Has Anyone Else On DU Noticed This Lately?

[DissidentVoice]

349. I just want Democrats to be DEMOCRATS!

I don't want them to be "Third Way."

I don't want them to be "Republican-lite."

I am a grandson of a man who was a longtime UAW member, and steward for many of those years. He had a full-size portrait of FDR on his living room wall. He was a beneficiary of the WPA, who put him to honest work, largely on infrastructure. I'd bet that several of the bridges he helped build in central Indiana are still there. After that, he went to work for Chrysler making engines for military vehicles during WWII. Prior to that, he was making/running "bathtub gin" just to feed his family (my mother, grandmother, aunts and uncles).

To not allow any criticism of the Democratic Party is tantamount to Ronald Reagan's dictum of "thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican." We are individuals, and no way think monolithically.

When Bill Clinton (whom I voted for twice) was elected, I was over the moon. After two terms of Reagan and one of Bush Senior, and talk of a permanent Republican Presidency, he seemed like one who would finally reduce the horrors of Reaganomics. However, when he proposed his health care plan I was very dismayed that it wasn't single-payer. Pundits at the time said he was trying to get Republicans on board by keeping the private sector in charge. Well, as we know, they didn't get on board, killed his plan...and worst of all, he rolled over and played dead, and jumped on the anti-"big government" campaign post-1994.

Nonetheless, I believed it when Hillary said there was a "vast right-wing conspiracy" against him. I believed it then and I believe it now. It is no coincidence that Rush Limbaugh's ascendancy to being THE voice of the GOP happened during Clinton's terms.

When Barack Obama (whom I also voted for twice) became President, after being punch-drunk by eight years of George W. Bush, I really did allow myself to hope again. However, Obama has disappointed me with health care (killing the public option), not calling for repeal of the evil Patriot Act (in fact extending it!), not following through with closing Guantanamo Bay and now NSA. He said that "the political will isn't there" to pass single-payer health care. Well, what he DID pass (which is a start, but only just) was done without any Republican support...he made the same mistake as Clinton in thinking that if he left the private insurance industry in charge, it would mollify the GOP.

I am by no means "anti-Dem." However, I am firmly anti-Democratic Leadership Council. That organisation poisoned the Democratic Party by making it as "me-too Republican" as they could without actually becoming Republicans.

The Democratic Party of today is much more like the Republican Party of the Jerry Ford era. What's more, they seem to be scared of their shadow when it comes to the term "liberal." The hell with that. I am an unapologetic Democratic Socialist, much more akin to FDR and Bernie Sanders than the bloody DLC.

I doubt that the New Deal would pass Democratic muster today. And that's a damn shame.