The past 35 years of "pragmatism" by Democrats, starting with Jimmy Carter, have led to a catastrophic rightward drift of the party of FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ. Unions have died, wages have dropped, the safety net has weakened, the environment has been raped and the planet has warmed. The Democratic party abandoned the progressive principles of FDR that raised America form the Great Depression by building a strong middle class. Nothing has damaged America and the Democratic Party more than taking up the royalist, supply side economics of Ronald Reagan and raising high the banner of the bankers and Wall Street. The 1% has grown filthy rich while the 99% fight like dogs for their table scraps. They signed free trade deals with China & NAFTA & CAFTA. They downsized us and outsourced us. We can't find jobs, we lost our pensions and now they are coming for our Social Security.
What have "pragmatic" Democrats done for us in the past decade? They signed off on a disastrous war in Iraq that drained the treasury leaving America trillions in debt. They signed off on deregulation of banks and financial firms leading to the greatest economic failures since the Great Depression. And they signed away our freedoms when they supported the Patriot Act.
"Pragmatic" Democrats like Max Baucus sold our health care out to insurance companies. Health care costs continue to spiral out of control while quality drops because the middle men are draining off resources and stopping single payer health care.
We can't cut greenhouse gas emissions because "pragmatic" Democrats have sold out to big coal, big oil and big polluters. Texas is dying in a 500 year drought, but the pragmatists don't have the courage to speak of climate change.
Give me leaders that stand for something. I'm sick of pushover, douche bag Democrats. The blue dog Democrats roll over on command for the 1%. They aren't serving us. They sell us out every time we let them. We must rekindle the Democratic party by supporting principled Democrats in the progressive tradition of Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt. Alan Grayson is a good example of a principled progressive fighter that deserves our support.
If we keep on rewarding failures and sell outs like Max Baucus by reelecting them we will get more of the same sell outs and failure.
There is no easy solution. We must occupy our communities and rebuild politics at the local level. After we reclaim politics at the grassroots level, the "leaders" will follow.
