Progressive vs Regressive: the battle for the Democratic Party.
This feels like you think the entirety of a “party” inhabits only the federal level. Reality it’s quite the opposite. From City Council to County Supervisors, to State Representatives and Senators to members of the US House and Senate, the “party” is integrated. What makes a mess of the thing is the power brokers within those positions. Professional politicians (folks that have never actually been in the work force but think they know what the work force needs) occupy seats of power not because they are the best person for that seat but rather because the wield power over others to bump them out. In California Nancy Pelosi is an example. Her district (essentially San Francisco) is in a mess and has been for decades. She really hasn’t done anything to fix the crime problem, the homeless problem, the crumbling infrastructure, to struggling schools, the drug problem, the hosing problem. These are not new issues. They have been around throughout her tenure. Yet she has such a strangle hold on her seat that no one, for any party is willing to challenge her. So she sits in her huge, palatial estate with it fences and gates and pontificates about knowing the solution when her track record tells us she is incapable, if not incompetent.
That sort of “good old boy and girl” reality is what keeps the government from actually doing the peoples work. The answer to that is simple…TERM LIMITS. No one should get to hold the same seat of power for decades. Such behavior is the antithesis of free and open government. New ideas get smothered by old ideologies before they see the light of day. The same thing occurs in out schools of higher learning. The “Chair” of a department is often someone who hasn’t done anything new in decades and is existing on the brilliance of the new thinking they suppress with their power. With all due respect to the brilliant minds that occupy some of these leadership positions, you should not get to just camp on a spot because no one is will to face your wrath. TERM LIMITS!
Sorry for the digression. The rise of Trump to his position as the President is a reflection of the broad dislike of many Republicans and quite a few Democrats for the dynastic power base they were told they had to choose from. 2016 was supposed to be a Clinton / Bush battle. Problem was, the Republicans didn’t like either of those choices so they revolted and pushed the new guy to the top. That transformed the Republican Party. Whether you like that or not is moot. It happened. As of today, the Democratic party voters have not been able to pull that off. Their best offerings turn out to be the same old people with the same old stories and same old strategies and same old rhetoric. Joe Biden! That’s the best they can do? That choice defies Progressiveness. If anything it is regressiveness. The only way the Democratic party is going to get anywhere is to dump it’s old leadership and bring in some new thinkers. That is not going to happen in this election cycle and hopefully the voters see that putting a party in power that is in such a state of chaos is a big mistake.
You are correct though Phoenix. America is overdue for the political realignment of the Democratic party.
