1115.org

This is what you get:

But it naturally follows that in order to keep their votes, the Democrats would have to honor their agenda and views — the evangelicals are big voting bloc and if the Democrats become the social conservative party, they could count on their votes for sure. (If they don’t make substantial moves toward social conservatism, this won’t work, obviously.) It doesn’t leave much room for liberals, but perhaps that’s a good thing. They are nothing but trouble, defending women’s civil liberties, agitating for gay rights and hectoring the government about not torturing and starting wars and all that. It would be a big relief if they didn’t need them.

It occurs to me that this may have been one of the lessons the political establishment took from the Clinton years. Gore had the presidency denied him in 2000 largely because the Democrats had alienated a significant enough slice of the left that it defected to a third party, making the outcome much closer than it should have been. They may see the way to permanent realignment to be the replacement of liberals (who are universally loathed among their friends) with the salt-of-the-earth, well organized and easy to appease social conservatives. It makes some sense. It would keep liberals rootless and powerless but they could continue to serve as the useful punching bag for the political establishment.

I have been writing about the fantasy of bringing the dominionists into the Democratic fold for five years. It never occurred to me that you could push the Dirty Fucking Hippies out of the party and replace them with Krazy Khristians. I guess that’s why Digby is Digby.

I didn’t like being a punching bag while Bush was in power. I’m not going to enjoy it while Obama is in power either. At least it’s not a surprise because I fucking told you this would happen.