While we?re on the subject of progressive Democrats trying to ?take back their party,? how about progressive Democrats trying to ?take back America?? That?s the name of a big confab happening in Washington now, about which The Washington Post has printed some funny and insightful lines:
This progressive jamboree is at the Marriott in Woodley Park, and is titled “Take Back America.? The theme is repeated often, and when a speaker says it’s time to take back America, everyone in the audience knows what that means. Most of the details of what will happen once America has been taken back can be worked out in January.
“We’re going to take this country back and it’s going to be election after election after election!” bellowed Howard Dean, recapturing some of the energy of his primary-season heyday as he addressed the crowd yesterday afternoon. “Now and November, we’re going to take it back!”
A progressive is what used to be known as a liberal. Liberals stopped being liberals about the time that Michael Dukakis rode around in the tank wearing the Snoopy helmet. A liberal has a bleeding heart and drives an avocado-green VW bus with a peace symbol on it; a progressive has a Listserv and raises money from his mountain biking club.
The 2,000 or so people at the Marriott might also be called the Left. But they’re the polite Left, the conference-attending Left, the politically pragmatic Left that has no interest in getting in a skirmish with riot police. These people are not so enraged by globalization that they want to race across the hotel lobby and trash the adjacent Starbucks.
Well, that was before Dean ?bellowed.? Now all bets are off.
