Just opened my ballot. Will vote straight D. But I am not excited, not eager. [View all]

[madfloridian]

I know what the other options are on the ballot, and I am not going to screw myself and my state and country by voting for them. I am happy to be voting for Charlie Crist. I like him as a person, and I think he was a good governor in a time that was dominated by the rise of the Tea Party. They are now his worst enemy, and in no way will he cater to them.

I am seeing the harm being done to public education with both parties enthusiastically on board.

I am truly alarmed at clauses in the new trade deals (also strongly supported by both parties) that will harm everyone but the 1%.

What I am seeing happening now is the culmination of the efforts of one group to make the Democratic party only accountable to the wealthy. In their own words:

The words of Simon Rosenberg, a founder of the DLC in the late 80s made it clear they wanted to marginalize the usual party constituents.

Originally from an early 2000 article called How the DLC Does It.

"Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."

They have definitely freed themselves from those restraints.

There was a great article in 1997 at Mother Jones. It told of how the views of the DLC were prominent. One of them was that moving to the right and pre-empting the positions of the right wing would help us win.

Democrats at the Crossroads

Two factions of Democrats with sharply divergent ideas are fighting to lead the party. Will they resolve their differences? Or will it be Republicans who cross Clinton's "bridge to the 21st century"?

The predominant analysis in the media echoes the New Democrat view that Clinton won by pre-empting the right on such issues as crime, welfare reform, and a balanced budget. "Every time Dole tried to get cracking on an issue," Al From pointed out at a post-election DLC press conference, "he couldn't do it because the president had, in a sense, beat him there."

That might be okay to take those positions while campaigning, but it's not okay for a party to keep those stances after they win.

After 1994, the Democrats understood the threat the Gingrichites posed, and they cooperated long enough to do remarkably well last November. Now the question is, can Democrats of different stripes manage their ongoing debates and learn to cooperate to build a new majority? Maybe. But only if the New Democrats temper their tendency to throw out all of the party's legacies in order to leap into an undefined world of "reinvented government" and market fixes. And only if the re-energized populists can reach out to popular constituencies beyond organized labor, and go beyond defense of public programs as they are, to fashion fresh solutions to problems of family security.

Populists may not like the "new ideas" of the Democratic Leadership Council. But they will have to come up with better prescriptions and political strategies of their own, not just more compelling descriptions of America's economic woes. CAF's Robert Borosage puts it in a way that could be a caution to his fellow populists as well as to the Democratic Party as a whole: "People will demand the basic protections they need to raise a family. Democrats will find answers -- or face decline."

In 2008 we were golden for a while. But it didn't last long. By the 2010 midterms we were again fighting the battle for the middle class, unions, the poor, needy and elderly.

Howard Dean's words at a conference right after the midterms struck at the very heart of it all. They were not popular, but they are still true today.

From the 2010 Washington Post:

Dean at progressive conference: Time for Democrats to 'behave like Democrats'

Dean, in a fiery speech Tuesday at the America's Future Now conference, gave voice to frustrations on the left that President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress have not used their big majorities to pursue a more progressive agenda. "We are done with putting people in office who then forget who got them there," said Dean, a former Democratic National Committee chairman.

"You did your job," Dean added. "You elected Barack Obama. You elected a Democratic Congress. You elected a Democratic Senate. And now it's time for them to behave like Democrats if they want to get reelected. They have forgotten where they came from -- and they haven't been here that long."

Dean echoed other progressive leaders who opened the conference Monday, expressing dismay, even anger, at the White House and Congress, saying they have been too timid and compromising on issues such as health care, the economy, climate change and banking reform.

Dean said the progressive base is critical to Democrats' electoral successes this fall and beyond. "If Washington understands that they can't do things that demoralize their base," Dean said, "then we'll have a permanent [Democratic] majority."

2014 is sounding a lot to me like 2010. Except now we are having to fight even harder.
As a retired teacher my heart aches when I see what they are doing to education and to career teachers like I used to be.

I can not wrap my head around the clauses in the trade agreements, especially the ones that allow other countries to sue us over laws we have that they do not like.

So, excited or not, I will vote for the Democrats on the ballot. I want it to be different, but our voices have not been enough to be heard.

When the DLC folded in 2011 and turned the policy shop over to the Third Way think tank, they claimed victory. They said they had done what they needed to do and had won. Hard to argue with them. They do not have to appeal to the ordinary everyday people, and they do not on many topics. Sometimes being better than the other party means you are not just plain crazy.