It aint a "purity test," it's a job evaluation

[yurbud]

Last edited Sat Feb 18, 2017, 12:38 PM - Edit history (1)

If the people with modest houses hire the same landscaper to take care of their yard as the massive mansions across the street, and notice that the landscaper hardly ever works on their yard, and half the time he shows up, he throws the trimmings from the big house on their lawn, it is not a purity test to say they are doing a shitty job.

It's a job evaluation.

Likewise, it is not a defense of the shitty job to say they are doing more for us than a gang of con men, who sometimes convince some neighbors to pay for lawn care, and then never deliver at all, or "take care of" their lawn with a flame thrower.

If elected Democrats and party operatives don't take criticism from the base of voters seriously--DEMOCRATIC PARTY voters, not swing or Republican voters, they will continue to struggle and just barely win.

Also, if you are not loyal to those working and middle class people who are members of your own party, why would swing and conservative voters expect you to take care of them?

The New Dem/DLC/Third Way wing of the party does push for some progressive change. The problem is, too often the progressive change is structured to give the financial sector or some other corporate interest a big chunk of the money that was supposed to go a program to help the rest of us, when the government itself could deliver the program more cheaply and effectively.

A good example is Obamacare. Many aspects of the private insurance part were huge improvements. But the Medicare portion is more efficient and costs are driven up by the avarice of spoiled trust fund babies. Those insurance companies don't even seem grateful that Democrats delivered tens of millions of new customers to them, and keep jacking up prices to pad their profits.

If the only consideration was delivering healthcare at a good price to average Americans, there should have been a timetable for all health insurance companies to rein in their overhead or Medicare would start expanding until it covered everyone.

That kind of accountability would make giving the private sector a role more palatable because it would make it clear that in "public private partnerships," the public part was in the driver's seat.

[Demsrule86]

1. Do you understand how insulting this post is to Democrats?

The idea that Democrats don't support the middle class and the poor...look around you ...you see anyone else who will? And it is a purity test ... I am so sick of the DLC insult tossed about by those who consider themselves pure Democrats I suppose...there is no DLC anymore. The primary is over and it would be really pleasant if we had no more these divisive posts.

[yurbud]

2. you prove my point when you say "who else will?" I'm saying this so Dems don't repeat the mistakes

they made when they won back Congress and then the White House.

By deferring to and bailing out Wall Street rather than punishing them, pushing for trade deals that screw American workers, continuing wars that destabilize the Middle East and drive waves of refugees into Europe, the centrists or whatever you want to call yourselves these days lost BIG.

Hillary won the popular vote, but you still don't have the House, Senate, most governorships, or most state legislatures.

If your only response to those losses is to blame people for not voting for you, you're like a drug addict who gets mad at his family for not giving him their paychecks to feed his habit.

The first step is to admit you have a problem, and it aint progressive voters.

[Demsrule86]

3. What mistake? Letting a non-Dem run in their primary?

I know they won't.

[Adrahil]

4. Here's what bothers me....

Whether you like it or not, we have, and will have, a market economy. That will not go away over night. You may sit there and wish ill on everyone and everything associated with "Wall Street," but many Democrats, such as myslf, have our entire life savings in investments of various kinds. While I want wrong-doers held accountable, I do not want some revenge-focused assault on the core of our finance system. Most people have no idea how very damaging that would be to every day Americans. The same with the Tea Party morons who wanted to let Detroit go under... they have no idea what that would have meant.

This is a failing of populism, IMO. The world is way more complicated than that.

[yurbud]

6. not revenge focused, it's protecting OUR investments. When Wall St can lie to small investors...

foreclose for minor mistakes, and so many retirement funds, and 401K's disappear, we have a serious problem with those firms.

The fundamental issue is whether democracy is the ultimate authority or money.

[Ms. Toad]

5. How about countering the arguments and having a substantive conversation,

Rather than labeling the post divisive?

For example, here's a point I see in your post that merits discussion: As to your point about no one else supporting the middle class and the poor, you're correct. But does that mean that the middle class and poor should quietly and gratefully accept tax structures and health care plans that favor people with means, just because they are better than what the Reublicans would create?

Shouldn't we be examining why so many people voted against what we understood to be their interests (union members and white women, for example), so that we can do a better job of acknowledging and addressing those needs in 2018?

[yurbud]

7. thank you. There is a similar argument we have in my union: people who are struggling have trouble

getting excited about arcane, incremental change. They don't have time to do the analysis and figure out if it will really help them, and then take time off work to campaign, donate money, or even vote for something small--even when I personally desperately wish they would.

And incremental change isn't the only kind possible. Part of some people's frustration with Obama and Democrats last brief control of Congress was we had just seem the Republicans go BIG on very bad ideas: wars, tax cuts for the rich, and bail outs for Wall Street.

We want to see Democrats fight as hard and pull out all the stops for average Americans.

Currently, they are doing that in opposing Trump's appointees for the most part. That level of effort needs to continue when (and if) they regain power.