There Is No American Left

Worth a read:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13567-there-is-no-american-left

The article leads with education, but touches on healthcare, foreign policy and egalitarianism. It's fairly brief, but he could have gone on and on.

I think this really says "There is no significant representation of the American left in major party American politics".
There are staunch leftists in the Democratic party, they just have little to no voice in shaping policy. The swing to the right within the Democratic party was very noticeable with Clinton.

I feel glad that public pressure caused Reid to put Elizabeth Warren on the Senate Banking Committee. I don't think that progressives have zero power either, but we can't set the terms of the debate and we can't push progressive legislation at the national level. We can't yet, anyway, but I don't feel satisfied with only blocking the worst supply-side idiocy from passing.

If we can get focused and involved next year and support progressive candidates early in the primary cycle, we might gain some ground in the midterm electons and force the Democratic Party back to the left. Progressive candidtates did well in the last election while appeasers lost to Republicans. The national party will probably continue with the same playbook they've had for the last four years unless we push them left.

I don't agree with the literal meaning of the title, but I want to see more like this. If we have energy in the midterms and the tea party feels dejected and doesn't turn out, we could start to prove Mr. Babones wrong. I think he'd like that, and I'd like it a lot.

Yeah, the title definitely isn't literally true, but it feels true sometimes, especially on defense and in many cases the economy.

While the inclusion of gay marriage is definitely a positive shift in policy (especially compared to Clinton's support of DOMA), it has a relatively small effect in comparison with the economy, defence spending, health care, civil liberties issues related to the 'war on terror', erosion of reproductive rights and the continued commercialization of prisons and schools with dubious results.

I just saw the thread title and thought, well hell, what am I then? Am I now a citizen of another country? If so, does this mean I get comprehensive health care at last? I wanna know because I wanna make an appointment, damnit!

Yeah. On furthur reflection, I think the pun totally intended.

I also parsed it as "There is no "American" left" or "There are no Americans left" and was pretty confused through the first couple paragraphs.

I didn't find this article to be that meaty. It points out something already easily understood by just about everybody in this country who is actually left of center.

Getting a bunch of facts (the actual kind of facts) in one place about (what I view as) Obama's abuses, however, is actually pretty useful. Googling such an idea is an exercise in complete futility, for example.