"Six Arguments in Political Hell"

[kent_allard_jr]

Jonathan Chaits quotes a memo from the Democratic Strategist, which lists all the arguments folks are going to make about the election and tells us not to bother making them again, because we've heard them a thousand times before. This is particularly true for the Centrist vs. Leftist debates. Did the Democrats lose because they were too left-wing? Or because they didn't energize the base? I think the DCs are right that no one's about to change their minds.

There's one perspective they left out, however, which was expressed by Matthew Yglesias when he said, "The Point of Winning Elections is to Pass Laws." The whole point of electing Democrats is to get progressive legislation passed. Folks who say the Democrats shouldn't be liberals, because it will cost them elections, are implicitly treating politics as a racket, a jobs program for their buddies. From the standpoint of the voters that's the worst kind of attitude you can have.

Comments

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Well, not so much a racket as a sporting event--go team blue!

But you can also view a national election as a chance to *stop bad laws from being passed* even if good laws won't come out of it. As the Republican pull harder and harder into the eliminationist, dominionist swamps, this becomes more and more important.