Searingly accurate cartoon comparing Repubs & Dems

The Village Voice ran a cartoon that strikes me as a searingly accurate comment on the state of Democrats and Republicans in the US right now.

It shows the GOP for the vicious manipulators and the Democrats for the spineless wimps they have shown themselves to be over and over again. It’s no longer Tweedledum and Tweedledee as it often seemed to be in the 1980s, but it’s not any kind of meaningful choice. If in November 2008, I’m asked to choose between, say, Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, I can tell you right now that I’ll be voting third-party, probably Green. And if you tell me I’m throwing away my vote, I’d counter that voting for either Clinton or Romney is throwing away my vote because neither of them come close to representing me. At least in the primaries, I’ll be able to vote my conscience.

Back in the 1970s, when I first became politically tuned in, the Democrats were a party that took pride in actually standing for something, and the mainstream Republicans of that era would be dismissed by today’s extremists as art of the looney-bird Left.

Other than Dennis Kucinich, i don’t see a lot of Dems willing to take a stand that could be in any way attacked by the right–and as a consequence, they generate no passion, no enthusiasm, and very few election victories. Where are the Barbara Jordans, the Tom Harkins, the Bella Abzugs, the Shirley Chisolms, the Ron Dellumss, the George McGoverns of today? and how is it that people so extremist they make Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan look like flaming liberals become mainstream? Whatever happened to conservatives who think for themselves, respect individual liberties, and demand government accountability?

And how much logner will the American people put up with such rotten choices before demanding a political system where third-party votes are not thrown away, and where the two big parties run peole that one might actually enjoy voting for?