Wingers, Fringers, and the rest of us
: There’s a lot of interesting followup discussion to my post yesterday about close-, clubby liberals trying to lock out fellow liberals they don’t like… like me.
They are trying to create a club that gets ever smaller as they reject more people who disagree with them about one of their fervently held beliefs or who don’t hate the other side fervently enough to meet their standards. The club soon makes them and no one else happy.
They think the club is the Democratic Party. They think they took it over in the last election. In fact, they lost the last election for us.
It is time for more mature politicians — see Bill Keller’s definition of politiican here — to take charge.
In the meantime, while the Wingers on one edge and the Fringers on the other edge spit and piss on each other, the rest of us — most of us — are left in the middle wondering where to turn.
See lots of discussion in the comments below. And see these posts from my PubSub egofeed, too. First from Fred Wilson a card-carrying (and checkbook-carrying and megaphone-carrying) liberal. He says that he and I disagreed only about the Iraq war; he affirms my liberal credentials and then says:
The war in Iraq needs to be buried in the past. It’s over as a politcal issue. The left lost that one. There are bigger battles to fight like fiscal responsibility, a sound social security system, a woman’s right to choose, etc. That’s where my left leaning politics are strongest and its where the majority of the country agrees with the Democrats.
I wrote several weeks ago that the left needs to focus on Social Pragmatism and Fiscal Conservatism. That’s a winning proposition. Opposition to the war in Iraq is not.
: Scared Monkeys says:
This is the death nell for the Democrats. The Kos wing has taken over the party and they will turn the Jarvis
