First of all I will say what I please as I don't view you as the end all of Democratic discussion. I too agree with voting for Democrats. That is why Obama will never again get my vote. I have been around the block long enough to see Pubs steal populism, while we worry about fringe issue debates. We have lost the economic trust of the American people and deservedly so. I am an American before a Democrat.
If a real labor party is needed nothing you say will stop it. Ban away Bud, but your power is symbolic. You don't scare me and your cavalier attitude towards free speech is abhorrent. Your petulance is emblematic of the new power base of this party, and I have better things to do, like elect real Democrats who care about jobs, not Trojan Horse pseudo intellectuals who think a stint at Harvard and the willingness to compromise make a leader. The true political war is coming, dear sir, and you will be shocked to find out who your true friends are. Ban away, terrorize the site, I could care less. Enjoy the crickets, as that may be all to be heard here. You elect your new and better neo-liberals, the New Dealers like me will be back with a different label.
I have watched my party devolve from a party of hard working laborers of all backgrounds, into a morass of self righteous freaks who lather themselves in the rhetoric of progress as defined solely by them. People who would throw away years of work on health care for purity, who would allow preteens to get abortions without parental consent, and who mock my God and those who would support Him. Yes I said it. I can be a Christian Democrat. The idea that someone prays or wants to wear a cross is somehow against the rigid secular tenets of the party. I don't stand for that. Most mainstream Americans don't. I stand for real values, the real values of FDR, Truman, and Kennedy, and to a lesser extent, Clinton. I stand for putting paychecks into people's hands, not excuses. I stand for the radical notion that minorities don't need paternalism to survive, they need safe streets and opportunity. I stand for education that puts children first, and I stand for a fair trade policy that creates jobs. I stand for heath care, not corporate giveaways that mandate junk coverage, but real health care, that covers everybody through progressive taxation. I stand for not being called a nut because I pray, and the right to scoff at science when I see fit. I stand for solving global warming but not banning away our way of life to do it. I stand for labor before gay marriage, and peace before war. I stand for parental authority, and teacher accountability. I stand also, for freedom, for the right to eat what I want, wear what I want and drive what I want. If you want to change someone, educate them. It is how we achieve reform in America and the hipster Berkeley fueled paternalistic nanny stating has to go, because, in case you did not get the point, I stand for America.
You see I am a Democrat, but not the kind infesting the party. Not dogmatically progressive, but pragmatically liberal. You are probably too short sighted to realize that unemployment is high partially because of credit and unemployment discrimination. Did you know that a bankruptcy seriously undermines a person's ability to get back into a good job? Do you care? What are you doing about it if you do?
If I am too conservative for you YOU are the one that can leave. Because I have news for you, the majority of my party, the real rank and file, the lunchbox crew, the nurses, and laborers think more like me than you. This country will always progress socially. Politics can accelerate the process but rarely initiates it. Gays will eventually get full equality, and marijuana will eventually be legal. But what it may not always have is a middle class, a thriving example of shared prosperity that once made the world jealous.
We need Americans to stand up and unite behind the cause of wage standards, true health care, and infrastructure development. We don't need egomaniacs running around making judgments on who, or what, a Democrat is. Because I have news for you, all those new and better Democrats you recruit are largely supported by a different base than you want, and therefore you get a different result than we deserve. Today's liberal is often yesterday's Rockerfeller Republican, a permissive, largely amoral group who care about libertarianism more than central economic planning, and private universities more than state funded schools. The hypocrites on this site regularly preach about the need for education then chide Gov. Palin for going to a state school. Oh please, this is what you complain about? Are there not better things to truly complain about with her? This is why you, not me, are called elitists. Or as TomP likes to say, classists. I was run off of this site because I did not conform to the dogma, but I would tell you the reason we are getting Republican policy is because we are supported by, especially on the coasts, former libertarian Republicans.
The Democratic party is not shrinking yet, but it will. As people see the narrow prism with which its' leaders and supporters view the world, it will continue to lose influence, being replaced by Republicans, or possibly that dastardly third party. Perhaps real Democrats will take back the party and its' true ideology of mainstream social progress and economic populism and we can hope so. But you are running off those people. You are cutting off debate in an effort to maintain order; a textbook case of egotism and foolishness. But importantly I would like to point out this is not your site alone. You own it, and you can end it, but it belongs also to the posters, because those are the ones that gave it life. There is no "Kos Brand" without us but there is most assuredly an us without "Kos Brand."
I would strongly suggest you take note of that.
If we support people like the odious Cuomo, simply because they pass laws to enshrine gay marriage, all the while overlooking his disgusting anti-worker agenda, we no longer have any kind of party resembling our values. We would have traded away paychecks and family stability all in the name of accelerated narrow progress socially. Should gays have full rights? Absolutely. Should that be what we base electoral decisions upon? Not if we have a brain in our ever loving head. When we get the worker back, the vulgar, blue collar, beer drinking, hunting, narrow minded hick so many of you like to label as nutbags, we will get more than gay marriage, or abortion rights, we will get jobs. We will get wages. And like before, we will have a true majority party not just in numbers, but in legislative authority.
Now in saying that, would you artisitic pseudo liberals please wake up and head into a working class neighborhood not parentally funded and get some candidates named Earl, or Chuck, or Susie, or Jane? Will you get someone with blisters on their hands, and aches in their backs and steel in their bones to pass real reforms? Will you please fall out of love with Ivy Leaguers and in love with bowling leaguers? Will you put faith in the people you claim to care about by trusting some of them to lead? And will you Markos, grow up? Will you learn that the Democratic party existed before you, and the heart of our values will exist after you. You as am I, are but one man. We will rise and fall together, like it or not, and banning me does not dissuade me or even separate us. If you want results you are stuck with people like me, get used to it. There will always be the Bubbas, Kos, and be glad of it. If you reunite, and drop the classism, and help me propel labor reforms, I promise to help you fix the environment, and achieve equal rights. But above all people gotta eat. And I would really like a future where we eat healthy food purchased by the earnings of the sweat of our labors, not the degradation of our laborers. Our priorities are screwed. Sophistry is rampant in every aspect of our political culture and it has to stop. So I am asking that it stop with you. Think about it. The children your efforts feed, after all, include your own. God Bless you Markos, whether you like it or not.
-Todd Bennett,
Proud Traditional Democrat