The NYT sits down with outgoing congressman Alan Grayson for an exit interview. In typical clueless fashion, the NYT interviewer professes surprise that Grayson doesn't just have a few choice words to say about the Republicans, but aims mostly at his own party's failings.
How out of touch would a reporter have to be to find a progressive congressman's criticism of the present-day Democratic Party "unexpected"?
But in a wide-ranging interview as his term drew to a close, he repeatedly aimed his artillery in an unexpected direction: toward his own party.
Not for overreaching, in this age of hand-wringing over big government and creeping "socialism," or for ideological purism. Instead, while surveying the wreckage of the November elections that cost him his seat and looking to the Congressional term ahead, Mr. Grayson posits that many Democrats have not been acting Democratic enough.
No shit!
The NYT reporter, of course, can't let criticism like that of the Democratic Party's never-ending shuffle toward the "center" go without a condescending little chuckle and a rap on the knuckles.
Judging by the results of the midterm elections, it does not exactly seem to be a widespread sentiment.
After all, how could anyone find fault with weak, afraid-of-its-shadow, mealy-mouthed Democratic centrism, except that it's too, um, left, for what everyone knows is a a center-right nation?
Back to Grayson, who makes for such a quaint spectacle - an actual progressive fighting for actual progressive ideals for actual progressive voters:
But at a moment when centrism seems to be the party’s antidote to a redrawn political landscape, Mr. Grayson is setting forth a radically different playbook of sharp elbows and unapologetic liberalism.
During the long conversation, Mr. Grayson...faulted Democrats for failing to deliver for some of their most potent constituencies, among them labor unions and antiwar voters.
"What did the environmentalists see over the last two years?" he asked. "A proposed monumental increase in subsidies for nuclear power industry and offshore drilling."
As for gay voters, he said: "What they got to see was a judge order that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ no longer be enforced and a Democratic president appeal that decision. That is what that constituency saw before Nov. 2."...
By Election Day, Democratic voters in many districts felt that they had no real choice, Mr. Grayson said.
"If you want people to support you, then you have to support them," he said. "You have to think long about what you did for people who voted for you, made phone calls for you, who went door to door for you." ...
He is annoyed with Democratic senators for waiting until now to challenge the procedural rules that, he said, allowed a determined group of Republicans to use filibusters to stymie much of the president’s agenda.
And he bemoaned what he said was President Obama’s reversal on a campaign pledge to let the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy expire.
Will he run again? He won't rule it out.
Take a break, Mr. Grayson. And then come back to the battle again. Your party needs you.