Why keep bashing Nader?

The guy is irrelevant now. He's never going to run again. Isn't it time to stop beating a horse that is not only dead but mummified?

Why not move on and try to ENGAGE Nader's people and take up at least some of their agenda instead, rather than just screaming "shut up and do what you're told because WE know better"?

The Nader phenomenon happened because the Democrats banished the left. The lesson is, stop treating the left as the enemy and let them back in again. Is this so freaking hard to understand?

We will never forget what he said about our Democratic candidates.

The people who voted for him matter, and the way to get them back is to engage them and treat them with respect. The DLC project failed and it's time for us to move on from it.

But if his name ever pops up on DU....:mad:

There are plenty of people here who are declaring that they will not vote for Clinton or Obama in the GE, because they're "corporate sellouts." There are plenty of people here who think there is no difference between the two parties.

These people are wrong, and they were proven wrong in 2000. Reminding them of that is necessary.

The Democratic Party should feel OBLIGATED to earn progressive support. There aren't any finicky activist-hating suburban moderates that we can get anyway. People who hate activists don't have progressive or humane principles.

They threw a fit and cried "you made me!" Children.

:sarcasm:

And they were malcontents because the DLC wing has been marginalizing them for 25 years.

You go into a diner, sit at the counter. The waitress ignores you. You ask for a menu. The waitress ignores you. You ask for a cup of coffee, just to prove you really are a customer. The waitress ignores you. People come in and sit on either side of you. The waitress serves them. You ask for a glass of water. The waitress ignores you.

You stand up and say, "I was going to order a $15 breakfast, and leave a 25% tip, but you ignored me, so I am fucking out of here."

Did she "push you out" or did you "leave and not take responsibility for being hungry"?

You go to a diner. This is a struggling diner, that requires 51 customers tonight, or they will go out of business and Shitbuckets, which serves buckets of shit, will take the corner. There are 50 people there, and you are #51.

This is a strange diner where everyone gets the same food. The waitress ignores you at first, because there are many other customers also at the diner, who are not you and also want attention. She then takes your order. She then combines all the orders together to create a Meal Platform that represents all people in the diner. You believe that you are not adequately represented in this meal, despite actually having greater representation than your small number (being but one person) might indicate you ought have. You storm out, refusing to pay or eat.

The next day, Shitbuckets takes over. Everyone must now eat buckets of shit every night. You say everyone should blame the waitress for not serving what you wanted.

Did the waitress "push you out?" Or did you just throw a fit, and now everyone has to deal with your actions?

since I built the diner to begin with, and the cook has been introducing shit into the meal, which of course everybody has to share equally in, so that they can compete with Shitbuckets on THEIR terms, I say fuck it, I'm going to go build me another diner where we serve real food. And you guys can continue sucking down shit all you want.

Democratic Party. That's what so many people don't understand about the 2000 election. They assume that if Nader didn't get their votes, they would have naturally gone to Gore. Well, not the one's I've met - they are diehard Greens and wouldn't consider voting for a Democrat. People should quit blaming Nader - he had every right to run and people had every right to vote for him.

Remember it was the Republicans who stole Florida.

Especially after the DLC made him stop running as the candidate of "the people, not the powerful". The mistake was in making Gore run as the "bland centrist more of the same" candidate.

You can't just demand that progressives back whoever the party nominates even if they get nothing in the platform that reflects their views. You can't just scream "OBEY!" over and over.

Why not admit the party was, in fact, too obsessively anti-left in the Nineties? Why not admit we were wrong to let the DLC take over?

but there is no difference between the DLC and republicans.

I, for one, will never vote for either. If it means leaving blank spots on my ballot, so be it.

:eyes:

Tell me, do you believe there was no difference between Gore and Bush in 2000?

so there would be no difference if Al Gore had actually been declared the winner?

Such idiocy astounds me.

His DLC managers had terribly mis-managed his campaign, and Clinton not supporting him was the final straw (not that he much WANTED Clinton's support,) but the DLC, and his DLC VP did NOT help him.

And in the primaries I didn't support Gore. He was a 'well, I suppose' candidate then. It was the tribulation of the 2000 decision that made him the leader he is today.

The DLC is about power, not democracy. It is about free trade, not fair trade. It is about economic imperialism and exceptionalism, and the creation of an American aristocracy

so fuck em all.

They did make our party meaningless in the Nineties, and you know it.

with Publicans in the 1990's.

They deserve alot of thanks.

And this is from someone who's not a real big fan of the DLC.
But at least I'm reasonable.

they don't seem to have learned a damned thing in the last 8 years.

They're still threatening to stay home, or write in DK, or Ron Paul, or....Al Gore! LOL!

he went out 4 years later and ran again. To be spouting that there are no differences between Dems and Repukes is a travesty. People die when the GOP get power. They die from poverty or war or lack of health services. The man has no shame.

Your pissed at him because of his words? Because of something he said? And you shall bear eternal enmity towards him as a result? Until the end of time? Really?

That is so warped, so lacking in proportion, so asymmetrical, that it is almost humorous. That is truly one of the most startlingly bizarre things I have ever heard.

there is ample reason to remind them that idiotic chucklehead used the exact same argument against Gore to poach two hundred times the margin of his loss in Florida.

It goes without saying that if you have business support, you don't care about the poor and the workers.

What we need to do is finally nominate a candidate with passion and convictions. Saying "I can work with everybody" is the same thing as saying "I don't have any principles".

who abandoned Gore for Bush because they thought Gore was too liberal, if the exit polls are to be believed. Everyone thinks pandering to them is the way to win elections :eyes:

You want a liberal Democratic party? Then work for it. Sitting on the sidelines only removes your voice from the process.

Working for Obama is GIVING up on having a liberal Democratic Party this year. A guy who says nothing clear in the campaign can't be liberal once elected.

the party was incredibly hostile to Nader for the last eight years. We bashed him day in and day out, and his supporters, too. And yet here you are.

Because when you're in the minority, you don't get appeasement. You work for change. And the way to work for change is not to throw your vote away because your party only agrees with you 95% of the time.

The fact is, progressives came back to fight Bush, and they came back IN SPITE of the hatred people like you, people who don't care about anything but "victory in name" showed them.

Nobody on the left deserves the kind of contempt your last post just showed towards me.

The party needs to treat progressives as being as important as "centrists". What's so hard about accepting that? The suburbs will never vote for anyone decent again, so why even bother trying to get their votes by dissing the left? They are permanently on the side of death and ugliness.

And you can't really be arguing that Clinton was with us 95% of the time. Try maybe 20%. You aren't with progressives when you expand the death penalty, increase the war budget and sign Rush Limbaugh's racist welfare bill. It doesn't make up for it that you put recycling baskets up in the death chamber or at the soup kitchen.

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Don't delude yourself, Gore kissed just as much Pentagon ass as Clinton did.

You're getting desperate.

I'll agree that Gore would've done better on the intel, but war with Iraq wasn't an issue in the 2000 campaign and if 9/11 had somehow happened under a Gore presidency, Lieberman and the GOP Congress would've essentially forced him to do an Iraq invasion.

Anyway, I've proved the continued Nader bashing is pointless, so I hope we can all do the right thing and move on. Nominating and progressive populist on a progressive populist platform would be a start. Obama could still be that candidate if he'd go back to being the man he was in the '06 Senate campaign.

Yes, it did. If the Dems had nominated a Progressive, we would have had those votes, making it harder for the Repugs to steal the election.

most of the Naderites still would have found reasons not to vote for him. You see here how quickly people turn on heroes. Al Gore was scum in 2000, he's a saint now. After Saint Dennis semi-endorsed Obama, he quickly became scum around here (and since bounced back). Moreover, we would have lost even more of the centrists. Again, Gore was already bleeding far more Democrats on the right than he was on the left.

Either the Progressives lost us that election or not. Can't have it both ways.

People who voted for Bush are pretty aware of the fact that they are responsible for Bush. People who knew Bush was evil but still refused to vote against him somehow think that they do not share in that responsibility.

Why do you always let the party's right wing off of the hook?

You probably didn't attack people for being Democrats for Reagan or Democrats for Nixon(which is what DLC Democrats were to start with)
back in the day.

Why is it only the left wing in the party, in your view, that owes unquestioning loyalty no matter what abuse and contempt they and their dreams sometimes receive from our party's deluded leaders?

The exit polls had Gore WINNING. That's why he fought for 19 days. You can't have it both ways -- the liberals abandoned the party because Gore was too corporate: the conservatives abandoned the party because Gore was too liberal.

The fact is the Dems voted for Gore. The left wing independents went Green. The right wing independents went republican. The Bush machine cheated. The number of dem votes that went to Nader was negligible, and certainly balanced by the number of repub votes that went to Buchanan.

A message that does not exclude the left will pull in those left indies. But you prefer to pull in the rightwing indies. Says a lot.

If the party rejected the DLC and embraced the democratic left, those votes would never have been Nader's to begin with.

Marginalize the left, with the triangulating thought that we have nowhere else to go, and we WILL go there. Keep doing it, and so will we, and each time there will be more of us until the Democratic Party has gone the way of the Whigs.

My votes have been ignored since I cast my first ballot for McGovern. And I, and a great many lefty dems, am fucking sick of it.

and threaten to enable Republicans. All you've accomplished so far is informing the DNC that you are an extraordinarily unreliable bloc, and that there is therefore no reason to bother pushing for your interests.

and don't give a fuck WHAT it believes?

The Democratic party is America's PROGRESSIVE party, and you are happy to see the progressives forced out by the DLC?

There are two parties in this country. One is the corporate party. One is the progressive party. The corporate party is made up of Republicans and some Dems; the progressive party is made up of some Dems and a whole bunch of leftists mostly in the Greens.

Keep moving the Dems to the right, and they will all become republicans, while the progressives become Greens, and the Democrats fucking disappear.

I DON'T WANT THAT. I've been a Democrat for 40 years. I don't vote for Greens. I don't vote for Independents. I don't vote for Republicans.

And if the DLC heads the ticket, I simply don't vote. I will not cooperate in the subversion of my party.

If you're neither a huge bloc or a reliable vote, they won't give a shit about you. That's the way things work.

You showed that our leaders don't care about reliable voters either. The shitty way Clinton treated the poor, especially the poor of color, workers, feminists, progressive activists and gays and lesbians in the Nineties, all of whom were totally left out in the cold except for photo opportunities. This was a Democratic Administration with Republican economics(even you would have to admit Clinton was wrong to push NAFTA through and sign the racist welfare bill)and "Religious Right" moral values(as Clinton demonstrated when he fought for the child-abuse causing "squeal rule" on abortions and cheerfully consigned gays and lesbians to misery by signing the Defense of Marriage Act(and remember, the pathetic 49% he got in '96 showed that none of those things gained him a single vote).

The kind of party people like you gave us is a party that only cares about CEO's and big donors. There was no way any progressive could remain within it in Clinton's second term with a clear conscience. To do so was to abandon your principles, because you knew that do so was to accept DLC rule forever.

The rest of them could be brought back in if people like you would stop already with the abuse. Admitting that the DLC was most of the problem would help, and you'd have nothing to lose by doing so.

We should NEVER AGAIN make the party as closed-off and hostile to progressives as it was in the Nineties.
The party should NEVER AGAIN brag about keeping progressives out in the cold.
Agreed?

As far left as I am, I think the Democratic party has to move farther to the right.

Because of the DHLs on the far left.

You would agree that we have to be to the left of the Nineties to justify our existence, wouldn't you?

You would agree, I hope, that the DLC was nothing but a disaster for this party.

Just compare them to the DHL results of 2000-2008.

Every rational person in America would agree that the DLC gave us phenomenal success in the eight years before 2000
compared to what we've gotten for the past eight years courtesy of Democrat-Hating-Leftists.

You should try to keep those two straight.

One gave us 22 million new jobs and budget surpluses. The other let us get attacked, lied us into a trillion-dollar war with hundreds of thousands dead and millions homeless, and bankrupted our treasury to hand out cash and credit to the wealthy. They're not that hard to tell apart. The DLC gave us one. DHLs gave us the other.

It is almost surreal that DHLs have the gall to try to lecture anyone on politics. They should have their mouths shut in absolute shame, listening only, with perhaps the occasional humble and respectful question regarding anything political, for the next fifteen years.

But then, they have no shame.

I'm a Democratic progressive who fights for my principles.

All I'm guilty of here is committing truth.

And you can't blame progressives at all for Kerry's loss. That was all his fault for not fighting back against the Swift Boat smears and for not running as an antiwar candidate. The voters didn't WANT a race between two candidates committed to staying in Iraq forever.
And that's what "we can do it better" meant.

ANY Democrat could have beaten Bush the First in '92. We didn't have to move hard right to do it. We didn't have to nominate an antiunion and antipoor candidate. And if welfare was the issue, Clinton could have proposed PROGRESSIVE alternatives, like federal job programs. He didn't have to leave the "the poor are just lazy and immoral" slur unchallenged. It was an insult to his own mother, ffs.

Real Democrats fight back against slurs and defend party principles. Real Democrats support massive voter registration campaigns like Jesse wanted and the DLC opposed.

We never EVER need to be as far right as we were in the Nineties. Got it? The country is moving left. Your brand of self-loathing politics is no longer necessary.

even tangentially, so what are you talking about?

You're the one calling Democrats 'Republicans' in almost every post. And now calling "my" Democratic politics "self-loathing politics", which couldn't be farther from the truth.

I love going out of my way not to label you as a Dem-hater even though every indication is that you side with their beliefs. But since I'm going to be accused of what I didn't do, my philosophy has always been to then just do it.

You're wrong about everything political in your post. Any Dem couldn't have beaten Bush in 1992. In fact, no Dem could have beaten him in 1992 except for Al Gore, who just barely did. Your complete misconstruction of political reality is amazing.

We can indeed be as far, if not farther right than we were in the 1990s. I think in some ways we already are, in some ways not. I think in some ways we should go farther right, in some ways not. Mostly I think we're just about right for this time and place, but we definitely need to go farther right starting now for this upcoming election. Both to offset promised DHL defections and untrustworthiness, and as general election strategy.

And yes, DHL progressives can most assuredly be blamed for Kerry's loss. Once they put Bush over the top in 2000 it was easy from there. It's alot easier to run from inside the office, especially in a time of war, even if it is a phony war. DHLs put Bush in office for eight years.

You seem to be confusing what you want to be true with reality. That's one big reason why nobody takes DHL political opinion seriously (see, there's my first inferrence).

Do you want us to expand the death penalty more than in the Nineties?

Increase war spending more?

Cut social spending more(basically, now, there's no social spending left)?

What issues could we move to the right of where we were in the Nineties and still be different from the Republicans on?

And I use the term "self-loathing politics" to describe the mindset(which, apparently you share)that the country is permanently conservative and that all we can hope to do is stand for a slightly less ugly conservatism. That we can't hope to help unions gain strength, that we can't close the School of the Americas(a school that exists solely to teach Latin American armies to teach poor people). That we can't let human rights matter in foreign policy(as we said they didn't matter when we sent the Haitian refugees back to be beaten to death by Tonton Macoute just to appease people in Florida who never voted for us anyway). That we can't, in short, disagree with Republicans at all other than being for smaller social service cuts and just barely not being antichoice.

Face it, the country is rejecting conservatism and embracing a positive progressive future. Your strategy is to ignore that and once again only govern for the rich(which is what being "moderate" means). Sorry, but the polls show your approach isn't needed. We can win by DEFENDING progressive values and by fighting for a different vision of America than Bush and the South want. We don't need to restrict ourself to the nonprogram of the Nineties again.

And the way to hold off progressive defections is to treat progressive values with respect. Nothing the anti-HRC posters on DU ask the party to stand for would cost us votes.

Are you saying that you don't recognize the need to go centrist in front of a national election?

That's like politics 101.

You know, I have a hard time coming up with anything from the right that I find palatable. It's just anathema to me.
But I did nonetheless manage come up with a handful of positions and policy type things to do, and to not do, that would be at least be a symbolic tip of the hat to rightwing attitudes.

But you know what, rather than me doing that, I think it would be so very much better for you to do it, and at least prove that you understand the political basics that I'm talking about. So why don't you give us like three things with a rightward tilt that you think the Democratic Party and candidate could do heading into a general election?

his reputation needs to be destroyed for generations to come as a warning to other assholes.

What caused that was the arrogance the party treated progressives with in the 90's. Even YOU can't deny that it wasn't possible to ask people who cared about peace and social justice to vote for Clinton's reelection. He didn't disagree with Dole on ANYTHING.

The message is, don't treat the left as the enemy. Engage them.

that proposes there was no difference between Dole and Clinton.

And this is why I will piss on Nader's name every chance I get until I die. And then I'll leave money in my will for somebody else to do it.

In fact, since Democrats would've taken Congress back in '98 under a Dole presidency, things would probably have been better.

You can't deny that the party was wrong to tell progressives to go to hell in '92 and '96.

There were no other differences in '96 and you know it. You're not a Democrat once you expand the death penalty.

Wow. You're denser than I thought.

And you know it. Nothing for women, nothing for the poor, nothing for peace. He bombed Iraq to raise his poll numbers.

You know as well as I do that we must NEVER be as right-wing as the party was in '96 again. Why fight me on this. You can't deny those next four years were a complete dead zone.

Why not join progressives in making the party matter again? Why not admit that only a party run from the bottom up can be worth having?

That one's my favorite.

Those four years after he ran against Bob Dole were some of the smoothest times in bipartisan politics. The Republican Congress couldn't have been happier with him.

seeing as Clinton gave them everything they wanted, and there was no difference between the parties and everything.

Clinton was conservative on all issues except abortion rights(and even then he accepted the basic idea that women who seek abortions should be stigmatized)and barely green environmental issues. Creating more national parks was a rich white man's issue anyway. It made no difference to anybody else.

Why were they trying to interrupt and distract him from enacting their agenda? Either they're stupid, or you are.

had no right to be president. Even though the Clinton years were exactly what the Bush second term would have been, the GOP saw the White House as theirs by liege right.

Got it now?

But c'mon, once you sign a welfare bill that persecutes the poor, once you expand the death penalty, once you bring in Bush the First's Republican NAFTA treaty, what can you do after all that that can still be significantly different than conservatism? And was there anything in the tiny progressive things that he slipped in half-heartedly when no one was looking that could possibly have been worth the hatred he and the DLC treated Democratic progressives with?

...was more important than spending the time enacting all the fiendish things they wanted, and it was also worth losing a bunch of Congressional seats in 1998?

Even you would have to admit that nothing progressive happened under Clinton after 1996, if anything happened before.

The point is this, we can NEVER AGAIN nominate anyone that far right again. Got it?

You have not explained that. And why would this hate be to such a degree that they would risk congressional seats, and eventually lose their senate majority? Your argument makes no sense.

And their obsession with getting payback on the man who dared to beat them got the better of their common sense. That's the only explanation. They had no reason to hate him on the issues. He expanded the death penalty(when the murder rate was already declining)did what the rich wanted and forced NAFTA through (and I hope even YOU can admit that was stupid and pointless), kept the School of the Americas open, fought for the "Parental Notification" policy on underage abortion(a policy that existed solely to give bitter, spiteful southern daddies the chance to beat their daughters for getting pregnant), and hung out with CEO's and let them essentially write our platform while ignoring workers, the poor, and especially poor women of color. And, for no reason, he SIGNED the Defense of Marriage Act(and in 2004, his approach to the antigay initiatives on state ballots was to advise John Kerry to "ditch the gays".

After all that, where did OUR party come in?

Once you were right wing on the above(and on increasing military spending)it wasn't possible to be progressive on anything that mattered.

And it goes without saying that we can never get progressives back if we lower ourselves to another "moderate" ticket. We need to reach out and admit that those people didn't deserve to have the party abandon everything it believed in in '92 and '96. We could have won in those years with a DEMOCRAT leading the ticket.

That did not happen after Clinton won did it? Okay the BS tax exemption for the sale of homes happened, but not most of the rest of it.

IIRC, I absolutely loved the way Gore trashed Kemp in their debate.

who thought the only thing that mattered about their vote was whether they could feel good about it. It was electoral masturbation writ large. And now they whine, "Oh, you didn't reach out to me!" Bullshit. That's not the way it works. You work to change your party; you don't sit and wait for them to appease you. Because frankly, you are outnumbered vastly by conservatives in your own party.

The message is, Naderism is a suicide pact.

Were they supposed to stay eternally loyal to a party that was eternally disloyal to them?

This all goes back to the senseless ugliness of the DLC project, a project that was never necessary.

There was no reason to drive progressives out of the party like the DLC so obssessively did. Liberals and leftists were NEVER the cause of Democratic defeats. Mondale lost because he had all the charisma of month-old oatmeal. Dukakis lost because he never fought back against smears. PROGRESSIVES bore no responsibility for the '84 loss OR the '88 loss.

The party should have listened to Jesse and registered the Rainbow majority of the American electorate. Instead, it kicked out everybody but the Yuppies.

Can we all agree that the party must NEVER AGAIN be as far to the right as it was in '92 and '96? Can we all agree that the party must never again leave the poor, labor and progressives out in the cold?

The answer is dialogue, not abuse.

take a look in the FUCKING mirror. those are your PRECIOUS democrats that continue to enable shithead, and it's arrogance such as displayed by yourself that will continue to drive progessives away. so good fucking luck with that election, eh sport.

Gore-haters, Kerry-haters, Clinton-haters, DLC-haters - empowered fascists to do their worst back in 2000.

The IWR was window dressing that meant absolutely nothing after that.

DHLs, lecturing others on "principles", are swimming in blood.

You can't let our party off the hook on everything because of what happened in 2000.

We could have nominated an antiwar, pro healthcare and jobs candidate in 2004 and won on a progressive ticket. That would also have stopped the war. And most of those who had voted Nader in 2000 DID come back and it was ONLY because of them that that race was competitive. Take their votes away and Bush woulda been reelected by 5 million votes.

It's not an honorable position to say to progressives "you have to back the Democratic ticket no matter how far to the right the party moves, no matter how much it treats your values with contempt, and no matter how powerless it leaves you in deciding its policies".

The fact is, The DLC Party of the 1990's had no right to ask non-conservatives to vote for it. You are defending people who probably broke out the champaign when Paul Wellstone's plane crashed. You are defending a president to was elected by labor union voters and then pissed on their future by pushing through NAFTA with a big grin on his face.

The Nader/Green Party phenomenon, whatever you think of it, happened because the party pushed people too far, because it was too cavalier with things people had fought for for decades.

It's time to admit that 2000 was as much the DLC's fault as it was Nader's. That's the truth and you know it.

You are clearly not tactical or a progressive if you think the party of the Nineties DESERVED liberal support.

i sleep well at night knowing full well i hold no culpability in this disaster.

That proves nothing except that people don't hold themselves responsible.

then you have no argument. nice orwellian username, btw.

then you have no principles, no matter how much you want to pretend that you do.

The past eight years are Dem-hating-Leftist years. That is historical reality now. The Democratic Party would do well to never forget their absolute untrustworthiness and never put us in a position farther from the center that we have to count on so much as a single one of their votes.

you're fucking high. conversation over.

This post is further evidence.

Wouldn't you say she's swimming in blood?

The Publicans were taking us into Iraq no matter what.

So no, Hillary doesn't have a speck of blood on her.

She, like every Dem in Congress, like every Dem in this country, like every one in this country, had absolutely no way to stop our going into Iraq once DHLs handed absolute power over to Bush and Cheney in Nov 2000.

Hillary was as helpless as any of us to stop the war no matter how she voted on the IWR.

Have fun with that.

And if you do believe that the war resolution vote did not mean anything, the least Hillary could've done to show that she had a brain in her head and was worthy of being a leader is vote on the correct side of the issue.

Just one of the many ways she shows how much more of a brain she has in her head than the people who criticize her.

Every Dem in the Senate knew from the start that the grounds for invading Iraq were bogus. And every one of them KNEW Bush would never give diplomacy a chance. It was just about looking "tough".

It all makes sense now.

split the progressive vote in Florida, Gore--now a Peace Prize laureate--would have been President. What would he have done regarding Iraq?

His reputation needs to be destroyed for generations to come? I could never do justice to the list of services that man has done the American public, but in car safety alone the number of lives he has saved is staggering. And what warning would that even send? Don't challenge the establishment? Be afraid to work outside of a broken system?

I don't even know where to begin with these Nader-haters. They lack so much perspective, so much proportion. What can be said?

I think both Naders should be remembered separately, so one does not contaminate the memory of the other.

That particular demographic generally ignores warnings.


or never gets them.

when i found that out, in 2004, i was through with him.

much respect to his supporters, but Nader himself is counterproductive and only in it for himself.

There's really no engaging people who've taken as their first tactic threatening the lives of you, me, and millions of others.

Preferably, with air power.

You can't fight against all progressive ideas(as DLC'ers and Clinton loyalists did) AND brag about how unimportant progressives are in your party and then STILL demand that said progressives support the party.

There is no way that people on the Democratic left wing deserved the treatment Clinton and the DLC gave them. It was the BELTWAY who blew the elections in '84 and '88, not us.

It's time to admit the party was WRONG to drive progressives away and to silence those who stayed.

Children. Reckless, dangerous children.

And I'm being generous. In adults, that's a pattern of abuse.

I'm game. Let's put on the gloves and see who's standing after 3 rounds.

You can't honestly be saying that progressives should've just backed Clinton in '96 and been happy with that, are you?

The whole DLC project was based on hatred for workers and the poor. It was based on kissing the ass of spiteful, life-hating death-penalty loving white Southerners. And it didn't even get the votes of those Southerners after all the trouble.

The answer is, let the Democrats disagree with the Republicans on all the important issues, let the party fight for the poor and for labor and for peace. Democrats should never be accepting checks from CEO's or calling themselves "pro-business". Once you've done that, you've abandoned the actual party. The Nineties, a decade when nobody but the rich benefited from Clinton's policies, proved this.

every dead American soldier. We warned them they would cost Gore the election. We warned them Bush was a dangerous, sociopathic moron. And they voted for Bush anyway. They used the threat of Bush as a weapon, and then made good on their threat when they felt they had not been adequately appeased. And now, as we warned them, and as they knew would happen, hundreds of thousands are dead.

Oh, and "The Nineties, a decade when nobody but the rich benefited from Clinton's policies, proved this?" Where were you living? Life was never better than in the '90s. And I'm far from rich.

I wouldn't let the Supreme Court, Katherine Harris, etc. off the hook.

I wish Gore had run like Gore now, and that he hadn't picked Lieberman as his running mate. I have a feeling L. led to some of those Nader defections. Trying to go toward the right by picking L. didn't take votes away from Bush.

But their crime is different. They are conservative; they were working to cheat for their candidate. And as conservatives, they are amoral scum anyway. It's the Naderites--people who had before them all they needed to know that their actions would cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and people who claim to care about such things--who deserve a special seat of honor.

Gore would've faced a Republican Congress baying for blood after 9/11, and you know he would've caved and accepted the right wing lie that Iraq was responsible.

Lieberman would've forced him to.

We must never nominate anyone who had anything to do with them again.

The "Third Way" was just Republicanism with a multiracial cast. Even you would have to admit that.

You simply ignore reality. Much like a republican.

far more vitriol at Gore than he did at Bush.

Just want to understand.

Rigging the vote is not as bad as having a different economic philosophy? Maybe we need to rewrite laws as to which is a crime then.

Which deaths of hundreds of thousands are you thinking of? I understand it's more likely with the GOP, but is this about Iraq? Sounds like hindsight is 20/20, but it's not like Bush campaigned on invading Iraq. Or maybe you mean something else?

blackmail the Democratic party with the threat of Republicans, that's equally evil. Without Kitty Harris, there would have been no Iraq. Without the Naderites, there would have been no Iraq. And yes, while Bush did not explicitly promise to invade Iraq, we knew that:

1. He would be reckless with the military,
2. He was an amoral oilman,
and
3. He would do anything for corporations.

While I didn't predict Iraq in particular, Iraq was not a surprise to anyone.

This is coming from someone who voted for Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004.

I knew Bush was trouble and I knew how important it was to get the White House but no one in 2000 saw 9/11 coming or an Iraq invasion. Different issues were being discussed---and saving this nation from the corprotocracy which it has become was one of them.

THAT was very strong and moved the Nader people. And on that issue they were and are 100 percent correct.

You aren't much better than a rightwing unthinking, mindnumb robot. They like to simplify and re-write history as well.

You know, if the Dems want to keep shifting right progressives WILL leave. They just will.

And the Dem party won't be worth much after that happens.

the stakes were. We knew he was going to be dangerous as hell. We might not have known where he was going to start a war, but we knew he was going to be a warmonger.

how it makes you feel.

Basically, splinterists threaten to use the Republicans to attack people if their demands are not met. It is a clear-cut case of the use of violence toward a political goal.

You make it sound like progressives should've had no reasons not to be passionate Gore supporters.

(and full disclosure, while I cast a despairing vote for Nader in 2000, I would have voted for Gore if I'd lived in a battleground state. As it was I was in Alaska and my vote didn't matter there because the state Dems hadn't even tried to carry the state for the presidential ticket since the 60's. I was a Democrat until '93, when Clinton sent the Haitian refugees back to die to appease racists in Florida, I've been a Democrat again since 2002, and was always fighting for the Democratic party's principles even when Clinton and Gore were fighting against them. There was no good reason anyone who cared about Democratic party principles to stay in the party in the DLC years. We had no voice and no chance against the corporate money.)

And how come the people who bash those who defected to Ralph when the party abandoned all principles NEVER bash those who were Nixon or Reagan Democrats? Where the hell do you get the idea that it's only the left wing of the party that owes absolute unquestioning loyalty?

How about fighting the real enemy for a change?

A lot of former Nader people came back in '04, and it's only because of that that the race was even close. Without those 2 million people who gritted their teeth and voted for Kerry, the Dem ticket would only have carred 4 or 5 states. The returned progressives deserve thanks for that, not this kind of psychotic hate.

I don't give a shit one way or another about Nader. He'd have been much better off never having taken Republican money. That made him a tool, nothing more.

At that point the left can't even claim he was supporting THEM against the centrist/DLC corporatists. He was marching you all off while the Republican swept down out the sky and slaughtered everyone else.

Divide and conquer.

Do I blame the left? Not really. Principles are principles. If you don't stand for something, you'll stand for anything.

Like the DLCers. They don't really stand for anything but the same things the Repugs stand for...except maybe a little less of it.

Back then I considered myself a moderate, but I sure as fuck wasn't a corporatist. I've known that crowd was out to fuck us since Reagan.

And, also, that he should've worked with those Dems who proposed a "vote swapping" agreement in '00 which would have allowed him to get the votes needed for federal funding while at the same time taking his name out of the mix in the marginal states. It would have been slightly better for Gore to win, fine.

What I am saying here is, there is no reason in 2008 for anybody to be continuing to denounce what happened in 2000, or to act as if that was solely Ralph's fault and the DLC had nothing to do with it, and I also feel the party needs to admit it was wrong to treat progressives and progressive values with the contempt and arrogance it displayed towards them in the Nineties.

The Nineties could have been a positive, progressive decade with the GOP on the defensive. Instead, the years 1992 through 2000 were wasted and too many good and decent people were treated like shit by the party that should've been their natural home. And 1994 proved that treating progressives like that wasn't even good politics.

We need to reach out to keep those people who came back and got nothing for it, and to apologize to those who stayed in and were given nothing but the back of Bill Clinton's hand in the Nineties. The left needs to be welcomed back and no longer treated as the enemy.

Bashing Ralph, who no longer matters, works against all of this.

Better just to ignore the guy and to admit his supporters had a point.

i can't believe i'm reading this shit here, but then again i guess i should take into account the source of said shit. zeig heil... i mean, seek help.

the gallagher brothers are the two worst musicians in britain's history?

Plus you never hear them complain about Reagan Democrats. I wonder why?

:wtf:

What was it, 26 warnings that were ignored because * was preoccupied (a good word that) with Saddam. Don't you understand. You have to have a supremely incompetent administration to ignore every single bit of intelligence.

"Bin Laden determined to attack" - do you think Gore would have gone on holidays?

What I'm saying is, there's no real point bashing Nader anymore, he's no longer part of the equation. What is needed now is outreach and engagement to those progressives who backed him, not incessant attacks.

And, it must also be said, it wasn't the Nader campaign's fault that Gore and the Senate Democrats ALL refused to back the Congressional Black Caucus challenge to the Florida electoral results. You will agree with me, I hope, that the Dems and Al were wrong to sell out to the DLC on that.

I was actually responding to.

like Bushites need the "war on Terra".

It's the diversionary lie they hope will keep people from realizing how badly they've f**d things up.

The assortment of corporate whores and RW collaborators lost the last 2 elections. When they start throwing the name "Nader" around, you know they're getting set to try to lose a 3rd one.

There is no pardoning for that.

than looking at the problems within the Democratic Party.

or their funding of Ralph Nader.

Al Gore was incredibly qualified, having eight years in the Clinton White House, and a Senate record before that. He was a consistent and fierce proponent of the environment. He was of impeccable character, and was a strong liberal. The only "lackings" the media could find in him were that he was:

1. Boring, and
2. "A liar," even though all his "lies" were Republican inventions.

Ever since the narcissism of Naderites cost the Democratic party the 2000 election, Gore has been a strong anti-war voice, a strong pro-environment voice, head of a sustainable-growth fund, author of multiple best-selling books from a liberal perspective, and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He is, so far, the most competent, brilliant, and successful liberal of this century. Any of his "lackings" were simply pathetic Naderist excuses.

That was all down to Gore's conservatism.

He's had more real positive impact on your lives than any president we've had since FDR. Once again, he didn't lose Florida--Bush did.

We should be able to admit that Nader and his followers could not be brought into the Party because it has been severely compromised by its need to raise money however it can. I blame privately financed elections, not Ralph Nader.

People somehow forget that the Bush machine stole the 2000 election whenever Nader's name comes up. Was running against Gore irresponsible? Yes. Had the race been honest, his run might have resulted in the Bush victory which so many people attribute to him. But merely pointing out the inadequacy of corporate Democrats doesn't justify the kind of hatred some people foster for Ralph Nader.

I still don't like having to vote for pro-corporate "centrists" in hopes of blocking Bush and his ilk from gaining power. Democracy isn't supposed to work that way. Nader may be irrelevant, but the problem that gave rise to his candidacy is very much with us in this election.

And they sneered and lied to do it.

Nearly a decade of him and his in power.

What's not to hate?

Atrocities have been committed abroad by presidents of both parties. Democrats who participate in the corporate consensus do not deserve sanction from us. I am baffled that we are hated for refusing to support people who endorse the military industrial complex and in fact blamed for the crimes committed by the MIC we resist.

If you think Bush and his ilk have only been in power for the last seven years, I have news for you. There has been a revolving door between Congress, the executive branch, and major arms companies since World War II. This situation was as bad under Bill Clinton is it is today. It was significantly less obvious, but the MIC was firmly in place.

The brutal truth is that Nader's showing in 2000 was a joke and that the Bush campaign stole many more votes from Gore than Nader siphoned from him. Nader was meaningless to the outcome of the election, and if Gore had not given up the fight no one would give a damn about Nader. Even Gore admits that he had nothing to do with it. He is just a scapegoat for people with so much hate that Bush and his fellow criminals cannot soak it all up.

Allowing the Republicans to take office is an abandonment of that responsibility.

when they know better, are entitled to be thought of as those who have enabled the fascists and all the atrocities they commit.

That's exactly what Dem-hating-leftists did in 2000, and in lying outright and repeatedly to do it, they showed just how little honest 'principle' there was in anything they were doing. Tell all the victims in the WTC and in Iraq that there's not a dime's worth of difference whether they are dead or alive. Watching DHLs promote their 'principles' is nauseating. As another poster put it, they sleep fine at night. That's DHL principles in a nutshell.

So make as many 'they're all just the same' pretenses as you want about the 'military-industrial complex', but every step of the way, every single step, Dems are better than Publicans. Even if it's only giving the MIC another $50 billion instead of another $150 billion.

Every arrogant DHL that sticks their phony-principle nose in the air and threatens to backstab the Democrats unless the Dems comply with their demands makes it more imperative that Dems move farther to the right.

Why assume the country is so reactionary that we can only ask for slightly-less reactionary?

We NEVER need to nominate a DLC-type nominee again. The country is moving left on economic issues, on trade, on the war. We don't need to appeal to people who hate the Sixties and hate life and hope anymore, like Clinton did. We can win as ourselves, just have some faith, willya?

Just replace "DEM-Hating" with "America-Hating" and this joker could get himself a guest hosting gig on the EIB network.

n/t.

This is the real world. This is about power. This is war.

You've been involved in politics for how long and you don't get this? I mean, you really don't get this deep down in your heart?

We'll get power back Ken, and if we can get it back in both the Executive and the Legislature together, then, AND ONLY THEN, will the kinds of things we want be even partially able to get done.

And even then it's not absolute because in the real world you need to hold onto power or you're fucked. We've been fucked since the Southern Strategy. And when I see Democrats abandon Democrats, like I did so many during the Clinton Administration because either he wasn't progressive enough, or because they bought into the whole tawdry Publican semen-sniffing play, I have nothing but contempt.

This is war. We're a team. Progressives bail on that team, and they backstab that team. In a war, you get shot for that kind of thing.

For good reason.

The problem is, the DLC approach was simply to surrender to what Nixon did to the country with the Southern Strategy. It was a program of just surrendering on all the party believed and settling for the illusion of victory. This is why the DLC caused the party to lose control of Congress in 1994. It was THEM who destroyed the party's popularity by killing the Clinton health plan.

We'd have done far better to do massive voter registration throughout the South and to support union organizing drives there and in the rest of the country, thus increasing our vote. Instead, our leaders made of point of leaving people of color and workers out in the cold AND BRAGGING ABOUT DOING SO. The "a Different Kind of Democrat" ad that Clinton ran was just a rewritten Nixon ad from '72 at its heart.

And if "we're a team" than it means all parts of the team are supposed to be equal. Under the DLC, progressives rode the bench, got the water, picked up the towels in the locker room, and that was about it. The team would have done much better in the Nineties if progressives were allowed into the game. The answer is, let us into the game now. Our ideas are popular, and we can make strong cases for them. There's no longer the need for the team to do nothing but "three yards and a cloud of dust".

when they know better, are entitled to be thought of as those who have enabled the fascists and all the atrocities they commit.

That's exactly what Dem-hating-leftists did in 2000, and in lying outright and repeatedly to do it, they showed just how little honest 'principle' there was in anything they were doing. Tell all the victims in the WTC and in Iraq that there's not a dime's worth of difference whether they are dead or alive. Watching DHLs promote their 'principles' is nauseating. As another poster put it, they sleep fine at night. That's DHL principles in a nutshell.

So make as many 'they're all just the same' pretenses as you want about the 'military-industrial complex', but every step of the way, every single step, Dems are better than Publicans. Even if it's only giving the MIC another $50 billion instead of another $150 billion.

Every arrogant DHL that sticks their phony-principle nose in the air and threatens to backstab the Democrats unless the Dems comply with their demands makes it more imperative that Dems move farther to the right.

as a political force for all intents and purposes. But the Democrat-Hating-Leftists that he cynically corralled
against the Democratic party keep coming back, as nasty and sanctimonious as ever.

They didn't stop at being Gore haters. They just became Kerry haters who at least 'held their nose' to vote for a great Democrat. Then, satisfied that they'd done their part, have come right back as Hillary haters and I'm sure the next time around they'll be here too, understanding nothing of politics beyond how self-righteous it makes them feel to be 'principled' above everybody else that they sell down the river. In fact, they are less principled than George W Bush.

They backstabbed the political representation of the left, the Democratic Party, thereby selling this country, and by extension parts of the whole world, into nearly a decade of fascists.

Relevance? Democrat-hating-leftists don't go away, unlike Ralph Nader. They keep stabbing the left in the back.

is to not only vote for the Democratic ticket but unquestioningly accept(as you do)that the party must ALWAYS nominate the most conservative candidate possible(which is what you accept if you still insist we have to go with HRC)? Guys like you never denounced Democrats for Nixon OR Democrats for Reagan.

The progressives who came back in 2004 did enough by voting for Kerry. It wasn't there fault that Kerry sold out by refusing to challenge Ohio, or that Kerry kept millions of voters at home by refusing to run as a peace candidate.


And there is no way you can say that Bill Clinton's Democratic Party was "the political representation of the left" or that the DLC was

You KNOW a HRC victory can't be a victory for the left. We'll work hard for it anyway, even though you and I both know it will mean the party is lowering itself to the Nineties again, and it will be your DLC pals that make it harder by writing big checks to Bloomburg, but you won't say a word against them.

is to understand what the Democratic Party is all about.

And I never said that to not be a DHL requires one to vote Democratic, which doesn't make one not a DHL. Dem-haters that voted for Kerry remained Dem-haters regardless of who they voted for, but at least they did their job.

Nor have I ever said we must always nominate the most conservative candidate possible. Hillary is very much a progressive, as was John Kerry, as is Bill Clinton. I have no doubt that any of them, given absolute dictatorial powers, would be as far if not farther left than Dennis Kucinich. You just don't get it even a little.

Yes Bill Clinton's party was the left.
Yes the DLC has represented the left, though not well enough.
Yes Hillary will be a victory for the left.

The DLC isn't my pal, but I understand what they've done well and where they go astray.

The DLC insisted we EXPAND the death penalty(at a time when our murder rate was dropping)
The DLC insisted we pass NAFTA, even though the majority of the country was always against it and it was never going to benefit anybody
but the rich.
The DLC made Democratic conventions a "debate-free zone" where the platform was decided solely by lobbyists and big check writers, with actual Democrats having no say it it at all.

No Democratic Administration in which anybody says(as HRC did)that it's White House staff had "no left wing" had any right to claim to be the left.

The DLC's day is past. It was never needed in the first place, as a real Democrat with a massive voter registration campaign could always have beaten Bush the First simply by defending the party's principles and his or her own character from all attacks. 1992 didn't have to be the agony it was.

What is needed is to have a positive message for all progressives, for the anti-Bush and anti-corporate power majority. We can win by speaking truth and fighting for our dreams with conviction. We don't nominate candidates who act like our core values are shameful.

I wish more people would understand that.

If the vicious posts from Clinton and Obama backers are any indication, they are still out of touch with reality.

How deluded can one get? The people that took the most corporate money, the people who voted pro-war and pro-Patriot Act are going to change things?

One of HRC's most avid supporters on DU claimed: "progressives are as useless as tits on a bull". And then they wonder why the progressives turn third party and then call them 'traitors'.

I like irony, but you can carry it too far...

It's much easier to blame Nader/the Greens/solar flares than it is to admit that we've run crappy campaigns for the past two presidential cycles.

Dubya was completely beatable by UNSTEALABLE margins, yet somehow the Dem campaign braintrust managed to fsck it up not once, but twice.

... is like coke hits for addicts. I totally agree with you that it's meaningless to do so, but it's simply too addictive in a self-destructive type of way for many.

but the Democrat hating leftists that fulfilled his heresy remain to threaten the Democratic party and by extension America, with fascism and all its attendant destruction. From Gore-haters to Kerry-haters to Clinton-haters to whatever-Dem-comes-next-haters, they remain a threat to the political power of the left.

Recognizing the danger they represent is anything but meaningless, and understanding that Democrats need to move farther to the center in response isn't bashing, it is political reality.

"the political representation of the left"

No politician that won't absolutely agree not to bomb Iran can be worthy of left support.

Neither can a pro-globalization politician, or one who will be just as anti-Hugo Chavez(I.E., anti-hope)on Latin American policy.

It can never be acceptable for the left to settle for the JFK '61 foreign policy again.

We can go alot farther to the center and still be the left.

Clinton was a Republican. Anything to his right is to the right of the Republicans. Why do you want a Democratic victory to be even more meaningless than 1992?

The country is moving away from conservatism. We don't HAVE to run another defeatist DLC campaign.

good luck with that. you people are truly beyond delusional. please, seek help.

:eyes:

When did this happen?

:crazy:

I am surprised to see him running in the Green primary

he's not even running

with a proviso. Nader said both parties were the same. Yet he didn't mind taking money from the Republicans in 2004. IMHO, if he were serious about that statement, then he shouldn't take money from either side. That said, he has a right to speak and a right to his opinion. His fight for safer cars and seatbelt use has saved a lot of lives.

It should be noted that most 2000 Nader voters were lost to him by then and that a lot of people who still backed him, as I understand it, weren't thrilled with that.

With several books in this decade, Nader has continued to teach Clintonites how to restore principle to the arid landscape of their opportunism and expedience.

Have they failed to get it, gnashed their teeth? Of course. As Swift said, you'll know a genius among you when the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

http://www.nader.org/index.php?/categories/5-Books

While I think Ralph should've stayed out in 2004(and should've only run a safe states campaign in 2000), I didn't mean to say that nothing the man did matters.

I hope you'll agree that his days as a candidate should be over. I mean, in the end, the man even ended up screwing over the Green Party. In the electoral arena, he ended up leaving nothing behind him in terms of a lasting structure or legacy.

My concern in this thread has been more with how the party treats Naderites and recovering Naderites. The agenda these people fought for, in my view, is still a good one and should be embraced, at least as much as possible, by the Democratic Party, whatever that party thinks of Ralph himself.

Why would we want them?

By this party and its leaders.

If the party had made them feel included and had treated them with respect, they'd have stayed. "It was the DLC, stupid", to rephrase a motto of the day.

The lesson is, no good comes from leaving progressives out in the cold like that. We need to be a party run from the bottom up, with activists and idealists mattering as much as the Beltway and the Ceo's and the big donors. When we aren't that party, we stand for nothing and even our victories mean nothing, like in the Nineties.

We must NEVER repeat that decade's political choices again. They were a failure as of 1994.

who treated Al Gore and the every Democrat with contempt when they insisted on lying that Gore was no different than Bush. That Democrats were no different than Publicans. That Al was just a corporate whore. That it didn't matter who you voted for because they were all the same. They tricked millions with their craven lies. Now, finally, after eight years, just about everybody sees how fooled they were, even if they don't quite admit their own responsibility in believing the Dem-Hating-Leftist lies, they know.

They were very bad people, Ken. Maybe you weren't around, or weren't involved, or just don't remember, but these people's lies took the third and fourth terms of what would have been a Democratic-left turnaround moving into revitalization, and turned them into eight years of fascist hell that erased everything of the nineties in the first two years and just got horrifically, fascistically worse from there.

You think you're going to rewrite history with your incessant 'the nineties were bad', 'Clinton was a Republican' claims, but those claims are ridiculous to anyone who lived through them. They weren't perfect but they were miles better than where they brought us from, and they had set the stage for some real improvements in the next eight years.

Until DHLs lied this country into hell.

Try to pretend it away all you want.

But c'mon, even YOU couldn't seriously argue that a Gore presidency would've been to the left of Clinton's(which would've been the only kind of a Democratic presidency, after eight years of slightly-right-of-center nothingness, that was worth working for).

Nobody elected as a bland centrist ever moves left after getting elected. It simply isn't possible.

Unless you like W.

:applause:

You just once might try to get Democrats elected by expanding the base of Democratic voters and mobilizing all progressive people, instead of always basing your politics on simply screaming abuse at those to your left.

Why not give it a chance?

Why not, just once, admit that Dems NEED the left as much as we need the finicky suburbanites?

And why not admit that progressive policies are actually good ones, unlike "centrist" policies, which aren't actually policies at all, but simply conservatism under another name?

FUCK NADER.

It's childish to demand repentance, especially since people like you never demand it from the Democrats for Nixon Alumni Association(I.E., the DLC)

It's enough that I said that Nader should've stuck to a "safe states" campaign in 2000.

I don't see things your way. FUCK NADER!

Nader is no longer the issue. Getting progressives back in the tent is the issue. The way to do it is dialogue and engagement, not abuse. Face it, your kind of politics simply doesn't work for this party.

It's how I feel just like when I say FUCK BUSH. Both fucked over our country and I will not apologize for my hatred of both of them.

The answer is unity in the present, not payback for the past. Get over the old shit already, it does no good to hold onto it.

So again, FUCK NADER.

If you did, you'd admit that 2000 no longer matters, and that the DLC was partly responsible for what happened that year. If you cared about winning and about the party, you'd move on and work for the future. The past is the past. And I don't hear you bitching about Democrats for Nixon or Democrats for Reagan, both of which later turned into the DLC. They were far more destructive in their betrayals than anything Ralph or Ralph's supporters ever did.

What matters is the future, get it? We can have a winning progressive future. Work for that. Don't rant endlessly about what can't be changed in the dead past.

And your DLC meme doesn't scare me. FUCK NADER!

For the love of God, why can't you just move on and work for the future already? 2008 is what matters, not 2000.

You seam to think he is relavant or you wouldn't spend so much time defending his sorry ass.

To stop obsessively denoucing the guy and his supporters. His supporters are people we can get back in the party if we convince them that they'll never again be kept totally out in the cold like progressives were in the Nineties.

It's about growing the party and winning a progressive victory, not defending Ralph. Ralph can defend himself. I'm just saying there's no point in wasting time attacking the guy over what no longer matters. The future is what matters.

You do the party no favors by throwing the same tantrum over and over. Grow up and move on already.

I will never change my mind. I will welcome Nader supporters back, but I will not change my stance FUCK NADER.

Some of us want to help win this election. Guess you don't really think that's important. But it's your loss if your love of your own spite is that important to you. For me, you're just a sad, lost soul. Hopefully, you'll someday move on and join us in the future, or at least in the present.

Thank you for your permission for me to vent my rage at the man who was more responsible than the SCOTUS for Shrubs "ELECTION"











PS FUCK NADER!

We NEVER had to move right in the Nineties. A REAL Dem could've beaten Bush the First. Harkin would've taken him going away.

Well excuse me for being piss at someone who was to concede to think about what they were doing. Handing the government to fascist was a bad idea. FUCK NADER!

And you've chosen to ignore that. You need to be pissed at everyone responsible. And the DLC did their part to cause what happened.

Just give it a rest now. Your posts serve no purpose.

You serve no purpose.

But you've refused to even consider it.

Why are you so addicted to ranting about the dead past?

Why is hate more important to you than hope?

Can't you see it's THIS YEAR that matters?

(I.E., the DLC in its early years) for deserting the party and causing the misery those Republican elections and reelections caused?

The Nixon-Reagan Democrats (DLC) are responsible for more deaths in Vietnam, Chile and Central America(you know, the place where Bill Clinton backed the Contras) than "Naderites" ever were in Iraq.

Have you EVER attacked them for causing the slaughter in Cambodia? Or for the murders of Archbishop Romero and Salvador Allende? Or for the fact that the people of Nicaragua were forced to vote to give up their independence and become a U.S. colony again in 1990

No, you haven't. In fact you decided those disloyal Dems should LEAD the party and the rest of us should be powerless within it.

How is what I've asked any more unreasonable than that?

You don't know what I think about those subjects. Yet you are willing to state for me what my opinion is? Spare me. I've put no words in your mouth. FUCK NADER!

We've got Dem-hating-leftists all over this board and the left blogosphere proclaiming how they won't vote for Hillary and even Obama as they are 'Dino publican whores'. That's now, not in the 'dead past' as you would like to pretend.

Nader might not be here, but DHLs remain just as much of a turd in the Democratic punch bowl as they have always been.

That's why I always talk about DHLs and not Nader or Naderites. Ralph just coalesced them for one election. One horrific election I'll grant, but one only, whereas DHLs are an ongoing problem.

On trade, on healthcare, on workers' rights(most Americans want unions to regain strength)AND ON THE WAR.

We have nothing to lose by standing for what they want.

You seem to think that Democrats should bend to accomodate the far left.

You got that exactly wrong.

Values which do NOT include, and can never include, globalization, increased use of the death penalty, cuts in social services and welfare regulations that punish the poor just for being poor.

Democrats are supposed to defend the powerless and help them empower themselves and get their place at the table. The party refused to do that in the Nineties.

You aren't progressive at all. You can't be if you think we should just settle for another DLC presidency. And we don't need to settle for that because, as you refuse to notice, the country is moving AWAY from conservatism and isn't likely to move back to it anytime soon.

We can win as the party of the dispossessed majority. We no longer need to be just as exclusive and uptight as the GOP. We no longer need self-loathing politics.

into the party or to modify their agenda to suit people who, by definition aren't very amenable to compromise or they'd already be in the party.

You play word games and it screws up your understanding of political reality Ken. "TRUE Democratic values" are the values that DHLs don't believe in. Calling outsider values the "TRUE" values is simply double-speak. It's a form of wishful dishonesty.

I agree with all of this:
"Values which do NOT include, and can never include, globalization, increased use of the death penalty, cuts in social services and welfare regulations that punish the poor just for being poor.

Democrats are supposed to defend the powerless and help them empower themselves and get their place at the table. The party refused to do that in the Nineties."

except the globalization part. Globalization is progressive. The way we're doing it isn't particularly, but Hillary has said she will change that, and I believe her. I don't believe she'll change it enough, but then I don't believe anyone will, so I'm left hoping she'll do at least enough. But again, globalization is progressive.

I don't refuse to notice that the country is moving away from conservatism. I'm sure I notice it better than you do. I'm all about the politics, which you seem pretty obtuse about. However, moving away isn't moved away. Now is not the time to move wholesale. Think of it like a wave, if you've ever tried riding one. It's all about timing and force. Now is not the time to go pushing hard left. I'll let you guess when the time is.

Oh, and "You aren't progressive at all." That gave me a smile. I'm farther left than you'll ever be Ken. Your problem is that you can't differentiate ideology and politics. You're like a newbie at this. I admire your enthusiasm, but you have this sense that you just have to start going all progressive on everybody and they'll follow right along, as obviously correct as it is. Well, it is obviously correct, but very few people, relatively speaking, understand that. And fewer still are going to follow it. It is only after the fact that most people wouldn't change back from progressivity.

That's why we need real smart, politically deft and experienced people to play this through. People like the Clintons.

All Clinton accomplished by tacking right over and over and over was allowing the right to control the agenda(Even in the 93-94 period, when he had a MANDATE to push progressive policies on health care, human rights and GLBT rights through because he had a Dem congress).

What do we gain by running behind the political curve? What do we gain by being slower than the public's leftward swing?

And it's hard to credit you as a progressive when all you ever do is bash progressives. Why do you never attack the Democrats for Nixon and Reagan(later known as the DLC) for all the years when THEY deserted the party? How come your response to that seems to be that we needed to accept that the only way to get those people back was to turn the whole party over to them and make progressives the powerless junior partner in the Democratic coalition?

And I'm no newbie, friend. I've been involved in politics for decades. It's arrogant of you to assume that YOUR approach is the only one an experienced person could possibly take.

Finally, no I DON'T believe that ALL we have to do is "go all progressive". We need to be clearly divergent from the GOP on all major issues(none of their current stances are popular), we need to go back to grassroots organizing, and also to FINALLY listen to what Jesse said about massive voter registration campaigns of the poor. We also need to help unions get stronger and get union voters registered(It's been decades since our presidential nominee last talked about repealing Taft-Hartley. We need to talk about THAT again. And we need to join Jon Corzine in campaigning hard against the Electoral College again). We need hard work and we need the program that will actually INSPIRE people, rather than just mush that folks don't object to.

The voters are actually ahead of our party now.

They might do that, but I pretty much don't believe that they'll ever catch up to progressives. It's just not human nature. Progressives pull the Democratic party, the Democratic party pulls the country.

So I don't think we're anywhere near behind the political curve. Nor am I worried that the public will swing left ahead of Democrats any time soon. I have no faith whatsoever in them. Four years from now they won't even have a memory of George W Bush, and they'll be ready to fall for the next smarmy Publican asshole waving a tax cut in their greedy faces.

I'm all for building up a progressive push left, at a rate at which we can carry enough of the population along to maintain political viability. AFTER we get elected. Voter registration, unions, grassroots, all good. Fixing the election machinery would be my first choice. All that behind the scenes stuff especially. The high profile stuff I think is going to be hard to do from behind this recession and the Publican debt. At the very least it's going to be a deliberate process.

UNTIL then, my fellow progressives can either get with the program or shut the fuck up. You can woo them all you want. I'm of a fuck them mindset. Their politically infantile approach to politics doesn't impress me, and their bitter Clinton-hating attitudes disgust me.

It's nice to see that you've been able to hold on to your ideological idealism over "decades" of political involvement. However, if you have a hard time creditting me as a progressive "when all (I) ever do is bash progressives", then how does that square with your demands that we Democrats credit progressives with being Democrats when all they do is bash Democrats? Good for the goose but not the gander? You want it both ways. And while I don't care whether anybody credits my ideology with anything, progressives do care about whether the Democratic party does value their input. They have to.

For somebody with the years of exerience you have, you don't seem to be able to draw the distinction between ideology and politics very well. I don't bash my fellow progressives for their ideology, but rather for their dull, childish, and in terms of DHLs, ugly, attitude towards politics. It seems almost inherent in progressive ideology, which is an idealism in and of itself, to eschew the real world complication of politics. That's why I'm Tactical Progressive, because I have no such hangups. Ideology is far ahead of politics. Politics is the real world. Ideology is the world the way you dream it should be. Confusing the two is the quick way to self-destruction.