“Running As Dems While SOUNDING REPUBLICAN.” Hey, What Could Go Wrong?

[Segami]

"..The polling numbers make it clear: These “Republican-sounding” Democrats aren’t just rejecting liberal orthodoxy. They’re defying the electorate..."

They say that one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and one Politico story certainly doesn’t make a campaign season. But if a recent article there is correct – if the Democratic Party’s strategy this year really is “Running as a Dem (while) sounding like a Republican” – then the party may be headed for a disaster of epic but eminently predictable proportions. “It’s one thing for Democrats running in red parts of the country to sound like Republicans on the campaign trail,” writes Alex Isenstadt. “It’s another when Democrats running in purple or even blue territory try to do so. Yet that’s what’s happening in race after race this season.”


Red Dems

Certainly this isn’t true of every race. Populist Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been brought in to help with Senate contests in several red states, for example. And a recent commentary (in Politico, come to think of it) argued that “an ascendant progressive and populist movement … is on the verge of taking over the party.” So which is it? Are Dems tacking left or veering right? The answer isn’t clear yet. But Isenstadt offers some worrisome anecdotes. He points to several Democratic candidates who are recycling Republican rhetoric, even in districts that went for Barack Obama in the 2012 election. Isenstadt highlights, for example, a campaign video and accompanying material from Colorado Democrat Andrew Romanoff. Romanoff’s video is indistinguishable from a Republican’s, complete with a Paul Ryan-style graph of “soaring” federal debt and admonitions that “you don’t buy things you can’t pay for.” Iowa State Sen. Staci Appel, running for a congressional seat there, is touting her record of opposition to government spending. Isenstadt also cites an Arizona candidate whose ads emphasize added border patrols, and an Arkansas candidate whose TV spot emphasizes a balanced budget and reducing regulations.


Past Shock

You’ve heard of “future shock”? These stories bring on a sensation that might be called “past shock.” That’s the sense that recent history is reappearing at a troubling and lightning-fast speed. These stories are likely to trigger a severe case of déjà vu in anyone who has followed U.S. politics for very long. Democratic rhetoric began echoing GOP talking points in 1994 under President Bill Clinton – and Democrats lost control of the House. When Democratic rhetoric once again tacked right in 2010 under President Barack Obama, Republicans ran to their left with a “Seniors’ Bill of Rights” – and the Democrats lost the House once more. They can’t lose it again, since they no longer hold it. But they can lose more seats, and they can give up the Senate, too. They already have their work cut out for them. President Obama, their party’s leader, may very well spend the next 90 days defending renewed military action in Iraq. Hillary Clinton, the party’s presumptive 2016 candidate, is likely to spend the time between now and Election Day repeating her Republican-like, hawkish foreign policy talk. And these Democratic Congressional candidates will be repeating GOP economic talking points on the home front, too. That’s not “change you can believe in” – unless you’re talking about a change in Senate leadership.




cont'


http://crooksandliars.com/2014/08/running-dems-while-sounding-republican-hey

[msongs]

1. with obama and now clinton, the party is marching further rightward nt

[Segami]

3. Makes one wonder...

if there's a concerted effort by some to 'shift' the Democratic Party right?......Hmm.

[0rganism]

5. might even be disgruntled former republicans

not every conservative enjoys the kind of overtly racist, blatantly idiotic mess that the current republican party presents. makes sense they'd want to move the other major party into a position they're comfortable with.

[LordGlenconner]

2. I agree with Antonio Banderas as well

Had no idea he was interested in politics.

[Kablooie]

4. Could it be a new Republican strategy?

Get Republicans to run as Democrats to dilute the Democratic message even more?
If people hear "Democrats" saying the same thing as Republicans it reinforces the Republican message.

[AverageJoe90]

6. This is nothing new, btw.

100 years old, guys like Ted Bilbo and Ben Tillman did sometimes take on progressive-sounding rhetoric to appease middle-of-the-road voters and small farmers.....even though neither of them were actual progressives by any stretch of the imagination(despite what you might hear from some revisionists, mostly on the right-wing.....). And sadly, many people fell for that schtick.

And now, conservatives are trying to take advantage of our party's failings in this era, too. Don't let them fool the people again!

[Baitball Blogger]

7. I'm afraid we're going to lose big.

[Scuba]

8. The right-wing infiltration and takeover of the Democratic Party is nearly complete.

It isn't just a few Blue Dogs anymore, it's most of the candidates and all of the Party leaders.

[RandiFan1290]

9. Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception

http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/leo_strauss%27_philosophy_of_deception

...this regime of secrecy, deception and propaganda is an essential feature of the neoconservative political philosophy that now drives the leadership of both major political parties. Leo Strauss, the intellectual godfather of the neocons, was a refugee from 1930s Germany who believed that any genuine effort to achieve “government of the people, by the people, for the people” was doomed to end as the Weimar Republic did in Germany with the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. Strauss had a very dark Hobbesian view of human nature, which he justified with “secret” meanings he claimed were hidden in the works of Plato, Nietzsche and all philosophers. Strauss did not believe that the general public could handle the truth as he saw it, so that any system in which the public held real power would surely end in barbarism.

The Straussian solution to this imaginary problem is a system of “managed democracy,” in which a privileged high priesthood or oligarchy monopolizes real power as it oversees a superficial structure of democracy and promotes patriotic and religious myths to ensure the loyalty of the public and the cohesion of society. Political scientist Sheldon Wolin has dubbed this “inverted totalitarianism.” Because it is less openly offensive than “classical totalitarianism,” the inverted form may be more sustainable and therefore more successful in achieving a total concentration of wealth and power, paradoxically making it more insidious and dangerous than the classical totalitarianism the Straussians claim to be saving us from.

[hobbit709]

10. Truman's statement still holds.

I'm getting real tired of these R-Lite candidates instead of offering the voters a real choice between a D and an R.

[HomerRamone]

11. "If this were to become a common pattern among Democrats,

voters would lose an essential feature of democracy: the ability to choose between two competing visions."

"would"?

http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf

"In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule -- at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it."