William Greider on Fiscal Cliff Outcome: Time for a New New Democratic Movement

And for a countervailing view on yesterday's fiscal cliff solution, here's William Greider at The Nation:

We might eventually learn to celebrate this moment as the beginning point for new politics—grounded in the reality of our injured condition rather than stale right-wing ideology. Instead of Republicans versus Democrats, this might become the time for Democrats versus Democrats in which liberal-labor progressives push the president and their party leftward and toward a more aggressive and ambitious agenda for rebuilding the country and the economy. The president remains surrounded by bean counters from the Clinton era who portrayed themselves as "new Democrats" moving rightward. Now the country needs new new Democrats who can revive the party’s imagination and thirst for governing.

I say that Greider's commentary is "countervailing," and I mean by that that it's countervailing in some respects to what I posted earlier today. It's perhaps more hopeful than what I posted--and hope's certainly not at all a bad thing to seek as a new year begins.

At the same time, I also see Greider coming down in the same place in which I came down at the end of my previous posting about these matters, when I argued that our future depends on raising all the hell we have in our hands to raise as the bean counters continue to count. They're hardly gone from D.C., after all.

They're hardly gone from the Democratic party, in fact.

The graphic is by Bitter Sweet Dreams at the Tumblr page, Be the change you wish to see in the world.