Michael Smith wrote:
>
> On Saturday 03 November 2007 10:52:43 Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > Does this ranking of DP politicians on a left-right scale have any
> > meaning?
>
> There's a curious reluctance to consider the operation
> of the Democratic Party as an institution, with structures and
> mechanisms and purposes of its own. This applies particularly
> to the congressional delegation. The preference is to regard
> the party as an arithmetic sum or average over a collection
> of individuals, some liberal, some not. Increase the relative
> concentration of liberals, on this view, and the liberalism of
> the whole party increases. Like adding more salt to soup.
This makes sense of a debate on this list some years ago when the Minnesota Greens were running a candidate against Wellstone for the Senate. Several posters attacked the Greens, on the basis that the Greens should only run candidates in districts/states where conservative Dems were running, not against a "good guy" like Wellstone.
In terms of the DP as an institution, the "liberal" members are the most reactionary, because they have NO EFFECT WHATEVER on national policy but DO contribute to the myth of the DP as a (possibly) progressive force. In the effort to turn U.S. politics to the left it is probably most important to defeat all "left" Democrats at every level. That won't have a negative impact on policy but it will help undermine the illusion of the DP being worth anything.
Carrol