Since the election has the "Left" lost it's mind?

I pose this question as a result of all these TRUMPmania End of the World articles and comments on the more "liberal" news and information sites.

To me, it seems there is a real push for R vs D and not .01% vs 99%. For example, many blue dog Democrats are on record as privatizing and or cutting Social Security benefits, but OH NO, it only counts when the Republicans want to do it. When you point this out, you get comments stating that you are a troll at best.

I have real issues with the canonization of the Democratic Party that is occurring at the moment, as if they are not in any way responsible for playing any part in messes like the Social Security debacle. You point out that Bill Clinton enacted Republican Policies as his legacy and lord help you. Or that ACA is sourced in Republican ideology. The vitriol is off-putting at the least.

Have these people lost their ever frikkin' minds? Is there no reflection, critical thought or examination by the "liberal" population for the Democratic Politician and their actions? It is as if they are as rabid as the far right.

Is there a readily available source, graphic or item that can show how much in common the politicians have with each other vs having things in common with the people? Or millionaires vs population? Like donors for an example. As an example, what do Trey Gowdy and Harry Reid have in common? They both have Monsanto as donors (pulled out of my ass-for illustration purposes only).

The cognitive disconnect astounds me and there must be something like an infographic that can be used to counter that perception.

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Pricknick's picture

how much in common the politicians have with each other

The list goes on and on. Basically the only difference is their party affiliation.
Donations and pacs:
https://www.opensecrets.org/
Wealth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_members_of_the_United_Stat...

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Roy Blakeley's picture

Enough said.

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Industries donate. Other donors:

An August, 2000 Newsweek story on Joe Liebermn(sic), The Soul And The Steel[1] reveals that some of the early funding came from ARCO, Chevron, Merck, Du Pont, Microsoft, Philip Morris and Koch Industries:

Mission

"The DLC characterizes itself as the 'founding organization of the New Democratic movement,' the goal of which is to 'modernize the progressive tradition in American politics.' The DLC further highlights its commitment to a 'Third Way' agenda that includes some apparently conservative as well as leftwing guiding principles." [6]

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Democratic_Leadership_Council

There you have it. That's what ate the Democratic Party.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

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sojourns's picture

To them, it's just hedging a bet. What they contribute to super pacs we have no way of knowing. I'm sure there is money in super pacs donated by foreign countries through some American holding company.

The left, I'm assuming you mean the center left and not the true left have lost their minds eons ago. They had a chance. A once in a lifetime chance to get behind Bernie Sanders and really make positive changes in our government. Not going to happen. Most of those Blue dog, center left, quasi republicans are far to afraid of anything that might rock the boat. Most of those people are in management or middle management positions, or professional positions that already got theirs and like the republicans, they say "fuck everyone else".

Another element in this election was the fact that Clinton is a woman, and there are great numbers of women that are going to vote for her on that incidental element alone, though they will deny that with great vehemence and pretend to be insulted. Forget that she's a criminal never convicted. She's a woman and by god that is all that matters. Curiously, more white women voted for Drumpf. I can't wrap my head around that at all except by writing it off as mass psychosis.

Nonetheless, Clinton still did in fact win the popular vote, leaving us with a mandate free president elect who should be Baker Acted on his temperament alone. Maybe it'll happen.

It's all history now. Batten down the hatches and do what you can for the next few years to fight Drumpf's actions as much as possible. Electing him tells me that the entire nation has lost its mind. Maybe Canada can help by being our therapist.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

any of it "left".

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Lily O Lady's picture

lefty-leftist and have nothing in common with those claiming to be center-left.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

You're the leftiest left-left-left leftist of them all!

The Democratic party "left" is losing its mind because it has no bleeping clue what the label even means anymore, and anytime someone points that out to them brains splatter on the wall. The Democratic party has no agenda, no platform, no philosophy of government, no moral compass and no principles. Is it any wonder nobody trusts it anywhere near power. The tragedy of American politics is that these are the only two choices the owners of the country permit us. Or so they think...

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Please help support caucus99percent!

Lily O Lady's picture

just not into us.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

boriscleto's picture

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

sojourns's picture

Merely for the sake of discussion.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

not corporations, were the largest funders of the Democratic Party and its candidates, while corporations tended to fund the Republican Party and its candidates. (That is, I believe the reason that Supreme Court cases that ruled in favor of corporate donors always made sure to mention that the same rule would apply to union donations-a little jab at Democrats, IMO.)

Reportedly, in 1980, the head of the DNC sent a memo to Democratic members of congress, asking them to see if they couldn't get some of those nice corporate donations the Republicans had been getting. When I first read about that, I tried to put a name to the culprit, but the DNC had two heads that year (also the year that Carter lost to Reagan); and I don't know which one was responsible for the memo.

When Democrats did begin getting those donations, Republicans, like Gingrich and Delay, warned corporations not to donate to Democrats, too. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/17/us/gop-seeks-foes-donors-aggressively.... However, this apparently was sorted out among the members of the big club about which George Carlin spoke.

This source blames Reagan, not the memo from the head of the DNC, but both could be true:

Since the mid 1930’s, the Democrats had controlled both the Congress and the White house for most of those years. Even when Republican presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon were in office, many of those years, the Congress was under Democratic leadership. And historically, the Democrats have been major supporters of small business, not of big business.

Then in 1980, when Ronald Reagan and a Republican Congress both came to power, the world of the “Washington D.C. Lobbyist” began to change.

As Republicans had always been such staunch supporters of big business, it became apparent to large US corporations that they needed some local D.C. help for obtaining a chance at a bigger piece of the gigantic “government business pie”. They also recognized that through their “hired lobbyist guns in D.C.”, they could exert or “buy” congressional influence for future legislation that would support the goals of their big businesses.

Due to this change in the controlling political party, during the 1980’s the number of actual “paid lobbyists” increased many fold. In addition, during that period the salaries for those in the “government lobbying trade” began to increase exponentially. This is because, for what those individuals in D.C. were able to “bring to the party” for big business, it was many times in the millions to billions of dollars of new US government business.

http://commonsense-gater.blogspot.com/2009/04/washington-lobbyists-why-d...

As another reason why lobbying increased so dramatically in the 1980s, some sources cite that legislators and regulators began going into lobbying business in a big way. It's hard to decide which came first, though. In any event, while interpretations of the facts vary, sources agree that the 1980s saw a dramatic change in lobbying in D.C.

Whether we want to blame Reagan or that DNC memo or both, or other reasons, the 1980s were when the number of lobbyists in Washington, D.C. began increasing exponentially. http://commonsense-gater.blogspot.com/2009/04/washington-lobbyists-why-d...

And, of course, the DLC (incorporated in 1985) and other New Democrats no longer wanted to depend on union funding because it did not want to fight for unions and issues vital to working families.

The DLC's effort to win Meeks's vote was part of a vigorous campaign by New Democrats to assure legislators that business groups would replace campaign contributions from labor lost by a pro-business China vote. In The New Democrat, the DLC's monthly magazine, Washington's most powerful business lobbyist, Thomas J. Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, wrote that even though some members of Congress risked losing the AFL-CIO's support, "business will stick by Democrats on the China trade vote."

Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."

http://prospect.org/article/how-dlc-does-it (Unions are the traditional interest groups within the Democratic Party to which Simon Rosenberg refers; and they had influence because they had long been the biggest donors to the Party.)

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months before he became a Supreme Court Justice. As per the memo, the Business Roundtable was established and other capitalist elitist organizations followed. The first platoons of lobbyists were formed - lobbying began in earnest after the memo although there were lobbyists, mostly not coordinated with each other, before this.

I think most of the value the Democrats derived from the unions was not money but the door to door campaigning; phone banking; leafleting, etc - volunteering in lieu of cast, although there was quite a bit of money involved also.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

MsGrin's picture

I sure wouldn't push the lever for him, but there will now be pushback on the attempt to scramble SS and Medicare:

many blue dog Democrats are on record as privatizing and or cutting Social Security benefits, but OH NO, it only counts when the Republicans want to do it.

We know Her Inevitableness was going to slash things, and there would not have been push back had she done it. *shrug* So it may be in this way, this election result nudges the party actually to the left. That is IF it can find a way to unify. That in no way seems a given - and if it does not unify, it will die. (It may die anyway.)

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

Pricknick's picture

Maybe Canada can help by being our therapist.

He's already showing a remarkable resemblance to Mr. hope and change.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/12/21/trudeau-touts-trumps-support...

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Sorry, Canada. I wanted Trudeau to be for real, and not just a rehash of what we'd just gone through.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

CB's picture

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it appears that, while flawed, Mulcair was the better candidate. Hopefully the NDP will win power next time, but I fear they might have blown their best shot. I hope I am wrong; or if not the NDP, then something else better takes hold in Canada.

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sojourns's picture

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

Clinton's candidacy finally marked the end of the democratic party as a leftist party. The process began of course earlier. Some say it started in small policy shifts starting with Carter. So not surprising to me that Nancy Pelosi for example, had to openly signal to wealthy contributors that Elizabeth Warren does not speak for the democratic party. Party sites such as TOP only give a facade of being leftist/liberal. When push comes to shove, the base supported a republican candidate in Hillary Clinton.

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

as a popular forerunner for 2020--according to the Dem Party Base and (left-leaning) Independents. Over both Bernie and Warren.

Help

Of course, Biden lagged behind Michele.

Go figure . . .

But, after all was said, and done,

From USA Today,

WASHINGTON — On the theory that it's never too early to launch the next campaign, the new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll has identified an overwhelming front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.

It's someone entirely new. . . .

Pleasantry

Mollie


“I believe in the redemptive powers of a dog’s love. It is in recognition of each dog’s potential to lift the human spirit and therefore– to change society for the better, that I fight to make sure every street dog has its day.”
--Stasha Wong, Secretary, Save Our Street Dogs (SOSD)

The SOSD Fantastic Four

Available For Adoption, Save Our Street Dogs, SOSD

Taro
Taro, SOSD

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

CaptainPoptart's picture

Bernie comes out on top, albeit by a small margin. Your main point, i.e. someone new, is however valid. Just goes to show how confused and divided the Dem and independent left is right now. At least Hellary seems to finally be behind us.

When Democrats and independents were offered some possible 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, Sen. Bernie Sanders (44 percent) and Vice President Joe Biden generated the most excitement (43 percent), with Sen. Elizabeth Warren favored by 34 percent of voters. However, most voters would like to see “someone new” (66 percent). Another Hillary Clinton run would excite 23 percent of voters, while 15 percent were indifferent to a Clinton candidacy, and 62 percent said she shouldn’t run.

http://www.suffolk.edu/news/69619.php#.WFyyDLRHaf3

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I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. - e.e.cummings

Wink's picture

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Oldest Son Of A Sailor's picture

NeoLiberal Left and the Liberal Progressive Left...

The NeoLiberal Left has taken leave of their senses...

Unfortunately the Liberal Progressive Left while quite popular, and sane has been harmed greatly by the NeoLiberals in the rigged primary, and left without a strong leader...

It cannot be argued that Bernie attempting to sell Hillary was the opposite of everything the Progressive Left couldn't stomach and left them leaderless...

The Progressive Left isn't the ones with the Hillary Election Fail Excuse Talking Point Of The Day...

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"Do you realize the responsibility I carry?
I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House."

~John F. Kennedy~
Economic: -9.13, Social: -7.28,
k9disc's picture

Drumpfenfear being pushed by the Neoliberal Left -- not at all.

My left of center friends on FB, a wide swath of demographics from across the country, have completely lost their minds.

Like desperate parrots they get a talking point, grasp it within their beaks as tightly as they can and then proceed to whip it around the room saying all kinds of stupid shit -- usually involving some pretty ugly RW framing.

The "Left" are in trouble in this country politically. The true lefties are looking at potential personal trouble, socially and criminally, in the near future. Scary times.

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Most liberals and most Democrats seem to have lost their minds, drunk the Kool-aid, or whatever you want to call it. It's one of the scarier things happening right now. Like watching Republicans after 9/11.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

asterisk's picture

Screw the good of the country. Everyone who did not vote for my candidate is a racist, cousin-copulating retard (as opposed to THEIR accusation that WE are gun-grabbing libtards). People who did not vote really voted for the other candidate. It is mathematically the same thing. Everyone knows it is a mathematical fact that 0 = 1.

How dare they spread fake news. We have to figure out how to do a better job of spreading disinformation than THEY do.

Someone at TOP suggested starting a liberal tabloid to compete with the National Enquirer. Suggestions that it is best to stick to the truth were not met with enthusiasm in many quarters.

If Newt Gingrich says there are almost no limits on who a President can pardon it is a LIE. Never mind that William Jefferson Clinton said pretty much the same thing. (OK. Sorry. Bad example.) WE are the fact-based group. Everyone has to believe whatever facts we made up as the Facts Of The Day. (NOTE: Daily Facts are subject to change without notice.)

Watch out for those sneaky Russians.

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Muddy Boots's picture

The power on the left is in labor, which has changed since 100 years ago. But until labor decides to flex its muscle the power will remain with the wealthy. Right now anyone wanting a seat has to have permission from the rich.

The fix 100 years ago was to go on strike, and when it got really bad to go on general strike. It was hard then, I think it will be harder now. One way or another nothing will change until the 99% decide to organize. The wealth will not hesitate to use violence, but the 99% cannot use violence back as they don't have that muscle. They have to figure out how to walk away from the wealth and leave them with their swamp.

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"If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back" - Regina Brett

janis b's picture

“They have to figure out how to walk away from the wealth and leave them with their swamp.”

I think that is quite a relevant resolution. But it will require organising, as much as possible, on a local level. There are so many people that need the support of their family, friends and community.

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bondibox's picture

Losing this election has caused people I used to be very closely aligned with saying stuff that's just plain crazy. The crap with the 'Hamilton electors' was too much. I asked someone if he thought we should allow the CIA to decide the election and he said "No we should allow the electors to decide it." My jaw is still on the floor.

They're willing to change the constitution because Hillary lost. And the most amazing part of it all is that they are probably sincere. I mean, you'd think they were all correct the record shillbots but they're not. Ever since Bill Clinton started triangulating the Democrats have been kicking their own constituencies under the bus. I think just enough people have realized this for the Dems to lose elections, but that still leaves the core of the party under the illusion.

I know it's easy to throw the term around but these people are in denial. Moving past it is a gradual process. Once you accept the possibility that the party isn't actually helping the populace and use that viewpoint as a cipher then everything makes sense but even then total understanding is a gradual process, there's knowing and then there's knowing where you apply the knowledge to the news cycle and get confirmation and then you believe what you already knew.

I like to compare it to Clinton corruption. Once you accept that as a hypothesis, everything she does makes sense.

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F the F'n D's

says nothing about how electors must vote.* So, while "faithless electors" may betray the voters in their state and may violate the laws of their state, they neither violate nor change the Constitution.

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/provisions.html

* I am not even sure there were statewide elections for President in 1789. It's possible that the electors were the entire ballgame then, as far as the Presidency went, but I don't know. I do know that only about 6% of the population had a right to vote on anything then.

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snoopydawg's picture

Both of them.With Bill it would have already been privatized if the Monica Lewinsky scandal hadn't happened. The link to the article about how she saved it is the article I linked.
Here's Hillary thoughts about it and her feelings about Simpson-Bowles

The first place to look for confirmation of this was the Podesta email cache. On October 10, Wikileaks released the infamous Wall Street speeches Clinton made behind closed doors, which said:

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, this may be borne more out of hope than experience in the last few years. But Simpson-Bowles — and I know you heard from Erskine earlier today — put forth the right framework. Namely, we have to restrain spending, we have to have adequate revenues, and we have to incentivize growth. It’s a three-part formula. The specifics can be negotiated depending upon whether we’re acting in good faith or not. And what Senator Simpson and Erskine did was to bring Republicans and Democrats alike to the table, and you had the full range of ideological views from I think Tom Coburn to Dick Durbin. And they reached an agreement. But what is very hard to do is to then take that agreement if you don’t believe that you’re going to be able to move the other side. And where we are now is in this gridlocked dysfunction. So you’ve got Democrats saying that, you know, you have to have more revenues; that’s the sine qua non of any kind of agreement. You have Republicans saying no, no, no on revenues; you have to cut much more deeply into spending. Well, looks what’s happened. We are slowly returning to growth. It’s not as much or as fast as many of us would like to see, but, you know, we’re certainly better off than our European friends, and we’re beginning to, I believe, kind of come out of the long aftermath of the ’08 crisis. [Clinton Speech For Morgan Stanley, 4/18/13]

Another diary on DK today about how the republicans want to cut SS with no mention of how many democrats were on board with Obama's cat food commission. A few people did bring that up but of course they were shut down.
As the OP stated, it's only bad when it's the republicans doing bad things, especially when it comes to continuing the PNAC's goals in the Middle East or renewing the various acts that took away our freedoms.
I'm sure that after Trump starts a new war then the left anti war movement will once again find their conscience and protest against it.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/22/lest-we-forget-clinton-wanted-to-...

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Unabashed Liberal's picture

we forget which Party/President appointed the Catfood Commission!

Mollie


“I believe in the redemptive powers of a dog’s love. It is in recognition of each dog’s potential to lift the human spirit and therefore– to change society for the better, that I fight to make sure every street dog has its day.”
--Stasha Wong, Secretary, Save Our Street Dogs (SOSD)

The SOSD Fantastic Four

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

both Republicans and Democrats, when in power. Democrats, when in power, are not liberal at all.

It's all part of traditional D.C. kabuki theater, friends. Sit back and enjoy the masterful performance, because that's what it is.

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I commented on the Democratic Party being finished:

The Democratic Party ended with JFK’s assassination. But like a zombie, it continued to walk the Earth pretending to still be viable for several years.

Watergate was the last real action of the Democratic Party, however mindlessly. They stood firm long enough to allow Republicans to see that Nixon had to go. Yet once he resigned (after a mainstay of GOP thought -the Chicago Tribune- declared he was done), the Democrats were lost. They had no plan, no goals, no organization. And NO LEADERS!

This sorry state of conditions allowed the Party to be captured by the well-meaning but incompetent Jimmy Carter, who listened to horrible advisors (Bert Lance, anyone?) and almost crashed the economy and made America look weak with his pathetic performance during the Iranian Hostage Crisis.

Follow this up with Bill Clinton’s betrayal of American workers, and the lying and worthless Barack Obama doing nothing about the real problems of the nation while in office, and there is no reason for any thinking human to continue to support that excuse of a party. Especially not when that useless Nancy Pelosi declared that the Party didn’t see any reason to make any changes after their deplorable attempt to push Hillary Clinton on us by ensuring that Sanders was blocked.

Both Parties need to break into fragments. The Democrats are already there. Trump will finish the job on the Republicans.

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Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

As awful as LBJ was in terms of foreign policy, and as much as y'all (rightfully) hated him, his domestic policy was, from the point of view of this gen-xer, stunningly good. Far better than anything I've seen in my lifetime. IMO, things started to go to hell w/the Kennedy assassination, but the real turning point was in 68. From then on, the Democrats have been increasingly useless. From 1986 on, they've been increasingly poisonous. And you're right, their swan song was Watergate--and I'd add this:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucY7JOfg6G4]

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Amazing how quickly his positions raced to the far right once he married into the Hershey fortune. Goes to show that his standards are for sale.

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Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.