It may be surprising to readers of the OT board, but the only political party to which I've ever been an official member is the Democratic Party. I was on the DLC wing. After Al Gore's speech at the Democratic Convention in 2000, however, I felt--like Ronald Reagan--that I didn't leave the Party, rather the Party left me. One will always hear in the media that it's the Republicans who have moved dramatically to the right. My feeling was that it was the Democrats who moved more to the left than the GOP did in the opposite direction. This article highlights my feeling has basis in fact. http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...-over-democratic-party-109348.html?ml=m_t1_2h
You felt wrong. Unless you were in the South, where the party evacuated the right-wing niche now occupied there only by the Republican Party. In the rest of the country, the Democratic Party has moved slightly right. Unless you're Obama. Then it's moved far right into cloning Republican warmongering and spying.
I have to agree that it feels like the Democrats moved to the right along with the Republicans. Clinton's administration wanted a single payer plan for healthcare. Now Obama gave us a plan based off the Republicans' plan from the 90s. Taxes are lower than they were under Clinton, and Obama has not effectively raised them.
The parties are all fucked up, Republicans used to be the party of science and industry, now they're the party of religion and industry. It's a very strange combination. Democrats used to be social causes and religion. Now they're social causes and science. Also very strange. In reality most Americans fall right in the middle. Neither party representing them.
