Progressives thought they'd overtaken the Democratic Party. Now they're in despair.
PoliticopThe movement has also had limited influence on the proposals House Democrats have put forward to address the coronavirus, with leadership rejecting its most ambitious ideas.
The abrupt reversal of fortune has prompted introspection among many left-wing activists, who only three months ago were confident that the future of the Democratic Party was theirs.
Interviews with more than 15 left-wing leaders — including grass-roots organizers, down-ballot candidates and former aides to Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren — revealed strife over what went wrong and what to do next.
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Dem4Life, not the smallish but very passionate bloc of conservative racist Dems in that era, mainly southern racists, who were always unhappy and enraged by the dominant liberals but only finally left in big numbers in outrage over the giant civil rights advances of the 1960s.
You know, no one can understand politics who imagines party labels are simple identifiers of everyone in the party; that's wildly inaccurate even at any one time, much less over different eras. Though these days Dems are overwhelmingly liberal and Repubs overwhelmingly conservative, there are still factions and differences.
At the time you point to, Democrats had both rabid racists who turned dogs on people trying to integrate schools and those who DID integrate schools. Oil and water. The latter ultimately won because they (including the substantial black bloc who helped create the New Deal and were huge in civil rights) far outnumbered the former, but conservative racists caused a great deal of trouble in the party for decades. Republicans of that era also had a residual liberal bloc constantly conflicting with their dominant conservatives.
So once we can identify political ideology by actions rather than the labels often very misleadingly claimed, or assigned by mischiefmakers, big confusions resolve into clearer pictures, and those using labels to deceive lose more victims.
It's actually easy because most liberals and conservatives are very, very, unmistakably different in many ways, with big differences in ideology and goals. Certainly the parties they dominate are. We just have to know what those differences are (much discussion by political psychologists on line).
Also among the players to be identified by actions rather than labels are those prone to extremism on both left and right; many find it valuable to to hide among mainstream parties and claim to be "true" whatevers, but the more extreme some become, the more they're less like whatever they're masquerading as and more like each other. A century ago socialist and fascist groups were always trying to woo each others' members away, and Trump and Sanders were at it in this one. But again they're revealed, and prettily easily too, by examining often atypical and destructive actions that seem to conflict with their rhetoric. Right now, btw, Putin's scheming to unite the genuine extremists with each other and with the rest of the Republicans against the rest of the electorate, so it's particularly important to be able to identify and watch them.
But we're all affected by deep-seated societal attitudes, and changing them is not the work of days but of centuries.
Of course liberals in both the Democratic and Republican parties of those eras did try to do "something about segregation" and many opposed "internment of Japanese Americans." Eleanor Roosevelt was appalled by her husband's agreement to the internment demanded by people after Pearl Harbor, especially in the west, who feared invasion would follow.
Most steps toward equality have always been the baby steps that are the only ones that could succeed against massive resistance to change. And often followed by steps back.
Just look at the huge backlash we're living through against the election of a black president and the great advances in women's and LGBTQ rights. Most Americans support both -- half of us ARE women, even a small majority of Republicans as well as a large one of Democrats supported gay marriage, and well over half of all voters chose Obama proudly. But cumulatively those were very big steps coming virtually at once. And here we are. Socially conservative reactionaries are willing to destroy our nation to reverse these advances in equality.
Again, look past the labels and the rhetoric and examine the actions. And don't trash good people because they can't prevail all the time and when you want. To put it in very simple terms, bad people win when when they can fool enough voters into turning against good people.
giant steps forward since, but nothing to equal the sheer size and scope of the New Dealers' magnificent achievements.
Trying to judge Democrats of those days simplistically against what came later obscures that. With the exception of the rabid southern racists who left to wreak havoc in the Republican Party, I think we're still pretty much the same kind of people they were, but operating at a more liberalized, higher level that they had a great deal to do with bringing us to.
Must have been like trying to round up fighting cats -- the rabid Southern conservative caucus, the radicals who didn't flee to a third party but stayed to fight to do away with capitalism. The black caucus who worked with the majority liberal factions to prevail, but not in everything.
were battling for the future of our nation against our wealthy classes and the left- and right-wing extremist revolutions that other nations were falling to, as a "liberal utopia." They were years of constant struggle and battles resulting in big gains, losses, and compromises.
But the idea that there could ever be such a party brings us back to those this OP discusses. What kind of people could imagine they were "the only true progressives" who could usher in an illiberal utopia and yet help turn the nation over to RW powers determined to destroy progressive government for at least the rest of our lifetimes?
Hand in hand with the monumental absurdity of imagining they could "take over" the giant Democratic Party, their hypocrisy and cluelessness continually amaze. And amuse.
They've been studied intensively, along with their counterparts on the right, of course. Their peculiar blindness to us, their rejection of what is required to make progress happen, and to themselves, including their irrational conceits about their moral superiority, make them unable to understand...almost everything. The Democratic Party represents well over 100 million progressives who, to put it mildly, do not appreciate dysfunctional troublemakers who determinedly sabotage their own professed ideals while professing only the highest principles.
But they see none of that. It's not that they don't want to be as superior to others as they think they are, just that they aren't and can't be. Exactly like the bad Christians and trumpsters who imagine belonging to their group and following their leader means they're the righteous ones, they're very, very bad at self examination, to the point of even being incapable of recognizing the difference between right and wrong in their own behaviors. But everyone who takes one good glance at them has no trouble seeing it at all.
Despite what the Republicans have tried to do against us over the past 40-50 years, liberal is not a dirty word.
I could be mistaken, but I thought, initially, the term progressive came about because being a liberal concocted something wrong. Like I said, I could be mistaken.
It'd be very rare to find one who wasn't, and that'd be a peculiarity. Almost an oxymoron.
Progressivism in government of course means employing the powerful tool of government to serve needs of its people that private groups and individuals can't or haven't. Progressive policies are an inevitable result of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And of course representative democracy is intrinsically liberal.
Not just liberals, though. Over the last century most conservatives have developed appreciation and desire for progressive policies, just to lesser degrees than liberals. Cons tend to be constantly worried that the "undeserving" are benefiting and shouldn't be. They've been taught to see "progressive" as a bad word now, but both the Tea Party and Trump were populist, RW rebellions against the wealth-serving Republican leadership who were cutting and plotting to destroy their progressive social programs and regulatory protections.
So no surprise that Trump didn't just campaign on no cuts to Medicare and Social Security but promised to repeal and replace "Obamacare" with a program with much better coverages for far less cost. Sanders promised to do the same from the "Progressive" anti-Democrat left. And of course Hillary promised to finish developing the ACA into the universal healthcare system she and our progressive liberal party had long been committed to. All of them promising to protect and develop the progressive programs the vast majority of America's voters want.
Also Agree with "reality come a-calling" analysis by peggysue2.
Oh, that was the reason!
Not that roughly half of all Americans are naturally liberal in personality and that the Democratic Party is America's liberal party. Oh yeah -- and that liberals are far too committed to individual freedoms to accept socialist government.
Even as they refuse to ally with people who share the same goals (!), OR types simply cannot understand why their plans always fail. It's because they want to be us, a "better" version, though, wired to rejection of the compromise and cooperation intrinsic to democracy. So their very reason for existence requires denying Democrats' liberal egalitarian ideology and commitment to progressive government.
And here they are once again imagining they could oppose and deny Democrats themselves, defeat democracy itself, to take over leadership of the giant Democratic Party, as diverse and requiring of respect and cooperation as America itself.
As always, they're the dog that didn't catch the car. Not that they would learn from that.
That's the plus side if some do manage to start another short-lived party.
Some of Sanders' populist staffers considering starting a third party have already made it clear they want no part of the OR leaders. Sanders' more enterprising 2016 followers had already separated into several minor groups, and I'm sure the populist staffers, OR and Democratic Socialists aren't the only ones who can't cooperate enough to ally.
No one wants the dysfunctionals who wander into and out of the moribund Green Party, but nevertheless the socialist editor of Jacobin has perversely decided to use its obscure, perennial-loser candidate to fracture the young dissidents who read his stuff away in yet another direction, maybe just to see if he can reelect Trump to spite everyone. He wouldn't necessarily understand that himself -- from what I've read most in the radical/extremist slough are not exactly good at self awareness.
And Senator Sanders has turned the extremely expensive and sophisticated database they all covet over for safekeeping to the PAC, Friends of Bernie Sanders, Inc, that helps his senate reelections. Now that I can see as understandable.
