Today I will be touching the third rail.
A third rail is an issue that politicians and officials don't want to touch because it's too controversial. The idiom refers to the actual third rail used in electric rail systems. The third rail carries a high voltage, so touching it is extremely dangerous. Third rail is originally American.
The Grammarist
Today’s candidate for foofaraw or not is the grinding trench warfare going on between “Democrats” and “Progressives” here on DailyKos. What I am suggesting in this case is a ceasefire once all Democratic Candidates have been formally chosen in this election cycle. It would remain in place until after the 2022 Midterm Elections.
But before I start a few words about my last DailyKos foofaraw or not diary. The diary was about a voluntary moratorium on rural bashing. It drew blowback from both rural bashers and those who see rural bashers as urban elitists. That blowback apparently spread to totally unrelated diaries.
Here is an exchange between two posters. The first quote is not rural bashing. It is personal, specific, and heartfelt.
The second quote as well as containing a shot at my previous foofaraw diary contains sweeping generalizations toward rural communities as some sort of monolith. Should you ever wonder if something you are about to write is rural bashing these two comments make the difference starkly clear.
It's crap like this that makes me genuinely worry for my BF's safety -- he's stuck living in rural upstate Ohio, which is about as far from a good place to be a socially-awkward Jewish bisexual as I've ever been to. Sure, these bigots are going after the trans community *now,* but there's no reason to believe they'll stop there.
Hold on now! We're on a 4 month moratorium of criticising rural America didn't you hear?
We can't go around just acknowledging how awful a place it is for queer and non-christians people.
Now on to today’s quote.
My concern is that autocratic dictatorships don’t arise out of nowhere. They usually don’t stand a chance of overtaking and displacing a representative government unless that representative government is badly failing the majority of its citizens.
Those of us who are used to being banged around these halls with charges of “magic fairy dust dreamers” who are crying because we didn’t get our super-special pony try to point this out, over and over — as if pointing out places where your own party is badly missing the play is somehow tantamount to rooting for the other guy. We’re not — or I’m not, at least; I daresay there’s a few “leftier than you” trolls that have made appearances here over the years. What we are trying to do with our criticisms is point out that if you fail the majority of citizens often enough for long enough, they will turn somewhere else in an attempt to get their needs met. To demagogues. To completely inexperienced nincompoops.
I would like to recommend Siab’s wonderful diary On the possibility of taking a small step backward, and becoming, once again, a site for Democrats from which this quote comes. I also want to say, because I have been scolded for not defending my own position strongly enough in the first two diaries in this series that I agree completely with:
if you fail the majority of citizens often enough for long enough, they will turn somewhere else in an attempt to get their needs met.
But I think a ceasefire is essential here between the Progressives and the Democrats. I could just as easily say left wing of the party and center of the party. There are many different word pairings used in this debate. It doesn’t matter. This is pure Democratic voters fighting with Democratic voters. But that fight is not as urgent and critical as winning the 2022 Midterm Elections.
I see Progressives and Democrats fighting as an example of a distraction from more important things, that is to say this fight is a classic Foofaraw.