Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Steven Rosenfeld — Will Democrats Try To Kill The Party's Progressive Wing To Regain Power?

The GOP went after its more principled wing. Will Democrats follow?
Absolutely. Didn't the election show that the votes are on the right? (snark)

AlterNet
Will Democrats Try To Kill The Party's Progressive Wing To Regain Power?
Steven Rosenfeld

Salon
“I hear you”: President Obama responds to midterm rout of Democrats, lays out centrist agenda
Luke Bunker
Obama said, the two parties could find common ground on “tax reform that closes loopholes,” which would allow for a lowering of corporate tax rates.… 
Finally, the president called for cooperation on international trade agreements.
Just what the public signaled it wants. Not.
Obama also announced that he will soon ask Congress to authorize American air strikes against the Islamic State militant group; a chorus of bipartisan critics had decried the administration’s decision this year to launch the strikes without seeking congressional approval. The president reaffirmed that the U.S. was engaged in the struggle against the Islamic state for “the long term.”
War is always popular — without boots on the ground.

5 comments:

Bob Roddis said...

War is always popular — without boots on the ground.

Oh yes. The miracle of democracy.

Tom Hickey said...

Actually, the miracle of high technology.

And here is where we agree. A flexible monetary system makes affordability irrelevant in the development, deployment and use of military technology. The only constraint is real resources (which involves the potential of inflation). As long as there are resources that can be transferred to military use, there is no limitation on the scale to which military operations can be extended.

But if the world were on say a gold standard, then the wars would be over gold in addition to oil.

Clonal said...

My feeling is that the Democratic party will split into two, and the progressive faction likely merge with the Greens to form a new party. Likely without the Grren tag. However it will take another defeat in 2016 to do it. Shenanigans like the one discussed will hasten the split.

Unknown said...

Hasn't the party already killed off the progressive wing?

True that Obama ran and was elected on a progressive agenda, however, he left that in the dust as he surrounded himself in neo-liberal advisors and neocon hawks.

I'm not sure how one could argue that Obama's record supports anything categorized by the word progressive?

It seems to me that running as a cheap knock-off of the GOP hasn't worked out that well.

Matt Franko said...

Fwiw to my Dem friends here, imo your faction still OWNS the high ground with the "socio-economic justice" cohort of voters...

Its just that lately Dems have a bad record of following thru past the general messaging so some in this cohort swing to GOP and others get demotivated and you can lose a close election that way...

I still dont think the GOP has as good a general message to the socio-economic justice cohort as Dems... so this makes the GOP very vulnerable...