The Democratic Party platform committee has voted down planks against fracking, against rejecting TPP, against condemning Israel for their occupation of Palestine, and even more progressive positions.
Moderate party does not adopt liberal platform. Film at eleven.
Condemnation of Israel is not a “progressive” position. It is (I’m very sorry to say) a left-wing position these days, but it has zero “progressive” functionality.
I’m nauseated at the way the fucking right-wing has monopolized support for Israel. That used to be a left-wing stance, but has been pirated by the bozo religious asswipes.
At least a few liberals still support Israel.
Also, I’m a liberal/progressive, and support the Trans Pacific Partnership. Trade is good for everyone.
The six people who will actually read the platform are going to be dreadfully disappointed. :(:(
The Democratic Party of today represents all the liberal values and progressive ideas held by the Republican Party of 1990. From the Affordable Care act, which was the Republican alternative to Hillarycare repackaged, to their stances on welfare, tax rates, military deployment. There’s hardly a progressive stance they actually take, and they’re typically just as much in the pocket of big business as the Republicans.
I really have to hold my nose voting for these people. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, HRC, aren’t so much leaders as they are centrists for the status quo.
It’s why I wish there was a Republican Party left that could be voted for. The Democratic party really needs to be cleaned up, but the only way to do that is to vote out the incumbents, and I’m never doing that so long as the Republicans put forward Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Donald Trump as candidates. It’s a neat little rigged system they have there. They get to stay in power because the opposition party is so loathsome and bereft of sanity. The Democratic/Republican duopoly talks all the right trash about one another, but on all the issues that really matter, on the issues that would fix our broken system, they find bipartisanship.
You read the actual bills that get passed by Congress, and unless it’s something so patently obvious and unpolitical that not passing it would get them all crucified, and those things are pretty rare, what remains is a bunch of bills designed to keep them in power. Slanting the legal rules toward the wealthy classes, changing the voting rules, drawing the districts, making it easier for 1% of the population to fund their campaigns, easier to ignore the will of the people.
Once in a great while they propose something truly liberal, like trying to pass gun control measures. Funny how they didn’t bother to do this when they had a Democratic president and supermajorities in Congress. That’s because they want to put on a show, like they’re really for something, but if they were, they’d have gotten it passed. They’d have reformed Healthcare in a way that wasn’t written by conservative think tanks.
The best thing you can say about them is that they are less bad, but that’s terrible for our Republic.
What are you talking about? Voting rules and drawing the districts are done by the States, not Congress.
Thank you for fighting my ignorance on this one issue. The overall point stands.
No it doesn’t. Two of your four points were obviously wrong. Do you have a cite for the other two?
Progressives have to learn to accept the reality that moderates exist. We didn’t steal your party; it doesn’t belong to you.
Progressives need to make a choice. Do you want to work with moderates, be part of a party in power, and get some of what you want? Or do you want to go off on your own and get nothing?
Sanders lost, Clinton won. The far-left progressive lost, the center-left moderate won.
Guess who gets to pick the platform – the one the voters selected.
The whole idea of the exercise is to win the general election. The electorate of the Republican party seems to have forgotten this, resulting in fringe candidate Trump. They’re tying themselves up in knots because he’s the winner and gets to control the agenda.
The Democratic party picked someone who, for all of her flaws, is competent, and acceptable to a large part of the nation’s voters. There’s no reason for the Democrats to tie themselves up in knots so the loser can control the agenda.
Which part, the part about slanting legal rules in favor of the wealthy, or making it easier elections to be funded by the wealthy elite? To create a discussion out of that would derail the thread. But briefly;
An article from a centrist which cites and links to a Princeton and Northwestern University study, talking about how interest groups with positions opposed by the general public have their positions heard by the legislature, this being due to our campaign finance laws. This results in legislation being passed which favors wealthy elites, and many of the laws and regulations that industries have to obey and follow ended up being written by the same people who own those businesses.
They rewrite the tax code to give themselves additional loopholes and deductions. So it’s not just businesses lobbying for and writing the laws for their own industries, but also the wealthy individuals who ensure that they pay less. Now they have more money to individually donate to PACs and gain even more influence over politics.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/in-house-bill-arms-dealers-wrote-their-own-rules-117842
Lobbyists and manufacturers and dealers end up writing legislation.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/banks-lobbyists-help-in-drafting-financial-bills/?_r=0
Citigroup writes legislation regulating its own industry.
Payday loan industry buys influence in Congress. Reform of the payday loan industry vanishes.
All of the above just makes it easier and easier for these same groups to have more influence over our laws, because they get wealthier at the expense of the consumer, who ends up having no influence. All perfectly fine if you’re a plutocrat. The rest of us lack representation in Congress and an impartial legal system.
These types of laws get approved by Republicans and Democrats alike, and are among the few things the two parties actually agree on. Hence my above disappointment with Democrats, centrists for the status quo. Only marginally better than Republicans on some issues, complicit in their corruption on most.
And the two that think it actually means something will recoil in horror after the election, and jump to the Greens.
That’s someone else’s OPINION, not an actual cite.
These are just election tactics. The Democrats actually support liberal politics, they just won’t say so during an election because they don’t want to lose votes, and won’t actually do anything in office because they don’t want to lose votes. But in their hearts you know they support every liberal cause as long as it doesn’t cost them any votes.
Clinton will support most every cause once it reaches 51% in the polls.
Those would all be incredibly stupid positions to adopt into a party platform.
Does every election *have *to pull us one way or the other?
Apparently, there’s no one who will be happy unless the new administration jumps several points (or more) in some direction from the 'orrid, awrful “status quo.” But the tendency, election after election, is to vote pretty centrist. So maybe what we get is both exactly what we (collectively) want and (in the whole) need: continuation until change is possible, not ahem radical shifts by electorate.
Ain’t it the truth. I guess it sets some kind of tone, but no party member is obligated to support the platform.
What a silly article. Dishonest, too. The best we can do here is to cite “Films for Action”? A site, for the happily uninitiated, filled with half-baked conspiracy theories about electoral fraud, hysterical attacks on Hillary Clinton for daring not to support everything Bernie Sanders supports, and an “editorial stance” that criticizes everything Clinton while uncritically accepting everything Sanders and his supporters have to say. Might as well link to US Uncut or something. Let’s try for a serious news site next time.
Paragraph 1 – Fearmongering: OMG the Democrats are “staying true to their corporate donors above all else!” AAAAAACK!
Paragraph 2-- No, for reals! This drafting committee “voted down a number of measures proposed by Bernie Sanders surrogates.”
And on goes the righteous indignation for about another eight paragraphs…until…
…in paragraphs 10 and 11 we discover that the committee actually approved a $15 minimum wage (though apparently this doesn’t count as a good thing as it is not indexed to inflation). Oh, we also learn that the committee gave the green light to condemnation of the death penalty. Oh, and that they called for the breakup of big banks and “a modern-day Glass Steagall Act.” Oh, and Sanders himself approved of this. Oh. So the headline could be “Progressives Win Important Concessions” rather than “Progressives Betrayed.” Oh.
We might also note that the author of the piece did not bother to get opinions from people opposed to her positions, instead quoting only folks who disagreed with the contested votes.
And somewhere in that article it might’ve been appropriate to mention the many truly progressive stances the Democrats have taken over the last few years. Standing up for women’s health issues and reproductive freedoms. Championing gay rights. Refusing to scapegoat Muslims and Muslim-Americans. Opposing the notion that the Second Amendment is the be-all and the end-all of American politics (Bernie Sanders’s positions on the issue notwithstanding, this is indeed a progressive and very anti-Republican stance to take). Trying to safeguard voting rights. Supporting organized labor. The list goes on.
This is bad, bad journalism.
It seems like gay marriage is a good but tough example to follow. Most are now in favor of gay marriage, but it took time to get the public to accept it. Was that fair to the many people who had to wait, perhaps even die, before they had the opportunity to marry? Of course not. But if a president had come out in favor of gay marriage 25 years ago he might well have experienced a severe backlash, and so might the movement.
The voters claims to want “change,” But in reality they seem slow to actually accept specifics. So I think a Progressive’s plan should be to continue to spread the message and convince the public, over time, that certain changes are right. Keep finding voices like Sanders and Warren and others to promote the message. Being correct is ultimately a very strong position hand to hold. But, alas, so many good things still take time. Frustrating, but there it is.
The powerful and the wealthy are well-positioned to avoid revolution. Not so much with evolution.