Is 2012 shaping up as yet another year when liberal Democrats will teach their party “a lesson,” sit on their hands and help elect a Republican President?
These little lessons haven’t worked out too well for Democrats. It cost them a Supreme Court majority, a like-minded bureaucracy, control of the national dialogue and the shaping of key national political assumptions. Liberal Democrats bitterly complain about what GOPers are doing when they themselves often help gift Republicans power.
You need look no further to where the Democratic left’s trajectory has led than to its running away from the word “liberal” to the word “progressive.” Not even in the darkest days of Republican Barry Goldwater’s landslide 1964 defeat did you see conservatives flee “conservative.” Progressive is to liberal what “pre-owned cars” is to “used cars.”
Democrats staying home or voting for third parties cost the party the presidency in 1968, 1980, 2000, 2004 and control of the House in 2010. Amid news reports about the closed-minded, ideological view of many on the Republican right it’s important to note that the Democratic left sometimes veers in the same politically punitive direction.
Two personal experiences with the Democratic left were most telling to this independent voter.
While attending Colgate University I supported the war in Vietnam (until Richard Nixon invaded Cambodia), criticized flag-burning and believed in showing the flag. I let my sentiments be known in a Political Science class and one day the professor said: “The Nazis – in all deference to Mr. Gandelman – liked to wave the flag.” Even students who didn’t agree with me were shocked and he later apologized. I was taken aback at being demonized by someone so intelligent.
Several years ago I got invited on a local Air America talk show by a host who insisted he wanted a moderate’s view. Once I got on the air he sneeringly noted that I had been a staff reporter on the San Diego Union, which had conservative editorials but a totally separate news reporting operation. He asked me how anyone could be a real moderate. Each time I tried to answer he and his producer loudly talked over me saying things such as “A moderate cup of coffee…A moderate case of AIDS…A moderate case of cancer.”
They abruptly hung up after implying I was right winger disguised as a moderate since I wasn’t a Democratic Party liberal.
At the Netroots Nation conference liberal bloggers said Barack Obama wasn’t liberal enough.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.