Play It Safe Politics

This is a well-written Los Angeles Times opinion article "They can't even win a war of words."

I agree with the sentiment of this writer, but not as a disappointed Democrat. Rather, as a disappointed American. Does politics have to devolve to the level of attacking your opponent while trying to not make any mistakes yourself?

"Yet somehow the Democratic Party still can't do any better than 'America can do better.'

'You can do better' is what you say to a dim child whose grades were even worse than expected. Is this really the Democrats' message to the nation: that we don't need to be quite as pathetic as we now are, though excellence is certainly beyond our reach?

This slogan speaks not of hope but of hopelessness, of scaled-down ambitions, of dreams deferred and dreams denied.

It's the smallness of it that kills me. This nation began with a dream — a crazy, risky, breathtaking dream of freedom, justice and equality. Sure, we've never truly achieved that dream, but for much of the last century, it's been the Democratic Party that has helped keep that dream alive. So how can it be that, today, Democrats don't seem to stand for anything at all?
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