Um, this has more to do with 20+ years of Third Way Dems appeasing real crazies,

[DissidentVoice]

127. Nicely said

I am so bloody sick of Democrats falling all over themselves trying to be "GOP-lite" in the supposed cause of "electability."

I suppose my first disillusionment was when President Clinton rolled over and played dead after the GOP kiboshed his health care plan in 1994 and then jumped on there "the era of 'big government' is over" bandwagon.

The problem?

We have allowed ourselves to be redefined (falsely) by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, who have turned "liberal" into a dirty word. We have allowed that word to be tainted as "unpatriotic," "immoral," "Communist" and "un-American." Somewhere along the way "conservatism" got elevated as some sort of badge of distinction, to the point where "true American" began to falsely equal "conservative."

All the to'ing and fro'ing and hand-wringing after Walter Mondale got drubbed by Reagan's "Morning In America" BS and Mike Dukakis got slammed by Lee Atwater's relentless hate machine (that he at least repented of on his deathbed) led to all this "me-too-ism."

Think about it: if George H.W. Bush had got a second term, how different would it have been from what Bill Clinton's Presidency turned out to be? Granted, of course, Bill Clinton didn't have Dan Quayle a heartbeat away from the Presidency and thank God for that, but especially his second term was directed more by Newt Gingrich (government shutdown notwithstanding; I still like how Clinton made the GOP blink ). Bush Senior was really a moderate, old-style Rockefeller Republican trying to convince a far-right base that he was Reagan Part II and he fell flat of his arse doing it.

I know it's not just the Democratic Party. Labour in the UK were ruined by Tony Blair, and the NDP in Canada and the ALP in Australia are nowhere near their social-democratic roots.

We need to take a hard look at just what this party stands for. Look at the ideas of the Greens and the Socialist Party USA. Some of their ideas could have been straight from the FDR playbook. It's time to reclaim them as DEMOCRATIC ideas.