Democrats insisting that progressives enter the Democratic Party is a co-opting strategy as old as the Populist/Democratic fusion campaign for William Jennings Bryan that killed 19th century populism.

The overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress voted for Bush's tax cuts, his military build-up, his assaults on civil liberties, and his regulatory and tax favors to corporate interests. But now, according to the "Anybody But Bush" Democrats, we should rely on these same Democrats to provide the resistance!

Cynthia McKinney, a Democratic Congresswoman who did resist the Republican Right agenda, is a good example of what the Democrats do to their progressives these days. When the right (including the Georgia's Democratic Senator Zell Miller and the Democratic Leadership Council) targeted her for defeat, she was abandoned by the state and national Democrats, from Andrew Young and Maynard Jackson to Terry McAulliffe and Bill Clinton.

We can't fight the far right by supporting the moderate right. The left did that in Germany in the 1930 elections and the moderate right they helped to elect soon handed power over to Hitler.

The Democratic Party has been the graveyard of every progressive insurgency since the populists died there in 1896. Reforming the Democrats has been the dominant strategy of liberals, progressives, and even most radicals since 1936. Inside the Democratic Party, the left lost its independent voice. Its analyses and policy proposals disappeared from public debate. The left ended up doing the trench work for candidates who were bankrolled by and indentured to the dominant corporate wing of the Party.

Wake up people! If you don't see that the Democrats are just as culpable as the Republicans for driving the nation to the right, then you aren't paying attention.