"Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing"

EXCLUSIVE: AOC triples down on Pelosi — and calls for pro-abortion party purity test in wake of Roe https://t.co/OVbcxYyZUh

— Raw Story (@RawStory) July 5, 2022

A fine sentiment for an individual; a terrible sentiment for a national political party.

A case in point, to increasingly restive progressives, is that even after the Roe decision was leaked back in May, Democratic Party leaders continued to support anti-abortion Texas incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar over his progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros. That runoff divided establishment Democrats from the party’s growing ranks of progressives, many of whom are inspired and supported by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

I'm guessing most of these "progressives" are:

a) on Twitter

b) couldn't identify the geographical contours of south Texas on a map.

I'm not the biggest fan in the world of Henry Cuellar. Then again, south Texas was reliably Democratic until recently.  Cisneros would have made sure more of it went Republican, costing Democrats yet another seat in the House.  Is purity of party worth that?

Besides, I've seen what party purity provides.  One need look no closer than at the GOP House, which aside from Adam Kinziger and Liz Cheney, is as partisan as can be (and neither Cheney nor Kinziger are my nominees for replacements for Democratic representatives).  Purity of party is why Donald Trump screams about "RINOs!" and berates "Old Crow McConnell."  I'd much rather Cuellar was inside the tent pissing out, than the reverse.

I'm perfectly happy with AOC being inside the tent, too.  It's pretty much the heritage and legacy of the Democratic party.  As Will Rogers supposedly said:  "I don't belong to an organized political party.  I'm a Democrat."  We could, of course, reduce ourselves to the size of the GOP.  That seems to be a popular argument on Twitter:  that the only way Democrats can win is to be more like the GOP, except, you know, liberal.  Or not, depending on who's advocating (the Lincoln Project would love all Democrats to fight like Republicans, which would practically mean being Republicans; at least as far as voters are concerned).

Call me old fashioned, but I think Joe Biden won because he wasn't Donald Trump, and he wasn't trying otherwise to emulate a Republican.  And yes, I agree, there's a great deal of tension between the geriatric crowd (raises hand.  I'm now in that cohort with Biden, even though he's several years older than me) and the younger generations.  That is a societal problem we're going to be fighting for a long time, until we figure out how to resolve.  Old people are no longer conveniently dying at 65 (why do you think FDR set that as "retirement age" for Social Security?).  And they aren’t conveniently shuffling off to retirement villages, either.

Nor am I.  Deal with it.