Your little rant about people throwing their hands up at the FIRST sign of difficulty is pure BS. I'm at least as old as you so we are talking about decades.

When we get our message out people like you, the establishment of the Democratic Party, tell us to sit down and STFU because we are damaging the party by not adapting to loving the corporate, right wing, so called  mainstream agenda that the party has adopted. Just in case you have forgotten that exact message of the left is damaging the party is what started this entire thread.

What I can't abide is people who continue to blame the voters for the Democratic Party's deficiencies. You establishment Dems have managed to turn off an entire generation of young people by the actions of your politicians when they had a majority in both houses of Congress and the WH. The Democratic Party had the opportunity to enact good, people centric policies and keep people enthusiastic about the party for decades. Instead they worked for the benefit of the corporations rather than for the people who worked hard to elect them all the while WHINING the Republicans, the Republicans. They whined and whined claiming to be completely powerless. Why be surprised when many voters took them at their word and decided not to work their tushes off for politicians who chose to be powerless and devote their time to accumulating corporate cash and passing their policies.

And you joined their

whining

You  have effected so much change by your invovlement that Democratic politicians disdain the policies that generations of Democratic voters worked hard to get passed into legislation and you and your crew have given away bit by bit.

Of course your brand of Democratic politicians, the ones you have worked so dlligently to put in power, are not going to fight the battles of the past because they are more than happy to relinquish those policies with murmurs of we are powerless against the Republicans and all the while they accumulate corporate cash.

How many times have we seen a liberal/progressive throw his or her hat into the ring, only to get zero support from the party?  Time and again, candidates who are firmly on the left are shut out in favor of candidates who are more willing to back and carry on the corporate-friendly deals that seem to be the real lifeblood of political parties these days.  It's why Donna Edwards probably won't stand a chance against Chris Van Hollen - not because she won't have people working hard to help her, but because the powers-that-be in the party aren't going to let her.  

And, sorry to say, but you seem to be of that ilk, the kind that works to keep people like Donna Edwards off the guest list, preferring cooperative little corporatists like Van Hollen, who can bring more money into the party than Edwards.

I wish I understood why it is that you must always assume that no one here actually does anything more than whine and complain.  People write letters to the editor, they call and e-mail their representatives, they volunteer on election day, they do GOTV work - it all has value, it all reflects interest and a desire to participate in their government.

Truth be told, it surprises me the endless ability of people to keep doing these things in the face of it appearing to change exactly nothing most of the time.  We keep doing what we do, fearing that to stop might be worse, always hoping that this letter, or this phone call will turn the tide.

We've been down this road with you before, Donald, and you just don't seem to be getting the message that while this is a forum for people to rant or vent or whatever, it doesn't represent the totality of people's lives.

It also seems to me that it is when liberals express a desire for liberal policies and liberal legislation and liberal candidates that you go off the rails, and we get a lecture about why we aren't good enough Democrats or aren't working hard enough, or are beating a dead horse, or some such nonsense that puts the blame for the lousy, right-of-center, GOP-pandering, state of Democratic party culture on us.  It's our fault.  We need to be practical.  Baby steps.  The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Defeatist in the extreme, devoid of imagination or innovation. You rise to the occasion only to make sure the rest of us know our place.

The political sphere can be a reflection of so many things ... not only the candidates and elected officials, but also a partial mirror of those who vote and those who don't vote. What are our expectations?  In this country alone, consider the diversity ... think about the differences of opinions.  Where do we fall on the continuum of expectations?  Many years ago, a major political science study of personalities and expectations was published by T. Adorno et al ... a key conclusion in that seminal work, "The Authoritarian Personality," posited that the further ends of the personality continuum are similar in expectations (e.g., more rigid and less compromising.)  The study did not purport to make any value judgment about right or wrong; it merely noted those findings.

How one regards the notion and reality of compromise in long-term endeavors--not only marriage and partnerships and friendships and, maybe, careers and jobs--can be attributed to many causes.  One cause is personality.  That doesn't take a study to see, as we are aware of how people in our own families and circles of friends respond differently in time and action all the time.  But, what we do with our expectations in certain areas like politics really does have a lot to do with personality type.  IMO, the late political philosopher and community organizer, Saul Alinsky, understood the connection between personal goals & expectation and personality and how it all fit together in a movement exceptionally well.  Key advice from Alinsky: Find your place within a political move in terms of your personality to maximize your effectiveness.  E.g.: First wave and frontline on a political position, next wave to advance the position, negotiators, compromisers/resolvers.  What all this leads to, of course, is the recognition of difficulty that occurs when one with a frontline fighter personality is cast in/has to deal with the compromiser/resolver phase ... because both phases of an issue(s) may be related, but they call for very different personality attributes and expectations.

When I was growing up, my Dad advised (and I listened) to be cautious in broad political view since, ultimately, the "plutocrats" would seek to merge & to control whatever they could.  Yes, he came of age in the 1930s; and, he idolized the one oligarch who seemed to abdicate his class, FDR. Actually, the word "plutocrat" is much stronger than gray words like "corporatist" or "bureaucrat."  In my very biased opinion, "corporatist" already seems like a shopworn buzzword that is overused ... but then, that is just my push for the re-emergence of a real enemy, the bad old Plutocrat.

Store the string someplace like notepad.  I store it with the text LINK between the >< and then I just grab it and insert the URL between the quotes.

The threats of a Constitutional Amendment were real, although it is not clear if that would have really occurred.  What was very likely, is that if President Clinton did not sign the Act, his veto would have been over-ridden.  And, that action would have jeopardized his re-election.  While that political calculation was not a profile in courage, it was a profile in pragmatism.  Clinton, politically out-foxed the Republicans who thought he would not veto the Act, and, he even went on to place campaign ads bragging about his achievement.   Not a particularly shining witness to equality.