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Ever since Democrats started saying "right now we need to win, and then later we will get to all of that stuff about principles and ideals" we have been losing elections. The notion that winning and principles are in opposition to one another is false. We can have both, or we will have neither. Standing on principle is what brings wins - the only thing that reliably will. When the party has fought hardest and stood most firmly on principle, ot has also had its greatest electoral success. I think there are people in the party who actually want the party to be cautious and timid and to move to the right. They portray principle as being a threat to winning as a dishonest way to achieve that. I think that too many people are more concerned about keeping the party in the center than they are about winning. They would rather lose than have the party move to the left or take up a strong oppositional stand against the right wingers. They say "don't be too aggressive, don't go too far to the left or you will lose."
This is all so inside out and backward that it is hard to know where to start.
"We can't fight for what is right because then we would be wrong."
"We can't advocate for what we want to see, because then we will not get it."
If you give up principle for the sake of winning, you will have won nothing even if you do win, and I think the continual cautious, centrist stance and the abrogation of principle and duty and honor is the reason that we lose.
I have been hearing the "it is not the right time" argument for over 30 years. Apparently, it is never the right time to fight back against the right wing, because there is always some nice little plan of ours that will be interfered with or jeopardized if we actually fight the right wing. Just what is the precious agenda, the plan, that always takes precedence over fighting back? Whom does it serve? How has it worked?
Then we have this other idea, that first we elect politicians and THEN we pressure them and let them know what we want, THEN they will move to the left. Of course, the exact opposite keeps happening. If we keep giving them unqualified support and rewarding them for taking cautious centrist positions, what incentive do they have to ever change?
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