As an unabashedly Liberal Democrat, I have often felt like a castaway on a desert island who has survived on the odd gull egg and foraged tuber. Despite the poor nutrition afforded me, I still keep up my efforts to light the signal fires and shoot off flares and to scrawl giant SOSes in the sand in hopes of being discovered and restored to the larger Democratic civilization.
Today, I actually saw a sail on the horizon. It was an Op-Ed in the Boston Globe. Reader, will you believe me when I tell you the title? It was no illusion, though at first I believed it to be so. I traced the letters with my faltering hand to be certain and said the words aloud.
Democrats Want Liberals, Not Moderates
Please join me below the orange conch shell.
Please understand, I am accustomed to read similar messages in bottles that wash up on the beach, the detritus of other castaways that occupy the blogging atolls that surround me, but this appeared in a major metropolitan newspaper!
This radical opinion was delivered by one Michael Cohen who elaborated on the subtext of the Cuomo primary as it relates to lessons for the Democratic Party. His Op-Ed is short but succinct in the takeaways for all of us who aspire to national victories next year. I would love to copy and paste the whole thing but alas I cannot. Please read it and I will do my best to condense and paraphrase his points. Here they are in the order he gives them:
1. Don't pat yourself on the back for being left on social issues. That is the LEAST we expect from you. You cannot call yourself a Dem otherwise. It is the equivalent of buckling your seat belt - thoughtless and reflexive and we all do it.
2. Screw up the economic issues and we will get annoyed and turn on you.
Here are Cohen's actual words on this:
Cutting taxes, proposing grand bargains, and slashing social spending might have been smart politics when Democrats were regularly being derided as tax and spenders, but today it goes over like a lead balloon.
3.
Forget the Bi-Partisan blather. It hasn't worked, it isn't working and it won't work in the future. In Cohen's most salient point
"Democrats are not just moving left, but looking for a fighter, not a lover".
4.Don't take Liberals for granted. Yes, we've been docile up to now but that may not remain the case. We have listened to the daily beatings regarding "pragmatism" and the "art of the possible" and morale still isn't improving as our lot gets worse and worse. The sour gruel is starting to wear on many.
Cohen leaves with one parting word of advice and he (not me) aims it directly at Hillary Clinton : Triangulate at your peril.
Is this simply a single sail on the horizon or will it followed by more? Will I be allowed to rejoin the Dems on the mainland? Will we recognize one another and have a tearful joyful reunion? Stand by as the story unfolds.