Lot of posts today about purity. Now it's time for a poll:

Today we have a lot of vocal opponents and proponents of the idea that it's important to drive out impure Democrats from the party by challenging them in primaries and criticizing them relentlessly, even when there isn't a Democrat with a chance of winning waiting in the wings.

Proponents say it's depressing and damaging to the Democratic party to have to see too much diversity of opinion on the critical issues. Opponents say that it's more important to win -- that it's better to have Daschle than the Republican who beat him, and that it's better to have Lieberman than a Republican.

So, here's the poll:

constituency - by the PERSON, not by the DOLLAR - than a DINO sellout.

just about any Democrat over just about any Republican at this historical moment.

And that's what we're really talking about here. Like I said elsewhere today, Daschle is gone and in his place is a very conservative Republican in a senate that isn't for from beign filibuster proof for the Republicans.

When there are 62 Democrats in the Senate, then maybe we can start talking about dumping Biden and Lieberman without any regard for whether they're replaced by a Democrat or a Republican.

.

It seems to me that Biden really showed that he is pro-Delaware with his votes on the Bankruptcy bill.

Now I think the bill is heinous, but (1) I'm not from Delaware and (2) it is like expecting a Senator from Iowa voting to bann ethanol and (3 disclaimer) I have been a Biden fan for many, many years.

I think that we should not expect Senators or Representatives to abandon the constituents that elected them.

I don't understand the anger with Senators who vote for pork for their own state. This is what we expect them to do, and this is how they keep jobs in their states.

to the banks and credit card companies. It is not a small thing. If Democrats cannot stand up for economic justice, they are "Democrats in Name Only" and not deserving to be called Democrats.

We must, at the very least, voice our extreme disappointment in their cloture votes.

...replace those Dems with a Republican.

And I don't see the route to getting the money out of politics that paid for those votes going through replacing any of those Dems with Republicans.

And I wouldn't care so much except that I saw Daschle get absolutely defamed here on DU, and now he's gone, replaced by a RW'er.

I've written all 14 AND Sen. Reid and Sen. Durbin, and I've expressed both my displeasure and dismay about the cloture vote. I didn't call any of the 16 'DINO', however.

:hi:

Impurity's what I want. The more, the better. Unitmigated venality, mendaciousness and viciousness make the world go round. Politics is purely about power. It's about winning...and it's about making your enemies lick your boots.

I like my politicians the way I like my food, water, and air -- filthy and corrupt.

And if we have the power, we can take our agenda and cram it down their throats. Without the power, all we can do is whinge, cry and whine about purity!!!

Let's grab the power first, then worry about the agenda.

Even a dead Democrat is preferable to a live Republican (John Asscroft learned that lesson!).

if given a choice between a republican and a Democrat who believes the best way to "win" is to encroach as far as possible into republican ideas, there is no choice ... well, that's not really true, is it?

there's a Hobson's choice ...

polls like this are as divisive as those the poll seeks to criticize ... thanks for nothing ...

...issue in which you're actively participating.

I just wanted to see how the audience digesting the debates in those other threads were being influenced by the arguments.

yes, i am actively participating in other threads by calling for an open, democratic process ... are you suggesting that my position is divisive or just the threads themselves?

and regardless, whether i myself have been divisive is hardly a defense for your being so ... at best, it would make me a hypocrite ... all day (year?) long i've been arguing that the Party needs massive reform ... polls like this one are totally alienating ... no one wants to hear your binary vision to the exclusion of honoring their deeply held beliefs ... your poll will do nothing to convince these people to stay with the Party and fight for Democrats ...

the Democratic Party has pissed off the left, they've lost thousands and thousands of enrolled voters (at least in Massachusetts where i live) and there are millions of voters who no longer vote at all ... if it's divisive to say Party insiders are totally screwed up because they have not opened up the Party to ALL Democrats then i'm guilty as charged ...

Absolute agreement, but not all of those millions belonged to the LEFT wing of our party. "Reagan Democats" ring a bell? We need to become MORE inclusive, not less so--- just as we were when we were the majority party in this country.

:hi:

there you go ... see, i agree, we should be more inclusive ... and you don't achieve that by handpicking candidates ... do you??

you become more inclusive by having an open and competitive primary process where all candidates, at least theoretically, have an equal chance to be heard and put their ideas before primary voters ... and that goes for the party's platform too ... we need to start asking people why they aren't voting ... we need to start asking people why they aren't registered Democrats ... we need to open up the party and invite those who feel alienated by how the party has been doing business to participate ...

you're saying all the right things but endorsing an action that does just the opposite ...

I cut my teeth on Chicago ward politics, and virtually every office has an 'endorsed' candidate; you are quite free to oppose that candidate in the primary, and you are quite free to oppose your committeeman/-woman at the next election. Not infrequently do 'unendorsed' candidates win, and you wanna know something? At the next election they are very likely to become the 'endorsed' candidate.

No one said politics was a bed of roses. If he wants to be the challenger, then best of luck to him--- but spare me the violins and sad music, OK?

:shrug:

i believe the lyric is: "if you don't like my peaches, why'd you shake my tree" ...

if you don't like the tune i'm playing, you're not required to read nor respond to my posts ... but i'll play whatever tunes i like, thank you ...

The world is not black and white, this or that, either-or. That's total bullshit.

When someone like Biden and a few others cross over to the dark side to vote in an atrocity like this bankruptcy bill that's on the floor now, I think a strong message should be sent to Biden and some others.

If we want to keep Biden, then what we could do is threaten to run an opponent against him. If he does not mend his way, then more stringent measures will have to be applied as well such as a "name-and-shame" campaign against him.

If name-and-shame with threats don't work, then it's about time we seriously search for an uncompromised progressive who actually has a chance against the incumbent and RUN HIM. Of course, this would be the last resort.

The point is there are ways to twist the arms of senators and representatives who may go out of line without having to resort to challenging them and perhaps booting them.

...debate that is going on in Padraig's post and a couple others today.

And your "let's run a candidate" strategy sounds nice, but what usually happens, I suspect, is much more like what happened in SD. Democrats convince other Democrats that the most liberal person with a chance of winning isn't worth the effort, so the conservative wins.

I'm so dreaming that more liberal Democrats than Biden and Lieberman win races in their states and that money leaves politics so that even good Dems like Barney Frank, Clinton and Schumer can be the 100% decent liberals that I know they really could be if they didn't have to rely on corporate money to stay in office.

But I'm not dreaming about any of those candidates losing to less liberal candidates just so they can learn a lesson about purity.

That was the point of my post. As I said, there are ways to keep them in line without explicitly challenging their seat of power such as a "name-and-shame" campaign. Frankly, there's a helluva lot of folks in the Senate who need it and need it badly.

voices are heard in the MSM.

So, what's going to stop them is some combination of big donations from small people, campaign finance reform, and some kind of injection of the people's voice into the MSM.

If Schumer and Clinton didn't have to worry that the MSM and Wall St were going to cut their oxygen off, they could vote the way I'd vote if I were a Senator 100% of the time.

You'd think that during the greatest days of the Democratic Party within the last 50 years, someone somewhere would have thought it a good idea to have publically financed federal campaigns with a ban on outside money. No, no such reform ever got through. It's a shame.

their interests and call them patsies. Then when someone in our Party who is a long term hawk on Israel or a long term fiscal conservative votes in a way we do not like... we go ape****.

You either have a big tent party and know that you will absolutely not get everything you want - but you'll get what you need, or you vote Repuke and get what the elites want.

and too many Democrats are abandoning the basic idea of protecting the little guy from abuse. I don't want (some of) these people out of office, but I do want them to SHAPE UP and that will only happen if their base raises hell and they realize they might lose votes if they don't shape up.

There are too many who have been saying one thing on the campaign trail to the base, then doing the opposite in votes. I'm actually easier on the ones who fess up to their beliefs and still get elected than I am on the ones who act like big Dems on the trail, then don't stick with the party when it comes to protecting average Americans.

This bankruptcy issue and the class action bill are CLASSIC big business vs average American and I am damned tired of Democrats not sticking together to protect the little guy. Protecting average Americans from abuse is supposed to be a fundamental tenet of our party.

The people I get really ticked at are Democrats from bright BLUE states who don't stick with us. I cut the people from red states and purple states more slack.

I think they're sick of the sissies.

Even here on DU, people for the most part aren't looking for "purity," or a hardcore liberal. They're just looking for someone who's willing to stand up for what's right.

They don't want Democratic apologists.

I will support any candidate, regardless of party label, that supports the issues I care about. Period!

but who knows - it would be a risk - a risk that a moderate Republican could beat a lesser know Democrat.

But I sort of think a moderate Republican is what Lieberman is anyway.

Bottom line - I always thought Dashcle fought well for us and a lot of people around here beat the c__p out of him for petty and often illogical reasons.

I would hope that liberalism can win the day in most cases - but I'm overall against ideological purity.

I find myself quite irritated by Hillary lately - her "every abortion a tragedy" remark really ticked me - but I also think she is simply positioning to win the general election and at the bottom of my heart believe she would do right by Democrats if she were president.

I do think she is acting as if she has already won the primary - either she is overconfident or we(DUers) are underestimating her - I don't know.

god I can't stand that it theoretically takes this sort of centrist move (that Hillary is making) to win the presidency.

So - no I'm against purity and am really tired of the slams against more moderate dems - but I still enjoy fire breathing liberals (like Johnny Reid) the most - and think that the energy created by a charismatic Democrat - like Edwards or Dean - is more important long term than a few centrist seats.

Democrats are so far in the hole these days that it will take a paradigm shift - a sea change of some sort - to turn things around.

Huh?

Voted aye on IWR

Voted aye on Patriot Act

If that's liberal, what's a conservative?

n/t

Attacking Clark supporters is a dodge.

It seems to me that for Clark supporters, Edwards will never pass their IWV test. As for his vote, well I'm still not convinced that the vote itself was a bad thing. They gave the president a big stick to shake - and unfortunately Bush chose to start beating people with the stick rather than swing it around to get UN results. I do not blame either Kerry or Edwards for this. A better president would has used his power more wisely.

Likewise on purity, many may always think of Clark as a pro-free trader who said good things about the Bush admin a year before he (Clark) ran for office - couldn't decide which party he wanted to be in - and thererfore he won't pass the "core dem values" purity test. That Clark doesn't have a voting record makes his purity more flexible - but he still has his words - which have been all over the place.

Look - I campaigned for Edwards but my husband and I donated to Clark as well (and the letter Clark sent out thanking is almost framable - a nice touch by his campaign:). We donated to Clark not based on purity but on pragmatism (the title "General" seemed helpful in the 2004 election) - as for core Dem values, I was prepared to give Clark the benefit of the doubt on purity - but it was hard to swallow. But guess what - no politician passes every purity test - and we all can be quite selective about our purity tests.

I really think it's going to be Hillary/Richardson, or maybe Hillary/Warner (Horrible of me to sound so defeatist so early - where is my Edwards optimism now?) and all of our petty squabbling and purity tests won't amount to a hill of beans come the general election.

We will both have a huge, stick in the throat, purity test pill to swallow before getting behind Hillary for 2008.

...democracy, and running for a national office is the biggest sample size there is in America, and a statewide office is the second biggest.

You're just not going to find people who can win, say, a city council seat in Cambridge who can also win statewide and national races.

I certainly know what I believe in, but I doubt that 50%+1 of Americans feel the way I do about a big enough set of issues that my ideal politician could win national and state elections.

And I know that the best I can hope for is a politician who believes in almost everything I believe in but doesn't look that way to most Americans. But when you have candidates who don't look exactly like what they believe in, the problem is that a lot of progressives don't see what's really going on! (For example, people thought flat tax enthusiast Jerry Brown and anti-Keynesian Paul Tsongas were more liberal than Clinton becuase, uh, one was a hippy from CA and the other was a nebbish NE'er?!?!)

AP, with those questions, you could apply for a job with Gallup! LOL!

We can win by keeping our values, and demanding lockstep is something the GOP does. We have to stand firm on our core principles, but not require goosestepping on the part of our people. If we control Congress, then we won't have to worry about losing people due to compromise.

But I'm a moderate Democrat, but I regularly vote for liberal Democrats with whom I disagree on some issues.