I was initially surprised to see that some voting for the DNC chair feared that Ellison would "push the party too far to the left". "You're kidding, he's mainstream", thought I. Then, the part of my mind that has been a close observer of and sometime participant in history for about 60 years remembered. "Were'nt the self-styled liberals, nearly all of them mainstream Democrats, the folks constantly sushing everybody on the left throughout the late fifties and the sixties?