I see that we have a diary here about how the winds are changing. Wake up. For me the failure to fight the Alito nomination is the final straw. There is majority support for sustaining Roe v. Wade in this country, and the Democrats won't step up to do it. If the Democratic leadership will not step up and organize the opposition on this, then somebody else will have to do it. I am currently living abroad, so I emailed both my senators and the DNC. No reply. I called the DNC directly from abroad and was shunted into a voicemail by a rude phone jockey. Folks, to this party we are nobody.
Marshall Witmann is still at the DLC, supporting an air attack on Iran, savaging peace activists and environmentalists, and generally selling RNC talking points. Ed Kilgore at New Donkey is big pals with Marshall.
The Democratic Party exists so that the Republicans can have a punching bag and pretend that there is Democracy in America. But as we know most Democratic operatives depend on corporate donors nearly as much as the Republicans.
The Democratic Party did nothing effective to fight the theft of the 2000 election. On the day of the Supreme Court decision deciding that election I was standing in front of the Arkansas State House alone with a protest sign. I had called the local Democratic Party and they had no plans for any action at all.
The Democrats piled on to support the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. Those who opposed the Iraq War and supported Afghanistan like Howard Dean were nonetheless portrayed by many, including many Democrats, as hopeless pacifists out of touch with reality.
We are spending more on our military than approximately the next ten powers combined and most of those powers are our allies. Yet to trump the Republicans on National Security Democrats will NOT talk about reducing defense spending - as if a bloated military will help us to fight a small, low-tech but dangerous group like al-Qaeda.
As James Howard Kunstler points out, the Democrats are also not talking about any effective actions to deal with the end of the availability of cheap fossil fuels.
Even Sean Paul Kelly (sp?) at the Agonist regularly joins the chorus of voices yelling that the REAL enemy is China. Not talking first about how to build a productive relationship with China, but how to counter their largely imagined threat. Japan alone spends much more on its military than China.
Many Democrats voted for the recent bankruptcy legislation in Congress, legislation that was cynically calculated upon the correct but silent assumption that a major economic downturn was on the way in the next five years and lower-income American debtors should be held hostage when it happened.
A majority of Americans support progressive positions on most policy issues from health care to abortion to the environment but the Democrats cannot translate this into election wins. Why not? Either they're conscious shills for the very wealthy few who now run this country, or they're so damn eager to be invited to the right cocktail parties that, like journalists in the MSM, they'll say or do just about anything. Maybe murmuring under their breath about their doubts.
Folks let's face it. The disasters of the last nine years (since Clinton's impeachment) are not just the Republicans' fault. The Democratic leadership has failed us catastrophically. Failure to fight Alito indicates to me that the leaders really do not represent most rank-and-file Democrats, and they are not budging.
Yeah, politics is the art of the possible, we have to be pragmatic, etc. But eventually it's possible to reach the point that it's clear we Democratic rank and file are just propping up a sad straw scarecrow the Republicans just keep hitting with a baseball bat. This country is headed for some desperately hard times and more and more insane politics. I'd rather be among those who inspire some future renewed progressive movement by determined if in the short term futile resistance to the craziness. Not an aider and abettor of disaster.
I'm finished with this bunch of spineless, incompetent losers. You'll find me at the precinct meetings of whatever small progressive party I can find or found.