Defeat a Lieberman - Save a Party by Fred Stembottom

[FredStembottom]

I write this as a response to The Plaid Adder's original post here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1572389

As a blue-collar worker, the Dem establishment seems like planets rotating around some other Sun in a galaxy far, far away.......

My whole political involvement (for my entire adult life) has been based on desperately trying to get the Dems to act like Dems and defend the policies necessary to a well-balanced, sustainable America (you know, things like jobs policies that sustain a middle class). Only to have to watch 26 years of Parakeet-like enthrallment with the shiny object of DLC "centrism".

The Republicans only won everything because our team was utterly hobbled. The exquisitely narrow, finicky and sophomoric arguments that we are told made the Republicans triumphant are like those road-side Jesus-grottos made of tin cans and pebbles by strange hermits on a manic swing. They crumble of their own weight and inscrutability.

How could the Democratic party, the party that created seemingly everything of lasting American value (Social Security, Medicare, Minimum Wage, Voting Rights and on and on) ever be defeated by another party who's sole creation is the Santa Claus promise of various "invisible hands" about to arrive to make everything magically good.

How could the Democratic party, the party of Planning, Sustainability and Rule of Law lose to another party whose only action, again and again, is to tear shit apart?

How could the Democratic party, the party that won World War II lose to a party that attacks other countries based on thinking so convoluted, labyrinthine and magical that it rivals the writings of Bo & Peep?

How could the Democratic party, the party of America's greatest economic days (accomplished largely through heavy corporate taxation and the encouragement of collective bargaining)lose to a party that encourages corporations to lie, cheat, maim and eventually leave the country altogether?

The answer of course, is that something as freaky, childish and stoned out of it's head on phony versions of Christianity as the current Republican party could not even prevail at the city-council level.... without the Democratic party hobbling itself. Like a drunk playing pull-tabs, the establishment Dems bought the exciting promises of DLC "centrism" - never winning but giddily certain that the million dollar pay-off is in the jar somewhere, goddammit!

What is now taking place in Connecticut is what has been needed for 20 or more years. DLC "centrism" is now a vision gone stark raving mad. To cozy up to the policies of a criminal junta is "centrism"? To endorse policies that smash into the lives of nearly every person still living on the fumes of Democratic hope is winning? Torture? Totalitarian surveillance? Near-complete outsourcing of our jobs? We should "tri-angulate" with these things?!?!

It's over. The grand Democratic experiment is over. We need an intervention to get the party away from the pull-tab jar. We, the rank and file who have cowered and pleaded and begged for scraps from the D.C. Dems are now here to say for ourselves what the Democratic Party is all about! And if it means sacrificing a seat in Connecticut to stimulate the first real interest in the millions of us living through "centrism"...then so be it.

Such a sacrifice will be over and forgotten in a matter of days if it spurs the rest of the D.C. Dems into treatment.

Let the newly sober Democratic party once again address US and say:

-We want your job to stay here

-Corporations should pay taxes

-Collective bargaining made you strong. Resume.

-Globalization is an old, ridiculous, fossil-fueled dinosaur. Let's make American stuff for Americans once again.

-Let's transition to new sustainable energies beginning tomorrow at noon. Here. Here's a New Energy job for each of you. Let's go!

Under this type of vision - the type only real and brave Democrats can deliver - the weird, demented road-side architecture of the Republican fever-vision will simply fall to pebbles.


*edited for link

[aquart]

1. Add universal health care and I'm there.

I come from union people and I never once understood how any good could come from shipping an American job overseas.

[FredStembottom]

2. Absolutely! Universal health care.

- Let's catch up. Universal Health Care in America!

[FredStembottom]

3. " " "

it's just that I think the jobs and economy aspect of our current predicament is what reformed Dems can address best - and should first. I would put uni-health care 2nd.

I could be wrong!:eyes: