{"id":972,"date":"2006-01-19T07:10:06","date_gmt":"2006-01-19T07:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:32","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:32","slug":"switch_or_not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=972","title":{"rendered":"Switch – Or Not"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commenter Andy suggests<\/a> that I pack my bags and head for the door between the Democratic Party and the GOP.<\/p>\n

So the only conclusion I think you can come to after this little therapy session is that you should seriously consider a trial separation from the party, or maybe even a divorce.<\/p>\n

\nI’m sure most self-respecting Democrats would agree that it would be in everyone’s best interest.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s amusing, because I get parallel pressure from the right…at a dinner with Cobb<\/a>, after we’d talked politics and I’d laid out my plan to rebuild the Democratic Party, and explained why I thought it needed rebuilding, he laughed and said it’d never happen. <\/p>\n

“Switch,”<\/i> he suggested.<\/p>\n

“The last time a large black man suggested that to me,”<\/i> I replied, “I think he had something completely different in mind.”<\/i><\/p>\n

Fortunately, Cobb has a sense of humor.<\/p>\n

Why not switch? Because the powerful already have plenty of advocates. Because I like clean air and gay marriage. Because I want taxes to be as progressive as is fiscally sound. We need two parties, and the tension that ought to bring. We need a party of business and one of labor; of responsibility and of charity; of growth and of restraint. I like business, responsibility and growth. But my heart is in labor, charity, and restraint.<\/p>\n

Right now we have instead is a party of the large corporations, and one of the universities and public-sector labor unions. Mostly we have two cliques of corrupt courtiers, where we ought to have parties, each elbowing hard to get closer to the trough. Jack Abramoff may have been a Republican through and through, but he’s an archetype, not an exception.<\/p>\n

Viscerally, I’m a Democrat, albeit an increasingly disenchanted one. Today, as in 2004, I’m a single-issue voter. I’m all about avoiding nuclear war in the Middle East, and as frustrated as I am with the current Administration for their performance on reconstruction, for failing to build the military – we need another 75,000 troops, and for failing to engage the American and world public in support of the war – I look across the aisle and see who, exactly?<\/p>\n

The Democrats need to come to terms with some kind of national security policy, and I certainly don’t see it happening in the netroots…take a look at the comment thread on this sensible post by Kevin Drum<\/a>. And note that LGF has comments that are effectively as looney, so don’t get all full of yourselves.<\/p>\n

I see a big part of my role as whacking them with a stick while enough more prominent people work to create policies that make some sense in this arena.<\/p>\n

The next biggest part of my role is to try and remind people that being a populist means being for the poor, not for the welfare department employees; for the students, not for the teachers; for the small businessman, not the large corporation. <\/p>\n

There are a helluva lot of people who think like I do; we’re the swing vote in many elections. We’re the reason why Perot was a factor, why Ventura was elected, why Schwarzenegger was elected. We haven’t found a home yet, or leaders, but we will.<\/p>\n

I’d like that home to be in the Democratic Party. The Democrats better hope it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed Liberal gets asked to switch all the time. So far, he’s stayed a straight Democrat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}