Let me take off my advocacy hat and put on my punditry hat. If we take a look at the political climate it appears that we’ve reached an impasse. Here is how DemFromCT puts it:
And when the votes are not there, you concentrate on core principles and look to 2008 to garner more votes (unless conditions change, attracting more R votes).
Here is how Chuck Schumer puts it:
“The Republican leadership and the White House is getting them all to march in line,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who ranks third in the party leadership. “But it is marching further and further away from where America is. We just keep at it. It’s all we can do.”..
Set aside for the moment the idea that they actually can do more…it doesn’t appear that they intend to do more. How will that play?
The Democrats will be blamed for a failure to deliver, but it will not translate into a boon to the GOP. There will be a couple of primaries against Dems. There will be a lot of talk about how there is no difference between the parties. But the electorate is still going to be eager to punish the GOP next November. Another year of bodybags and bad news will guarantee that.
And the Republicans are probably going to lose senate seats in Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Oregon, Colorado, Virginia, and Nebraska. In fact, they stand a good chance of losing seats in Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. And if things really turn sour, they might lose seats in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Meanwhile, Alaska and Idaho remain wildcards. That’s thirteen senate seats with two additional wildcards.
They lose all of them and we’ll have 66 votes. They lose half of them and we’ll have 58-59 votes.
That appears to be the current strategy. And it is unlikely the Republicans can do much to prevent losses in the 7-8 range.
You’d think they’d respond to this threat. Reid certainly hoped they would respond to it. I’m at a loss to explain why they haven’t responded to it.
In the House, the Republicans are retiring in droves. The landscape keeps getting worse and worse for Republicans. And think about this: how many Republicans are in trouble with the law in spite of a fully politicized Justice Department? How many more will be in trouble with the law once a Democratic Attorney General is sworn in?
And, yet, they won’t move. The Democrats are giving the GOP more than enough rope to hang themselves and they are obliging with gusto.
There’s just one problem. What about the well being of the troops?
You’re right of course. Logically, it makes no sense. I’ve got to believe that the GOP leadership is wishing and praying for one of three things to happen: 1) major improvement in Iraq, 2) Bush attacks Iran, 3) a terror attack hits the US.
One’s not going to happen. Two and Three would both be horrendous, but some in the GOP actually would argue that there would be a silver lining for the party in 2008 then, as utterly repugnant as it would be.
Which of course boils down to “they’re fucking insane.”
Do you ever get the feeling Democrats could have 82 Senators and 320 Reps in the House and we’d still be close to current troop levels in Iraq for another 1/2 dozen F.U.? I think killing people for fun and spending money faster than you can print it creates a unique inertia.
Please.
the democrats just shot themselves in the foot with 3 million volunteers and funders with that MoveOn bullshit.
I think it’s going to be a tighter 2008 than you predict with all these blunders.
MoveOn shot their members in the foot. I think you’re confused. Out of those three million members, maybe two will vote for Fred Thompson because…nah…not even one will vote for a Republican.
the moveon crap is just indicative of how unwilling the dems are to embrace real democratic values. they are scared sh*tless of moving, lest they offend someone and lose a vote.
they are more concerned w/keeping their jobs than serving the country.
i say, vote them out (not all, but we know who the do-nothing blue dog repubbb-lites are).
i say, start recall proceedings for pelosi and reed.
i say, do a ned lamont on the dem party as a whole, and show them we mean business.
with what army?
I’m not confused at all. The members will still vote for democrats in the end, but fewer will open their pocketbooks, respond to fundraising letters, or campaign for democrats.
Personally, I’m done volunteering for the national party. They like my money but not my politics, so they don’t get either.
was stupid, and has presented the Repukeliscum with a huge target, which they are in the process of employing well.
It was a terrible mistake of tactics by MoveOn.
“If you are explaining, you are losing”
Instead of critiquing Petraeus in a way that made Bush look bad, they used a stupid pun. Really dumb.
Well, yeah; and what about the well being of the country? While Rahm Emanuel, Reid and whoever is tending to increasing their precious majorities, they are failing to do that which they are there to accomplish in the first place. I find this a pathetic and embarrassing strategy. Every direction you look, the country is going down the crapper and the bugs and theocrats that BushCo has placed in the different branches and departments are becoming institutionalized. Allowing another year of this will tack on another 10-15 to get it out. The time is now; they should do their jobs and quit cravenly worrying about the next election.
I dunno, BooMan. I think they’re playing a longer game. They know they’re going down this time, but they know they’ll be back. Think about it. Nixon set precedents for Reagan. Reagan planted the maggots that now infest the Bush maladministration. They hand off a big steaming sack of shit for the Dems to clean up. The Mighty Wurlitzer plays down every success and plays up every failure of the Dems for a cycle or two. They carefully cultivate another good ole boy or silver tongued actor for the next comeback and we do it all again. And every time they chip away another chunk of the Constitution.
constitution now!
I think we have got things backwards. Rather than calling senators about dem bills, we need to call on the f**king rep admendments and bills. Move-On had a right to free speech pure and simple. We don’t need the upcoming telecom protection act but lobbyists are already in gear for it and you better believe that they have hit the phones with the dems already. We need a pre-emptive call on that one for sure!
There is nothing left of the constitution now!
Heh. I was thinking the same thing and almost added something like that at the end.
I was thinking on the drive home, we’re already this close to a fascist state. I thought for a while they were grooming Tommy Franks for something, but they put him out to pasture when he was stupid enough to speak openly about their plans.
I don’t think it’s time to break out the champagne just yet. Things look pretty good for the Dems right now, but the same people who railroaded us into Iraq still have their hands on all the levers. And they still have fourteen months.
Is ot true that of which I have heard…that the reps. are waiting til after the primaires to turn human again??!!
Democrats are being lured into the tar pits. They win 2008 and then lose big time in 2010 and 2012 because they either are responsible for “defeat” by bringing the troops home or if they don’t, for failing to do what they were elected for. They will be demonized either way. The only hope is for the Democrat who wins to be up front with the country and say it is going to be hard and ugly to clean up the Bush years mess but he or she must at the same time inspire citizens that they CAN persevere and restore the America that they want our country to be again.
The Democrats today guaranteed that they will never get one thin dime from me for the DSCC or the DCCC. But Move-On will (and already has) gotten my contributions. These slimy characters need to go.
‘You’d think they’d respond to this threat. Reid certainly hoped they would respond to it. I’m at a loss to explain why they haven’t responded to it.’
Now I’ll try my hand at the pundit game.
A simple explanation:
The Republicans understand that 2008 is for them a lost cause, completely. And they also know that for the U.S. Iraq is a lost cause. But maybe, just maybe, Iraq is not a lost cause for the Republicans. When there is always 2010, why get bogged down in 2008, and waste money, time and energy? What a difference two little years can make. Right?
They, in the person of Bush as figurehead, have set up the Democrats for a huge debacle and the Democrats are letting it happen. The Democratic president will have to make definite, explicit decisions about Iraq, the ones which Bush has pointedly avoided. Any bad news out of Iraq—what else can be expected?—will then be the responsibility of the Democrats, while in fact these future outcomes will have largely been determined by the Bush administration’s actions. Then we must consider all the Democrats who went along with the Iraq (and coming Iran?) war. It will be very easy for the Republicans to pin the whole disaster on the Democrats because even now the Democrats are not showing clearly on which side they stand: stop the war, continue the war. Neither do they state clearly to the public any understandable reasons for either position. It is not enough to keep saying that such and such a percentage of the U.S. populace wants out. The country needs leaders (Bush?) and not poll analysts (Bush is not always completely wrong).
I can go on. But I’ll only mention the disastrous state of the dollar and the U.S. position in the world because of the crude, nasty policies of the Bush administration. How many Democrats went along for the ride?
The Republicans are planning to retake congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012. If the Democrats don’t become more united and more committed, openly stating their positions instead of only whittling at the words and postures, the Republicans will succeed and pick up where they left off. The Republican Party has no intention of being exiled for any length of time to the political wilderness. There’s too much money for the taking, provided the house of cards doesn’t crumble before then.
Their motto: two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward. On and on. Elephants have long memories.
their right to rule. They do not think in terms of their losing because they feel, and rightly so, that they have won most of the battles up to now.
MY FEAR is that Bush will attack Iran (remember that BOTH repubs and dems gave him authorization) and during that time will call for marshall law and rescend voting.
The only way we will get our country back will be to fight yet again for it and truthfully I don’t think we have the courage or the leadership or the knowledge of how to do that any more.
i say we all start to get behind local progressive candidates and actively campaign for the seats of the blue dog repubbb lite dems.
well, I keep my eye on the FEC filings and I can tell you that there just aren’t any people running against the Blue Dogs. Go through it yourself and make up a list of any candidates you can find running against a Blue Dog. Then look at their site, if they have one, to see where they stand on the issues. Or call them, email them.
You want to run primaries, I’m with you. It’s not happening and I can’t do anything about, really.