>>There is a tremendous amount of circumlocution around Doug's point:
>>ousting Bush means greater breathing room for even the activist
>>left.
>
>On the flight out to Seattle this morning, I read David Margolick's
>piece in the December Vanity Fair about Bush's judge nominees. I've
>heard them described as right wing, but never fully appreciated how
>dangerous and insane they are. When I said that I'd rather have
>politics be about something other than preserving the social gains
>of the 20th century, this is exactly what I meant.
It was once -- let's say from FDR till LBJ -- possible to say that the Democrats had a better domestic policy and a worse foreign policy than the Republicans did.
Since the mid-1970s or thereabout, however, the social gains of the 20th century have been steadily destroyed under the bipartisan consensus.
Today, if anything, it is the Democratic Party that is the party of fiscal austerity. Clinton/Gore eliminated AFDC -- we'll see what Dean/Clark can do to Medicare and Social Security. -- Yoshie
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