If the people who read my diary from last night thought I was angry then. Well...I was pretty calm and relaxed as compared to now.
It clearly appears to me that centrists and so-called progressive deanics can no longer co-exist in the same party. What each side thinks is best for the party are completely incompatable.
When progressives do something they think will help, centrists pile on them. When centrists do something they think will help, the deaniac/progressives pile on them.
Despite the fact that, policy wise, the two groups are quite similar, a nearly full-out war has started, at least on kos, between the two groups. The reason? Not the what, but the how.
more below...
It is clear that progressives have now delcared open war against the Democratic Party - that is, the Democratic Party as it exists today. They wish to totally destroy it. They want to "throw all the bums out" and totally recreate the party, turning into something which is wholly different from the democratic party is today.
In the process, they will completely alienate conservatives, independents, and moderate (current) democrats.
If what I have seen on this website over the past two days is the direction the party is going, then the Democratic Party has already lost. It is a dead party. It will fracture the left and moderate factions of society so much that the conservative republicans will have a stranglehold on Congress and the White House for the forseeable future.
I had been thinking about posting a diary about discussing the whats and hows of the party in order to find common ground. But it is now clear that there is no common ground. the two factions in the party just will not and cannot work together.
Of course, being a centrist myself, my answer would be just to boot out all the so-called progressive deaniacs who are causing trouble. We almost won 2000 without them anyway, and how much they helped/hurt kerry in 2004 is increasingly coming into question in my own mind. If by trying to keep them in the party, we lose more votes than we gain, I would just as well say good riddence.
Of course, this break isn't because centrists never wanted to work with progressives. Centrists could have kicked them off the train long ago if they wanted to. But we thought we needed this new Dean wing of the party to win. Obviously bringing them along still changed nothing. Not only did we still lose, but by a wider margin.
No, from my centrist perspective, this is wholly and totally the deaniac wing of the party's fault. They don't want a coalition with centrists, they want to conquer the centrists.
My advice to the centrists in the party: Ignore the deaniac wing of the party. Ignore them until they decide to work with us instead of against us. The center is where elections will be won, and if you can't see that, then you're a fool.
I'll continue to fight for what I believe in here because it is important. But I'm through with giving the deaniac wing the benefit of a doubt.
Until things changed, the deanic wing of the party is the democrat's version of the radical religious right. Pure ideological purity is demanded. Anyone else is "with the other side" as far as they are concerned.
Now, prove me wrong.
[editor's note, by FleetAdmiralJ] Well, i've decided to do a part III to this, either tonight or tomorrow, depending on my availability and mood, to continue this discussion, but hopefully on a more positive track. With now 27 votes, and not a single "no" in the poll, there at least seems to be some flavor of optimism here that the two sides can in fact work things out.
My thought for a third installment is to ask...so you think it can work together...what do you think needs to happen for that to occur. It's obvious that people aren't in harmony right now, so what can we do to improve the situation? Constructively.