I know there are actually a pretty fair number of "progressive" US Senators and a good percentage of House Democrats are as well. This, of course, depends heavily on what progressive means (or hell - Democratic). I'll get along with some generic generally understood "progressive" rather than a named Caucus, still a doubtful exercise, but one has to start somewhere. Anyhow, I'll just postulate that there is a pretty large percentage of national Democratic legislators who could be called progressive. Now that's thrashed out...
You might think that would have some meaning. You'd be FOS if you did. Take a look at legislation passed. What the Democrats managed to do was to pass a previous decade or two GOP legislation. Now, the Democrats only control the Senate and the Presidency. The President manages to advocate for the stuff of one or two decades previous GOPerism. Sure, I have the luck to live in Oregon and having 4 of 5 House members as Democrats and passably progressive to go along with Sens Wyden and Merkley and all that means is ... well, what we've gotten.
It is easy enough to see that President Obama is far less harmful to Democratic ideas than any of the GOPers and I suppose that can be presented as a reason to vote for him. There is a problem with that, the Democrats tried that in 2010 and to a significant extent it didn't work (a whole bunch of Bluedogs found out). The President I worked for and voted for in the Primaries and General has turned out to be the best of the bunch and about what I expected (a bit more of what I expected, maybe). When you toss the reality of LIEberman, Bauchus, and Nelson you get something that you have to try pretty hard to call Democratic. It comes down to the most important people in the room are hardly recognizable as Democrats and you get what we've gotten.
No comments:
Post a Comment