Left bashing, hippie punching and red-baiting is ok it seems

[dreamnightwind]

110. Yes, Blue Dogs got hosed

I don't agree that that proves shows that people will choose a real Republican over a Dem championing their policies every time. I wish it were true, and I think other people wishing it was true is why the meme is so pervasive. But many of the elected Dems are like that precisely because it works, as shown by the vast majority of our elected Democrats being corporate sell-outs. 2010 was odd in many ways, some unique dynamics playing out then, I don't claim to fully understand them.

Frame it like this and see how it feels, if you're being interrogated by two cops, who do you relate to, the good cop or the bad cop? The good cop, of course, and by design. Is the good cop sincere in his/her concern for your welfare? Not particularly, and you can sense that, but the other cop terrifies you beyond imagination, so you choose the good cop despite your reservations about his/her sincerity. That speaks more to our situation than the real/fake Republican/Dem meme IMHO.

From reading your posts over the years I pretty much agree with them, our world-views are similar. Maybe I should have left this alone, I just think it's incorrect that people will always choose the real Republican over a fake Democrat, though I can see how it's a useful idea to promote, we need more real Democrats.

I agree with your last line, we can reach people in any part of the country, crisis is opportunity.

Americans are ready for policies from the left of the spectrum, issue-specific polling backs it up. Socialism as a word has been tarnished by the corporatists, so let's use a different word for the far-left Dem caucus (we have the Progressive caucus, for what it's worth, mostly good people corrupted by a bad system, they spend a lot of their time on the phone calling corporations for campaign donations and the corporatists have little to fear from them).

Wealth redistribution, a functional safety net, reduced militarism, fighting climate change as if our lives depend on it (they do), regulation of corporations, social change (gays and pot for example), good-paying local non-corporate work, most or all of this will play fine in red states. The biggest exceptions are gays, abortion, organized religion, maybe guns. Economically, we're all in the same Titanic, 99% of us anyway.

How we get there, given the corporate capture of the two main political parties, is the question. If good cop/bad cop is all that is on the ballot, we're screwed. It's about the primaries, we have to learn to defeat the party's chosen corporatist with less money and worse organization (nothing helps organization as much as a well-paid staff), and fighting the "unelectable" tag they use as an excuse to support the DINO (we have the polls that show we're not crazy, and as we keep fighting for change while the country keeps going to hell, progressive policies will look better and better). And it's about reaching out to people we have little in common with who are also getting screwed by corporatist policy, because after we win the primary we have to beat the Republican in the general election.