October 14, 2010
THE IDEOLOGUE'S DILEMMA:
Herding Donkeys: Are the Democrats a party in desperate need of an ideology? (Justin Moyer, October 13, 2010, CS Monitor)
[I]n 2010, what Howard Dean called “the Democratic wing of the Democratic party” faces quite the syrupy dilemma. Inspired by a campaign that bridged timeworn ideological divides to try to win every state in the union, leftists ordered up a consensus to elect Barack Obama in 2008 and expand the Democratic Party. Now, they must govern with conservative Democrats-in-name-only who surrendered health care’s public option, oppose gay marriage, and recoil at the mere sight of House Leader Nancy Pelosi. Meanwhile, a candidate who seemed very liberal turned out to be a president who’s frustratingly moderate.“What was the point of having a Democratic congressman in Idaho or Western North Carolina ... if that person simply opposed whatever the most popular Democratic president in a generation proposed?” asks Nation contributor Ari Berman in Herding Donkeys, a nostalgic, often angry, look back at the past six years of Democratic electioneering. “[H]ad Obama been co-opted by the very forces he promised to fight during his campaign?"
The only way to expand the Democratic Party--like the Labour Party--is to make it the Third Way party when the conservative party temporarily abandons the field. But that means repudiating everything the base believes in. So they're stuck with the intense psychological conflict over whether the mere opportunity to exercise of power is worth advancing the opponents' causes with that power.
