''The Common Good''

Armando has a short quote from a conversation with Jim McDemott on Kos: "ARMANDO: I'm selfish just like everybody else. I'm lucky. I have my job, I have my health care and haven't thought about it but your description of it just now really got to me and it makes me wonder if Dems are using it properly.

McDERMOTT: But you are absolutely right and, you see, I mean, by the way if there's anything that's lost, that we've lost for awhile, it's the sense of the common good. You are honest enough to tell me that that's exactly how you thought. You are thinking about yourself. I've got a job, I've got health care, I've got, you know, I'm doing OK, so it's not a problem.

Well Reagan started us down the road, not that he was the first, but he was the one that articulated best when he said: "are you better off this year than you were last year or four years ago?" The question should be are we better off than we were four years ago and the fact is that as a country and as a people and as a middle-class, we are not . . . and that's why I think the biggest thing that's missing in the Democratic Party is that we have lost the idea of the common good." Thanks to Washington State Political Report for the tip.