Democrats hard rise

I was reading through Not Very Bright’s Post: Way too red, which linked directly to the Free Times article on the Democrat’s Uphill Battle.

On NVB someone responded to the post with this comment:

The Democrat party in this state is dead. Not because there are no democrats…but because there is no leadership. If there was, the Democrats would run Sanford out of town (nonprofit money washing scandal), protect education reform (not letting the voucher movement gain a head of speed), and pick up as many as 20 marginal seats. But as it is, none of that will happen. The silence you hear is the Democratic leadership, letting Mark Sanford and friends run amok in state government. Oh well, another generation will come along in 15 years or so…

Hmmm on the question of leadership, with the attrition rate the Democratic Party there wasn’t much left to choose from for leadership and guidance (i.e. Tommy Moore?). But the problem is a bit more systemic and the in the article Sen. John Land is quoted as saying:

“The Democratic Party is in the worst shape I’ve ever seen it [in South Carolina], every time you created a black district, you bleached three other districts. We weren’t voted out — we were switched out.”

Will Folks at FitsNews agrees with this assertion and uses it to argue of the repercussions it had later with Republicans backing a Democrat for the SC Supreme Court.

I agree completely. Perhaps the unbalance should be investigated a little more and another more equitable redistribution of seats within the legislature should take place to ‘repatriate’ those ‘white democrats’ and appeal to the centrist and bring them both back into the fold. Or if not, perhaps it’s time for a viable third. Why? Well the article says it best:

“There are lots of independents in this state,” [Carol] Fowler says.
Independents will be the swing vote in the 2008 presidential election, as well as the young vote.

And more importantly:

“Liberal has become so joined at the hip with Democrat that there needed to be another word to describe left-leaning, forward-thinking people who don’t necessarily agree with every plank in the Democratic platform,” says Rafi Dowdy, city host for Drinking Liberally that meets at the Publick House in Columbia, of his choice to use the word progressive.

“Progressives have always been open-minded, forward-thinking people going back to the days of Teddy Roosevelt,” [Andy] Brack says. “There are progressive Republicans and progressive Democrats. The difference between them and traditional politics of any stripe is that they are open to new ideas and compromise.”

That last word of course is the most important. Pundits have been saying it for the past 6 years that this Presidency has been Divisive and Partisan, but even in the Waning years of the Clinton administration, the divide was fomenting and forming.

In the meantime, I’ve joined the mailing list of Drinking Liberally. I’ve been looking for a place for Progressives, and am rather interested in what they have to say.

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