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In reply to the discussion: The "extreme left" didn't give us Trump. The path to hell was paved by [View all]haele
(12,566 posts)Look, you're still playing catch up if you want the Democrats to become more "pure" once they're on the national level. By the time they've been elected as a House member, or a Senator, or heck, even a Governor, they're already locked into the politics that got them there - which means money and incrementalism.
Politics is the art of negotiation, not a football game. People forget that. It's a mix of balancing local needs and philosophies to create a greater federal good for everyone.
Republicans have forgotten that in their mad tactic of, as a party, marching lockstep into the embrace of Fascism so they can punish Democrats for the New Deal and Nixon.
To defeat the current Teapublicans, we need to 1) Work hard to nurture and elect more local candidates to unseat the Teaparty groundswell that took over back in 2010, and 2) Work hard to ensure these local candidates understand civics and the way governing works, rather than playing a game for money.
Which means we have to find a common ground between the people who are dedicated to specific projects and causes, and people who have to work with the world as it is, rather than the way they want it to be.
And we move forward together.
But if we keep saying to ourselves "Well, Hillary" or "Well, Bernie"... If we keep fighting the last election and talking about the surface what went wrong instead of what the reality is, where we need to be, where we should be, and where we can stand to start out from, we will keep losing.
We listen to our enemies and our detractors, fine. But we don't let them define us; we look for the weaknesses in their screeds for pick our arguments - if we choose to engage them rather than tell them "go on with your bad self and cry out about the world in your Snowglobe".
Because sure as everyone shits, I can tell you this - the Republicans and the Greens are both more comfortable in a world that is small and manageable for them, not a world that encompasses everyone, in which we have to deal fairly with EVERYONE.
If we as democrats ignore 70% of the electorate for a precious 15% and an equally concerning 15%, we will lose.
We do have to start out from the median, and show that we can chew gum and walk at the same time, that we can GOVERN instead of rule, that we can work with everyone for the whole instead of breaking down the country into disparate causes.
And lucky for us, polling and surveys show us that the middle is actually center-left.
I can start from there. Can you?
Yes, I'm a snowflake - part of nature and the rest of the Universe. Not some little bit of glitter protected with my buddies in a snowglobe.
Haele