Are Ameri cans Becoming More "Progressive"

Rick Perlsteing tries to answer that question. Perlstein writes that even though more independents today agree with some core Democratic Party positions, most of those independents are unwilling to call themselves Democrats.

Here's a riddle: What's an "independent"? More and more, it's an American who holds positions we associate with Democrats but who refuses to call himself by the name. Why? Part of the reason is that people say to themselves, "If only there was a party that thought like me--that was for harnessing the power of government to help the needy and protect the middle class; for reining in business excess; for fighting overseas threats through soft power instead of reckless force." But they don't find today's Democrats answering to the description. A Washington Post/ABC News poll published in early June proved it on Iraq: It heralded the emergence of what might be called "antiwar independents," who'd like nothing more than to find a party determined to end the war but don't see enough difference between Congressional Republicans and Democrats for the latter to earn their loyalty. Fueled, the Post suspects, by the failure of Congress to change course in Iraq, independents gave Congressional Democrats a 49 percent approval rating in April but only 37 percent in June.

Perlstein points out that Democrats don't actually act like Democrats and they certainly don't want people to vote for them as Democrats.

I don't know if that is true. Many of the Democrats I know, and in my neighborhood, that is a lot, have some real problems with the Democratic leadership, which they view as too far to the left of them. These are people who grew up with a family who were FDR and JFK Democrats, strong on defense, strong on assistance to those who need it and a vision for the future based upon what they define as American ideas.

But today's Democratic leadership has moved into a world that does not seem very American. Loyalty to the nation seems to have been abandoned. Politics no longer ends at the water's edge and for many of my Democratic neighbors, they have looked at the Democratic leadership as having more interest in bashing President Bush than in promoting Democratic ideals.

It is not that my friends and neighbors like President Bush (they don't at all), but they wonder if the Democratic majority in Congress was worth the win in 2006. They view everything that the Democratic leadership has focused on as being more Anti-Bush than progressive. Some investigation into the Bush Administration is a good thing they say, but they wonder, where are all the promises we were made?

Progressives, as opposed to liberals, have an interest in moving forward, in looking for solutions. These are not people who look to the past and try to punish the past. They acknowledge failures and mistakes, but seek to learn from them. While America may indeed be moving in a more "progressive" direction, the political parties are being left behind. The party that can "adopt" these progressive and to a certain extent independent voters will start winning elections. The problem is that right now neither party seems comfortable enough in its own skin to find a way to bring those voters into the fold.