Dark days for liberals

As I've said in earlier posts, I'm completely for reelecting President Obama. He's earned a second term and he is surely a much better choice than the guy who's got Romnesia.

But my complaint is that the Democratic Party has drifted uncomfortably far from what I believe its core ideas and values should be.

This post, written by a guy named David Dayen at the Firedoglake blog says it way better than I could:

Obama comes at the end of a 30-year cycle of narrowing and narrowing what passes for the liberal agenda. The landscape was so different in the 1970s that Nixon was calling for a guaranteed income. Now when Democrats are really feeling bold, they highlight policies that they are proud to reveal were based on Republican ideas of just a few years earlier, things like the Heritage Foundation’s health care plan or the market-based solution of cap and trade.

I would disagree that liberalism – although that’s probably the wrong phrase – has disappeared. It’s just become hidden beneath a thicket of campaign contributions from wealthy donors. The decline of unions as a political counterweight means that Democrats chase big money, and not surprisingly they respond to big money concerns. Issues like poverty, hunger, and need go unremarked upon on the national stage, even while they remain core concerns at the community level.

Amen to that.