Imagine if, rather than blaming the "far left", (whatever you think that is),

[tomp]

191. cross-posted from another thread:

If one looks at the history of the u.s., recent or remote, and comes to the conclusion that the problem is with people not voting for democrats all the time every time, one is is suffering from some sort of mental handicap or is a democratic party hack trying to blame others for the failure of the democratic party to attract sufficient numbers of votes.

The democratic party has a long way to go before it can absolve itself of blame for our current troubles. In other words, it's not just about the last election. Our current troubles are of long standing (like the last century plus, at least) and the democratic party is not uninvolved.

The idea that one must vote for the democrat because the republican is worse robs people of their right to their political principles based on observation of historic realities. that, to me is fundamentally unpatriotic. In fact, voting democratic no matter what could be considered as part of the fundamental problem.

I know from personal experience that leftish democratic voters have been lobbying for the party to move left for many decades (at least since the time of Roosevelt) to no avail. What we get is Rahm Emmanuel lecturing us about ponies and obama's cat food commission, and then you all blaming us for all the problems (in other words, we got rightward , corporatist movement). I have always voted democrat even though i have no love for the party with its entrenched leadership and increasingly rightward leanings (among other things). I vote democrat but i advocate for a third party because the party has abandoned me and my kind. I believe many young people see this as well. You can yell about it and cast blame all you want but you are not convincing.

I also don't appreciate young people (or anyone else for that matter attacking "boomers" (of which i am one) and their purported consumerism. Boomers like any other generation are a mix of things. Broad-brushing is wrong.

Third parties are not necessarily a problem in an of themselves. Bill Clinton may have benefitted form Perot running in '92 (there is debate about this, but there is less debate about clinton winning by tacking to the right). But overall, offering the voting public more choices rather than fewer seems just overall more "democratic." The real object of this post is the ongoing suppression of the ideas of the leftish wing of the democratic party. Other threads (and the jist here) have referred to us as "the far left." This is McCarthyite talk and it is part of why the democratic party loses votes from the left. This should be obvious.

I believe Hillary won the election and there are a multitude of reasons why she did not actually gain the office. Attacking the left wing of the party for correctly summing up the history of the democrats is just asking for more trouble.