The Daily Beast: Michael Kazin- The Radical Left—Always a Bridesmaid

Source: The Daily Beast- Democratic Socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders-

Source: The Daily Beast: Opinion- Michael Kazin- The Radical Left—Always a Bridesmaid

I agree with Michael Kazin that the New-Left, lets say has always been the bridesmaid in the Democratic Party. George McGovern in 1972, would be the exception to that, where the New-Left got exactly the presidential candidate that they wanted. But where the Democratic Party is smarter than the Republican Party, is the Democratic Leadership knows how to use their radicals to get them to vote for their mainstream Center-Left establishment candidates. 2008 and 2012 with Barack Obama, are perfect examples of that.

Where the New-Left, thought they were getting Dennis Kucinich, or Ralph Nader ideologically, they instead get someone more like Jack Kennedy in Barack Obama. Whereas the Republican Party will go out of their way to make it clear to their Christian-Right and Neoconservatives that their candidates are just as stuck in the 1950s as the people the Far-Right rather have representing the party. John McCain, in 2008, Mitt Romney, Mr. Northeastern at best a Moderate-Conservative Republican, depending on which Mitt you’re talking to. Are good examples of this from the GOP.

The term radical, is not necessarily bad. It just means you’re out of the mainstream in the time and place that you happen to live. Which is where the New-Left has been in America since it was created in the 1960s. America, is not Scandinavia ideologically, or anything else and never has been. We like our Constitution, we like our property rights, we like our federalist form of government, with most of the power not being centralized with the national government, unlike in Scandinavia. We like all of our individual freedom. Including the Right to Privacy and Freedom of Speech. Which even includes the right to offend. All things that the New-Left in America has been against at point, or another.

It’s hard to win politically in a country, when you represent something that is completely different from what the country is use to and what they want to keep. Where you’re literally running to remake the economic system and trying to convince hard-working middle class workers that they’re simply under taxed and need big government to take more of your money from you to serve you. Where you literally want to get rid of the Constitution and rewrite it, or simply not bother to replace it. And be able to do everything that you want through majority rule and referendum.

The New-Left, is part of the Democratic Party to a certain extent, because they need the Democrats and to a certain extent the Democrats need them. Not because ideologically even though at times they may have similar goals, are very different ideologically. Where the New-Left, ideologically would be better off in the Green Party, or Democratic Socialist Party and perhaps even the Communist Party. But are smart enough to know that if the bolt the Democrats for a Far-Left third-party they’ll lose their place in one of the major parties in the United States. The New-Left, are the bridesmaids of the Democratic Party. They come close, or at times look that they are, but in actuality simply get used by the Democratic Leadership time and time again.
HNN Editor: Michael Kazin on Barack Obama and The American Left