Political parties in the United States

Why did the United States lurch to the right in 1980? In large part it is because Reagan preached a New American Ideology. As one woman said of Reagan, "he gave us back our pride."

When did we lose that? Well …

Americans had emerged triumphant from the Second World War. Powerful, wealthy, and filled with hubris, America had managed against the East bloc well enough and even weathered the unnerving Cuban Missile Crisis, but then things started to go really wrong.

The American President was assassinated in his own country, in broad daylight. His successor got mired in a land war in Asia that led to the first clear defeat of the American Army. He did not seek another term as President. Anger over the War split the nation and the Democratic Party. Spending on social reform and a full scale war caused run-away inflation. And then OPEC staged an oil embargo, sending people into long gasoline lines as energy prices soared.

Iran seized the American Embassy and yet another the Democratic Administration seemed paralyzed.

Those old enough to remember the events of October 1962, when the United States and the Soviet Union nearly started World War Three, recall that both sides backed down. Yet there were grumblings that Democrat JFK had been "soft on Communism." The Republicans had to bail the Democrats out in Vietnam. And once again, the Democrats were paralyzed, this time by the Ayatollah.

Reagan asked the demoralized American people, "are you better off today than four years ago?"

Many thought that Reagan spoke about economic benefits, and surely that was true, but that was not the entire story. Americans were embittered over losing the War in Vietnam, having had oil shut off by OPEC, and having the American legation held prisoner by Iranian fundamentalists.

America had lost its place in the sun, and Reagan promised "morning in America." The long night was over. America was turning a corner.

A nation's myths do not need to be based in fact. They merely need to be believed.

In the last century, economic inequality was seen as one of the roots of social unrest.

Reagan challenged this view. He said that so long as everyone was getting something, and that the "pie" was getting bigger, people were better off than if they divided the existing pie more equitably.

He said capitalism was the answer and that the Democrats with their views about "fairness," were merely impeding real economic growth. That Democrats were responsible for reverse discrimination - and their social program had proven no better than their ability to win wars.

Right or wrong, Reagan made his case. His foreign policy was bellicose enough to instill a feeling of pride. And the Iran hostages came home - even though history records a seamier side to that triumph.

The Democrats continue to be reactive to Reagan's New Deal.

Reagan put his finger on the pulse of America and articulated their hopes and fears. Reagan's vision of America endures. Americans who do not remember the Vietnam Era, or the Great Society, tend to see America's problems as having been caused by the flawed values of the Democratic party and Republican policies as having been vindicated by the court of history.

But mostly, where the Democrats have failed, is in understanding that American values have shifted, although they are probably not changed at bottom.

The Democrats have campaigned largely on bread-and-butter issues … their legacy from the Great Depression, whose agony swept them into power. People who can actually remember the Great Depression are well into their eighties. The Labor Movement of the 1930s is the stuff of history books.

The question now before Democrats is, can they offer a vision that is better in tune with America's basic values than the one being offered by the Republicans?

Until the Democrats can do that, they will follow the lead of the Republicans, and at best be pale shadows of the Republicans who are better at articulating Republican values than are the Democrats.

The closest this nation came to having someone articulate an even-newer New Deal was Ross Perot. Flawed though his candidacy might have been, it showed the American people are not asleep.

The Democrats are asleep and until they awaken, we'll have more of the same.

Jonathan Singer offers this plaint:

There has been a significant amount of unhappiness and even outrage within the progressive blogosphere are the direction the campaign for Congress has taken in recent months. The likely Democratic Senatorial nominee in Pennsylvania does not fall in line with the party's stance on abortion, a highly charismatic, though somewhat unpolished candidate in Ohio is no longer running for the Democratic Senatorial nomination in that state, and the possibility remains that the blogosphere's favored candidate in the Montana Senate race will not receive his party's nomination. The list goes on.

Some of us in the progressive wing of the blogosphere have contemplated staying home on election day rather than supporting the eventual Democratic nominee in the state. Why, if my candidate did not gain the party nomination -- for whatever reason -- should I go to the polls on election day, let alone try to organize or work to get out the vote in the coming months?
What Mr. Singer is missing is that none of this is about what I do? Who cares what I and a few hundred (?) or thousand (?) bloggers do on election day? The point is what will all the other voters do?

Will voters go out into November weather to vote for a schmuck because he's slightly better than the putz running against him?

Will voters take time off from work to vote for someone who thinks they are not entitled to basic human rights?

Will potential voters even bother to register when both parties are offering nothing but right-wing zealots and consultant-massaged say-nothing-do-nothings?

The Democratic Party today has not one idea or plan or initiative or position to offer the people except:

"We're against the Republicans ... at least some of the time."

That's hardly a get-out-the-vote plan. And when Democratic Party-line bloggers scold progressive bloggers for not getting with the program, I have to wonder if they really are that stupid, they're being deliberately obtuse, or they figure we just won't notice we're being made into "whipping boys" for the inevitable voter reaction to such cynical Democratic Party treatment of the electorate.

For a week, just about all we've heard about is Dick Cheney's "simple hunting accident," and how the victim was a long-time Republican fundraiser, and the attempted White House cover-up, and his beer(s?) at lunch and the yahoo truck-based hunting style, and the fact that the quail in this "hunting trip" were in fact caged and released only when the good ol' boys were ready with their guns to blow them to pieces (hey, the rulers are entitled to privileges, aren't they?), and all the other horrid details of this incident involving this hateful man. We heard his unemotional apology, delivered like a military policy statement on the right-wing's propaganda news channel.

Some analysts have even declared that Cheney's recklessness with firearms has boosted his stock with the macho gun-loving lizard-brain constituents of the Republican Party. (Sometimes the Daily Show is just prescient.)

But when it comes to long-term implications in the political realm, the bigger news story was Paul Hackett's withdrawal from the Ohio Democratic primary race for the Senate seat up this year -- and how he was apparently pressured out by none other than the big shots in the Democratic Party itself -- many of whom recruited him to run in the first place.

"For me, this is a second betrayal," Mr. Hackett said. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me."Since then, we've seen quite a lot of chest-thumping in the blogosphere, with an abundance of I-told-you-so's and offerings of revisionist history. ("We support Sherrod Brown. We have always supported Sherrod Brown.")

One example is yesterday's offering posted on Booman that comes close to accusing people who don't line up and vote for Democrats -- any and all Democrats, no matter what their political views or character flaws -- are, in effect, supporters of the Republicans. Never mind what kind of Democrats get elected. Never mind that politicians like Casey, whom the diarist supports, are to the right of Democrats like Ben Nelson and Ken Salazar, who've proven how unreliable they can be.

A cornerstone if this kind of political position is the unstated but clear-as-day strategy of co-opting modern-day, pseudo-conservative Republican positions and "values" so that the only change in Congress is with which party the wingnut in question is registered.

Maybe it's not all that foolish. Maybe it's quite clever. We're supposed to be fooled into thinking that buying into such a rightward push in the Democratic Party is actually in our interests. Their calling card is the Republican boogie man, which doesn't need much embellishment to be convincing. And then they toss out a few bones to the voters.

I believe that if you are registered to vote in Pennsylvania, and you do not vote for Bob Casey over Rick Santorum in the general election in November, then you support the privatization of Social Security (which Santorum favors and Casey opposes). I believe that if you don't vote for Bob Casey instead of Rick Santorum, then you support the K-Street Project, which Rick Santorum helps run. I believe that if you don't vote for Bob Casey instead of Rick Santorum, then you think that the minimum wage should only be increased as long as several million workers lose all of their protections nationwide. If you don't' vote for Bob Casey instead of Rick Santorum, then you support CAFTA, which Casey opposes and Santorum supports.It's easy to offer such simplistic rhetoric. But let's set aside the self-righteousness of it and get to the logic: "Our misogynistic bastard is better than their misogynistic bastard."

This seems like a fool's strategy to me. If you become that which you abhor, how do you change back? If the Democratic Party is made even more of a faux-Republican party to obtain power, how would one change it into a progressive party? Where would be the mandate?

What all this party-insider grandstanding is based on is the unspoken and perhaps unexamined belief that neither party wants to address: Women have no right to have a voice in politics.

Every time you hear someone declare your interest in your rights to equal liberty, equal justice and equal protection under the law as your "pet cause" that fits your "single-issue voter" demands for "ideological purity," think about what they're really saying:

"Shut up, woman, and let us men deal with this! We'll get to your concerns later."

Chris Bowers, The Booman diarist mentioned above, probably does not believe he's a chauvinist or that he's blinded by male privilege from really seeing or hearing what women are doing and saying. (I think the jury is still out on Kos, who seems to be proudly anti-feminist.) But the fact that women are marginalized just for demanding equality in this country is very telling.

So as the bellowing gets louder, and the accusations that women's equal participation in all things political is only provisional and secondary to men's rule, remember this:

As long as it's left to men alone to pass judgment on whether women's rights should be respected, honored and protected as a minimum requirement for a truly egalitarian society, there will be no equality for women...

...and reproductive rights will always be a bargaining chip to be given away...

...and universal healthcare will be a lofty political plank with no credibility...

...and progressive values will suffer...

...because a non-inclusive "big tent" strategy will never turn on the regressive hand that feeds it.

So Jedmunds has read Markos and Jerome's book. I haven't. I suppose I'll flip through some pages next time I'm in a bookstore that carries it. But having read Kos on DailyKos for over a year now, I don't feel any need to part with my hard-earned money and too-short time to curl up with a tome about how civil rights are "special interests" and how the Democratic Party can win only by standing for nothing except things not (quite) Republican.

The most glaring problem with the Kos/Armstrong approach to “reforming� the Democratic Party is their ill-considered assault on so called “single issue groups,� ie unions, feminists, blacks and Hispanics. It may in fact be true, as Kos/Armstrong argue, that the sum of these special interests is no greater than the sum of their parts, however their purported solution is breathtakingly naïve. They embrace what they call a broad based, yet completely undefined “progressive� movement, that will remain outside of the Democratic Party, and like their historical conservative counterpart, “take over� the Democratic Party.

Some problems with this idea are readily apparent. First, it is not at all clear that this progressive movement is itself anything more than the sum of these “special interests.� Sure, it’s lovely that this “progressive� movement, which has no apparent purpose other than electing people who happen to be Democrats, will be unencumbered by these single issue litmus tests, such that theoretically, a pro-life, pro-business, anti-immigrant, war-hawk can be elected under the Democratic banner provided he gives rhetorical hell to the Republicans. And that would be considered a great victory for this “progressive� movement.

What I find extremely interesting is how much Markos, and it seems Jerome, have totally bought into the Republican frame of Democratic constituents: "special interests." That puts women's fighting for equal rights right up there with Enron pushing for special regulatory favors. That puts African Americans fighting for equal rights and equal opportunity right up there with the oil and gas industry pushing for less regulation and more tax breaks.

Where Markos and Jerome see "special interests" in traditionally Democratic constituencies, I see citizens. And when it comes to Dick and Jane fighting for their rights vs. Multinational Conglomerates R Us lobbying to be able to dump more toxic waste in the country's drinking water, I don't have any problem seeing a difference.

What I find even more laughable is the idea that you can just glom on to the progressive netroots label with avowedly non-progressive, Democratic Party sites like DailyKos, and figure nobody will notice.

Markos a progressive? Give me a fucking break. How many progressive principles has Kos actively, and often viciously, attacked? How can anyone who labels people fighting for their rights as "roadblocks" to be "pushed aside" call himself a progressive.

Obviously the word is rapidly becoming meaningless, at least in the online world. In fact, the Markos strategy to winning elections is to be for nothing but against anything Republican. To him, being for anything means giving in to "single issue voters" like "the women's studies set," whom his "big tent" ideas have no room for. (Several people noted on "Blog for Choice Day" that Daily Kos was mute on the subject, except for a culture of death diary pushing all the right-wing talking points on reproductive rights. You can accuse Daily Kos of a lot of things, but you can't call them pro-choice -- not when they're pushing candidates who are proudly in favor of forced pregnancy.)

Jedmunds continues....

This purported “progressive� movement would appear to have no ideological goals other than electing Democrats. Seriously. According to Kaus… err Kos and Armstrong, we need to take over the Democratic Party, just to get the Democratic Party interested in winning elections. If you think about that long enough, when you’re done laughing, you’ll probably start crying. Unless you’re like me, in which case you squelch your emotions beneath a hard, calloused layer of seething and bubbling rage.

But in fact Kos and Armstrong insist that this new “progressive� movement is without firm ideology, un-united by any single issue except for perhaps opposition to the Iraq war. Yes, indeed, this progressive movement is united in its opposition to a decision that was made almost three years ago. Hahaha. No really, it’s kind of sad. In fact, I doubt many of us are united by little more than an intense and conditioned opposition to the current occupant. And I wonder if Kos and Armstrong ever considered what will happen to this “progressive� movement, united by nothing more than the desire to bring Democrats kicking and screaming to power, when the current occupant takes the hero’s walk into the sunset. Or maybe more optimistically, when and if the Republicans in general heal their self image which has taken some blows lately. What does this “progressive� movement do then? It’s easy to be anti-Republican and nothing more, when Republicans are at their nadir of popularity.

When I look at the strategies pushed on the front page of Daily Kos, I wonder at how they can claim that they're offering anything other than business as usual. Already the Democrats are weak and disorganized because they cannot unite around any issues. Already vast numbers of Democrats vote along with the Republicans on offensive bills like the "Now You Have to Be Rich to Declare Bankruptcy" bill. How is pushing for more "big tent" Democrats (read: Democrats who don't hold progressive values) going to improve things? How is this any different than what the DCCC, DLC and other establishment players are already doing?

Answer: It's not any different. And if you want proof, just look at how Kos & Co. push Democratic Establishment golden boys like Bob Casey, Jr., whose radical right-wing views include making women's wombs property of the State.

But they don’t realize that they have the same problem the Democratic Party has: they don’t know what they stand for, because they’re too afraid to stand for anything.

This is the heart of the problem. Rather than fight for progressive values, Kos and Armstrong advocate more running away from scary Republican rhetoric. Call it the Michael ("I-I-I-I am not a liberal!") Dukakis school of politics.

This “progressive� movement to take over the Democratic Party is little more than an illusion. It’s all pretend. A dash of rabble-rousing and a dash of half-assed wishful thinking for a facile ride that anyone can get on and that’ll never go anywhere. There’s no point to it. At all. There’s not really even a commitment to grassroots politics. After all, Schumer’s appointing Casey as the nominee apparent in Pennsylvania is to be celebrated, for the sole reason that Casey can win. We not only don’t care about ideology, we don’t even need to care about process. Let the DC Dems decide. Because they know best. Except when they don’t. How can we tell the difference? Well, I guess Kos will tell us.

There is a real progressive movement. It's just not happening at Daily Kos -- let alone being led by Markos. Or, as Jedmunds says,

I suspect that a truly enduring movement needs to be united by more than anti-Republicanism or anti-Bushism. And they need to have some idea of what they believe in, or else they won’t exist beyond victory. And I suspect, that if a real progressive movement is to emerge in this country, that Kos and Armstrong, like the Democratic Party itself, will be obstacles to it and not leaders of it.

Read the whole thing. The comments in the thread are of interest, too:

Amanda

I’m inclined to think Kos & Co. have pitted “special interests� against the party, and I don’t think their goals are necessarily at odds. Or, to put it another way, this paranoid fear that advocacy groups turn off the public strikes me as illogical.

bellatrys

Trying to woo [pocketbook voters] away by promising to be Repub-lite won’t work. Trying to woo them away by promising to be more Repub than the Republicans won’t likely work either - why should they believe it?

OTOH, the DCCC is just dumb enough to try *either* of those. In which case they will wonder, as they embrace being Evildum to Evildee, why all remaining traces of their old “base� have evaporated - and pay Al From another half-billion to try to figure it out for them.

FoolishOwl

Part of the trouble is that the progressives have been trying to take over the Democrats from the outside ever since the Radical Republicans were defeated and the Republicans were purged of progressive politics. Kos’s model is exactly that which has led to defeats of progressive movements over and over again.

R. Mildred

the dems and kos and all the rest want a win now, any actual strategy that would allow liberal issues to get implemented would take time, they want cake now, before dinner, and are honestly believe that they won’t spoil their appetite.

The only people I’ve seen sell things off and out as quickly and easily as these guys are crack heads, and like crack heads they don’t care who they hurt in the search for the next hit.

Bella

Thing is, the mainstream Democrats have largely kept people like me (waaay to the left of the party as it presently stands) in line and voting for them based on, really, the one Big Issue, the one on which they were never supposed to fail us: abortion. And yet, here we go, they’re about to do just that. And when that happens — and I tell you, I am this close to certain that it’s going to happen, oh, in a few days or weeks, when Alito gets confirmed — my much-decried special interest ass is going to be looking elsewhere. Here’s where the anti-choice fundie wackjobs and I are alike: I don’t like feeling like I’ve been played for a chump by my party. And I really don’t think I’m going to be alone in this.

Jettisoning ideology and identity politics in order to get nominal Democrats elected to office is the kind of profoundly stupid thing the DLC has been up to for a long time now. And we can see how goddamn successful that’s been. We are seriously outgunned when it comes to the really big money, the press is largely in the tank, about all we’ve got on our side is this fragile coalition of identity-based progressive groups and individuals, and Kos and Jerome want to marginalize us further? The hell? Why the fuck would I want to get right-wing Democrats elected? What’s in it for me? God, yes, I’d love to see that twisted little shit Rick Santorum driven from office, but by Casey? Why?

postdated

This leadership is purposefully destroying the party by their willful and intended ineffectiveness.. now that the party is almost the size of a bathtub the bastards have the nerve to take the base hostage and demand ransoms for them to represent us again. They have made the terms of the ransom very clear… Only when you give up your liberal and progressive issue will we then go back to work and represent you… however, the fact of the matter is that once we give up our dreaded issues and ideologies and become partisan just for partisan fuck sake… our representatives will actually be representing the GOP they envy so, and not us.

There are many other comments, but eataTREE offers the lame-ass counter-argument:

You don’t have to vote Democratic. It’s a free country. You can vote third-party or stay home if you like. But the upshot of your doing so is twofold: a) more Republicans are going to be elected (and yes, that will actually make a difference to policy decisions regarding the issues liberals care about), and b) Democrats will tack even further to the right, since they’re no longer getting votes from the left.

This is the regularly-employed tactic. The only problem is that we're talking about the Democratic Party, and who's leading it and best representing the voters. Casey apologists and others like to jump ahead to November, but we're entering primary season. There are no official Democratic nominees to Congress and the Senate yet.

And yet these right-wing faux-progressives claim that only their boys can win. I think the past two decades have proven that that's not true.

I don't know, but to me these folks seem like they're so driven by fear that they figure the only Democrats who can win elections are Republicans, or at least Democrats who look as Republican as possible.

Which is kind of like lighting a fire in the hearth on a really hot day, and offering the rationale that at least it's our heat, and not from the sun.

Finally, from Lorenzo's comment:

Jedmunds said,

In short, think tanks were used to legitimate their ideology.

*DING DING DING* Finally, someone who gets it.

The problem with compromising your ideology instead of fighting like hell to normalize it is that you normalize the other guy’s ideology.

Liquidating ideology for partisanship ultimately only serves to normalize the opposition’s ideology and thus to keep getting them elected. The entire point of the conservative movement since the 70’s has been to normalize their ideology to make themselves into the center and thus to increase their electoral fortunes.

Update 2:40pm EST: See also eugene's review of the Kos/Jerome book at MyLeftWing:

While the chapters on consultants and infrastructure may garner the book attention among established Democratic circles, it is the chapter on the single-issue groups that I bet will be best received by the blogosphere. This was the case in an earlier review of Crashing the Gate published on ePluribus Media by Aaron Barlow. Barlow commended the authors for taking on the single-issue groups who peddle special interests and pet issues (frames that are Republican in origin and generated to discredit Democrats; Markos and Jerome repeatedly adopt such frames - one wonders if they read their Lakoff that closely), and opens his own review with the familiar tale of an anti-war protest that saw a series of speakers take the podium to exhort the audience to care about their own cause.

For Markos and Jerome, such instances are perfect examples of how these single issue special interests have ruined the Democratic Party brand. I find that difficult to believe, particularly since in the case of antiwar protests, they would not have existed at all had it been up to the Democrats. Antiwar activism has routinely been denigrated by the Democratic establishment. To blame antiwar activists for Democratic failures, then, is to me simply appalling. Had Democrats either taken the lead on opposing the war, or done their jobs and not voted for it in the first place, the single-issue approach the authors find so frustrating wouldn't have happened at all.

[snip]

One has to be careful to not allow an attack on specific groups and organizations to slide over and become an attack on people who take those issues seriously. While neither Markos nor Jerome explicity makes such an attack on people, their use of language - speaking of these matters as special interests (a Republican frame) and as pet issues (another Republican frame) can have that impact, especially if this book is uncritically used to frame the discussion. Democrats take issues like the environment and abortion and labor rights and ending racism and health care and peace extremely seriously, as well they should. Any Democratic strategy must also take them seriously.

What we do want, and what the authors seem to desire as well, is for these groups to craft a strategy that is holistic in nature. To come together to support candidates who share all values (The authors suggest that the 2004 Colorado elections were a good example of this approach). And to come together to explain to Americans why their core issues of concern are not separate, but are fundamentally, even inextricably, linked - why you can't have successful labor organizing without addressing racism, why you can't fix the environment without talking about foreign policy, why you can't provide universal health care and at the same time say it's OK to deny women abortions, as someone last weekend tried to convince me you could.

In short, that strategy needs to directly address what is routinely derided by Markos and Jerome in this book: ideology.

The American political landscape is littered with the bodies of Democrats who believed you could build a governing majority without worrying about ideology. Pat Brown, Lyndon Johnson, even Jimmy Carter to some extent, found out the hard way that as a Democrat, you ignore debates over ideology and deeply-held beliefs of your voting base at your peril. Ideological splits cannot be forestalled by appealing to party unity or by trying to silence dissent - they can only be resolved by working through the issues themselves, rather than ignoring them and allowing them to fester.

Markos and Jerome's dismissive attitudes of ideology are more than politically shortsighted. Their attitudes, I would suggest, stand in the way of a reconstruction of a progressive message. To the authors, ideology is a term that is always defined as a negative. Ideology divides, never unites. It alienates, never amalgamates.

There's much more, well worth the read.

A few interesting tidbits....

Pam at Pandagon asks why Tim Kaine has been dubbed knight respondent to King Bush's State of the Union speech.

After all, in my state I cannot hope or expect to see same-sex marriage pass, but I certainly expect the Democrats not to have to exact same position on it as the Republicans. I need Dems to make a stand that our state Constitution should not be altered to discriminate against us.

Today’s Dems are so fixated by winning that core values don’t matter; it’s about job security and pandering to the emotions and not the brains of the sheeple, instead of risk-taking and reframing difficult issues that have been hijacked and demonized (successfully) by the Rove machine.

That is not leadership, that is cowardice and lazy thinking.
Walter Shapiro at Salon (free with ad viewing) points at the Democrats' own DC consultants:

The larger question hovering over the Democrats, like any other out-of-power party, is how to strike the right balance between conviction and expediency. Rich Galen, a Republican strategist, expressed the consultants-know-best argument in the most bipartisan tone he could muster: "As we Republicans learned with Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition, those on the ideological edges are willing to lose an election on the grounds of doctrinal purity. Consultants don't do that. Consultants are in the business of winning elections."

But Time magazine columnist Joe Klein ("Primary Colors") will argue in a new book coming out this spring, "Paradise Lost," that misjudgments by Democratic consultants have played a major role in leaving the party without a power base more influential than the state of Illinois. And from my own vantage point, the Democrats' positioning on the eavesdropping issue invites comparisons to their fetal crouch in the run-up to the Iraqi War. A majority of Senate Democrats voted for Bush's go-to-war resolution -- including John Kerry, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton -- at least partly because the pollsters insisted that it was the only politically safe position, a ludicrous and self-destructive notion in hindsight.

The problem with a consultant-driven overreliance on polling data is that it is predicated on the assumption that nothing will happen to jar public opinion out of its current grooves. As Elaine Kamarck, a top advisor in the Clinton-Gore White House and a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, argued, "These guys [the consultants] just don't get it. They don't understand that in politics strength is better than weakness. And a political party that is always the namby-pamby 'me too' party is a party that isn't going to get anyplace." Molly Ivins wonders at the Democrats' seeming affection for this weakness:

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?
Leila Hessini gives it all a global perspective:

In 1973, the United States was part of a global trend to reform restrictive abortion laws that resulted in the unnecessary deaths and injuries of millions of women. After the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade secured the right to abortion, access to safe abortion care dramatically reduced maternal deaths and injuries. Despite this healthy trend, right-wing conservatives immediately began a crusade to undermine women's health and self-determination, promoting conservative ideology over public health interests and significantly limiting women's access to safe abortion services.

While things are bad in the United States, they are much worse globally. Nearly one-quarter of all adult women in developing countries suffer illness or injury related to pregnancy and childbirth. One hundred twenty million couples want to delay childbearing but do not have access to modern contraceptive methods. Many more lack access to essential obstetric care, which leads to 515,000 maternal deaths each year. And not coincidentally, approximately 70,000 women die each year due to unsafe abortions and millions more are temporarily or permanently disabled.

So how has the Bush administration shown compassion for these women? On his second day in office, President George W. Bush reinstated the global gag rule. It prohibits foreign nongovernmental organizations that receive U.S. funds for family planning from providing abortion services, including referrals, even when these activities are supported by their non-U.S. funds and are lawful under their own legal system. While freedom of expression remains a constitutional right in the United States, our foreign assistance is used as a vehicle to impose an ideological agenda that undermines that right around the world. Through the gag rule, the U.S. government is proclaiming that women outside the United States should not benefit from a right that American women, at least theoretically, enjoy.

While proponents of the gag rule maintain that its imposition is necessary to reduce the number of abortions, research shows that it accomplishes just the opposite.Jaye Ramsey Sutter at BlondSense pulls back the politically cinematic curtain:

Women are like the unsuspecting Janet Leigh in Psycho. Women think they are free to drive their own car, plan their own route, but they never anticipate that Norman Bates, armed with his butcher's knife, will work out his issues with women and their bodies on them. The ironic thing is women trusted that they had won the battle, secured their reproductive freedom and they could rest easy, sleep tight, that their rights, once gained, will remain. A happy ending with equality. They are surprised to learn that other plans had been made.

In the end, Molly says it best:

If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.Astroturfing "netroots" folks, take note.