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Read other letters about this article
The question is: How much do we on the left respect ourselves? Will we continue to bust our asses to elect politicians who do not respect us and treat us like we are an annoyance? Will we continue to support politicians who swear to do one thing and then do another when elected?
I do not blame the Senate staffer who laughed at us. We have always been a laughingstock. We beg for crumbs from the Democrats table and reelect them. When Republicans go against the mandate their base gives them, they are punished at the ballot box. John McCain couldn't pick Joe Lieberman as his running mate because the Republican base wouldn't have stood for it. For years, Democrats have had to put a right of center southerner on their presidential tickets because they did not want to seem like they were in the pocket of the people who vote for them.
We've brought things like this Lieberman thing on ourselves. We did not punish the Democrats in Congress who voted to continue to fund the Iraq war when they promised to end it. We did not punish those who voted for FISA. We did not punish those members of the Senate who rolled over for anyone Bush offered up for judicial appointments. Our elected officials from our party do not listen to us because they do not have to.
What are we going to do next? Are we going to continue to break our asses, leave our jobs and school, and donate money for and to politicians who treat us like we are their dirty little secret? It is clear that the Democrats are going to dick us over this term, so that battle is lost. How are we going to organize a movement to unseat the people who thumb their noses at us year after year? We threw Lieberman out during the Connecticut primary but did not follow up. Why not do the same thing all over the country, but follow through this time?
