There is a clearly discernible tendency among the US left to think that turning the US into a social democracy is the matter of electing right men to political offices (esp. presidency). Hence the disappointment when the man who initially "sounds right" starts doing bad things while in office.
I find that view fundamentally flawed. Methinks the US politics is determined for the most part by powerful, well organized, and fundamentally conservative business elites who face little organized opposition from the rest of society. Any elected representative has a choice of either accepting this realpolitik or being trampled over.
With that in mind, Clinton and Co. were not "sellouts" but political realists. Given the current power structure, going against the wishes of big business is not a viable option - the best a political can do is drag his feet and get some concessions here and there. The hatred that the right spewed on his presidency tells me that he did not totally abdicated to the power of business elites, but tried to get such concessions.
Greens simply do not matter vis a vis the power of big business, so they could not affect in any way the Democratic Party, just like a fly cannot affect the path of an airliner. Anyone who expects the 2004 Democratic candidate, whoever he is, to put the country on a path toward social democracy is bound to have a rude awakening. The only thing that accomplish that is breaking the backbone of big business that owns this country - but I am not holding my breath to see that happening any time soon.
I will support Dean in 2004, because I think he is most capable of "pulling a Clinton" - i.e. negotiating more favorable terms of surrender for anything social and democratic. I think that Lieberman also has similar, if not greater, capabilities to do the same but his stance on foreign policy is more than I can handle. Or perhaps Lieberman is smart to realize that in order to accomplish anything on the domestic forum, one has to totally capitulate to imperialist dictates in foreign policy.
If anyone on this list is serious about social democracy, I suggest moving to Europe, because it will not happen here any time soon. That at least is on my mind lately.
Wojtek