Oh, please! Don't make Emanuel out to be the Messiah; he's so busy tooting his own tin horn without you helping him. The American Conservative Union gave him a lifetime ranking of 14.4% in 2006, compared with Dick Durbin's 6.7%, Obama's 8%, and Jan Schakowsky's gloriously low 2.1%. Sure, Emanuel's lower than most of the GOP, but liberal? Hah. I hear him talk, and I hear Third Way Faux Democrat.

Chicago's political blueness is surely more a result of the ward system -- which delivers nuts and bolts benefits to neighborhoods as surely as it delivers Democratic votes, not Emanuel telling everybody to go f**k themselves. That kind of stuff might play up in privileged, lily-white (~90% White), wealthy Wilmette (family median income, $122,000), but in the actual City of Chicago (e.g., Cook County), not so much.

The City That Works works because the Democratic politicians make it work -- the GOP thrives in economically and racially homogeneous areas where moral windbaggery is delivered to the destitute in lieu of working sewers, good roads and safe schools, OR where people are privileged enough to think they don't need a functioning civic body. Places like the Village of Wilmette.

Emanuel's courting of centrist and conservative Democrats just isn't what's needed -- his candidates LOST. We need liberals who deliver for their neighborhoods, Chicago-style -- thick slabs of pork (yeah, dirty word, but f**k you, too -- you know the old-school adage: Politics is who gets what, where, when and how); responsive government at the neighborhood level. It makes a difference; you see results.

Study Chicago's system all you like, but don't look to Rahm Emanuel as the architect or embodiment of it. The good aldermen and alderwomen deliver for their wards, and it makes all the difference.

And five, we have a universal health-care system over the next 10 years where if you work, you have health care.

And if you're unemployed, between jobs, or disabled, then what? Doesn't sound so universal to me. Universal = everybody. The key to universal health-care is portability -- the coverage stays with you, wherever you go. Pinning health-care coverage to employment is one of the things that's put us in the situation we're currently in; you lose your job, you lose your coverage.

We need to break the private insurance industry's stranglehold on health-care, taking what should be an inalienable right (since health = life, right?) and making it a commodity. Talk about a trust in need of busting. Sheesh. What is it, ~45 million Americans without insurance and counting?

AliceInWonderland said...

However, if the Party only funds people that say they are progressive or liberal, the Party is not being wise nor smart. Democrats come in all shapes and colors, some are progressive and some are conservative.

I disagree. What's a conservative Democrat? Not quite as hard-line about defense spending as a Republican? Not quite as pro-life as a Republican, but less pro-choice than a liberal? "Not quite" does not a mandate make, Alice.

I don't think any Democrats honestly qualify as "progressive." A handful, at the most, would come close to that label. And that's precisely the problem -- you've heard of damning someone with faint praise? That's how I see the drive for moderate and conservative Democrats in various quarters.

Did the Republicans increasingly dominate our system by softening their tone, by weakening their message? Nope. Now, people will say "And they're losing, now, so look what it got them?" Yeah, they got spanked in 2006. One election.

But people can look at the GOP and say that they stand for something; I'd say they stand for something wrong, but at least it's something, at least they're standing. Democrats need to stand for something, and that means moving not to the appeasing conservative wing (who're the likeliest to bolt to the GOP, anyway), or the accommodationist moderate wing (I'd love to see a fiery moderate platform; what the hell would that even look like?), but the liberal wing, if only that wing still truly existed in the Democrats. There the progressive ideas reside.

And it's there, if only the Democrats would take it -- liberals seek improvement in things, measured in progressive ways. That's where it has to come from, where the spark and the fire reside -- that's what Dean touched on; I feel like he gets it way more than most.

So what if Murdoch snags the WSJ? So what if he cans the news division, and lets the reactionary editorial page rule the roost?

What all those laid off good reporters should do is start their own online newspage, or go to other publications. If they're good reporters, they can go someplace where good journalism is valued (good luck finding it in the US, sadly), and if they can't find it, they should start their own, taking advantage of the low operating costs of an online enterprise. And if they do good stuff, so much the better -- people will pay attention, they'll get readers. That's how it should be, anyway: good writing and reporting draws readers.

Let Murdoch turn WSJ into a tabloid -- circulation will wither and die. That seems to happen to every paper that guts content in favor of glitz, anyway. Contrary to the conventional wisdom thrown out, people do value good content.

Right now, the WSJ editorial page is like the poison pellet wrapped in the bread of the good reporting -- they benefit from that good reporting; take that good journalism away, and they're left exposed and seen for what they are.

But the good journalists, unlike the partisan hacks in the WSJ editorial department, will find a place to go.