Andrew Golis

so, the oh-so-dramatic (sarcasm emphasized) fight for the “soul” of the democratic party is underway. Should the whole party go to church? Should we move to Canada? Should we be the party of peace, love and smokin’ pot or the party of middle-American values like latent homophobia and racism? Oh, the choices!

I’m not going to make my case for what I think needs to be done, but I’ll observe a few things that seem clear from this “debate” and the very fact that it needs to occur at all:

1. Democrats are a bunch of wimps. We wouldn’t be in this position if we’d just suck it up and say “this is what we stand for,” regardless of where that stance is on the political spectrum. The problem wasn’t that Al Gore or John Kerry were too liberal or too moderate or blah, blah, blah, it’s that they weren’t clearly either! I’m telling you, it’s not always what you stand for, it’s that you stand for it.

2. Democrats are self-important whiners. We enjoy this. That’s right, I don’t think that there is anything that some liberals (and I mean the general ideology, not the left wing of the party) enjoy more than this self-absorbed reflection about what we think. I mean, good lord, figure it out and move on!

3. Democratic leaders are weak. Yes, parties are always going to have infighting and yes, part of the whole issue at hand is choosing leadership. But politics is supposed to be ABOUT leadership. The fact that there isn’t someone charismatic enough and smart to rise to the top and say “hey, we’ve got to do this now or we’re going to lose” does not bode well for our party. This void of talent is, in my opinion, the only reason John Edwards still may have a career ahead of him.

That’s all I’ve got for now, what do you think?

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 2nd, 2005 at 7:47 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.