RESPONSE TO THE PARTY-WORSHIPPERS

I gave it in a comment I made here. This, of course, is derivative: I suspect that the original controversy has to do with Cindy Sheehan's diary of last Monday in which she stated:

I was a life-long Democrat only because the choices were limited. The Democrats are the party of slavery and were the party that started every war in the 20th Century except the other Bush debacle. The Federal Reserve, permanent federal (and unconstitutional) income taxes, Japanese Concentration Camps and, not one, but two atom bombs dropped on the innocent citizens of Japan were brought to us via the Democrats. Don’t tell me the Democrats are our “Saviors” because I am not buying it especially after they bought and purchased more caskets and more devastating pain when they financed and co-facilitated more of George’s abysmal occupation and they are allowing a melt down of our representative Republic by allowing the evils of the executive branch to continue unrestrained by their silent complicity. Good change has happened during Democratic regimes, but as in the civil rights and union movements, the positive changes occurred because of the people not the politicians.

Now, obviously, this is a pretty warped idea of history Cindy Sheehan brings to her opinion of the Democratic Party. But some of it is meaningful; how historically necessary, for instance, was slavery, or Japanese-American concentration camps, or the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? But, then, if you scroll down to look at the thousand-plus comments on Sheehan's diary (yeah, it's a lot), you see comments such as this one -- not false, if pessimistic, but meriting three troll-ratings nevertheless from DKos's most famous "enforcers." Other comments on this thread deserve attention too: contrast cartwrightdale's comment that "supporting capitalism is a fundamental and uncontestable part of being a Democrat" with my poll here in which a majority of respondents on DKos predicted that capitalism would be gone in a hundred years or so. There's clearly a difference of opinion on DKos on what it means to be a Democrat.

Escalating the controversy, in some part, was nonpartisan's diary here, with another 400+ comment monster attached below, in which he suggests that if you're going to ban Cindy Sheehan from DKos, then here are a list of other historical figures who (if they were alive today) you'd ban them too. The 400-or-so comments below, btw, are mostly a conversation between nonpartisan and DKos's "enforcers." Also note the comment here, with three troll-ratings as well. How is tigana's comment "spamming" if it's used to prove a point?

The Democratic Party, today, is an oil-and-water mix of dissent and conformity, delusion and realization. There is a certain constituency within it that is dissenting in off-years and conformist in election years. A part of it is open to persuasion.