The idea that there is one Democratic Party, and that it is to blame (or, for that matter, to praise) for anything, is wrong-headed. There is no such organization
There is a Democratic party, of course. But it’s made up of individuals.
And, while there are some bad congressmen in the Democratic party, all the good congressmen are in that party. Who?
Senators like Barbara Boxer, Richard Durbin, and Ted Kennedy.
Can you imagine one of them in the Republican party?
Representatives like Diane Watson, Barbara Lee, George Miller and Lynn Wolsey from CA; Raul Grijalva from AZ; Ed Markey and John Olver from MA; or my own rep., Jerrold Nadler.
Can you imagine any of them in the Democratic party?
Even some Democrats in contested district are doing the right thing on a lot of issues. Some of them are listed here
Candidates like Sam Bennett, running in PA-15; her website says
The Bush Administration seems to have things exactly backwards. Where government should be robust – protecting and caring for its citizens – they have made it weak. Where government should tread lightly, they have made it overbearing
got any Republicans who say that?
And, at the Presidential level, can you really say that there are no differences between, oh, just for instance, John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani? Have you read the articles each wrote in Foreign Affairs? Giuliani wants to terrorize the world by building an ever-larger military, an ever-larger spying apparatus, increasing the use of torture, and acting, in general, like the rogue nation we have become under Bush. Edwards has a rather different vision – where we use our great wealth and power to build, rather than destroy; to gain the trust and respect of the world, as we once had it (and not so long ago).
Is the Democratic party perfect? Let’s not be silly.
Is it the same as the Republicans? Let’s not be silly.
OK. Edwards and Clinton both voted for the Iraq war. Does that make them the same as Republicans? That’s a fallacious argument. By that reasoning, since I have two legs, and you have two legs, we must be the same.
And even the vastly imperfect individual Democrats are universally better than the Republicans they replace, or who might replace them. Is Bob Casey my ideal Senator? No, he is not. Is he better than Santorum? Damn straight. Do I like everything Jim Webb says? I do not. Do I like more of what he says than what George Allen says? You bet.
When you find a Republican senator who declines to shake the president’s hand, let me know.
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that is the question. My posts automatically go FP, and I forget that. So, if someone wants to move this to the side, that’s fine with me. I’m not sure what ought to go where, anyway.
But, although I don’t know where my diary should go, I know a Democrat should go to the White House
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but I just got a call from my wife that we are all going out to dinner, soon. I thought we were eating here.
I’ll be back
stream of diaries and essays, both here and at DK, vilifying the motives and vision of the candidates we must choose from, unless others enter the contest if the primaries still do not give the American people one person they can settle on. WE must elect a Democrat president, I don’t mind much one way or another which one it is.
I am despondent because of the mind numbingly alternative offered by the candidates for the other party plus the daily frustration of elected Republican leaders who still will not give peace a chance, or admit that unless we all sacrifice and made very tough decisions we are condemoing our grandchildren to a world infinitely worse than we inherited from our grandparents.
Perfectiopn in politics can not exist because it is impossible to please all the people all the time. But if we don’t give the democrats, warts and all, a chance to get it right, we condemn our nation to perpetual conflict, ddomestically and globally. I thank the two posters above for reminding us of that reality.
… I don’t think the bashing of the party is saying that each and every Democrat is awful. To me, at least, it’s irrelevant at this time that there are good individual Dems or that they are better than the Repubs generally.
The decisions of the Dem leadership at this time are horrible and deserve all the bashing we can give. They are making mistake after mistake and we will all suffer for that.
I don’t think that can be disputed any longer.
Is there a difference between the Democrats and Republicans? Yes. But the differences are so marginal that I don’t see anyone (other than Kucinich) that I could put my heart into supporting. At this point I’ll vote democratic, but I won’t be looking to the winner (whichever party they are from) to fix what’s broken.