'Party of yes' is difficult to unify

Many progressives are disappointed in the Obama administration. A catalog of disappointments could be created easily. Promises made have gone unkept; compromises were made prematurely; expediencies have too often dominated decisions.

On the other side of our political picture is a faction committed to denying any success to this administration. The Republican Party wears the badge “The Party of No proudly, it seems. Unhappily, the gap between the two parties is a chasm with moderates on one side thrown over the cliff and moderates on the other side often finding themselves facing blue dog Democrats (often being closet Republicans in essence) and progressives feeling betrayed by those who reach out in vain to Republicans. However, the Republican leadership has chosen to brook no compromise.

Will Rogers “joked, “I belong to no organized political party; I'm a Democrat. This is the difficulty of the Democrats. Truly the party of “big tent, it is the party of the rest of us who are not born with a silver spoon in our mouth, who have not found the path to excessive wealth, who are not threatened by another's religion, race, national origin, sex or sexual orientation, or other “difference from us.

So, Democrats have difficulty in creating a unified agenda. The hidden agenda of the Republican Party seems to be the suppression of the bottom 98 percent of Americans. We, the 98 percent, are all in this together.

The lesser of two evils? Perhaps, but our better nature is in the Democratic Party, The Party of Yes. Our better nature is to say yes rather than no our fellow Americans.

Herb Best

Streamwood