Ideological Blind Spots Doom Democratic Party to Becoming Irrelevant

[ulTRAX]

The Right has a grand vision. They don't shy from taking on the big issues or from planning where they want the US to be in 20-50 years.

In contrast the Democrats, the only force that can take the Right on, are mired in self-imposed ideological blind spots: issues they just refuse to rethink. In large part was see that ideological straight-jacket at work here at DU. Even the new expanded issues forums reflect the ideological limitations of traditional Democrats and don't expand to cover those issues true PROGRESSIVES see as issues. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=120x24383

What do I mean? There's plenty of forums on the minor issues. But most are subsets of over-arching issues such as Constitutional reform, democracy, federalism, distribution of wealth, capitalism, corporate rights, civic equality, property rights etc.

Consider the 2004 race. Kerry worked entirely WITHIN the Right's agenda of irresponsible tax cuts. He did not challenge or expose the Right's agenda to strangle government by sabotaging revenues. Yet any issue not challenged, becomes more and more entrenched in the American mind.

The simple truth is this: unless Democrats can rethink those BIG issues they are making themselves politically irrelevant. They are dooming themselves to operate within a framework the Right has created and the BEST they can do is advocate minor tweaks to that dysfunctional system.

Where's the vision?