comfortable in their jobs and don't want to rock the boat. Lobbyists have their ear. We are in an existential crisis as a democracy and can no longer listen to people opposing "radical" policies (Medicare for all, SCOTUS expansion, nationalization of key industries) and government reform, demanding "moderation" and "gradual" change, decrying everyone demanding justice and fairness as "radicals".
To quote William Lloyd Garrison who faced a previous existential threat to democracy in the form of slavery:
I am aware, that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hand of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.
The Democrats constant march to the "middle" (which has meant moving to the right, always to the right) has been going on for decades. We have repeatedly sold out our constituents in order to please the right and the imaginary "moderate" Republican voters whose votes they are worried about losing, despite the fact that such voters really no longer exist. John Oliver brilliantly exposed the idiocy of Chuck Schumer's decades long quest to serve these imaginary voters.
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We are in this mess because our leaders refused to take the threat on the right seriously for decades. They fell over themselves being polite and civil to "our colleagues" across the aisle, while those "colleagues" openly planned the destruction of representative democracy and everything the Democrats claim to stand for. They defended their actions as "real politik", and being "pragmatic", a word that whenever it is trotted out by Dem policymakers means some constituency is about to go under the train wheels (see "welfare reform", "tough on crime" policies, "bankruptcy reform", and many more "neo-liberal" policies).
How many times do those of us on the traditional left have to be proven correct about the end goal of US political right before we are listened to?
I can recall when
Bush v. Gore was handed down being dismissed by Dem party officials at a party event as "overreacting" when I paraphrased Kyle Reese from
The Terminator:
Listen, and understand! The GOP is out there! They can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop... ever, until we are dead!
For 26 years I have watched this country's inexorable march to fascist police state while party leaders denied reality. You will pardon me if I don't look favorably on those whose cowardice, cupidity, and borderline quisling/Vichy nature/attitude have lead us to ruin.
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