And this is how the Democratic party gets pulled ever further rightward.

[sendero]

91. I'm not sure...

where I stand on this. Is it a case of pols wanting to infiltrate our party and move it their direction OR is it a case of pols seeing which way the wind blows and wanting to front-run it?

IMHO we are seeing the left-right pendulum at the beginning of it's leftward traverse. The last rightward traverse lasted about 30 years. It's reasonable to assume the leftward one will last a similar time.

This election was the first seismic shift in decades, since Reagan. And the smart pols know it too. Going forward we are going to see lots of "adjustments" that only a few years ago would have been unthinkable. The Tea Party morons don't get it at all and think doubling-down on failure is the correct course, they will make themselves irrelevant in a very short period of time. The Repugs that aren't stupid will start moderating their positions. Democrats SHOULD start moving left but I don't think Obama will, it's just not in him. But someone down the road will.

All of this has been brought on by the Great Recession that proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the economic and regulatory policies of the right, as put into practice circa 1980, have failed the country utterly and completely. Even though you will never hear it challenged on the MSM, people are realizing that the "tax cuts for the rich create jobs" idea is total fiction. And since is was, is and always be "the economy stupid", people are ready for a new approach.

Another learning moment has to have been experienced by those who thought that if you throw enough money behind a bad idea, people will go for it. Didn't work.