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Good to see you. I wish the feuders hadn't run all the sane people off.
Yes, as you and others on this thread are saying, there is no good choice, and the crumbs that are falling from the table - such as Obama's weak and temporizing statements about possibly holding administration officials accountable for something - make for thin fare to say the least. I am not holding my breath, but I am not depressed either, nor surprised or disappointed.
There is a split in the party, and it is not going to go away, and until it is resolved we will continue to get these miserable results. These are exciting and volatile times and I am very encouraged and inspired by what I see. What is happening was inevitable and while it is a little unpleasant it is a good thing in the long run.
What I see is this - the party has come to be dominated by those who describe themselves as "economically conservative, socially liberal." This is libertarianism with a thin veneer of do-gooder causes for cover, and has come to be what people see and think of as "liberalism" and as the only possible left wing political expression. The faction that controls the party and modern liberalism - about 10% of the population at most - is epitomized by the Dean campaign, DFA and most significantly, the same faction is also responsible for creating the Obama phenomenon, which is more of a marketing campaign than it is a political campaign. They are selling and marketing modern liberalism, the cultural movement that arose from the ashes when the political left collapsed in the late 60's. The public votes Republican in reaction to that - a rejection of the modern liberal cultural movement, not a rejection of the political left nor of the traditional principles and ideals of the Democratic party. The people support the traditional principles and ideals of the Democratic party, but they reject PETA, "organic," bike riding, "socially responsible investing," greening of corporations, veganism, and rule by the cultural elite of upscale educated academic people who refuse to confront or do battle with the powerful and entrenched corporate oligarchy on behalf of the working people.
Edwards was the first candidate in a while to talk about power and economics, and politics has always been about that, not about lifestyle choices, individual stances, belief systems, or personal choices of any kind. The faction that controls the Democratic party and modern liberalism is not spineless, they do not confront the corporate powers because they have no desire to, no intention to do that. The battle, in their eyes, is not between the working class and the ruling class, it is between two aristocratic groups jockeying for power over us. They are the academic, upscale, intelligent, educated, successful people with the moral high ground and want to replace the Republican elite with themselves.
This so obvious if we step back and look at things objectively. They run professorial types for office - we had professor Gore, then professor Kerry, and now professor Obama. They talk about who "deserves" the office, as though elections were a matter of nominating an instructor for tenure or appointing a CEO for "American Liberalism Incorporated." They judge a candidate on the culture war issues, on style over substance, and then complain when the public rejects their candidates for superficial reasons - style. Gore, Kerry, and Obama are idols, celebrities, heroes of this narrow demographic of educated successful suburban folks with liberal lifestyles and sentiments, and it has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with being able to relate and identify with those candidates on an emotional levels.
To support Obama requires two things - first, one must "get" it. That means one must relate on an emotional level to unspoken things, to spiritual things. Secondly, one must hold the notion that "winning" is a matter of placing intelligent "like-minded" people into office,
Imagine the idiocy of trying to build political power based on the intelligent few. By definition, it will always be a minority movement, and I am not even talking about the artificial and unsupportable definition they use for who is and who is not intelligent - more to do with style and fashion and rhetoric than anything else. A day does not go by without people here betraying this prejudice and bigotry, when they call the people stupid, ignorant, morons, knuckle draggers, mouth breathers and on and on. This reinforces the elitist feelings for people, which is the whole purpose of modern liberalism, and is a convenient escape from any responsibility or accountability. When we lose, liberals can say "well what do you expect? The people are too stupid to reach." They would rather be "right" - the consolation prize in politics - than win, and what they want to be right about is this - "we are the smarter and morally superior people."
This is unraveling and becoming more clear every day, and that is the most powerful and encouraging thing I have seen in politics in 35 years. The logjam, the trap we have been in, the frustrations and confusion are coming to an end. It is a very good thing.
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