...when Gore and Kerry ran to the left of Bill Clinton, they both got far more votes than Bill Clinton. In fact both got more votes than any Democrat in history and better percentages than any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson.

...they are really more incumbent owned. They are also dominated by labor groups and some other interests. The other party is also incumbent owned and dominated by Christian and right to life groups. Corporations tend to spread their money around and if a left wing party were dominant, that party would get corporate money as well.

What I want is for the liberal party to stop the insane folly of bashing liberals. How much more self defeating and self destructive can you get? The Democrats can't constantly be telling the liberals to shut up and wait for Democrats to get elected, and then turn around to the public and say, 'See? we're not liberals.' The public sees Democrats trying to have it both ways and sees the Democrats as weak.

Everything Democrats say keep coming out as too calculated, ala Kerry: I voted for that bill before I voted against it. Or they propose bizarrely complex and unwieldy programs, like Hillary's monster turd of a health care bill. Why not just be liberals and start from there? Wouldn't life be a lot simpler then? Wouldn't it be lot easier to say things? Wouldn't you end up being more convincing?

If you're a liberal, you can at least defend government programs. If you're not-a-liberal, then how can you defend Social Security and Medicare and the idea of universal health care? How can you defend human rights and a non-crazily aggressive foreign policy? Answer: you can't, because you're not-a-liberal. If you're not-a-liberal, you have to run around bashing your own party and flag burners and gay marriage and suck up to Republicans and make like a blood crazed warrior. How can you then turn around at the end of the day and expect liberals to vote for you? Answer: after a while, dude, you can't. It just doesn't work.

...the Democrats dominated as the liberal party. If liberals are such a small and insignificant minority, how do you explain that?

...was a liberal, and an east coast elitist as well. The New Deal was a liberal program. The TVA was a liberal program. The UN was a liberal idea. The Marshall Plan was a liberal program that saved Europe. The GI bill put many working class stiffs through college. The New Frontier, the Great Society, the race to put a man on the moon, the highway act, all of these were liberal programs, and there were many others. Where the hell did you get the idea that people weren't liberal before you came along?

Liberal doesn't mean gay marriage. That's a civil rights idea, and a social tolerance idea. It's a sad fact that progressives of the past were mostly racist and believed in such things as eugenics. They didn't have the social insights that we have. We are raised to be tolerant and we are exposed to all sorts of people just by staying home and watching tv. But people of the past were not raised to be tolerant and they didn't get to meet lots of different people.

Liberalism is about government of the people, by the people, for the people. The liberal idea is that we have a right to organize our own lives through our own government. We can choose to have a highway program, to save Europe, to put people on the moon, to have medical care for everyone, to tax the rich, to tax ourselves, or to take measures to prevent global warming. The conservative idea is that we shouldn't be able to do any of those things, because conservatives think all government really amounts to oppressive communism. The conservative idea is that things like moon landings and roads and medical care fall magically out of rich people's pockets. The conservative idea is that the less we tax the rich, the more good stuff will trickle down to the rest of us. But it doesn't work and it hasn't worked and it never will work.

We prospered under liberal Democrats. This country grew rich and strong and people's incomes rose under Democrats. Under conservatives, starting around Jimmy Carter, we've grown stagnant. Incomes have gone down. The quality of our roads, our schools, our minds, have all declined under conservatives. Our wars have become stupider and more ruinous. You, for instance, apparently don't even understand what a liberal is. You seem to think a liberal is just some sort of snob who wants to pick on you. That's what you've been told in this conservative era. But you've been told wrong.

Liberalism doesn't mean socialism, either. Liberals don't have a master plan. Liberals believe that we, the people are obliged to run our lives and that we can decide to do whatever looks best to us at the moment. If something doesn't work, we can forget it and do something else. That's liberalism. That's the way FDR ran his presidency, too.

Liberals don't believe in the immutable forces of history (as does the Marxist left), nor do we believe in the immutable forces of the marketplace (as does the libertarian right). We believe that WE are in control of our own destiny and that we can and should control our own destiny through our own responsible self government. And why Democrats are supposed to be embarrassed for believing that, I have no goddamn idea. Maybe you can tell me.

...five year olds can't even spell 'anal.'