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You seem like a genuinely nice, concerned person, but I must point out that, in the real world of politics, your prescriptions for action just don't work.
As I said in my previous post, I voted Dem for years. I also did activism for various Dem candidates. By 2000, I was fed up with the DLC and turned my back on the Democratic Party. It was a fascinating experience because it taught me that, even though I fancied that I had been as intellectually tough on Dems as I had been on Reps, as long as I was functionally a Dem, that just wasn't true. I had been giving them a lot of breaks without really being aware of doing so. Once I stepped outside the Dem Party, it became obvious that they are as deeply in hock to big money interests as the Reps are and govern accordingly. All the things that are not part of the public debate but should be became obvious too. When looking at politics in America, don't just think about what's going on and ask why, think about what's not going on and ask why not. When you do that, you realize just how narrow the range is of policies and discourse that are deemed appropriate by political elites. And "political elites" includes Dems.
In your last post you point out a couple of disasters of the Bush Administration, the Iraq War and the economy, and rightly say that you could add many more. But, h_lance, during all of the Bush Administration, the Dems were roughly half of the Congress. That gave them the power to stop everything Bush has done, from war funding to the Patriot Act to Kyl/Lieberman to bankruptcy "reform" to tax cuts for the wealthy to Supreme Court appointments, etc. But they didn't. And it is precisely my point that liberals are at fault for that failure because they doggedly follow the advice you give in the second half of your post. Until Dems learn that they will lose liberal support if they don't stand up to the likes of Bush, we give them no impetus to stand up to him. Why would they if there are no consequences to not doing so?
Look at the elections of 2006. The country overwhelmingly voted Reps out of - and Dems into - office. That was almost universally attributed to popular discontent with the Iraq War. So what did Dems do about that, given their enormous popular support? Not one damned thing. So now it's two years later and your advice is Vote Democratic!
Your first prescription is to encourage grass roots support for progressive policies. Look at the platform of the Green Party and you'll see that that's exactly what that is - grass roots support for progressive policies. But for some reason you deem every sort of support for progressive policies to be appropriate except electoral support. Nader and the Greens are actually progressive, which I believe you think you are as well, but you adamantly refuse to vote that way. I just can't buy that approach.
Your second prescription is to help the Dems win and then point out your contribution. I'm sorry h_lance, but that's naive. If you do that, as liberals have been doing all along, what you get from Dems is "Thank you very much. See you in two years." You don't get anyone in office to pay attention to you if they know that you will never penalize them for acting against your interests. It's Politics 101, and liberals haven't learned it. Again, the Christian Right is far smarter than liberals on this subject, which is why the Reps give them a lot more stroke than Dems give liberals.
Finally you say what Democrats say every single election year - "not this year!" Here's another election and Dems are telling liberals that, once again, we can't vote our principles. I've been hearing that from Dems every election year for the past 8 years. You say "for the time being," we must vote for Dems so that Reps don't win. The problem is that, by that logic, it's never time. According to that reasoning, the time is never right for liberals to vote liberal. And if you never vote liberal, what does that make you?
