The Dems and Obama

Lots of talk in DC these days about how Congressional Dems won't be bowing to "Rex et Imperator" PEBO. It is going to be a fun run here, watching the newly muscular Dems have at each other. The Democratic Party is basically an American version of the kinds of ruling coalitions that hold sway in parliamentary democracies in Europe. Marriages of convenience among factions with widely disparate views, these coalitions invariably fray as differences begin to outweigh whatever it was that held them together.

Rep. Clyburn (third ranking House Dem, and member of that most independent of coalitions, the Congressional Black Caucus) put it this way: "The Democrats are going to be Democrats," Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), the party's third-ranking House leader, said Friday as he left the Summers meeting, by numerous accounts a session that involved spirited give and take. "We're creative thinkers," Clyburn said. "We don't believe in groupthink." No, Representative Clyburn--it isn't that you don't believe in groupthink, it is that you don't hold any ideas in common. There are no unifying principles in the Democratic Party, as the liberal impulse causes adherents to naturally doubt dogma and established order (the purview of conservatives), preferring instead the "politics of meaning" and whatever it is the liberal "feels" is most important at that time.