Dems may lose, just as Labour Party has - betray your base and lose!

http://www.therespectparty.net/breakingnews.php?id=618

"The historic scale of Labour's defeat at the ballot box is evidence of the deep betrayal felt by those who once voted Labour in the hope of a fairer society. The depth of disillusionment with the mainstream parties is underlined by the shocking breakthrough made by the BNP.
Labour is wholly to blame for its own crisis and has to take a large share of the responsibility for creating the conditions in which the far right is growing.

Labour loosened the rules that gave licence to greedy bankers to gamble away our jobs and homes. Labour failed to protect our public services from wasteful and costly privatisation. Labour has overseen growing inequality and a chronic shortage of affordable housing. And Labour failed to tackle the scandal of MP's expenses."


Not that the corporate Dems will heed the warning, I'm just saying...

It may be uncomfortable, but it's true.

and who embrace corporate rule. I'd like to see a third party, but I don't see any out there. If someone's thinking about it, now's their chance. I don't even know of a person, nevermind a party, that could inspire the masses.

Just bullshit -- but not surprising.

with your articulate, well thought out, responses!

if our Democrats keep going the way they are , they have lost me.

Enough is enough. The GOP is still leading all the talking points. Promises made by Dems are not being kept, and the next election is closer than they think.

If ever there were a time for Dems to put their foot down, and call out the GOP, THIS IS IT!

Huge unemployment, an economy in the toilet, two wars, GOP approval tanking...when is there a better time to be a Democrat?

Get the lead out, guys. Quit being a door mat for the Republicans...if you don't, they'll be back before you know it.

You can't run on Change We Can Beleive In and then institute fundamentally a corporate plan.

things that I (and perhaps others in the base) would not agree with. On other issues such as health care it's too early to tell. He has laid out the principles he wants and now we will see what happens. If the polls are to be believed most Democrats still strongly support Obama. Besides Clinton supposedly "betrayed the base" with NAFTA & Welfare reform and he had no problem being renominated in a democratic primary without any real opposition and in the general election. I think Obama is at least as liberal as Clinton if not more so.

Labour got re-elected the first couple of times, too, because people still had bad memories of the Tory years.

But Labour made two huge mistakes:

1. In an effort to placate "moderate" voters, they failed to undo the damage that the Tories had done with their privatization schemes.

2. They added their own unpopular policies: increased surveillance in public places, a proposal to require national ID cards, participation in the Iraq War, allowing unrestricted access to Britain by East European "guest workers" (no other Western European country did this), which drove down wages and reduced the number of jobs available to working class Britons... The list goes on.

The two situations are not entirely comparable, because the UK has a parliamentary system, so lots of options for protest votes.

Be like Cindy Sheehan campaigning for McCain because she felt betrayed by the Democrat Party.

Giving the other side the advantage.

That is, if there really is more than one side. Which looks doubtful these days.

If the Conservative vote remained static while the Labor vote decreased, I can see your point but if there was an increase in the Conservative vote, then where did those extra votes come from? Most likely from prior Labor voters.

and speculating on what will probably happen here in the next couple of elections.

I haven't followed the UK situation enough to have an opinion on that.

Newsflash: 95% of Democrats approve of the job Obama and company are doing. The DUers you see griping are the micro-fringe minority.

if you lose the swing voters it's all over..

From a poll I've seen and I'll have to look for it again to provide a link to, the largest segment of Dems consider themselves to be moderates, the next largest group were liberals and the smallest group considered themselves to be conservative.

The largest voting block is the independents. You don't get them by turning left. You lose the independents and you lose the election.

Those who stay home because they didn't get their bennies the last for years are why we could lose.

and i'm pretty much done voting for Dems to block the repubs. i suspect a lot of progressive indys feel the same.

There is nothing noble about making a stand and getting repubs for your efforts.

i'm not going to have the finger of blame leveled at me. i've done my part to get dems elected. what have the dems done for the progressive community, aside from chuck them under the bus?

the mealy mouthed dems just pretend they're a little different than the repubs.

Most people, in America, don't give a shit about ideology. They are basically pragmatists who vote based on their personal well-being or lack of it.

McCain lost because he only offered more of the same of the failed presidency of Bush and the Republicans.

Now, Obama and the Democrats are offering a sort of "less of the same" or "not as bad" policies from Afghanistan to the economy to health care. If they fail the electorate will turn on them on a dime.

The general ideological skew here is far more to the left than your average Democrat. The Ds are, and always have been, a moderate party for moderate folk.