> The explanation lacking in this thread is the evident failure of the
> DP's survival instinct. Whatever you say about them, they have to
> want to stay in power. The have failed to do a lot to that end that
> was arguably doable, well short of provoking mass popular uprisings.
They like staying in office, of course, and it's nice to be in the majority, since some additional perks come with that. But the main institutional imperative is to stick around. The kind of popular initiatives that I assume you're alluding to would alienate the people and institutions that really count.
They're just time-servers. They don't have any real policy initiatives that they're seriously committed to (except the ones they share with the Republicans, of course).
Their business model is to market themselves to their demographic -- which is not entirely coextensive with the Republican one -- well enough to persist and occasionally prevail, without ever actually doing anything that would compromise elite interests.
Parasites, really, more than idiots. That is, they know their con game well and they're actually fairly good at it.
For a party that's doesn't have a "survival instinct," they've been around for quite a while.
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Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com