UPDATE: The early results of my poll indicate that you do not think that liberalism is dead. Wonderful. I agree. START ACTING LIKE IT.
Stop giving me "off the table", opt-ins, opt-outs, triggers, more trade than cap, "how dare you question the President", "I have his back (so I'm a better Democrat than you)". "oh no, President Palin or Huckabee or whoever is your personal right wing boogeyman."
We question our leaders. That's what we do. That's what makes us great and why we'll probably endure long after the Palin's and Mark Kirk's of the world have crawled back under their respective rocks. Don't wring your hands over it. Don't give up. Stop negotiating with yourself before you get to the negotiating table. Don't buy into the cat litter box contents of "off the table". Celebrate liberalism by acting like a liberal.
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The original post is below the fold.
It seems to me that Democrats have added a new boogeyman to the equation. If we don't comply with the same corporate and military interests that governed under Bush, we'll get Bush or the likes of him in the form of Sarah Palin or even Mike Huckabee, back in office. This argument is being used to support war escalation, fake health care reform and fake climate change reform because everyone knows all republicans have to do is merge Osama bin Laden's face into that of the Democratic candidate to win an election.
I've been reading several posts and comments on Kos since Obama's announcement of war escalation. The justifications based on the situation on the ground in Afghanistan I can understand. I don't agree with them, but I understand.
The political arguments I find very disturbing. Several commenters said if we don't go along, we get a President Palin or a President Huckabee. Another pointed to the failures of the Green Party. A diarist compared liberal Democrats to the PLO. Now, I guess we're somewhat used to being compared to the PLO in that we typically don't believe in arming Israel and all its enemies to the teeth and telling them to have at it as a Mid East peace plan. However, now we're the PLO because we don't think that fake health care reform or fake climate change and energy reform and now a war escalation in a country that clearly needs some peace are all that great of ideas.
All this is very sad to me because it tells me that even the liberals or progressives (whatever you choose to identify as) believe that liberalism is dead. The heirs of John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt don't have enough faith in the truth of their ideals that they choose to adopt a softer version of their political opponents so as not to risk an election. The fact that we even use the term progressive rather than liberal indicates to me that we do think we're already there.
It seems to me, you're just trying to use the boogeyman strategy same as Bush did for eight years, but now the boogeymen are the repubublicans. If we don't act like the less whacky republicans, we'll soon get the real ones back in power and maybe even the tea party extremists. However, using republicans in this was merely elevates them no different than changing our foreign and domestic policy to fit terrorists elevates them. I don't accept this argument because I've been living here in the IL-10 under the fake moderate Mark Kirk for 9 years now and I can tell you that a fake moderate is a conservative and grows more conservative as he's rewarded for it.
Are we at the point where the far right wins even when the left of center wins because we think we have to keep the far right happy to win anything? If yes, then they've already won again and liberalism is truly dead.