What is the future direction of the Democratic Party?
Should we be trying to lure back David Cobb, Houston Green Party candidate for President? Of course, the Green Party has even more internal divisions than Democrats. I keep urging my Green friends that the local Democratic Party is ripe for takeover. Convert your local Green meetings to Democratic Green meetings and out organize the disorganized. I also urge this of my Libertarian friends but incredibly they seem even less organized than Greens and Democrats.
Should the online net activists be backing DINOs or progressives? Natalie Davis argues for supporting the revolutionaries at Blogcritics.org: DINOs and Revolutionaries. That is building on Thomas Nephew's criticism of the amateur analysis from the net before the Ciro Rodriguez / Cuellar debacle. The net aggressively took on DINO Cuellar before realizing many votes had already been cast and Texas has open primaries. The analysis from sites like MyDD before election day also failed to realize this was a geographical fight - Laredo versus San Antonio.
Over at Political Cortex there is an argument that Democrats need to get out of their DINO comfort zone and support Feingold for President. Personally I think any Democratic candidate must have the ability to make the South and border states more competitive. I don't think Democrats can win any deep South states but some of the border states are possible. Feingold and Kucinich are too far from the center to win. Unfortunately I am not sure what Republican is too far in the other direction where he couldn't win.
Some progressives who came back to the Democrats in an attempt to stop Bush's reelection are saying Bye-Bye Dean.This after seeing no change in the ineffectual Democratic Congressional leadership as exemplified by the lack of a fight over Bush's Supreme Court justices.
Right now the state of the national Democratic Party has not changed since last October when Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote:
What the Democrats have to do is get off their schadenfreude cloud and start the hard work of crafting a message of hope that they can deliver convincingly to the electorate - not just in the Congressional elections next year, but in local elections all over the country and the presidential election of 2008. That is not happening at the moment. While Americans are turning increasingly against the war in Iraq, for example, the support for the war among major Democratic leaders seems nearly as staunch and as mindless as among Republicans. On that and other issues, Democrats are still agonizing over whether to say what they truly believe or try to present themselves as a somewhat lighter version of the GOP I wonder what Harry Truman would think about today's Democratic Party?I believe the Democratic Party needs to stand for competence and honesty in government, health care for all, civil rights for all, and economic progress and opportunity for all Americans. Is that revolutionary or ultra-liberal? Can DINOs, Greens, Libertarians, Progressives, and Moderates unite behind that?
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