I absolutely detest “Third Way” and the DLC!!! And those that are plugged into this way of thinking. And acting.

Agree!!

however Schaller is completely wrong about Dixie. As someone from the Deep South, I can tell you that a message of economic fairness will resonate to the tune of winning states like AR, LA, and especially VA. His analysis is DEAD WRONG. He needs to point more at the DLC dems and those who are just GOP lite for his ire and not an entire region. Southerners are not a bunch of bigots as he says. What they are are traditionalists.

The Dems lost their way by straying from their populist roots. We can win Western and states by following the mold of Schwietzer, Tester and Webb. Not by turning ourselves into a bunch of wimpy elitist Northeastern Yankee type liberals ala John Kerry. Who was a weak elitist cold ass. Could not even stand up and take a STRONG stance against the war in Iraq. Not for the sissy ass reasons that a lot of the activists have for being against it. But for the simple reason that it was a stupid ass thing to do. Bad foreign policy..period. How the hell else does someone lose to shitforbrains. Kerry lost that race. Bush did not win it. And it was because he could not grow a damn spine.

I know I am not giving my best in writing this right now but will have more pointed stuff for Schaller later.

I think there are many people who have changed their registration as a protest against this very polarization of politics. They still vote with their same core beliefs, but they refuse to sanction what the parties themselves are doing.

It’s redolent of the growth in agnostics and atheists that vexes Christianists so much…people are leaving the very institutions that ostensible leaders (largely Republican) hold so dear.

But there is also an opportunity for a big tent.

The core issues which people vote on have changed to some extent. Specifically, you can have many opinions on gun control and fit in the Democratic Party. You can have many opinions on tarriffs and international trade (as long as you don’t give the shop away to the big corporations). You can have many opinions on the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as long as you’re actually seriously trying to reduce them.
We encompass people who approved of the Afghan invasion and those who didn’t. Even people who want more trains and people who hate trains (sadly; we should encourage everyone to see the benefits of trains). We can include people who think drugs are fun, and those who think they’re dangerous, as long as they recognize that the Drug War is completely counterproductive.

What do you have to do to be successful in the Democratic Party today? (I’ll leave out the personality and campaigning stuff since I don’t understand it.)
(1) Be rock-solid on civil liberties and honest government issues, keeping the government out of people’s bedrooms and off their phones, restoring habeas, and so forth; including bringing the Administration to justice for its crimes, and ensuring the impartiality of the judiciary, and ending the political interference with the civil service and scientists;
(2) support generally progressive economic policies, rather than trying to loot the poor to pay the rich; (3) support sane things that work (like single-payer health insurance) and oppose things which don’t (like the War on Drugs, ‘abstinence-only education’, etc.)

This is not rocket science.

I saw a figure of 14% of the electorate voted in 2006? THAT’S a mandate? Is that figure correct? On a good year we get maybe 50-60%?

At 14%, Bush has every right to assume that those 14% aren’t representing the people that voted for him in 2004. As far as he’s concerned, they were are all at home clutching their rosaries rather than voting.

Nevertheless, it’s reasonable to suppose that 98% of Americans view Abu Gonzales’s a thug for seeking John Ashcroft’s signature from his hospital bed. Reprehensible.

The Democrats sure seem to be on their way to losing their third straight Presidential election that they should have won easily.

Here’s a thought … tell everyone who’s still hanging around from the god-awful 2000 campaign that we don’t need you any more, time to go get a real job (watch them turn pale). Then take a look at the electorate and realize that the Democrats have a natural majority. Just do what the base wants you to do, and you’ll be golden!

Nah, that would be too easy, how would the candidates spend all those millions they’ve been collecting?

The Democrats’ last three presidential candidates and Gary Hart are from a group of Vietnam era expediters. These are the same “guys” who during the Vietnam era were not acting out of any degree of conscience but for personal gain or personal planning. And this includes Kerry and Gore who went to Nam and Clinton who did not. That generation lost its best to the vaguries and tragedies of that era and Kerry, Gore and Clinton were never the best of that generation or even close. It is time to drop that group of bullshit artists and move on.

Forget about all this “centrist” stuff. Schumer and gang are just vague, unimaginative self perceived instutional success stories. There is no potential for greatness and leadership.

Please read Schaller’s brief but compelling article on the new political dromedary and let me know what you think in the comments.

Well, I do not find it compelling. Here are the folks that I see “between the humps”:

They are the people who voted for Bush in 2004, but for Democratic representatives in 2006. There must be millions of them.

I see it this way: The Republicans thought that they had a new American Majority from 2000 – 2006, and for a while, they barely did. But that majority was an artificial construct that is now disintegrating.

Newt Gingrich built the two-humped camel, but maybe it only worked because there were a lot of people who don’t know very much, but who want to be on the winning team, and the Republicans looked like winners. Now, however, they have morphed into Republithugs, and suddenly that hot date is looking like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Bob in HI