No, Liberals Don't Control the Democratic Party

[OilemFirchen]

30. In my lifetime (60 or so years)...

liberals have never controlled the Democratic Pray. Liberalism has influenced the party platform, and liberals have been participants in the party, but it's extremely naive to believe that they ever have been influential enough to "control" it.

That's why, as a lifetime Progressive, I've rarely had my dreams shattered by the mechanisms of realpolitik. I don't start with idealized expectations about what a party or individual will do, thus I avoid the disappointment resultant from the crushing blows of reality. Progress is progress, no matter how incremental, and I'm reasonably satisfied with the direction of government throughout the pendulum-swings of electoral politics.

I'm old enough to remember the fine liberal Republicans of my youth, and the heavy weight of the Dixiecrats. I'm also old enough to remember how the movement politics of the sixties ultimately self-destructed, partly because of the ill-conceived notion that governance could be "controlled" from the outside in. It took far too long to come to the realization that one must work within the system to influence it. More's the pity if today's Left chooses to ignore that sage wisdom.