Chicago Mayor Daley’s Bro Pleads for Dems to Return to Center

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s brother, William, is warning the Democratic Party that it is going too far left and will end up “in the wilderness” in 2010. William Daley has been a longtime political operative that has been connected with the Clintons for many years but that doesn’t make him an extremist lefty, apparently… at least in his opinion.

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Daley wrote an op ed for the Washington Post today where he warns that the Democratic Party is in danger of going over the leftwing cliff. With the revelation that Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama is jumping the sinking Dem. ship and has declared that he is now a Republican and with the several Dems retiring from Congress, Daley warns that all the centrists are running away from the party and that will cause it to lose future elections. In fact, he’s sure its too late to prevent major loses in 2010. He warns that if the party doesn’t return to the center they will lose more than just the next election.

But now they face a grim political fate. On the one hand, centrist Democrats are being vilified by left-wing bloggers, pundits and partisan news outlets for not being sufficiently liberal, “true” Democrats. On the other, Republicans are pounding them for their association with a party that seems to be advancing an agenda far to the left of most voters. The political dangers of this situation could not be clearer.

Unfortunately for Mr. Daley, the figureheads at the top of the party are all true socialists. Obama, Pelosi and Reid are the most un-American set that have ever taken power in this country. Even worse than the socialist cabal of the FDR Administration. Daley warns that the party better go back to being the centrist party that won it elections. But he says they aren’t “doomed.”

Despite this raft of bad news, Democrats are not doomed to return to the wilderness. The question is whether the party is prepared to listen carefully to what the American public is saying. Voters are not re-embracing conservative ideology, nor are they falling back in love with the Republican brand. If anything, the Democrats’ salvation may lie in the fact that Republicans seem even more hell-bent on allowing their radical wing to drag the party away from the center.

I hate to say it but Daley is right. The extremist trajectory of the Democrat Party is already hurting it in a major way. Of course, I hope that it continues that way until it is not only in the wilderness, but destroyed for decades to come… but that’s just me. Suffice to say, William Daley is right but it is likely that his warning will fall on deaf ears. It is the nature of a party to keep going in a straight line until the voters deliver a rebuke that sends it reeling backward. In fact, it isn’t just the nature of parties, but the nature of humans. Prudence is not very common despite the “common sense” of it. ____________