This night the dream was leaving

In the past I've been known to use an "abusive boyfriend" metaphor for the Republican party; the kind who says "you know I only hit you because I love you." The Raw Story's Nancy Goldstein has a column in which she pegs just what kind of boyfriend the Democratic party is turning out to be. Excerpts follow, read the whole thing.

Effective immediately, the Democrats will be known as the lyin'-ass boyfriend party - the perfect date for progressive voters looking to be stood up, bullshitted blind, or left holding the tab.

The Democrats are setting themselves up for a lot of us to be visiting someone else on the side. They're inviting a spoiler like Ralph Nader or Ross Perot to start romancing us in '08. We thought getting their asses kicked three elections (two presidential, one midterm) in a row would teach them something, but it seems they've learned nothing. I could just spit at them.

...the Democrats really can't differentiate themselves from the Republicans. As the Alito hearings have shown, they all get along like a bunch of dorm mates, with occasional spats that can easily be resolved over a pitcher at the pub or a few reps at the gym.

Their kids will never be drafted; their daughters and wives will always enjoy access to contraception and abortions; their queer kids will live well within the long shadow of their protection (and payroll, as Mary Cheney and John Schlafly will attest).

Damn them all.

ETA: Pam has a good entry speaking to a similar subject: Just how genuine is the lefts' commitment to people with whom they cannot personally identify?

If they [the left] could step outside of themselves just for a moment, they'd see how absurd this all is. I'm not holding my breath, though.

She goes on to compare this phenomenon with one she has observed working in magazine publishing:

The reality is that many progressive non-profits and magazines have this problem. I think it's for many reasons -- jobs in publishing tend to pay poorly at the bottom of the food chain; these jobs are considered somewhat prestigious jobs -- even the low-level ed assistant positions are often filled by friends of friends, the daughter of your sorority sister, etc. They hire people they know -- and these folks don't know many people of color. It's the classism-on-the-Left issue rising up again, something that comes up in brief flurries, gets hands wringing for a bit, and then dies down to business as usual.

Earlier in the entry she quotes Shakespeare's Sister:

Not a shred of recognition that perhaps the ideological stagnation from which the Left suffers may be a result of its major power players still being predominantly white, straight, and male—which, by the way, wouldn’t be a problem if those particular straight, white males could and did speak eloquently to progressive issues of concern to women, gays, and minorities, but they don’t. And it’s not because they can’t—Paul the Spud can speak just as passionately about women’s issues as I can, and I can speak just as passionately about gay issues as he can. Extricating oneself from the responsibility of speaking to issues beyond one’s own demographic is a choice, and marginalizing the concerns of women (for example) as "identity politics" is indicative of nothing more than the unwillingness to identify with women.