After several disastrous elections the Democrats formed the Democratic Leadership Council. Made up of largely pro-Wall Street, pro-interventionist, Democrats, they decided to try appealing to moderates and some conservatives by being conservative on just about everything but social issues.
With the election of Bill Clinton, two times, that approach seemed to be successful. However, we lost to Bush twice. This should have caused concern that the policy of just throw the progressives a bone once in awhile wasn’t going to work. Then President Obama won twice so these concerns were largely drowned out. But after losing to of all people, a man who may not want the job, it’s time to re-examine the success of Third Way Democrats. Were they successful in their own right, or were they just lucky?
The election between George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton could have gone either way. While some in the DLC may say that this success was due to Bill Clinton’s own strategy the fact is, without Bush breaking his “no new taxes” pledge, and causing the Republicans to stay home, the election would have likely gone the other way.
Bob Dole, though I respect him for actually fighting for disability rights and standing up to the conspiracy nuts in his own party, was a weak candidate. The Republicans breaking parts of the Contract with America, probably didn’t help either.
McCain’s loss was not so much President Obama’s victory as much as it was people were pissed about the market crash and the Iraq war.
Romney was a weak candidate that tea partiers viewed as a RINO.
This caused Democrats to ignore big problems in the states, as a result, we hold virtually nothing in the heartland.
We cannot keep relying on Republicans to nominate weaklings or incidental surprises like market crashes.
We cannot keep nominating people who want to use the military the same way Republicans do: As the world’s police.
More importantly, we can’t keep writing off people in small towns while we focus almost entirely on urban issues.
We need to run real Progressives not these same Republican-lite politicians. When people see a Republican running as a Republican and a Republican running as a Democrat, they’ll vote Republican.
President Obama said not to adopt a Tea Party mentality but maybe it’s time for exactly that. The Third Way pseudo-Dems have been stumbling around, bumbling blindly into their successes in spite of their best efforts to fail. It’s time for actual Progressives to take charge. If for no other reason than we can’t possibly do worse.