Also posted in orange.
I, like most of you, come to this site in search of solutions.
I am only 36 but have likely lived half of my lifespan if I am so lucky to respond well to HIV antiviral medication as part of my illness that I have disclosed before. So I’ve got about halfway to go. But I could also get hit by a bus tomorrow. Random chance happenings and long term probabilities accompany our lives like wolves tracking their prey. And something always gets us in the end
But I will not succumb without a fight. And party of my commitment to survival is pursuing courses of action that empower myself to improve my community’s ability to govern us wisely. In times of crisis, good governance is all that stands between us and random acts of mass destruction and long-term probabilities of global failure
If I or you would not give up, why have our leaders?
For all of my voting life I’ve voted Democratic — except once in my first election when I voted for Ron Paul while living in Austin, TX … I was young and naive, so please forgive me. I remember well in 1992 when I made my decision to straight slate vote Democratic party because no Republican would ever represent my values, my hopes, or my dreams. The rest of the 1990s were, politically speaking, like finding a voice that had been withheld before I was even old enough to understand election consequences. Clinton may not have been perfect, but in response to the Republican Destruction Machine, he spoke for me often and frustrated me mightily when he bent to their pressure.
I’ve have since grown older and wiser and have seen, too, how even Clinton’s policies eroded my future and placed our nation at risk to what has come since.
But I still had a voice.
So hear me out when I say this: “The Democratic Party is not speaking for me”
It is silent. It is meek. And for all the reports of our amazing 2006 election and our search for clear mandates, the party is rudderless as a policy maker. It merely acts in reaction and acquiesces to a despot’s blackmail. It has fallen from such hope and such clear opportunity that the descent has been as dizzying as it has been nauseating
Keep this in mind: What has carried the Democratic party to success in 2006, was us, my friends and colleagues. Us, the Netroots and the Grassroots. The people who articulated the paradigm shift to a 50 state strategy. The people convinced our party’s candidates that the Internet mattered as decisive channel of communication and coordination. The people who put unknown candidates in districts given up for red and funnelled them money and support.
Us.
You couldn’t find a more motivated group of Democratic supporters ANYWHERE on this planet than us, my friends and colleagues. We are it. The heart and soul of what it means to be a Democrat.
And yet reports swirl around Washington that OUR representatives are hiding their horrible policies behind procedural screens. That OUR representatives are baking secret trade deals behind closed doors. That OUR representatives are failing us again and again.
Or plain and simple: That our representatives are ignoring our will.
I wrote a few comments this morning that deserve repeating in this diary:
I woke up this morning, caught Dood Abides great diary on Dkos, and in response to the typical refrain of our Democratic leaders at least being better than Republicans, I say:
Oh really
Have the Dems done anything of real substance IN SIX MONTHS of legislation.
Don’t tell me how close the majority/minorities are. It’s about leadership and the Dems are clueless and pathetic.
For six years they whinged and couldn’t get anything done as an opposition party. And now in the majority by the same slim lead as the Repubs had, they can’t do shit? And the Repubs can get away with whatever they want?
Fucking Benedict Arnolds.
I’m sick of Democratic Status Quo.
Because of them, more soldiers will die, more egregious legislation will not be overturned, more secret deals will be cut, more jobs will vanish in the middle of the night
BECAUSE OF THEM.
In response to Sirota’s ceaseless populist quest to restory integrity and decency in our party , I replied:
The Party of FDR and JFK
have been reduced to a quivering pile of slimeballs as far as I’m concerned.
I am beyond disgusted. I’m so angry that I’ve become hostile to a party leaders that cannot practice principles. I will work to bring them down. To shame them. To discredit them. To demolish any public standing they have.
There are too many people in the party and too many people who barely affiliate themselves with Dems BECAUSE of this behavior as it has been expressed day in day out FOR YEARS.
It’s about having values.
It’s about putting your nation first and not your pandering to the elite few.
We can find leaders elsewhere who clearly and solidly speak for us and work for our interests as citizens, as fundraisers, as donors, as troops on the ground, as troops overseas who have been stranded in a war due to the DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP’s failure to conduct a war against a President here at home.
We can find those leaders HERE ON THIS SITE.
I’m sick of spin. It’s made America and dizzying disaster.
I’m getting of the merry go round NOW. Who is with me?
And finally, after reading another excellent post by Kagro X, I wrote:
By surrendering to Bush
the Dems surrender their integrity and mandate from the People.
By surrendering to Bush, the Dems surrender their chance to change the equation
By surrendering to Bush, the Dems have surrendered the lives of how men and women to tyranny.
Our own.
This party leadership does not speak for me or for Americans.
As for the rest, Olbermann speaks for me, the Democratic Leadership can stick their empty words up their asses.