THE PARTY'S OVER - Sam Smith on the Demise of the Democrats

The Progressive Review ^ | 11/18/2002 | Sam Smith

[dirtboy]

Whatever you think about Sam Smith's political views as an old-school liberal, this is the best post-mortem on the Clinton Dems that I have seen yet.

[Keith]

yes....move farther left...repeat after me...moooooove leffffft.

Hahahahahahaha.

[facedown]

It still clings to Clinton like a abused spouse in denial and accepts other leadership that runs the gamut from the unappealing to the indefensible.

That they chose Nancy Pelosi over Harold Ford is very telling.

[Restorer]

It must jettison its self-defeating snobbism towards Americans who go to church or own a gun.

He hit the nail on the head with this one.

I have been continually astounded by the open derision of "ordinary" Americans by those who claim to represent them.

[jdege]

What he doesn't seem to notice are that:

1. While the DLC did it's best to move the party away from the fringes of lunacy where it's progressive wing had taken it, the first two years of the Clinton Presidency demonstrated clearly that the swing was more pretence than reality.

2. The New Deal and Great Society programs are being rolled-back because they have demonstrably failed.

3. That until the Democratic Grass-Roots wake up to the fact that their basic approach is contraindicated by reality, it doesn't much matter what the DLC does.

[Tacis]

He is right!! Thank God we have Pelosi, Streisand, Sharpton, Belafonte, Baldwin, Clift, the NYT, Schumer, Nadler, Leahy, Begala, and McAuliffe to lead us from the darkness back into the bright strong light. Praise be!!

[m1911]

Yeah Sam, it's the Republicans with the big money donors, not the Democrats

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

It has been said that the ancien regime in pre-revolutionary France was decadent in the extreme. One of the hallmarks of this decadence was the "salon society" in which political careers were made and broken by the not-so gentleladies of Paris of that era, who wielded enormous influence based on intrigues of the parlor and the bedroom. The film "Dangerous Liasons" documents this aspect of French society very well, I think.

What I find is ironic is that clinton came to the fore and was "selected" not "elected" in the salons of Washington, and chief among the madams was the well known high priced prostitute Pamela Harriman.

Doubly ironic (at least to me) is that "Salon" has been the liberal magazine that captured the Zeitgeist of the times.

Well, we all know what happened to the ancien regime and one can only hope that the same fate awaits the modern day equivalent of Louis XVI and his bride Marie.

[m1911]

Oh, maybe it's the individual donors?.

Guess not.

[ThePythonicCow]

but have left the country fully in the hands of the cruel, the selfish, the violent, the dumb, and the anti-democratic.

Is that us he's describing here, and Bush and the Republican party?

[m1911]

How about those evil "big businesses"?

[45Auto]

the discrediting in the public mind of such fundamental liberal programs as social security, economic policy, and public education.

One does not have to read any further than that statement. It is the near catastrophic failure (like public education; social security is not far behind on the road to total failure) of these very programs which is at the heart of the public distrust of the rotten RATS who created the seeds of this mess in the first place. The author has got the 'cart before the horse', his argument is entirely backwards.

And I don't think his analyses of the demise of the RAT party is accurate at all. The party has been drifting steadily to the left for the last 60 years; Clinton fooled only the gullible into thinking he was a 'centrist' or a 'moderate'. The man is a died-in-the-wool Marxist wearing a thicker disguise. It may that the RATs have finally drifted too far toward communism, and that the failure of this 'policy' had become obvious to the 'public', a public which has gotten wise to the absolute contempt that the RATs hold for it. The contempt held by the author of this piece for the 'public' is palpable.

[m1911]

Well certainly the lowest fund-raisers are democrats, right? Uh oh.

[Little Bill]

Sam is a commie and a very, very good writer. I was a regular on his web site during the 'Toon years, he was one of the few leftists that saw the Bent One for what he was and is.

[The Wizard]

he is absolutely correct

[Leisler]

They aren’t snobbish to people who go to the correct church. If it is liberation theology man-boy love Catholic, good. If it is hide the money, race baiting, black capo to blacks church, good. If it is hate Israel eat bacon Temple, good. If it is Universalist/Unitarian “let's swap wives” and acknowledge Gaia type Protestants church good. All others bad.

They aren’t snobbish about guns either. All their private bodyguards have them and low and behold they got their personal carry permits no problem.

[ThePythonicCow]

The man is a died-in-the-wool Marxist

My take is that it is Hillary who is the died-in-the-wool Marxist, and Bill is a died-in-the-wool philanderer, thief, charlatan, con-artist.

[SBprone]

Sam is a commie and a very, very good writer. I was a regular on his web site during the 'Toon years, he was one of the few leftists that saw the Bent One for what he was and is.

I appreciate his take. He is very perceptive for a commie.

[Monk Dimittis]

He is right!! Thank God Gaia we have Pelosi, Streisand, Sharpton, Belafonte, Baldwin, Clift, the NYT, Schumer, Nadler, Leahy, Begala, and McAuliffe to lead us from the darkness back into the bright strong light. Praise be!!