With all due respect to BooMan (I love you man!) I have seen the Democratic Party over the course of my lifetime move from the party of “can-do” (remember Kennedy and going to the Moon? LBJ and passing civil rights legislation?) to the party of “Don’t hurt me Mr. Republican Conservative Talk Show Host, I promise to be Good.”
Well, to be honest that’s not completely fair. There are many good progressive democrats, and many who fight hard for their beliefs and policies. However, far too many of the old guard are (A) “We Like Big Business too, so Give us some of that PAC Money Mr. CEO” DLC types; (B) “Let’s stick my finger in the wind and see if it’s safe to come out of my bunker today” types; “Flat Out Conservatives who Just aren’t as Conservative as the GOP Crazies” and (D) “Living in the past when I had Republican friends in Congress” and “Why can’t we all just get along” clueless types.
Truth be told, with rare exceptions (Nancy Pelosi come on down!) most National Democrats will not give the time of day to their base supporters: Unions, progressives, even minorities. They see us as a problem to be hidden in the closet, unlike the Republicans who make an effort to feed and nurture their base supporters and at least keep them somewhat enthused. I suspect we need a complete changing of the Democratic Old Guard until things will really change for the better.
I’m not recommending a “Tea Party” from the left. There’s no need to go there, but we need a new breed of Democrat, one who doesn’t shy away from his or her values and principles and who embraces the party’s base.
I don’t like everything Alan Grayson has done so far, but damn, I do love that he doesn’t just sit there and take it. He doesn’t try to play nice with the ever increasingly right-wing extremism in Congress, running for office on a platform of hate and white racism.
And why should he or any Democrat be afraid to call out the Republicans for their ties to Big Corporations, their extreme positions on civil liberties, and their unthinking racism, homophobia and rhetoric that evokes violence toward and hatred of religious minorities, liberals, black people and anyone who supports social justice. He ( and a few others) call them out for their heartlessness, their corruption, their idiocy, their lies and their failures.
Too many Democrats these days are running scared. Scared of the Republicans. Scared of Big Business. Scared of being associated with “activists” and liberals. Scared of their own accomplishments (preventing a Depression, saving jobs, health care reform) and scared of calling the GOP out for the damage they did for eight years and have continued to do by their obstruction of Obama’s policies, even ones that the GOP itself had previously endorsed.
I guess they never learned that the best defense is an aggressive offense. They are like the French trying to sit behind the fortifications of the Maginot Line hoping for the best while the German Army ignored those outdated defensive measures and blitzed their way to victory in little more than 6 weeks.
Well we have about 6 weeks until the election. Time to go on offense. Obama at least is finally making the effort to fight back, but too many Democratic officials and candidates, afraid of what Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh might say, are keeping their heads down. You don’t win elections that way. You lose them.
You lose big time.
Yes!!
I’ve concluded that the operative slogan is no longer “Yes We Can!” It’s “No, the Republicans won’t let us do it.”
Yes, this is precisely what Obama is hiding behind with DADT.
Time to stop blaming the Republicans on this. Time to get this done. No repeal? No appeal.
As another Democratic president once said: “The buck stops here.” Not at the desk of Susan Collins.
He is not in office yet and he may never get elected to any office, but in the Ohio 8th CD, Justin Coussoule is giving John of Orange Boehner an experience he’s never had.
Coussoule is making a race out of it. We’ve never seen Dem signs in the rural northern part of the district. Now there are quite a few.
Well of course you’re not befuddled!
Sooo, I would really like to reframe the way we talk to the Right also.
My two cents would be to start using the word “Correction” when referring to Obama’s game plan. When I hear people at the Forums bemoan, “Is this my new reality?” or “What happened to the American Dream and Is there no more hope” I don’t want to hear a response that tallies what the Dems have tried to do.
We’re in the middle of watching the Dems try and Correct what past administrations have tried and failed at; those of us still standing are taking the brunt of that Correction yes, but as a Correction it is not open ended, these policies will go a long way toward righting the ship, but a Correction is always strident and there will an end and then a beginning again.
All true, but
1– it’s up to them to communicate that, at which they’ve been a miserable failure so far.
2– When they screw up so royally as they apparently intend to do on the tax bill, there are just no excuses left. Getting dealt a stinking hand doesn’t excuse playing it in the most idiotic way possible.
I think it’s become obvious that we DO need a lefty tea party. How long do we pin our hopes on a party whose only recommendation is that they may be stupid, politically suicidal, corrupt cowards, but they’re not as crazy as the only other game in town?
We need a lefty tea party that’s focused, has a real agenda, and isn’t afraid to communicate it. The Dems deserve all the contempt we heap upon them, but the political configuration in this country is such that they ARE the “left”. To the left of them is just a bunch of bloggers squabbling over trivial, orphan compromises like a public option, the weak-kneed financial reform, and all the rest of the “socialist” initiatives that would have felt comfortable in the Nixon administration.
The teapartiers are astoundingly stupid, but they got the pattern just right: not really a party, but a real force at one end of the spectrum that has gained real influence over the GOP while holding onto the option of gaining enough strength to form a real party. I don’t think they have the brains to ultimately be more than a flash in the pan, but they did build a viable structure even if they don’t have the intellectual power to make it work in the end.
We rightly mock the teapartiers for their lack of a set of sane principles or a coherent agenda, but it’s long past time for us to take a long look in the mirror and recognize that we’re running on at least as much empty as they are. Either those on the left get our act together and create a left flank for the Dems the way the teabaggers did on the right. We hear about how they’re wrecking the GOP, but they’ve moved it in their direction while actually protecting GOP moderates. If Mark Kirk wins, it will be because against the backdrop of the teabagger crazies he can pass himself off as “centrist”, whereas any Dem candidate who wants to play “centrist” has to move to the right of Pelosi, Obama, and Reid, because they’re as “left” as anybody with any cred gets in America.
There was never a better time for a lefty teaparty. The Greens blew it, so it’s time to start over. “Social Democrats” has a nice ring to it. Somebody, at long last, has to make them do it.
your comment reminds me of the old phil ochs song, substituting “centrist” for “liberal”.
the teabaggers, do not forget, are supported by a very firmly entrenched infrastructure of conservative ideology and corporate money. Thy would not be where they are without the backing of outlets like Fox Newscorp and well-funded organizations like Dick Armey’s Fredom Works. Most bloggers don’t have that.
One reason the right has that kind of infrastructure, by the way, is that the people backing the right spend freely, while the people backing the left are cheapskates.
One of the few guys who runs campaigns right, Russ Feingold — no PAC money, etc. — is about to get his ass handed to him by a self-financing millionaire.
There’s no percentage in being good, and listening to the base will get you a quarter and a cup of coffee.
Everyone’s first instinct is self-preservation. Even Democrats.
It’s enough to make a person throw a shoe at the digital, wide-screen TV! The Democrats have so much on their side, and tend to destroy themselves.
Delay the vote on the tax cuts til after the election? What Wusses!
THose of us who wasted shoe leather on these cowards are SOOOO disappointed.
First point–in my political lifetime, which goes back to handing out leaflets for JFK, Democrats are no more or less visionary now. Few ever were (JFK, Clinton, etc.) and most were not. They were and are politicians, and the balance between self-interest and their reading of political realities is usually hard to evaluate from outside.
Second point–President Obama’s accomplishments in his first two years are historic. But making history is frequently compromised, ugly to watch and beset by criticism on all sides. It only looks glorious later.
I agree that this year is very hard to watch. Democrats in Congress are not doing much to motivate progressives or other Obama voters, and the Administration is losing opportunities, whether or not for good reason. Meanwhile, this campaign is beset by more overt racism, xenophobia, Christian right extremism and willfully ignorant right wing extremism than any time I can recall. Not that this hasn’t existed, but it hasn’t been given a home in a major political party, or amplified with such tacit approval of its legitimacy or respectability by media, at least in my lifetime.
I pressed the post button accidentally. I was going to add that in its heyday the gatekeeper media was vulnerable to a certain kind of xenophobia–McCarthyism is a prime example. And Barry Goldwater’s nomination in 1964 liberated some right wing extremism into the mainstream. But what’s going on now is far uglier. It has a great deal to do with the first black President of the United States, whether he wants to own up to that or not. The recession, Citizens United, the new media environment and the apparent inability of the administration to get its message through (with a lot of complicity, from progressive media to some extent as well)–it’s all looking like a perfect storm.
And yet…it’s still September.