I'm a pretty longtime Kossack, but I've been away for a while. In fact the other day I posted my first diary in almost two years. Since then I've been poking around, reading diaries and posting comments. And I have to say I'm a little disappointed at what I've found.
One of the reasons I drifted away from DKos to begin with was what I perceived as an insistence on orthodoxy. I consider myself a liberal, but that does not mean that I march in lockstep with mainstream liberal thought on every single issue. So I was frustrated by those who demanded ideological purity.
Sadly, it seems to have gotten worse.
In the last few days, for example, I have seen dozens of complaints about the mainstream media's treatment of President Obama. Frankly, this has left me a little confused. From what I can see, the mainstream media loves the president. Sure, Fox News and other right-wing mouthpieces make it their business to attack him at every turn, but they're hardly objective. I have seen nothing that makes me think that the truly mainstream media is especially critical of the president.
Same thing with midterm election polling. There seems to be a widespread belief that the media is somehow manipulating poll results, or else outright lying. Seriously? The polls are what they are. If the media emphasizes the fact that certain people are up or down, it's because they think that's where the story is. If the polls happen to look bad for us -- as they undeniably do in a lot of races -- then maybe we need to take a hard look at why that might be so instead of reflexively shooting the messengers.
We need to be able to look at ourselves critically, and not just beat our chests and rattle our sabers and say our party, right or wrong. If we have failed, we need to be able to recognize it, or else we will never be able to change it. People are unhappy with our party this year. Some of it is artificially stoked anger, sure. But only some. People do have things to be angry about. The economy has not recovered as quickly as we either hoped or (at least tacitly) promised. Health care reform was handled poorly. The administration has done a poor job of communicating their successes. These are facts. The Republicans and the Tea Party didn't create them. They have capitalized on them, maybe even misrepresented them, for sure. But we cannot ignore our own responsibility.
Now, I imagine that I am going to be blasted for posting this diary. I am going to be called a downer, and a troll, and all kinds of other things. I'm used to it. The other day I had the audacity to suggest that maybe it was time to look at raising the retirement age, and you'd have thought I had suggested throwing kittens into a wood chipper by the way people reacted. That's a GOP talking point! people cried, aghast. The horror!
Really? This is what we've come to? Jingoistic boosterism, blame, and rigid adhesion to political dogma? Does that sound like anybody else we know?
We're supposed to be better than this. No -- we are better than this. We're Democrats, for heaven's sake! We overcame the Great Depression, won World War II, fought for Civil Rights, stared down Khrushchev, brought down Nixon, started the Green Revolution, and raised millions of people out of poverty. And we didn't do it by acting like the Tea Party. Let's start acting like who we really are.