Warren will have a strong voice in crafting the party message. But they have to listen, too.
Hmm.
We'll see.
The defeat of the Keystone XL pipeline in the Senate marked a major show of muscle for next year’s new hell-no caucus: liberals.
Liberal Senate Democrats united to block the controversial project, even though their imperiled Democratic colleague Mary Landrieu of Louisiana begged them not to at a Democratic Caucus lunch on Tuesday afternoon. [...]
But red-state Democrats like Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska are on their way out, and liberals like Jeff Merkley, Bernie Sanders and Sheldon Whitehouse — with Elizabeth Warren leading the way on messaging — may cause as many headaches for Senate Republicans as tea partyers caused Democrats in the past four years.
First off, the Democratic Party gets zero congratulations for staving off the great transcontinental Koch tar sands screw-you-all death pipe by a mere one vote after scurrying to hold that impromptu vote on that same screw-you-all death pipe in the hopes that one embattled politician could use the death pipe to prop up an already-doomed re-election bid. There's nothing quite like proving elections come before principles like holding a last-minute vote to toss the principles because someone's election is on the line; kudos, though, for an exercise in cravenness so large that it could be seen from space. You have just boldly reminded us all once again that the fate of the planet hinges worldwide primarily on a class of people that would feed their grandchildren's futures into a woodchipper time and time again if it would gain them a slight boost in job security from any one month to the next, and I am certain that it will do wonders for turnout in future elections when you are similarly promising poor Americans that you won't abandon them, or promising non-lily-white Americans that you will go to bat for them, or promising the female half of the American population that no, we will not be inserting transvaginal menstruation monitors into every last one of them in order to detect unlicensed non-pregnancies, not even if the Republicans want that, at least not unless one solitary southern-state Democrat thinks that agreeing to buckle under on that one might allow her to lose her race by a mere 18 points instead of 20. Again, kudos.
But where were we? Ah yes, the rise of a new liberal wing of the Democratic Party that will work in the minority to block the various Republican attempts to curtail women's rights, curtail the rights of the poor, curtail the rights of voters, curtail the rights of any of you poor bastards out there who does not own an oil company. Politico can name at least four of them, although one is not technically a Democrat, and while they are each already well respected among the ranks of people who think we should be fighting against those things, I would feel considerably more roused if the rest of the party could agree on far more simple things like that yes, it is probably fine to admit that you voted for the popular president from your own party, or no, perhaps we do not need to "move right" in order to appear more agreeable to people who do not give a flying damn about the poor, or the middle class, or businesses that are not Big, or pretend that rising sea levels and more severe weather will be just fine because hey, the kids will get used to it sooner or later.
Having true progressive voices in the party is lovely, but insufficient. The party needs to act like a party, not like a marketing group trying to decide how to better sell soda. (Drink new Pepsi Flat. It's the same Pepsi you know and love, we just left it in the truck for eight months because we had forgotten about it!) Take a hard listen to the voices in the party that have attracted nationwide interest because they're saying popular and sensible and morally decent things everyone else in the party has been too timid to pipe up with, and maybe pipe up with those things too, and perhaps the party will find the nation becomes more interested in them as well.