I understand how people get angry at me for criticizing the White House and Congress, as well as institutions like the Treasury or the CBO that are under the executive and legislative branches of government.
And -- yes -- you succeeded in making me feel bad.
And I held my tongue for a while.
Because you told me I wasn't being a good Democrat.
The thing is:
I believe in civil rights.
I believe in social and economic justice.
I believe in diplomacy over warfare and that war should always be the last resort, when all other means of resolving conflict have been exhausted. I believe that war should only be carried out for the purpose of national defense and never for conquest.
I believe that government has a responsibility to protect and sustain the welfare of human individuals and families over big business and those new, vast, dark pools of money that now circle the world, draining whole nations of their wealth with little restraint from governments.
I believe that the working class is more important than the investing class.
I believe that society has a responsibility to take care of children and the elderly -- every single one of them without any excuses -- and that government is our means for executing on this responsibility.
And I believe that the best society is one that provides a level playing field for everyone who starts out in life.
Like it or not ...
These things make me a good Democrat.
It's the pundits and politicians who have drifted from our Democratic Party values who are the bad Democrats, not me.
I'm talking about all those liberal hawks.
Those fiscal conservatives who always find money for wars but never enough for actual human beings living in this country.
Those Hamilton Project, Wall St. Dems, the Rubinites -- you know who they are.
The liberals-who-hate-liberals Mara Liasson, Gloria Borger crowd.
I don't want to be shouted at for disloyalty anymore.
I don't want to be written off by party aparatchniks for being an extremist, because I want Dems to think of humans before corporations and human welfare before bombs.
I'm not the one who was betrayed the values of our parties, betrayed the legacy of Roosevelt and all those liberal lions of our past.
I am a good Democrat.