A commenter notes:
30-40 years lowered taxes for corporations and the wealthy and a rate of unionization that’s been slashed to 1/3 of its size as a percentage of the economy. CEO pay that continues to skyrocket while average workers continue to see their gains fall behind rising costs of living. An infrastructure that continues to crumble while R&D budgets continued to be shifted to military projects. If the far left is really that much in evidence within the Democratic Party they are the single least effective force known to man.
It is an article of faith on America’s Right that the Far Left, the Hard Left, the Radical Left, the Communists, the Socialists and the Maoists, are in control of the Democratic Party and have been for many years. Of course that’s completely insane, but incredibly enough, these people actually believe such things.
In other words, American rightwingers are utterly out of their minds. They are living in an alternate universe where everything is the opposite of the way it really is.
Now I would not mind having a conservative faction in the US. I don’t like Canadian conservatives very much, but I have met a few of them, and I actually sort of liked them as people. They are to the Left of the US Democratic Party in a lot of ways. I asked one of them about US conservatives, and he shook his head. He said he was a conservative too, but that US conservatives were insane. I knew a British man, a proud conservative, who always voted Tory. He said the same thing. He stated that over in the UK, the conservatives like him were basically reasonable people, but that US conservatives were bat shit nuts out of their freaking minds.
I could live with conservatives like that.
There will always be conservatives. It would be great if we could, but you can’t rid of conservatism. There will always be conservatism in any society. Not because conservatism is a good idea – generally, it’s a terrible idea – but because conservatism is simply a natural trait in human beings. In order to get rid of conservatism, you would have to get humans to stop being human.
The truth is that there is a left wing of the Democratic Party. There is also a rightwing and a center. The rightwingers have been in control of the party for a very long time now. They hate the leftwing of the party and hold us in utter contempt. We feel pretty much the same way about them.
Left-wingers and even liberals have been fleeing the Democratic Party for at least 20-25 years now, ever since 1990. And even before then, Lefties didn’t support the Democrats. They often either voted 3rd party or they didn’t even vote at all. I remember my Mom once introduced me to a friend of hers and her husband. Later my Mom said incredulously, “They’re socialists. They’re so leftwing they don’t even vote for Democrats! They vote ‘socialist’ instead.”
If you go to real leftwing websites like Counterpunch and The Nation, they have been screaming about Democrats for over 20 years now. They attack Democrats almost as much as they attack Republicans if not more. The basic attitude on the Left is that the Democrats are nothing but a bunch of Republicans anymore (DINOS), there is no Democratic Party – instead there’s a Republican Party with two wings, there’s no difference between the parties, etc. That last phrase is not exactly true, but I think there are two parties in the US now:
- A Left wing of the Republican Party (Democrats)
- A Rightwing of the Republican Party (Republicans)
The people who stay in the party anymore are party stalwarts for whom the Democrats can do no wrong. You can never say one bad thing about the Democrats. Everything the Democrats do is right. No matter how many rightwing outrages the Democrats commit, either they weren’t rightwing, or they weren’t outrages, or it’s really not so bad, or it never happened, or we are leftwing fanatics for bringing it up.
Basically, it’s “the Democrats are always right,” and to speak ill of the Democrats is treason. These people would call themselves liberals, but really anymore they are just mushy Centrists. As the Democrats continue to get pulled further and further right by the Republicans, these “liberals” scurry after them to the Right and reflexively support every rightwing outrage that the Democrats do. So a lot of Democratic Party “liberals” aren’t even liberal anymore.
The other argument is “they had to do it.” Any rightwing outrage the Democrats do is because “they had to.” Why did they have to? Because if they didn’t, they would lose the next election. So we have to put up with untold numbers of rightwing outrages, each one crazier than the last, because otherwise the Republicans (who admittedly are far worse) will get in. Those of us are on the Left are called traitors and told to suck it up.
All of the real liberals in the party are told that we are “leftwing extremists” and part of the “loony left.” It’s really painful being a liberal Democrat anymore. The party hates you, and most of your fellow Democrats hate you as “traitor” and a “leftwing nut.”
A lot of masochists like me stick around and suck it up, but there is a continuing exodus of pain-phobic liberals and leftwingers from the party. Every time you turn around, there are more leaving and more calls for a third party that would be truly Left or liberal. So there’s a civil war going on in the party between the corporatist Obama suit and tie millionaire types with the private jets and the regular old liberals, and both sides despise each other.
The war has been going on for 20 years now and shows no sign of ending.
On the other hand, there are always crazies splitting off to the right, saying that the Democrats have become “leftwing extremists.” Most of them say that the Republicans are “rightwing extremists,” and they see themselves as “the reasonable center.” Those of us in the party Left think all of these Right defectors are obviously insane since of course they are experiencing hallucinations and delusions about the party. Hallucinations and delusions are the symptoms of psychosis after all.
These folks claim that they are “the rational ones.” While they were in the party, they were continually trying to pull the party to the Right because if we didn’t keep moving Right, we would lose elections.
The latest mass defection was something insane called “The Third Way.” These are corporate suit and tie folks with tons of money who live lives of luxury on high incomes. Most of them are connected with the corporate world. They split off to form a “Third Way” movement that did not succumb to the “extremes of the Left” (the Democrats) and the “extremes of the Right” (the Republicans). Right now, these crazies are trying to pull the party even further to the Right and threatening to run candidates against Democrats. Of course we were perfectly happy to see their backsides (the Republicans can have them), but the whole phenomenon is disturbing.
As you can see, those of us on the Left think that all these people yelling that Obama is a Leftist, a Communist, a socialist, a Maoist, etc. are obviously out of their minds. There isn’t one single socialist on the face of the planet who thinks that Obama is a socialist, and most socialists despise him as a rightwinger.
Why does every conservative in America think Obama is a Communist? The only possible answer is that apparently they must be mentally ill. Or perhaps they are on another planet. Or in another universe, maybe an alternate one like Alice’s Wonderland.
So not only are we liberal/Left types not in control of the party, but most of us have already left the party, often a while back, are leaving now or will be leaving soon. Those of us still in the party are masochists with spurned lover syndrome. Even the liberals are not in control of the party anymore (forget the Leftists), and nowadays most Democrats who call themselves “liberals” aren’t even very liberal. They’re about as liberal as Barack Obama was this month (since they reflexively adopt every position he takes), and that’s not very liberal!
