Reply #130: and that's fine. [View All]

The 'moderates' in the Dem party (not the DLC, which does not speak for the vast majority of Dem moderates) will remain in the party and their influence will always be there.

I have no problem with that.

Liberals do not make up the Democratic Party as a whole, so liberalism will never be 'resurgent in the Democratic Party as a whole'.

I haven't been writing very clearly of late. By "resurgent" I mean "allowed at least some representative voice" and by "as a whole" I mean at all levels of the party, not throughout the rank and file. I want party progressives to have a voice. At the national leadership level, where Terry McAuliffe lives, we do not.

The discussions of the expansion of health care coverage that I've heard among the candidates, while heartening somewhat, are not proof to my mind that the top candidates really "get it". Maybe I'd feel better if I saw the top brass of the party getting behind some kind, any kind, of plan to cover the most vulnerable in our society, getting behind some kind of offensive meant to take on the insurance lobby, but I don't.

For specific problems that I have, particularly with the DLC and its approach, you needn't look any further than the welfare "reform" bill from 1996. When was the last time you heard anything about its effects? The five year ban kicked in just as the recession was getting going - does anyone wonder what the effects of the "reform" have been? Even assuming that those effects could be at least somewhat counterbalanced by some measurable electoral swing in the middle towards a Democratic Party willing to screw the poor, have they? Has there been any measurable swing due to that New Dem willingness?