interest party" (no special interests in the GOP, Zell? pffft).
The common question he gets is "why not become a Republican?" He answers that by saying that the Democratic Party is where he's been his whole life, it's a house that is really dilapidated and there is a family that moved into the basement that he's not too pleased with (I think this might be a racist analogy)...but it's "still home". Okay, whatever. But more than the "why not join the GOP" question, I want to know:
In what way would he like the Democratic Party to change? Assuming he doesn't want it to become exactly the same as the GOP (what would be the point of having two identical parties?), in what way(s) would he want it to differ from the Republican Party?
He wants the Democrats to offer some kind of unique choice, right? Yet he doesn't even seem like an old-fashioned Southern Democrat--they were "conservative" socially (part of that "conservatism", of course, was racism) but liberal/populist on economic issues. But Zell was the first guy to jump on the Bush tax breaks for the rich bandwagon. So...what's the deal, Zell?