How the Democratic Party Fosters Conservatism
Writing in CounterPunch, M. Junaid Alam makes some excellent points about how the Dems have been actively helping tilt American politics rightward:
The blurring of political distinctions between America’s two major political parties, achieved through Democratic acquiescence to Republican ideas on every major national question, has prompted some progressives to conclude that Democrats and Republicans are now essentially identical. This conflation is a dangerous error: it is too kind an evaluation of the Democratic Party. For to view Democrats as mere Republican clones is to discount the far more pernicious role they play in encouraging a politically conservative framework that traps and demoralizes many Americans into adopting right-wing positions in the first place.
If Democrats simply paralleled Republicans, they would be politically redundant. But the Democrats are not duplicative - they are duplicitous. Peddling slightly less reactionary programs and packaging them in more appealing rhetoric, they soften up, placate and paralyze possible popular opposition to right-wing attacks. This creates the groundwork for future assaults by the Right. The Republican agenda, ugly, brutal, and brazen as it is, could not possibly pierce the public on its own - but the sordid record of Democratic appeasement has locked, loaded, and enabled right-wing advances. …
