A Short Note On The Democratic Party And The Progressive Left....

[DisgustipatedinCA]

62. This is well-written, but please allow me to summarize

Magistrate, your writing abilities are impressive. I hope you don't mind if I summarize, in an attempt to get to the meat of the thing.

Point #1: progressives cannot claim the title of "real Democrats", etc. There are lots of centerists too.
Point #2: progressives should question whether attacking anyone to the right of them is productive, with the implication that this behavior is not productive.
Point #3: a paragraph about pragmatism and realpolitik. You'd like things to be more to the left, but things are what they are, so let's work with the center.
Point #4: Hyperbole can be useful if used sparingly. Overuse of hyperbole forget themselves and start to believe their own press. People who engage in too much hyperbole range from clowns to demons. You left yourself open here, employing hyperbole to talk about hyperbole.

I think you have some good points, but I also think you missed one of the biggest ones. As a progressive, I know good and well that we're not going to have single payer anytime soon, and that we're not going to have a whole host of other things progressives would like to have. But it's our job to agitate for those things anyway, to play our part, to be the archetypal progressive. In the end, compromise can be made, but negotiations had better start from the left flank, else we're not doing our jobs.

Finally, I wanted to say I haven't yet read any of the responses to your thread. I'm guessing this is already covered somewhere in those responses, but you've written this post as if there's not guilt to go around on all sides. There is, and I believe you know that.

thanks.