Originally Posted by Odin

I take being called a Leftist Loony as a compliment.

Right, considering the source. It doesn't really piss me off to be called "far left." Although I don't consider it quite accurate, it's at least not absurd, in the way that calling Nancy Pelosi "far left" or Barack Obama a "socialist" is absurd. I'm almost far left, definitely in the ballpark, and I am a socialist, even though Obama ferdamsure isn't.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Right, considering the source. It doesn't really piss me off to be called "far left." Although I don't consider it quite accurate, it's at least not absurd, in the way that calling Nancy Pelosi "far left" or Barack Obama a "socialist" is absurd. I'm almost far left, definitely in the ballpark, and I am a socialist, even though Obama ferdamsure isn't.

I agree, Obama is basically a capitalist pig who uses the socialist and the far lefty rhetoric to shore himself up and move himself ahead.

Originally Posted by Exile 67'

I agree, Obama is basically a capitalist pig who uses the socialist and the far lefty rhetoric to shore himself up and move himself ahead.

Boy, there's a phrase that's a blast from the past.

I don't know what the long-term effects of Tea Party ascendancy among the Elephants would be, but it's already much further advanced than Strom Thurmond's gang ever was. I repeat, every single Republican seems to be afraid of them.

The long term effect, if things proceed in a linear fashion, will be the demise of the Republican Party, which of course means it won't be allowed to go on much longer.

Although I'm thinking it might actually be better if it did. If the Republicans go the way of the Whigs, a new party might form from conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans (if there are any of the latter left) and become what the Republicans used to be. I can't help feeling that would be healthy for the nation's politics. So would the GOP becoming again what it used to be, though. Which is more likely? Interesting times all around.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

The long term effect, if things proceed in a linear fashion, will be the demise of the Republican Party, which of course means it won't be allowed to go on much longer.

Although I'm thinking it might actually be better if it did. If the Republicans go the way of the Whigs, a new party might form from conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans (if there are any of the latter left) and become what the Republicans used to be. I can't help feeling that would be healthy for the nation's politics. So would the GOP becoming again what it used to be, though. Which is more likely? Interesting times all around.

The Republican party will most likely remain in place.

Originally Posted by Exile 67'

The Republican party will most likely remain in place.

We can only hope.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

The long term effect, if things proceed in a linear fashion, will be the demise of the Republican Party, which of course means it won't be allowed to go on much longer.

Although I'm thinking it might actually be better if it did. If the Republicans go the way of the Whigs, a new party might form from conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans (if there are any of the latter left) and become what the Republicans used to be. I can't help feeling that would be healthy for the nation's politics. So would the GOP becoming again what it used to be, though. Which is more likely? Interesting times all around.

Let's see...2006, 2008, there is no Tea Party, the Republicans get wiped out. 2010, while approval ratings for the Republicans are still in the toilet, the Tea Party comes along, commandeers the Republican Party, and drives it to the biggest gains in the House either party has seen in generations.

So the answer for the Republicans is to get rid of the Tea Party and go back to what they were doing before, because that was working so well...

I honestly don't understand why you constantly post this kind of stuff. There are several possible explanations:

1) You're not very smart.
2) You have an inability to distinguish between fantasy (the world as you wish it was) from reality (the world as it actually is).
3) You have an extremely parochial world view, live in a very left wing place, and have no concept of what the rest of America is like, and how people think.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

So the answer for the Republicans is to get rid of the Tea Party and go back to what they were doing before, because that was working so well...

When I say "what they were before," I don't mean just a few measly short years. I mean before 1964-65, which is when the party started to change. While the Tea Party per se is new, the phenomenon of which it is a part is decades old, if not more than a century. The new, disastrous Republican Party was very much in evidence in 2006-2008, and for many election cycles before.

Sorry, sometimes I forget that we have people as young as you are on this forum, or who think that history began when they were born.

EDIT: It actually goes back to the 1930s and begins with the Democrats, not the Republicans. Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, the Democrats were mostly a regional party dominant in the South and with limited outreach to the rest of the country. There were Democratic bastions among immigrants in the Northeast and among such labor unions as existed then (about like now, actually).

In the 1930s, the Democrats formed an odd coalition that included African-Americans, labor, progressives throughout the country, and the South. It was inherently unstable, but for a while it gave the party dominance of the federal government almost as strong as the Republicans enjoyed during the decades after the Civil War. (During this same time, the Republicans rather than the Democrats were the main proponents of civil rights.)

In the 1960s, the Democrats in control of Congress passed and President Johnson signed legislation putting an end to Jim Crow, which the Southern Democrats saw as a betrayal. The ironclad allegiance of the South to the Democrats was broken by this action. Late in the decade, the Republicans began strategically wooing Southern white voters, taking advantage of what the Democrats had done.

What they didn't see was that while they could indeed win the South, they could not do that and at the same time retain more traditional Republican territories such as the Northeast and the West Coast. Today, those regions of the country are strongly Democratic, while the South is strongly Republican -- an exact inversion of the way things were prior to the 1960s. As part of this, the Republicans were much more moderate in many ways prior to the '60s. They were civil rights advocates, included the Equal Rights Amendment as a plank of the party platform every election, and would never have advocated anything as weird as wanting to "drown the government in a bathtub." They were civilized and modern, not reactionary and crazy. Conservative, yes, but in the dictionary sense of that word, defenders of the status quo and of tradition, not advocates of radical reactionary change.

So this is a long-term process of transition for the party, and it cannot be understood by reference to three elections over six years.

Originally Posted by Exile 67'

The Republican party will most likely remain in place.

Why? One of the two main parties in a two-party can commit political suicide. Such has happened twice. The Republican Party has tied itself to constituencies that cannot remain the majority without the addition of new constituencies. The Democratic Party would enjoy a sort of Era of Good feeling only to split due to unwieldiness. Winning over the moneyed interests and appealing to the most ignorant or at least those most contemptuous of learning is one way to go under. The wave of the future is with, at the least, people who respect formal education.

The GOP has adopted economic policies that can only expand a group that will never forgive it -- the working poor.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

When I say "what they were before," I don't mean just a few measly short years. I mean before 1964-65, which is when the party started to change. While the Tea Party per se is new, the phenomenon of which it is a part is decades old, if not more than a century. The new, disastrous Republican Party was very much in evidence in 2006-2008, and for many election cycles before.

Sorry, sometimes I forget that we have people as young as you are on this forum, or who think that history began when they were born.

EDIT: It actually goes back to the 1930s and begins with the Democrats, not the Republicans. Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, the Democrats were mostly a regional party dominant in the South and with limited outreach to the rest of the country. There were Democratic bastions among immigrants in the Northeast and among such labor unions as existed then (about like now, actually).

In the 1930s, the Democrats formed an odd coalition that included African-Americans, labor, progressives throughout the country, and the South. It was inherently unstable, but for a while it gave the party dominance of the federal government almost as strong as the Republicans enjoyed during the decades after the Civil War. (During this same time, the Republicans rather than the Democrats were the main proponents of civil rights.)

In the 1960s, the Democrats in control of Congress passed and President Johnson signed legislation putting an end to Jim Crow, which the Southern Democrats saw as a betrayal. The ironclad allegiance of the South to the Democrats was broken by this action. Late in the decade, the Republicans began strategically wooing Southern white voters, taking advantage of what the Democrats had done.

What they didn't see was that while they could indeed win the South, they could not do that and at the same time retain more traditional Republican territories such as the Northeast and the West Coast. Today, those regions of the country are strongly Democratic, while the South is strongly Republican -- an exact inversion of the way things were prior to the 1960s. As part of this, the Republicans were much more moderate in many ways prior to the '60s. They were civil rights advocates, included the Equal Rights Amendment as a plank of the party platform every election, and would never have advocated anything as weird as wanting to "drown the government in a bathtub." They were civilized and modern, not reactionary and crazy. Conservative, yes, but in the dictionary sense of that word, defenders of the status quo and of tradition, not advocates of radical reactionary change.

So this is a long-term process of transition for the party, and it cannot be understood by reference to three elections over six years.

Tellingly, the Presidential election of 2008 shows the near flip-flop of Presidential politics: in a near-landslide, Democrat Barack Obama won only one state (North Carolina) that Republican Dwight Eisenhower ever lost in either 1952 or 1956.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

When I say "what they were before," I don't mean just a few measly short years. I mean before 1964-65, which is when the party started to change. While the Tea Party per se is new, the phenomenon of which it is a part is decades old, if not more than a century. The new, disastrous Republican Party was very much in evidence in 2006-2008, and for many election cycles before.

Sorry, sometimes I forget that we have people as young as you are on this forum, or who think that history began when they were born.

EDIT: It actually goes back to the 1930s and begins with the Democrats, not the Republicans. Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, the Democrats were mostly a regional party dominant in the South and with limited outreach to the rest of the country. There were Democratic bastions among immigrants in the Northeast and among such labor unions as existed then (about like now, actually).

In the 1930s, the Democrats formed an odd coalition that included African-Americans, labor, progressives throughout the country, and the South. It was inherently unstable, but for a while it gave the party dominance of the federal government almost as strong as the Republicans enjoyed during the decades after the Civil War. (During this same time, the Republicans rather than the Democrats were the main proponents of civil rights.)

In the 1960s, the Democrats in control of Congress passed and President Johnson signed legislation putting an end to Jim Crow, which the Southern Democrats saw as a betrayal. The ironclad allegiance of the South to the Democrats was broken by this action. Late in the decade, the Republicans began strategically wooing Southern white voters, taking advantage of what the Democrats had done.

What they didn't see was that while they could indeed win the South, they could not do that and at the same time retain more traditional Republican territories such as the Northeast and the West Coast. Today, those regions of the country are strongly Democratic, while the South is strongly Republican -- an exact inversion of the way things were prior to the 1960s. As part of this, the Republicans were much more moderate in many ways prior to the '60s. They were civil rights advocates, included the Equal Rights Amendment as a plank of the party platform every election, and would never have advocated anything as weird as wanting to "drown the government in a bathtub." They were civilized and modern, not reactionary and crazy. Conservative, yes, but in the dictionary sense of that word, defenders of the status quo and of tradition, not advocates of radical reactionary change.

So this is a long-term process of transition for the party, and it cannot be understood by reference to three elections over six years.

Reading your posts is like listening to a tape running on an endless loop. Age can sometimes confer wisdom, but it seems more often with Boomers it just results in them living further and further in the past as time goes by.

In any case...the Republicans' biggest successes in the last 30+ years have been in 1980-1988, 1994, and 2010. In each case, it is because they ran on the Goldwater-Reagan-Contract with America-Tea Party issues. Their biggest failures (aside from Goldwater, who was a poor candidate in a very unfavorable year) have happened at the hands of Nixon and two Bushes. The latter are the modern representatives of the old Republican Party you're pining for. I would think most "liberals" would prefer the Goldwater/Reagan libertarian-leaning wing of the party to the "fascist" Nixon/Bush old guard. However, as a self-proclaimed socialist, being more honest in that regard than most "liberals", you have correctly recognized that fascism is much more closely related to your belief system than libertarianism, which is your arch-enemy.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Reading your posts is like listening to a tape running on an endless loop.

Reading yours is like listening to the verbal equivalent of cotton candy: all air and no substance. That's especially true when, as now, you have no good answer to what's being said.

In any case...the Republicans' biggest successes in the last 30+ years

Let's see, now . . . how long ago was 1965, when I said this process started? More or less than 30 years? Ah -- it is in fact 46 years.

So "the Republicans' biggest successes in the last 30 years" really don't have anything to do with what I was talking about, do they?

Of course, given that the party is pursuing a particular constituency, they're going to do better when they appeal to that constituency than when they don't but that's not the question. The question is whether they would do better by NOT appealing to that constituency, and instead adopting positions that have more appeal for the rest of the country. The question is whether the move that was made 46 years ago was a mistake. And you cannot answer that by reference to anything that's happened in the last 30 years.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Reading your posts is like listening to a tape running on an endless loop. Age can sometimes confer wisdom, but it seems more often with Boomers it just results in them living further and further in the past as time goes by.

In any case...the Republicans' biggest successes in the last 30+ years have been in 1980-1988, 1994, and 2010. In each case, it is because they ran on the Goldwater-Reagan-Contract with America-Tea Party issues. Their biggest failures (aside from Goldwater, who was a poor candidate in a very unfavorable year) have happened at the hands of Nixon and two Bushes. The latter are the modern representatives of the old Republican Party you're pining for. I would think most "liberals" would prefer the Goldwater/Reagan libertarian-leaning wing of the party to the "fascist" Nixon/Bush old guard. However, as a self-proclaimed socialist, being more honest in that regard than most "liberals", you have correctly recognized that fascism is much more closely related to your belief system than libertarianism, which is your arch-enemy.

Hmm. IIRC, in 1972, Nixon won all states except MA and DC. Doesn't seem like an electoral failure to me.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Hmm. IIRC, in 1972, Nixon won all states except MA and DC. Doesn't seem like an electoral failure to me.

Yep. And if you go beyond the Presidency, there's 1952:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...lections,_1952

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...lections,_1952

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...election,_1952

which saw the Republicans take control of both houses of Congress, and also win the White House for the first time since 1928. That makes it a bigger win than either 1972 or 1984 (insofar as the Democrats won both Congressional elections those years). Not only that, but because this was the old GOP, the genuine conservatives as opposed to radical right-wing crazies, headed by Eisenhower, they not only won the election but were actually able to govern and get things done. As opposed to, say, now, when the biggest accomplishment Republicans have out of controlling state houses and the House of Representatives is to anger the voters.

Yes, 1952 was a high point for the GOP. It's been pretty much downhilll ever since.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

In any case...the Republicans' biggest successes in the last 30+ years have been in 1980-1988, 1994, and 2010. In each case, it is because they ran on the Goldwater-Reagan-Contract with America-Tea Party issues. Their biggest failures (aside from Goldwater, who was a poor candidate in a very unfavorable year) have happened at the hands of Nixon and two Bushes. The latter are the modern representatives of the old Republican Party you're pining for. I would think most "liberals" would prefer the Goldwater/Reagan libertarian-leaning wing of the party to the "fascist" Nixon/Bush old guard. However, as a self-proclaimed socialist, being more honest in that regard than most "liberals", you have correctly recognized that fascism is much more closely related to your belief system than libertarianism, which is your arch-enemy.

No, 2010 is a Pyrrhic victory for the GOP as shown in mass protests in several Midwestern states against the policies of new Republican governors who have chosen to make the "tough" decisions to transform slightly-blue states into pure plutocracies to be exploited by out-of-state interests who drain the assets of those states. Once elected, the GOP has shown nothing more than the crony capitalism of the Dubya era... on steroids.

"Tough" decisions -- decisions made without kindness, charity, or conscience. Most people cavil at the prospect at doing such. Who could do that with comparative ease?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociopath
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_leader
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociopaths_in_society
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Mafia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Dunlap
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Kozlowski
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Duke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gotti

All in all I think that we will do best when we start acting with self-restraint, conscience, charity, and principle.

Wherever we are on the Left, we are failing to help Obama get elected in 2012 because we would much rather make excuses for his Right leanings, than keep him accountable. I have been treated here, in some respects, as a traitor, because I attempt to expose how Obama and some other Democrats are abusing their base. It appears that some of us would rather slam the Republicans than face that huge Obama elephant in the room. There has been a glaring double standard in regards to what Bush did and Obama. I guess it makes us feel better to point fingers at the opposition rather than to admit that Obama has failed us in many ways. We need to stop with the excuses and start with a major holding his feet to the fire if he is to have a chance in 2012.

Any time we have tried to raise our voices in opposition, we get chastised by the White House. Even here, those of us who tried to point out that the heathcare reform was a give away to the insurance industry, we were called perfectionists.

Obama hasn't just neglected his base, he has abused it. The president's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, dismissed liberals who objected to Obama's healthcare bill as "fucking retarded"; the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, ridiculed the "professional left" and said liberal critics of the president "ought to be drug-tested". Obama himself has described Democrats opposed to his compromises on tax cuts as "sanctimonious".

Now we have many calling for Obama to be primaried. Had we been doing our job all along, this may not have come to this point. There are now thousands of people begging Bernie Sanders to run for president. I know, I know, he is a Socialist. But he would shine a bright light on the issues that benefit the citizen and not the corporattions.

"An Associated Press poll last October found an astonishing 47% of Democratic voters believed that Obama should be challenged from within the party for the 2012 nomination. Potential candidates include Dennis Kucinich, Ohio's leftwing Congressman; Howard Dean, the populist ex-governor of Vermont; and Rachel Maddow, the cable news presenter. None of them would win. But that wouldn't be the point. It would be about holding Obama's feet to the fire."

The following is a reality of the growing political climate.

Forget Sarah Palin and Donald Trump: Obama needs a challenge from the left

If the president had a Democratic opponent in the primaries it might stop him repeatedly triangulating to the right

Mehdi Hasan
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 May 2011 20.10 BST

Cast your minds back to November. Barack Obama had received his "shellacking" in the midterm elections, as the Republicans regained a majority in the House of Representatives and seized control of 29 of the 50 state governorships. It was the worst midterm defeat for the Democrats since 1938. Just a week earlier the president's approval ratings had fallen to a record low of 37%.

Fast forward six months, and the president is enjoying the "Bin Laden bounce". His approval ratings stand at 52%, according to Gallup – up six points on April. Historians may look back on 1 May 2011, and the killing of Osama, as the day Obama secured his re-election.

But even before the al-Qaida leader was dumped in the ocean, Obama had reason to be optimistic. Just 18 months away from the next election he has no obvious or credible Republican opponent. So far, the listless lineup of potential presidential candidates resembles the characters from the bar scene in Star Wars – a motley collection of far-right loons, freaks and conspiracy theorists.

There's the former senator, Rick Santorum, who once compared homosexuality to bestiality and paedophilia; former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has said America must stand with "our North Korean allies"; Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who believes carbon dioxide is "not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas"; former governor Mitt Romney, who has said he won't appoint Muslim-Americans to his cabinet; Tea Party Congressman Ron Paul, who wants to scrap income tax and abolish the education department; and former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who published a book last year titled To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine. Oh, and the "birther" billionaire Donald Trump.

The heart sinks. Lamenting the presidency of George W Bush, the late JK Galbraith once remarked: "I never thought I would yearn for Ronald Reagan." The current Republican presidential field makes one yearn for Dubya.

The tragedy is that Obama needs to be held to account – but from a leftwing, not rightwing, direction. He has embraced and affirmed a centre-right world view utterly at odds with his 2008 presidential campaign, with its promises of "change", "reform" and a decisive break from the Bush-Cheney era.


Consider his record: he failed to close the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay; approved the use of military tribunals for detainees; "surged" 40,000 troops into Afghanistan; doubled the size of the detention facility at Bagram airbase; doubled the number of drone strikes inside Pakistan; gave CIA torturers immunity from prosecution; continued extraordinary rendition; said he didn't "begrudge" bankers paying themselves multimillion-dollar bonuses' ruled out a government-run "public option" on healthcare; froze pay for public sector workers; signed off on tax cuts for billionaires; vetoed a UN resolution condemning illegal Israeli settlement-building; and joined China in sabotaging the climate summit in Copenhagen.



Liberals have given Obama a pass. Some avert their gaze; others proffer excuses. He needs more time, they say. But he has had 29 months in office. He is a good man in a bad world, they say, before blaming the Republicans for all America's ills. But it wasn't a Republican Congress that forced him, for instance, to double the size of the Bagram facility – where human rights groups have documented torture and deaths – and deny prisoners the right to challenge their detention. He did that on his own. Bagram is Obama's Guantánamo.

The double standards are glaring. Imagine, for a moment, the outcry from Democrats if Dubya had held the 23-year-old US soldier, Bradley Manning – the alleged WikiLeaks source – in conditions described as "degrading and inhumane" by more than 250 eminent legal scholars. Shamefully, however, Obama publicly defended Manning's detention, including his solitary confinement, as "appropriate".



The irony is that Obama, a self-styled conciliator and healer, has spent much of his presidency appeasing Republican foes on Capital Hill and capitulating to corporations and Wall Street banks. He has eschewed populism, allowing the Tea Party to surf public anger over bank bailouts and bonuses, job losses and home repossessions.

But what else should one expect from a White House stuffed with corporate-friendly, Clinton-era figures? The president's chief of staff, William Daley, appointed in January, is a former banker, and opposed Obama's healthcare reform. His treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, George Osborne's new best friend, was one of the architects of bank deregulation. Meanwhile, progressive economic voices like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman are studiously ignored.



Obama hasn't just neglected his base, he has abused it. The president's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, dismissed liberals who objected to Obama's healthcare bill as "fucking retarded"; the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, ridiculed the "professional left" and said liberal critics of the president "ought to be drug-tested". Obama himself has described Democrats opposed to his compromises on tax cuts as "sanctimonious".


I have a proposal. Why not give him an electoral target for this animosity? Why not run a left candidate against Obama in the Democratic primaries next February? A Democratic opponent would act as a countervailing force to whichever Tea Party-backed Republican he ends up facing in the presidential election. It might force Obama to triangulate to the left as well as the right, and encourage the Democrats to have a long-overdue discussion about their values, policies and direction.

It is a risky strategy, given that none of the last three presidents to face primaries while seeking re-election – Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush – survived to serve a second term. Would a primary challenge from the left wreck Obama's chances of re-election? I suspect not, given the Bin Laden bounce and the weakness of his Republican opponents. The question that progressives should ask is whether they believe Obama should only have to answer to the likes of Donald Trump and Sarah Palin.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...es-palin-trump

If I hear the term "hold his (or her) feet to the fire" one more time--from anyone anywhere--I just may lose it.

Yes, there are many areas in which Obama is disappointing. Arne Duncan is one of them. But since I live in IL I pretty much knew what I was getting.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Hmm. IIRC, in 1972, Nixon won all states except MA and DC. Doesn't seem like an electoral failure to me.

True, but considering the ultimate consequence of that election, it's kind of hard to count it...

You know? I actually find references to which party won what states any time between 1945 and 2001 (at the earliest) to be less relevant than the political turnovers of the preceding 4Ts, and the alignment with the make-or-break issues of that 4T. Plus, to some extent, the immediate post-4T-realignment. Discussions of anything in between are like these economic charts the pundits publish that wail "But, ever since 1990!..." Or 1980 or 1970. Or even 1960 or 1950. Or why I keep a price chart in my Finances folder that runs back to *1890.* No; that is not a typo. The start of the Missionary Awakening, or close to it.

Originally Posted by annla899

If I hear the term "hold his (or her) feet to the fire" one more time--from anyone anywhere--I just may lose it.

Why does that phrase upset you so much, since it is merely an expression of keeping him accountable.

Deb:

For years now, I have been hearing proposals from the left that are founded on sound criticism of Obama, but are tactically foolish. It was foolish to try to "send a message" last year by not voting for the Democrats. We've seen the result. It would be equally foolish to run a primary challenge, and in fact I doubt it could be done in any serious way. Running for president is expensive, and professional politicians are seldom prone to do it unless either they see a chance to win or they wish to accomplish something else by losing. Unless Obama seems vulnerable, as Carter did in 1980 or Bush in 1992, you're not going to get a Kennedy or a Reagan running a serious challenge to him.

We have some history to guide us in terms of tactics. What pushed Roosevelt to the left in his first term? Not a threat of a primary challenge, but movements on the left out there in the country. Father Coughlin's (initially) socialist-leaning radio commentary (he turned into a fascist later) with its enormous audience. The increasing popularity of the Socialist Party. The Townsend Plan, showing a strong demand for government old-age pensions that eventually pushed him to enact Social Security. Huey Long's radical proposals in Louisiana, which he ran like a dictator, and the danger that Long might run for president on a third-party ticket. Upton Sinclair's bid for governor of California and his equally-radical proposal to seize idle factories to produce goods for giveaway instead of sale.

There's enough support for progressive ideas in the country to fuel this kind of opposition, but we're only starting to see it manifest now. In fact, it could be that in the long run, the "don't vote" people were right and I was wrong: by putting Republicans in power in the states and in the House, the stay-homes might have given the left exactly the spark that ignites the tinder. (I doubt that was on their minds, so I still think they were wrong -- but maybe it was a fortunate mistake.)

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

True, but considering the ultimate consequence of that election [1972], it's kind of hard to count it...

That's the most ironic thing about Watergate. The shenanigans were meant to help to insure an election that Nixon had in the bag anyway. Considering the amazing things he accomplished in his presidency, if he hadn't been a crook, he's probably be remembered as one of our greatest presidents, certainly the greatest of the Boom Awakening era.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

There's enough support for progressive ideas in the country to fuel this kind of opposition, but we're only starting to see it manifest now. In fact, it could be that in the long run, the "don't vote" people were right and I was wrong: by putting Republicans in power in the states and in the House, the stay-homes might have given the left exactly the spark that ignites the tinder. (I doubt that was on their minds, so I still think they were wrong -- but maybe it was a fortunate mistake.)

In the meantime, though, they gave us Scott Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers and the abiding headaches. I would rather that progressives come out to the polls even if they're not 100% satisfied with their choices.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Deb:

For years now, I have been hearing proposals from the left that are founded on sound criticism of Obama, but are tactically foolish. It was foolish to try to "send a message" last year by not voting for the Democrats. We've seen the result. It would be equally foolish to run a primary challenge, and in fact I doubt it could be done in any serious way. Running for president is expensive, and professional politicians are seldom prone to do it unless either they see a chance to win or they wish to accomplish something else by losing. Unless Obama seems vulnerable, as Carter did in 1980 or Bush in 1992, you're not going to get a Kennedy or a Reagan running a serious challenge to him.

I was not one of those "do not vote" folks. My main message was for us to stop being apologists and start holding Obama accountable. What I experienced with so many of us progressives was this denial about his betraying the very platform that got him elected. As I have said many times in these forums, we suffer from abused voter syndrome. Instead of us challenging Obama, we at times, enabled his move to the Right by not holding his feet to the fire.

Originally Posted by Deb C

I have been treated here, in some respects, as a traitor, because I attempt to expose how Obama and some other Democrats are abusing their base.

Can you provide some examples? You have posted probably more words on this forum in the last 3 months than anyone else. As far as I remember, you have been accorded the same treatment as everyone else on the forum: supported when there is agreement and disputed when there is disagreement.

I don't understand why you equate disagreement with accusations of being a traitor.

Are you confusing us with some other forum?

James50