Peter Beinart, in the Daily Beast, writes about the recent change in Democratic politics since Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate Seat. The article, a good one, is found here. I do think Beinart overuses the phrase "superjumbo" but its otherwise a good article.
Still, I think it misses the mark somewhat. Democrats held power for almost sixty years by being effective coalition builders. Even to this day, the Democratic Party is a jumble of union workers, African Americans, Latinos, and liberals. The problem with this coalition, is that there is no unified political ideals. As a result, Democrats end up looking weak and beholden to the special interests within their own party.
Now, its true that by 1979-1980, people were fed up with liberal politics and wanted to open things up a bit, economically at least. And the DLC certainly played up to that during the 1990's. But what this article doesn't mention, and really should, is that in the interim, the Republican Party changed as well. The grassroots conservatives began taking over the leadership positions and the GOP moved to the right - too far to the right, in my humble opinion.
What drove me nuts was the failure of the DLC and the Democratic Party Establishment during the 2000's to see what was unfolding. Rather than chase the GOP to the right, the Dems should've stayed where they are, if not move a little bit to the left. Instead of coalition building, state a set of principles and stand by them. This is what guys like Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh don't understand.
With HCR finally
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