Is the Democratic "Big Tent" too big?

One amazing consequence of this long primary season has been the internal debate about the ultimate direction that the party should take.

There is the progressive wing that want to return the party to the little people through grass roots organizing, with an activist, energized base. Generally socially liberal and anti corporate. Advocates the 50 state strategy.

There is the corporate DLC wing that, for better or worse, advocate more, "Republican Lite" policies for lack of a better word. Like global free trade, and advocate the 50+1% strategy.

There is the blue dog conservative wing that supports, in general, fewer restrictions on firearms, conservative social policies, a little more hawkish on foreign policy matters.

On one side, there are the GLBT civil rights, amongst others, and then there are others that advocate "Don't ask, don't tell" and the DOMA. How, as a party do we ultimately settle this?

edit for poor grammar.

and growing. I think the same can be said the the Democratic Party

I was just interested in what others thought, given some of the rancor in here.

comparitively speaking that is. The Party is still young, almost still in infancy. I you have to learn to crawl before you can walk, then I think the Party is still learning to crawl.

considering the topic!:evilgrin:

You don't negotiate with cancer. You don't give cancer the VP spot on the ticket. You don't appease it.

You kill it. Cut it out. Radiate it. Some people even flood their bodies with poison. I'd say we've had the national equivalent of chemo this decade. Unfortunately, like all chemo, it damages the good as well as the bad. But we can recover, if we end this now.

There are those that claim it was the savior of the democratic party in the '90's.

There's square pegs, and then there's round holes, and it seems to me anyway, that both parties have the same issues.

I've been saying for a while that the Republicans have been the most ripe for a split idealogically. The unholy alliance of the Reagan Revolution doesn't really make sense. Now that the religious conservative movement is faltering it seems like those folks who are actual Christian conservatives should split. These people have a real social justice component to their beliefs and should logically be joining with progressive democrats to make that agenda happen.

in reclaiming the party.

should be disbanded and the Democratic Party allowed to split into two or three parties spanning the center-left to the center-right.

The admission criteria are a bit to vague,

it is called leadership, and there has been almost none of it in the party for 30 years.

Define what it means to be a Democrat and ask people to make the necessary sacrifices to accomplish what's right for America. Do that and there will be plenty of people to fill that tent -- WITH A PURPOSE.

This is what Obama is doing. 70% of Americans agree with progressive policies across the board, even if they don't know that's what they are. Leadership gets people to really commit to what they are already feeling in their guts.

Not a closed tent, but also not open to people who don't really believe in the core progressive principles either.

When the tent allows the DLC types in, all that does is tell the outsiders that there are no principles inside, so why should they join with us?

powerful people in the Party that align with them.

Is to start actively targeting these officeholders in their primaries, one at a time, until they're gone.

to be a perpetual minority party? It's getting to be that way - thankfully.

It's the balance of power I'm guarding against - not the size of membership. Most of us are still progressive, and our platform should reflect that as much as possible (while still holding a majority). What I hate is all of the backflips we think we have to do just to tip the 51/49 scales. We don't. We need to be more confident and not let the sellouts make the decisions for us. It'll pay off, if we can ever commit to that, without picking-off and/or marginalizing our leaders that stand for a bold, progressive platform.

If you really don't like so many people in the party, maybe you should be blaming the winner-take-all format that makes possible the two-party duopoly on power.

I don't mind having conservative Dems in the party and I don't mind DLCers. They're voices should be hear just as loudly as mine. That's not our problem.

Our problem is that the blue dogs and the DLCers have marginalized progressives to the point where we don't feel we belong in the party at all anymore. Where is our voice? Where is our agenda being heard? Despite the hype, Obama is no progressive and Hillary doesn't come close. The candidates who represent us (Edwards, Dean, Kucinich) are ridiculed and pushed to the sidelines by the media and the well financed DLCers.

So no, the tent isn't too big, it's just not filled with people who represent a lot of us.

We need to either make the tent smaller, or kick some of the others out to bring balance back to the party. I think a lot of it comes from the "conservative" or DLC dems thinking we need to be more like republicans in order to win, when we really need a progressive, populist, agenda. That would really bring us the numbers we need to ram through our policies.

I'm fine with DLCers and blue dogs, I just want my voice heard as well but right now it isn't. How often do you hear single payer health care come up in debate? When was the last time you heard a candidate say they were for the decriminalization of marijuana? Why are we debating whether tax cuts to the ultra wealthy should be made permanent when we should be talking about whether to provide more incentives to the working class and the permanent underclass?

The progressive agenda isn't even on the map in this country yet many, if not most, people actually support our views.

You see, the question isn't whether we should allow the DLC and blue dogs into the tent, it's whether there's any hope of them ever letting us past the turnstiles.

60-70% of the public supports all of the traditional positions of the party on issues of power and economics, but that has been occluded by the "culture wars." It is because of the culture war issues that these big tent-small tent discussions even occur. There is a faction in the party that is always seeking to purge people on the culture war issues, or those deemed "too far left." They want to make the party into a Republican party on the true political issues of power and economics, and battle it out with the "morans" on culture war issues. Since that is all about personal positions and stances, it becomes more of a religious movement than a political movement, and people talk about it as though we were trying to convert true believers and eliminate heretics.

The tent is not big enough, but that is because the party does not have a solid foundation of political principle to stand on anymore, and because a dominant faction within the party sees the party as a spiritual rather than political movement. I suspect that we are witnessing the last gasp effort of that faction, and will soon see the collapse of their movement. It cannot come soon enough, in my opinion.