I’m pretty well exasperated with the stalemate in Washington, but I am holding out hope that the public will smash the Republicans in 2008 and give Democrats such large majorities (and the White House) that there will be no more excuses for not moving aggressively on at least a center-left agenda. And despite my frustrations, I still see this as a likely scenario.
Despite discontent with Congress this year, the public rates congressional Republicans (29 percent approve) lower than congressional Democrats (38 percent approve). When the parties are pitted directly against each other, the public broadly favors Democrats on Iraq, health care, the federal budget and the economy. Only on the issue of terrorism are Republicans at parity with Democrats.
Other recent polls have shown the Democrats leading on terrorism and foreign policy. The Republicans are really just the party of the deep south now. It’s up to the electorate to make that clear.
The Democrats’ strategy is deeply unpopular with liberal Democrats, but who the hell are they gonna vote for? Ralph Nader?
More than eight in 10 liberal Democrats said Congress has been too restrained, while about the same percentage of conservative Republicans said it has been too aggressive. A narrow majority of independents, 53 percent, want more congressional action.
Yes, we want more action…
But if we aren’t going to get it we will look for the Democratic candidate (Dodd, Richardson) that promises more action. And then we will join with the broader electorate to absolutely eviscerate the last vestiges of the GOP from New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Upper Midwest, and the West Coast. And we’ll make further inroads in the border states. In 2009 there will be little left of the GOP outside of the Old Confederacy and some of the plains and mountain states.
How are we going to vote them out when we don’t even know if our votes count?
We’ll NEVER know if our votes count if we don’t pass a federal law guaranteeing some portion of our votes will be audited.
I can’t share any enthusiasm. I actually think this explains the utter contempt the Republicans show us. They don’t need our votes anymore.
We MUST make passing HR 811 a PRIORITY if we want to have any say in the next 12 years. I’m dead serious.
But if we aren’t going to get it we will look for the Democratic candidate (Dodd, Richardson) that promises more action.
And what if we end up getting a candidate who promises less action, in other words, Repub Lite once again? Are we going to join ranks and support the lesser evil, to be loyal to “our” party?
If so, we will have been played for suckers yet one more time.
give Democrats such large majorities (and the White House) that there will be no more excuses for not moving aggressively on at least a center-left agenda.
They ran out of excuses in May. By formulating plans in which they will be able to give us yet more excuses, you are simply helping the Dem establishment to con progressives indefinitely.
We need to be wary here. We elected Bill Clinton and got the end of welfare, NAFTA, no health care, and international intervention outside of UN mandates. We also ended up with a weak party that lost the presidency and both houses of Congress.
Any Democrat will not do. I’m all for eviscerating the last vestiges of the GOP, but we cannot do that unless the Democratic Party offers a clear alternative. A majority of Americans want us out of Iraq, want single-payer health care, want an end to NAFTA and WTO outsourcing of US jobs, etc. A Democratic candidate who opposes those views is not going to excite the party base and we will end up with another close election. A close election will be a Republican victory because of election fraud.
I don’t see any Democratic candidate able to go the distance who is worth supporting. I’ll vote for Kucinich in the primary but that’s mostly symbolic. We are going to end up running against one (maybe two) very unpopular war(s) with a candidate who supports the policy that got us there in the first place.
And isn’t that the point. Just what does being a Democrat mean? When a Democrat sees taking the middle as the way to electability, it simply means absorbing positions that Republicans take, which simply means a Democrat who has become more Republican.
We are a long way from the social democracies of Europe and the English speaking democracies, even more so as Bush contrained our social-liberal agenda even more than Reagan did with his large deficits and their effect in increasing interest payments on the burgeoning National Debt. Servicing the National Debt is now the second largest federal budget item after national defense (servicing the military-industrial complex).
We will never become a full-fledged social democracy at this rate, with presidential candidates who believe the poor and lower middle class are no longer worth fighting for. Wealth and income inequality is now a fact of American life and we had better just learn to live with it.
I don’t believe they will do anything even if we hand them a huge majority. If we do that they will just veiw it as a mandate for their present do-nothing behavior. We have to do what the Europeans do, when they can’t get their rulers to listen. We have to engage in direct action to cost the rulers money if they don’t listen to us.
YES!!! Without direct action, nothing else will be possible. We’ve already lost. It’s an uphill battle now.