MoveOn.org just sent out an email lambasting unnamed “Democrats In Name Only” (DINOs), specifically those who are retreating from the fight to end the Iraq War.
In the U.S. party system, where no candidate is actually held to an ideology, and more often than not, positions on issues frequently tend to fall randomly into either party, and the parties’ positions have in some cases swung drastically over time, what exactly does it mean to be a Democrat? Does it really mean anything? Does the fact that progressives have cast their lot with the Dems really mean that Dem = progressive?
No, and this is one of the top problems with U.S. politics. Neither party is really dedicated to a particular political segment. Ideological segments have cast their lot with particular parties (usually, of course, in reaction to the segments that have cast their lot with the other), and those parties’ interest in maintaining that support is what drives them to appease them, but only enough to entice that support to stay tenuously on their side.
The U.S. Democratic party is not a liberal party, and the Republican party is not a conservative party. The parties reflect what their most valuable supporters stand for, but the parties themselves don’t stand for anything.
The third parties do, of course; but that doesn’t do any good in the U.S. team-oriented system. In much of the rest of the democratic world, a party stands for something, and you vote for the party that best stands for what you stand for. In the U.S., you pick whichever party is most likely to want your support and show it by appeasing you. Or, increasingly, by scaring you about how “bad” the other party is.
It means nothing to be a Democrat or a Republican. It’s just a team, and many people seem to choose the team they think will win rather than the team they think will make things better or do what they want. It does mean something to be a Green, or a Libertarian (sort of), but in U.S. politics, that has no cachet.
