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Edited on Fri Aug-10-07 04:23 PM by welshTerrier2
All seriousness aside though ;-), we really need to have a party pow-wow about exactly how we go about building our party. what are our values; what are our rules; how flexible should we be; how inflexible should we be; how can we reward the good guys; should we consider punishing the bad guys.
I'm going to write this post from my personal perspective. Even the most progressive elected Democrats are a big compromise for me. I've been willing to "stay put" until now in the hope that doing so would at least move us closer to what I believe is best for the country.
Here's the problem for many of us left-wing Dems, we don't get nothin ... Here's why. Let's assume we have a Dem controlled Congress as we sort of do now. What happens when key choices come up for a vote? Either the "liberal" Democrats work out some sort of compromise with the conservative Democrats or they don't. If they do, the result is well to the right of my position; if they don't, the conservatives vote with the republicans as they did on the wiretapping bill and we get a right-wing republican result. And me? I don't get nothin ... Now this is a pretty sorry state of affairs. Where's my representation?
And then, on top of that, I'm called a purist. I'm called self-indulgent. Call me all the names you want to, I'm still getting nothin ...What I am is NOT REPRESENTED.
Well, this then brings me to a discussion of the Blue Dogs and, more broadly, to a discussion of party governance. How should the "Big Tent" be operated? If one argues that each rep should do whatever they believe according to their values and their conscience, then why shouldn't I do the exact same thing. If I don't feel represented, why shouldn't I vote based on my own principles? Put another way, if they won't compromise with me, why should I compromise with them?
Of course, this leads to some serious political problems for all concerned. This is the perfect prescription for a "house divided". And, even beyond that, is that what we consider a party that represents all its constituents? What we're doing now is giving no voice to the party's left wing. None. It's not a matter of "purists"; it's a matter of having no voice at all. What we're left with is a tyranny of the majority. The left has NO SEAT AT THE TABLE. The result has been a loss of voters to either other parties or, more prominently, to alienated Americans who just don't vote at all. This is terrible for the party; it's much, much worse for the country.
The Blue Dogs are the perfect triangulation model. They reflect Looney Liebermanism. The idea is that, whenever they please, they can morph into republicans and put the Democratic majority into a minority status. So, returning to some of the earlier posed questions, what, if anything, should or could the party do in response to this disloyal conduct?
The party has no real leverage with the left inside the Congress. Put another way, if I vote for a Green candidate, the party cannot "take anything away from me" because it hasn't given me anything to begin with. They can't threaten my district. They can't hold back on electoral support. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. But, this is not the case with the Blue Dogs. No, to answer another poster's question, I don't want to hand Blue Dog seats back to the republicans. But neither am I willing to be held hostage by that very threat.
It seems to me that some accord has to be reached if party unity is the goal. Blue Dogs cannot run free, off their leashes, anywhere and anytime they choose. If they want to be welcomed under the Big Tent, and I hope they do, they need to make certain concessions just as all other party members do. Certain central themes of the Democratic Party should be CORE VALUES and should be NON-NEGOTIABLE. I would argue, and again this should be negotiated at a party-wide forum open to all, that the recent Constitutional abuse for which the Blue Dogs voted should have been part of our core values as a party. We hear a lot about party loyalty from the conservative wing of the party until it comes to issues where they want to go off on their own.
It's always the unrepresented left who is accused in these forums of disloyalty. If they truly are not represented, it's not clear what they are being asked to be loyal to. And then, the "true blue" loyalists from the Blue Dog camp turn right around and cast their votes with the republicans. Party loyalty would, indeed, be an interesting topic to explore in greater detail from this perspective. The reality is that the Blue Dogs, especially with Democrats in charge, always get a seat at the table. Either they force a compromise in their own party or they side with the republicans tipping the vote their way. It must be nice. And, even given that, they see no obligation to remain loyal to other Democrats.
So it seems a great pow-wow is called for. It's time for the party to stop pretending we're a Big Tent and all on the same team when clearly we are not. It's time to start making it clear that we will not do anything or say anything or allow anything just to keep the party intact. If we can't agree on a set of core values, we are nothing but an empty shell worthy of nothing. There's tons of room for compromise but there is no room for being compromised. To allow any of our "teammates" to vote to eliminate our civil liberties and to be free from illegal searches and seizures is unconscionable. It's time to sit down with those teammates who did this and have a little chat. They need to understand that they've done serious harm to the party. It's hardly just the left who is angry at what they've done; this stabs Constitutional protections in the back. It hands bush even more unchecked power. No one has argued against giving the government the power it needs to protect the country as long as that power, as it's always been, has been authorized and overseen by a Court. The FISA law even accommodated doing this after the fact so as not to interfere with the timeliness of the process. But even that was not good enough for the Blue Dogs. They wanted the Executive Branch to be free of the checks and balances that the Founders so carefully wove into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. One wonders whether they've ever read those documents.
The issue raised in the OP goes way, way beyond the single issue of wiretapping. We have some real issues to address with the Democratic Party. Perhaps raising issues like this at this time will find very little traction. So many are so distracted with one campaign or another and cautions about electoral risks and rips in the Big Tent are likely to go unheeded because many believe the Democrats are sitting pretty after 8 years of bush's disaster. They may be right although they would be foolish to take winning for granted. But the issues raised in this post look well beyond the next election or the one after that. We need to define who we are and how we will resolve our differences. If we fail to do that, in the long run, we will not succeed. More will come to see they are not represented. Again, that's not the way parties should operate and it surely is not the way democracies should operate.
i've already recommended this thread. now it's getting a well-deserved KICK ...
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