[lbo-talk] Responsibilities

[Somebody Somebody]

On the other hand, it isn't as if, when offered a slightly more left-sounding candidate, American voters jump on their bandwagon. Obama is surprisingly conservative... mostly because he WAS the most conservative of the major Democratic candidates. Meanwhile, Edwards, who after all the scandals are said and done with, was in terms of domestic policy, the most liberal. Yet, he was a distant third in the race.

Nor can this be attributed merely to the peculiar horse race dynamic of the 08 election - consistently voters choose the more moderate Democratic candidate for national office. Let's face it, if Americans were at all susceptible to socialist agitation, we would expect them already to be already highly receptive to liberal reformism, but they're really not. Of course the obvious the answer isn't to appeal to the majority of the population, but to a tiny minority of the minority of self-described progressives in this country. But, how such a miniscule subsection of American society is going to propel the national body politic leftwards is anyone's guess.