Why Im Quitting The Democrats
By Allen Snyder
I suppose Ive been a left-leaning moderate Democrat all my life. Since my earliest political memories are of break-ins, bugs, John Dean, and a crooked Republican president resigning in disgrace on national television (for the ill-informed, that would be Richard Nixon in 74), I quickly learned to watch my step around the GOP.
And when I later saw millions of nitwits vote twice for a guy who was so clueless and dangerous, all because he made them feel better about themselves (Ronald Reagan in 80 and 84), it made me want to make a giant martini, tie an olive around my neck, and sink straight to the bottom. So thats what I did from 84 to 91.
Its not that I love Democrats, think theyre all wonderful, worship at the sacred altar of FDR, or believe their leadership is the panacea for all that ails America. Rather, theres always this sense they cared about other people as well as Americas important place in the complex and ever-growing world community. Sure, the Dems are crooked, too, but theirs seemed a benign corruption. At least they rooted for the underdog, the little guy, the worker, the poor, the minority. They embraced cooperation, fairness, compromise, peace, and progress. Sadly, its been these very commitments that have left Democrats eating three squares a day of hot self-righteous Republican political dust for just over a decade now.
This belief in Democratic ideals has lately exposed itself to me like a wrinkled old flasher in a Columbo-style trench coat; flaccid, floppy, useless, and not a little offensive and embarrassing. While this last election should have clued them in to what Ive suspected for years (that theyve been pissing on my leg and telling me its liberal rain), Democrats have instead decided the lesson of 04 was were leaning way too far to the left. So desperate are they not to alienate the remaining 77 swing voters, theyve morphed into Republican Lite.
In a misguided effort to attract only marginally brain-dead and only partially propagandized conservatives or moderates away from the Jim Jones-like Cult O Christian War and Tax Cuts that is BushCo, theyre increasingly spouting religious and culture war gibberish, while remaining shamefully mute as GOP thugs literally get away with mass murder in Iraq and re-election fraud here at home. They even selected an abortion anti-choicer to replace recent loser Tom Daschle as Minority Leader.
It was bad enough in 2000 when no Democratic Senator had the balls to take the back of the Congressional Black Caucus in denouncing the election scam in Florida (painfully well-documented in Michael Moores Fahrenheit 9/11). But it was positively horrifying to hear Democratic Vice-Presidential loser John Edwards say Democrats shouldve talked more about moral values and more loudly professed their undying faith in God during this last election (and then the difference between you guys and the Repugs would then have been what? Better hair? Whiter smiles?).
Their most dreadful act was when, after spending months assuring me and the other Democratic faithful that we wont give up till all the votes are counted, John Kerry almost immediately whimpered out a concession, inexplicably called for healing, and slunk away with his tail between his legs, leaving Democratic mouths all over the country gaping in shock. I can still taste the betrayal. Tastes like
defeat.
The Democratic Party has thus become the most unlikely enabler of an Administration so addicted to power and force, so corrupted and driven by insatiable greed, and so committed to ending modern two-party American democracy, that it no longer feels the need to keep any of its abhorrent policies under the radar. Since their perceived mandate precludes both subtlety and accountability, theyre pushing ahead with their painful agenda to the chagrin of all who love freedom.
Anybody suitably informed by non-American news knows how morally depraved BushCo really is, but it would be immense folly to expect that the ever-more-conservative mainstream US corporate media will put down its pom-poms, megaphones, and ratings reports long enough to tell us about it. Theyre too busy creating the Mother of All Media Ironies feigning outrage and indignation over voter fraud in Ukraine while giving their own countrys widespread reports of voting irregularities little, if any, notice.
So while the Repugs maneuver in Congress to keep criminals like Tom DeLay in office or end Democratic filibusters thus ensuring their judicial appointments are duly rubber-stamped and sent off to subvert the Constitution, well all be getting the royal BushCo shaft. Our jobs will continue sailing overseas, the tax burden will shift even more from rich to middle class, wronged consumers will be prevented from suing in court, and our sons and daughters will die daily for nothing in the endless, but politically necessary, war on terror. There is little hope that meek, spineless, and apparently scared-shitless Democrats will do anything but lie nice and still while this conservative juggernaut of incompetence, fear, violence, and fascism rolls right over them.
Given Democratic complacency, maybe its not me whos quitting the Democrats after all, but they who quit me.
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Allen Snyder can be reached at asnyder111@hotmail.com This article is copyright by Allen Snyder and originally published by opednews.com but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.
