AOC: "...concerted effort from the Democratic side to unseat me..."

[Hortensis]

75. :) The changes you speak of are why I spoke of liberal Democrats.

While the situations we have to operate in change dramatically, we haven't. Liberals (virtually all progressive, but not a synonym for) have been remarkably ideologically stable. Our biggest difference from conservatives is belief in equality of all people and individual rights.

I agree with virtually everything in your history, but to add some of the things I believe are important and political and ideological opponents do their best to obscure: Liberals came to dominate the party even before the sifting out of most conservatives to the Republican Party. We had to contend with a large minority conservative faction with different, only somewhat overlapping ideology, and especially to keep the more extreme, hostile Southern conservative bloc controlled, but we did it by making deals -- we didn't become them. We held to liberal principles.

It's telling that the culture of the pro-slavery Southern conservative bloc who remained in the party after losing the Civil War, and who loathed liberalism and egalitarianism, was not able to degrade the liberal majority that had taken the Democratic Party back from them. We had to deal with them and keep them contained -- our ideologies were far too incompatible and we were far too committed to liberal principles (equality #1, rights #2) and progressive goals. But -- once they fled to the conservative-dominated Republican Party, Southern conservative culture took that over and corrupted it along with Big-Money conservatives. They purged traditional conservatism, moderate conservatism and conservative progressivism -- and became uncontrolled. The pubs did become them.

Meanwhile, liberals carried on. Overall we always remained liberal and progressive, as we are now. The situations and social standards within which we work change, sometimes dramatically, and have to be dealt with. Social mores advance, and us with them (we're virtually always a force among those advancing them), and sometimes society backslides in spite of us, like now.

BUT, through it all, liberal Democrats have remained very ideologically stable and are a major structural reason our nation has survived the various upheavals that took down so many others.

Another reason for the stability that allowed America to prosper and advance is that, as long as the Republican Party still had a lot of moderate conservatives, they and liberal Dems were able to unite to control more radical elements from farther left and right when they threatened stability. But, we stayed ourselves -- cooperation did not make us more conservative.

As I said somewhere else, that stability of underlying ideology means that America's giant liberal organization of Democrats don't get dragged by minority factions. Nor do we lack the most advanced ideas -- our liberalism and sheer numbers mean we normally lead in ideas also. New ideas virtually always originate from and are accepted among the mainstream. What "radicals" typically bring to the pot is cherry picking something we're not doing and claiming it can be done when it's not time or, often, should be done when they're the only ones who want them. (VERY anti- small-D democratic, and that's very typical.)

But all this means the notion that Democrats are so weak of character and principle that we need far left guidance to keep us from slipping right, or to do right, is ridiculous, a conceit they need for themselves and that claims a place in history that's not real and they haven't earned.

Yes, Ocasio-Cortez is talented and charming. I'm still waiting for her to decide if she actually wants a future as a legislator or to work in a movement from outside.

What we don't like is past associations with the people whose big "good idea" when a Democrat won the Democratic nomination was to throw the 2016 election to tRump and the Republicans and are still working to take out the Democratic Party that blocks their ambitions. Massive conceit, but they might possibly be able to throw the nation under the bus again if more people don't get smarter fast enough. Their major tool is the same as the Republicans' -- constant deceit narratives and character assassination of our party. There's something really wrong with those behaviors, from the days of their predecessors' passionate attempts to defeat our New Deal reforms up to today, in the background trying to make everything we do fail and up up front varying between vicious criticism to pretend approval. It's the same general kind of wrong that last century managed to fool many people into helping extreme populist revolutions get control of and bring down many nations.

Itm, getting to what set me off: That they routinely oppose and then claim credit for our choices and achievements as theirs, with the constant Big Lie that they "moved" us their direction. Given the nature of anti-Democratic/anti-democratic populism and authoritarian extremism, very fortunately for our nation that's not possible.

We've lost control of RW extremism, but we will at least block the far smaller but also aggressive LW extremists attempts to get power. Because we are far, far larger and more able than them, incredibly more responsible and principled, and because we have to. And of course we don't like or trust these people, whom OC is known to have once associated with and hopefully no longer does, because that would be stupid, and we're not stupid either.