Political Paralysis of the American Weenie Social Democrat

[substitute]

I feel politically defeated. I'm on the left end of the Democratic party, more of a social democrat type. My adult life began just as we started to lose ground, and my country has gone inexorably to the right since

Comments

[halfjack]

SEA needs your money and time and looks like a better bet than most.

[dorothy_parka]

a lot of my friends write on daily kos, but you're really preaching to the chior over there. or not--they seem to be very moderate a lot of the times, and the more liberal blogers and posts get alot of negative comments.

honestly, tho, i think there are more of us than let on, us traditional pink-commie liberal dems. we need to unite and become a force as annoying and vocal as the crazy neocons. maybe you can figure out a way to do that on the inernet. most of the "liberal" blogs are not liberal enough for me.

[dossy]

Can you summarize your point of view? Can you do it succinctly enough that it's not too lengthy?

According to all the political web quizzes, I keep falling just slightly left of "centrist" or nearly "libertarian." I'm curious to hear what a "social democrat" values. Then, it might be possible for me (and others) to come up with suggestions for single-issue or focused groups that might be a good fit.

[the_angelmoroni]

bear with me, im typically a-political

I think you hit the nail on the head with the term 'group mind'. The repulicans have it, and the democrats don't.

a small example would be the new torture/habeas corpus bill that just passed. For the past year McCain has been actively speaking against bush and his torture policy. When it came time to vote, McCain voted in favor of it.

Now take all of our friends, being mostly center or left of center. And lets throw in a fairly inconsequential issue in... say vegetarianism. If a vegetarian bill were to be brought up, our friends would be about 50/50 on the issue, and the votes would reflect that.

essentially, in a nation divided, the democratic party is a party divided. For one man to fix this, it would look like helping people set aside their egos, and voting for the greater good of the party, even if they don't agree with specific bills or policy, just like McCain did for the torture bill.

[threepunchstuff]

'group mind'. The repulicans have it, and the democrats don't.

This has actually been measured, empirically, both as mass behavior and on the level of the individual voter. Check out the work of a political scientist named John Zaller and a psychologist named David Sears. Both at UCLA.

[mcfnord]

Be the change you want to see, work in your profession to finance the best approaches, and keep it local if you can. You must remember that politics are like glaciers, changing almost imperceptably for weeks or months, and then violently snapping and re-aligning. And it will be good.