Advantage For The GOP

The Conservative movement with the help of the media has successfully made the word liberal an insult in American politics. So much so that Democrats all over the country run away from the term. This leads to our leaders being called polarizing figures by the media for simply being a liberal. It's a built in advantage for the GOP.

Eric Alterman:

After all, no Democrat running for national office has admitted to being a "liberal" in decades. Some claim to be "conservative." Others prefer "populist." Almost all of them claim to be "progressive," but they usually preface this with another word, like "pragmatic," lest it open up unwanted vulnerabilities. "Liberals" are off the map, except as an epithet.

It's not going to change in till Democrats fight back and place the term liberal back to it's rightful place in American politics. It's have been American Liberals who have been defender of civil, women, worker rights and democracy thru out American history.

President Kennedy, Acceptance Speech at the New York Liberal Party Nomination in 1960.

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal." [...]

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.