The Reluctant Democrat

This just in: the Democratic Party is dead. What is left know is just a re-animated zombie, stumbling about and frequently bumping against walls, chairs, puppies, etc. "How can Democrats be dead" you say, "I just saw Bill Clinton on TV giving that FOX News reporter the business! Wasn't that great?"

Whatever.

The era of Bill Clinton is gone, never to return again. Get over it. For some, it was nice while it lasted - and compared to life under GWB it sure looks like good times, doesn't it - but those days are done. So instead of debating, discussing and deliberating about Bill Clinton, what are the Democrats who are in office today doing?

They are rolling over - again - with the same old tired triangulation strategy of staying close to Republicans, so they won't be labeled as pro-terrorist by the President and his cronies. For anyone who has paid attention to the '02 and '04 elections, that strategy will sound familiar and not in a good way. People who are old enough to know will recognize that this strategy lost in those two previous rounds. Those same people will also ask - why should a strategy that has lost the last two rounds - and I could have included the '00 and '98 and '96 and '94 rounds too - be placed back into operation? The bottom-line is that the Democratic Party is controlled by an organization who call themselves the Democratic Leadership Council and their reason for being is to make the Democratic Party as close to the Republican Party as possible.

That is why the recent debate about detainee treatment was not a debate between Democrats and Republicans, but a side-show debate of Republican v. Republican, with no one ever seriously doubting that Republicans would make their Republican President look good. But when the majority of the American people disapprove of the President (the other side of a 40% approval rating) one might naturally think that highlighting how different you are from him is the best thing to do.

Not the DLC. No matter how many times they get taken out to the woodshed (most people reasonably think that if they are going to get a Republican, they might as well vote Republican) the DLC keeps coming back for more, ever hopeful that if they pretend to be just like Republicans hard enough, Republicans won't be able to say those mean things about them, like calling them liberal.

Ouch!

Is there another party around here?

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