Does the U.S. Need a Center-Left Party?

Post Reply New Topic

In the United States, we have only two major parties, and I'm sure many would agree that they do not give sufficient representation to the diversity of ideas and policy preferences of the people. The Republican Party represents the center-right to, increasingly, the far right with the activism of the Tea Party. The Democratic Party represents the center-right to the center along with a few progressive activists who don't realize their party's leadership is decidedly not center-left. Does the U.S. need a party where center-left ideas are truly dominant?

The Democrat Party is dominated by left wing pinko stinko commie loving liberals who want the government to run everything.

ruveyn

I think we need to pull the Dems over to the left, stop giving them money directly, and support progressive candidates and PACs.

Does a donkey need teats?

ruveyn

We don't NEED any parties.

We have parties because the Organizers like them, the Powervolk understand them, and they make it easier for the media to run the country.

We need patriots who are more concerned with practical solutions than ideology.

We need people participating in the system who understand that freedom demands virtue and selfishness isn't one of them...

We need...



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQE7R6mzTL0[/youtube]

Depends on if it's a jack or a jenny.

Sure, any party that splits away votes from the Democrats is fine by me.

A very strange expression. I would want to take advice from the philosophically serious on "need" and from those more advanced in equine physiology on the possible functionality of mammary glands of infertile mules and hinnies. I was intrigued to find myself informed that female equus / africanus hybrids are sometimes fertile.

But the whole actually leaves your intention unclear.

Would I paraphrase it as "we need it as a flea needs an electric guitar", or as "we need it as the pizza parlor proprietor needs a source for flour"?

Maybe the question should have been, "Does a mule need teats?"

Airlocks are useful.

We could use any leftist party at all. The Democrats are center-right, and the Republicans are far-right. We don't have a political left in this country except for a lonely little fringe out there.

Then again, I am actually pretty happy with the Democrat representing my district. My politics are really center-right anyway, so having the Dems in control of the legislature works just fine by my account.

In practice, though, they can be a little flaky and politically accident-prone. The recent incident with Mr. Wu for example, or perhaps poor Weiner...still, I do happen to like the guy who represents my district in Congress.

Last edited by WilliamWDelaney on 27 Jul 2011, 2:53 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Yes, especially if it is a jenny and capable of bearing offspring. If we were to go by your question here, we should assume that you would be in favor of a center-left party in the US.

Douche.

Agreed. It's frustrating for me as someone whose politics lean toward the left that the words "liberal" and "progressive" are branded as obsecenities in the United States today. Without progressivism, women and minorities would never have gained suffrage, laborers would still be working in needlessly unsafe conditions lacking things as basic as emergency exits, and we wouldn't have any of the national parks or the infrastructure built under FDR's public works programs. The United States could have been in a much different place today if we'd taken a real interest in progressive renewal years ago-- building a new green infrastructure to supplant our energy dependencies, and investing in innovation to build whole new industries as we once did. Instead, we decided-- as usual, in recent years-- to go down the so-called "conservative" path, one that got us mired in unwinnable wars, squandered our surplus, and peeled back regulations to let the rich fleece the poor and middle-class.

One of the reasons I left the States was because there was really no one speaking for me. Let ruveyn and Inuyasha and anyone else who thinks the Democrats are actually "leftist" be up in arms about the suggestion. I don't care. The Democrats are cowards and capitulators, but even when they do actually put up a fight, what they're fighting for is usually not that progressive anyway. What the U.S. needs now is a true, united, progressive voice to counterbalance this shift to the right-- one that has a spine, and isn't afraid to stand up to the Republicans and demand they make some sacrifices for the good of the country. We've tried it their way for far too long, and this obsession with status quo has gotten us exactly what any obsession with status quo yields: stagnation and decay. That is why progressivism is important. It's natural selection at work-- either you adapt and grow, or you perish.

What is progressivism? I contend that it was probably more down to economic factors than anything else why women gained suffrage and got out to work.

My God, I don't know what you'd call a genuinely classical libertarian party!