Politics and the big tent

I’m not a member of any organized party—I am a Democrat.

—Will Rogers

The wonderful thing about being a modern-day Democrat—as opposed to a modern-day Republican—is that it’s a coalition which accommodates both Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin. Unfortunately, among many of us, that’s also a problem.

I’m not talking about those who are of the Purity Left, for whom clones of Ralph Nader are the only acceptable representatives of the progressive movement. I’m not talking about firebaggers, who see any sort of compromise as a death knell to the party. (Just don’t tell them that their revered leader did business with Redstate and Drudge.) I’m talking of rank and file Democrats, of Democrats who are pragmatic, who are cut to the core when Blue Dog Democrats go against what they consider to be a defining Democratic position such as stricter gun control, or action on climate change.

I will admit that I am often frustrated by the likes of Manchin and Kay Hagan. The recalcitrance they exhibit on supporting what most of us consider core Democratic positions can be more than confounding. I sometimes lapse into the position of wanting them shunned from the Party, as they’re poor representatives of it.

‘it’s not power they want but a vessel for their resentments’

Michael Tomasky has a good article on The Daily Beast about Ron Paul and the type of people who support him. A couple of lines stood out:

Some people take great comfort in backing candidates they know will never win – they prefer, on some deep level, to fall short and be angry about it. It encases their loserdom in a carapace of purity and righteousness. I had a friend, a hard-core leftist …. who liked to say: “Vote for the loser, he’ll never let you down.” ….

…. the paradox of Ron Paul is that if he gained any actual power, most of his base would desert him, because it’s not power they want but a vessel for their resentments.

****

Never mind Ron Paul supporters, what a truly perfect description for the ‘pure’ left! (Although, of course, the two groups have a habit of overlapping).

‘purity politics’

The People’s View: So Friday night, a government shutdown was averted. And already, you have people in some big orange “progressive” places melting themselves down over how that aversion was a loss for progressives and how President Obama gave in to billions more in cuts. So let’s look at what we know about the deal, what Barack Obama’s negotiating skills gave us…

Let’s start looking at it from the perspective of core Democratic values … the Republicans’ effort to defund family planning blew up in their faces, and President Obama and the Democrats protected this much needed service for poor and middle class women and families….

… The Republicans wanted to block any money from going to implement health care reform, and guess what? They didn’t get that either. And that is a big deal. Although probably the likes of Uygur would have liked health reform to be defunded (so they could claim Pyhrric victory over the failure of an un-implemented law that did not carry his favorite pony item)…

…What else? The environment. Democrats have successfully kept the Republican “EPA riders” out of the budget deal. You know, the same riders that would have told the EPA, in essence, “Carbon di-oxide is not a pollutant, you can’t regulate it!” Politico calls this a major victory for Democrats…

…Not bad, I’ll say. Three pretty big progressive policy initiatives were saved from the Republican axe. Remind me why some of the people who claim to be progressives are whining about this again? …

….how about the screaming idiots on the professional left didn’t take dumps all over the President’s initiatives in the first two years, under the guise of purity politics? How about they hadn’t helped along a depressed Democratic turnout? How about if they had actually helped do proper analysis and sell the benefits of health reform, financial reform, credit card reform, student loan reform, women’s pay legislation, among a myriad of other things? How about they didn’t help turn the House over to the Republicans wholesale?…

…we are laying in a bed that the whiny Left made for us together with the teabagging Right. It’s their own making. What we are looking for are solutions within that framework now. It didn’t have to be this way, but it is. What President Obama needs is for progressives to get his back when he’s fighting for our environment, for women, and for health care in a toxic, hostile Washington, DC…

So please, before you go off the rail with Daily Kos, FDL, Ed Schultz or Cenk Uygur, please do some thinking, and some fact finding. Cool the nerves. Calm down. And read. Then make your own judgments. I think you’ll be more pleased than you think.

Please read the full post here – it’s magnificent

Thank you Rita for the link