The 2010 elections were not only a disaster on the federal level. The Republicans gained supermajorities on the state level in places like Alabama and Texas. Republican-majority governments in states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Arizona, and Florida have been passing radical legislation, much of it unconstitutional on its face. The assault on abortion rights has been unprecedented, as has been the efforts to destroy public-sector unions, and to disenfranchise Democratic constituencies like racial minorities, college students, and the elderly who survive on fixed-incomes. In many cases, the courts have done what the Democrats were too weak to accomplish, and have blocked or overturned Republican legislation. But there is no guarantee that this dam will hold. The judiciary, on the state level, is growing more conservative, and the Supreme Court still has a conservative majority. The takeover of the judiciary is nearing completion, and the effort to starve the federal treasury of funds is making Grover Norquist’s dream of shrinking the government enough to drown it in a bathtub a real possibility.
I think the Republicans have pushed the ball far enough down the field that they will be in position to radically change this country if they win the White House next year. They’ll almost certainly be able to attain a majority on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, which will then allow all these extreme abortion laws in the states
to go into effect. They’ll probably be allowed to get away with severely limiting voting rights without any challenge from the Department of Justice. Public-sector unions will be gone. The EPA will be rendered toothless. Entitlements will be gutted. Everything that isn’t tied down will be privatized and corrupted.
There won’t be anything compassionate about the triumph of conservatism. And it will be really hard to fix.
I don’t think this is hyperbole. Do you?
I don’t think it’s hyperbole, but I’d add a qualifier.
I think if Romney is the nominee, things are slightly less dire. Despite all his flaws, he is not crazy. I don’t know how strong he would be in standing up to his own party though. If he’s willing to buck Congressional Republicans, it could even lead to the party cracking up.
If Perry (or Palin) is the nominee, all bets are off.
Please note that I am in no way saying Romney wouldn’t be bad. I think he’d be awful. GWB awful? Maybe. Same ballpark. But the others…well, I think they lead us straight down the rabbit hole.
Trouble with Romney is he’s so pliable to his handlers that he makes Bush look like a block of concrete.
Agreed, but there’s a difference between being a nominee or candidate and actually having been elected.
haha, so you think Romney would be more pliable as a president than he’s been as a candidate? sorry, am picturing him trying to pick a tie for the day.
Image consultants pick President’s ties now anyway.
“I don’t know how strong (Romney) would be in standing up to his own party though.”
Bingo. A President Romney would sign virtually all the bills that a Speaker Boehner (or Cantor) and Majority Leader McConnell (or Kyl) delivered to his desk. Romney nominees (both judicial and executive branch) would have to pass the same litmus tests that nominees by a President Perry (or Palin or Bachmann) would have to pass.
Romney leads us down the same rabbit hole…just with a Fortune 500 approved demeanor.
Romney, Bush, Obama, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference in their policies, just the rhetoric. The media report that his big jobs speech will feature more business tax cuts and road project pork. Now, couldn’t that be said of any of those three? Obama has bought into “the government is the problem, not the solution” and “more tax cuts will unleash business spending”. I’ll be looking for a Bob Newhardt re-run on cable while he
liestalks.The Heritage Foundation PMG and Darrel Issa are about to gut and filet the post office. Want to give odds on how fast Obama signs on.
This statement caught over at Balloon Juice from a cong. staffer commenting on Mike Lofgren’s piece points to the ever expanding problem of getting the message out to the ‘independents’ who are not overanalyzers but who instead are the ones who spend 5 minutes before voting making their minds up.
What they do with the rest of their day curdles my mind.
The EPA will be rendered toothless.
That happened last week.
That’s funny. My friends who work there don’t think so. The Clean Air Act is still in effect. The Clean Drinking Water Act is still in effect. The regulations on greenhouse gases are still being developed. Enforcers are still bringing polluters to court. Thousands of volunteer groups are still receiving technical support.
Your fears aren’t reality quite yet.
Are those regulations even at the comment period yet?
Some of them are. You can check the EPA site for the status. They are being issued by application: (1) refineries and power plants (released); (2) medium and heavy duty vehicles (released).
The latest news is this. It apparently has to do with resolving issues related to what data will be publicly reported (and what will be classified as Confidential Business Information, CBI).
So why was a douche canoe like Cass Sunstein using GOP talking points to delay the EPA rules? Rules that are likely behind where we really should be?
Friday: The administration needs to talk about jobs more! I feel betrayed.
Saturday: How dare the administration cite jobs to explain its actions?!? I feel betrayed.
His point is Bruce Bartlett’s and Greg Sargent’s…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/how-democrats-help-republicans/2011/03/03/gIQAxLs
w6J_blog.html
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/should-democrats-play-by-republican-rules/
I understand his point when he made it. I was answering the question he asked. Perhaps my answer was more opaque than I thought.
Obama administration officials are – quote unquote – “repeating GOP talking points” because they are pursuing a strategy of selling every single action they take as being about jobs. Why delay this rule? Jobs. Why support unions? Jobs. Why pick the third stall from the left when Michelle used the ladies room? Why, because it will create jobs, of course.
Right, and I also understood your original point…but is the strategy for jobs that they’re pursuing that good for liberalism and for Democratic policies and Democrats in general? I find it dubious.
The thing is, the idea that more environmental regulations will cost more than they benefit is an outright republican lie.
Ask Sunstein. His job is to make noises about reviewing the economic impact of regulation. So. He made noises.
The rules are behind because the industries did a document dump on the comments. All those “public comments” have to be sorted through and responded to. And that requires EPA employees to read through them, classify them to bundle in responses, and write a fairly terse response to what are sometimes real technical issues in implementation. Remember that the rules were essentially in cold storage for 8 years. Not totally lost because more research inside and outside EPA allowed the rules to be refined before releasing them for comment.
Did I mention that the real public can comment on the rules too? Or just read through them so that you can get over the culture shock.
But the rules themselves are what matter. And getting a Congress that will not undercut the process.
I don’t have to ask that POS. I’ve read plenty about his Chicago School shit. Need I remind you that the standards are going back to 1997, so worse than the Bush bullshit of a few years ago. That’s how backwards it is. Or that the environmental groups sued to have the limits enforced and when Obama took office, they dropped the suit because they were promised stuff would get done. Now they are firing up the lawsuits again. Look, we all know they are trying to preempt Orange Julius and Miss McConnell. And that’s not a recipe for success.
Looking at one ozone-related reg in isolation, ignoring the rest of the Obama EPA’s actions on ozone, and then declaring them to be “worse than Bush” on the issue isn’t the action of someone who is actually concerned about smog-reduction policy.
Cass Sunstein has always been something of a rightist.
The above comment about the EPA supposedly being rendered toothless last week is the precursor to the old lament “Obama’s selling out again, and there’s no difference between Obama and the republicans so I’m not going to vote” mentality, which is a big part of the problem we face as progressives. I appreciate the reality check as a rebuttal, TarheelDem! I will be the first one to criticize Obama and the Dems if I believe they are doing the wrong thing, but I will also keep the big picture in view and understand the political reality of certain situations. That said, progressives need to understand that we are essentially in damage control mode right now with the current Congressional make-up, and allowing the republican party taking over the WH is a recipe for the realization of our worst nightmares. We have been warned…
Too much of the divisions between the wings of the progressive movement need a reality check. And the part that often gets missed is Democrats does not equal progressives and never has. Not in the New Deal, not in Camelot, certainly not in the LBJ years and after.
There are Democrats who have different agendas than progressives and not all of them as easily identifiable as DLC or Blue Dogs. And there are progressives who have different agendas than Democrats — most often the opening up of the two-party system to other parties (a quixotic endeavor with big-tent parties).
The nightmare will come about not through the progressive circular firing squad but through the failure of progressives to convince their personal networks to the sixth degree that we are facing a major crisis in the agenda of the GOP. So the folks you should be trying to convince are not progressive commenters on blogs but your family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors. And their….And…
How can you convince them when the President is only taking the crisis(Jobs!!) seriously now? Once his re-election is in serious jeopardy.
If you think the President is only taking the jobs crisis seriously now, you’ve not kept up with what has been going on. You can make a better case that certain members of Congress (cough, Max Baucus, Kent Conrad) have not been taking the jobs crisis seriously. And that the President has been waiting for Congress to get in a political environment in which it can act again. Which it now is, given that the debt/deficit can has been temporarily kicked down the road.
What is different now is that Wall Street has become afraid of a double-dip recession, which would aggravate the deficit-debt crisis even more and absolutely panicked by the Tea Party caucuses recklessness over default. You now have Wall Street economists writing articles re-examining Marx’s critique of capitalism and worrying that the market through its bought members of Congress might destroy itself. And you have Europe having discovered that austerity makes things worse.
For the first time since the healthcare debate, the President has more political space in which to act–if he will occupy that space. And that’s the issue.
I guess I was thinking of the folks whose personal networks tend to be to the right of them, not those whose personal networks think them hopeless centrists. In your case, best wait until January. Or have your networks rattle Congress’s cage on jobs to open up the space.
Obama is going to position himself right were he thinks the moving center of political gravity is and try to maneuver behind the scenes or publicly from there. We’ll know Thursday where he thinks that political center of gravity is. Hopefully he has found out that folks think he has done too little instead of too much.
You now have Wall Street economists writing articles re-examining Marx’s critique of capitalism and worrying that the market through its bought members of Congress might destroy itself.
Which ones? I know of only one, Roubini. And I wouldn’t call him a Wall Street economist. Last I checked, he was a university professor(with a consultant/economic data business) and not employed by any Wall Street bank.
Judging by his words (for example, 2011 SOTU) and actions (focus entirely on the debt issue for calendar 2011) there isn’t obvious evidence that he’s been concerned about jobs. Remember he had that big “Jobs Summit” in December, 2009, but outside of a few mentions in town halls, not a lot since.
Now, I could see you arguing that he’s following the lead of certain Vichy Democrats in Congress, and of course the GOP has played the media well on the debt ceiling “controversy” making it hard for politicians to talk about much else for the first half of 2011. But this is one of those few instances where the bully pulpit really can make a difference. If Obama had been saying for the past 9 months that “Jobs are the real issue now, not the debt” instead of endorsing the view that the debt was the real crisis, then he’d have a TON more credibility now on that issue.
I do agree with this:
For the first time since the healthcare debate, the President has more political space in which to act–if he will occupy that space.
Somehow, someway, the Washington consensus is actually waking up to the jobs issue. And moreover, the Washington consensus is actually allowing him the opportunity to open the discussion on this topic with his speech on Thursday (this might be why so many in the GOP are upset about it).
This gives the President the classic first mover advantage. This is why I think the Thursday speech is likely the make-or-break moment for Obama’s Presidency. Does he grasp this advantage and define the issue on his own terms, forcing the GOP to adjust the framing? Or does he pre-negotiate and offer watered-down, ineffective GOP tax-cut policies as the solution? Does he label the tea party-driven GOP as hypocrites intent on destroying the economy in order to win in 2012, or does he adopt language suggesting “both sides are equally culpable”?
Yes, it is POSSIBLE that Obama could pull off a victory in 2012 through a combination of a) a really repulsive GOP candidate and b) somehow convincing voters that the GOP is mostly to blame for the economy. But realistically, without Federal intervention NOW the economy is going to be as bad or worse come November 2012, and realistically if that is the case the incumbent President is going to be trounced. Especially if his first presidential term consisted of NOTHING but bad economic news.
Therefore, I think it critical that Obama not only win the moment with this issue, but also that his team find some how, some way, to actually get effective economic policy changes through Congress. And that’s not going to happen without substantial public pressure on the GOP.
Washington is waking up to this issue because Wall Street, seeing where Europe is right now, is getting scared.
To get an understanding of why Obama needs to use a light touch, read the biography of Jackie Robinson.
In time, he had enough respect that he single-handedly desegregated the restaurant at the Greenville, SC municipal airport in 1961. I had friends who were long-time Dodger fans that cut him a lot of slack on that one.
The Thursday speech and how the Democrats hold together through January very much will determine how the voters see the Republicans. And that is going to be key to making the case that Congress in general and Republicans in particular are responsible for poor recovery of employment. And if the Republicans play like they played the debt ceiling bill, that will be so clear that Democrats need only lightly mention the facts. It must be a team strategy; it cannot rest on the President alone. And the key players on the team are Baucus, Kerry, Durbin, Bercerrra, Clyburn, and Van Hollen.
And it is still 14 months from November 2012. That is 14 more job reports that go onto those graphs. And it is 14 months that Wall Street can no longer get profits by trading paper. Something will have to happen in the real economy.
You are right about public pressure. That is why Thursday must be a clear call over the heads of Congress to the voters.
I’ve studied Jackie Robinson in some depth.
You’ve mentioned several times that Obama has to play it careful because of his race. I appreciate that being from NC you have the opportunity to see modern racism up close and personal. I, too, know that there is a large part of white America that holds the same attitudes that Robinson faced, but they’ve learned to hide that in public.
At this point all I can say is your comparison with Robinson got me thinking about Obama and his approach in a different way than before. I’ve not reached conclusions yet, but it’s definitely a topic worth exploring.
My initial thoughts are that I want to believe: a) most of white America is mostly past this — there are still some underlying racist feelings in general, but for a specific person, especially someone like Obama, this is completely not an issue and b) the remaining (mostly closeted) white Supremacist faction is already hysterically imagining the worst from Obama, and using doctored photos and videos to feed their fears, so having him act tough to the GOP won’t make anything worse.
But that’s what I want to believe – maybe I’m fooling myself. I’ll continue reading and thinking on this.
Thanks.
You are indeed fooling yourself, but give it a couple more generations and it’ll be closer to reality.
you are definitely fooling yourself, but Obama is playing it very well. I think it won’t take 3 generations
White progressives are not past it. That is why African-American progressives are so irritated at some progressives’ fixation on Obama’s failures and at their reading motives into every thing he says or does. Or connecting every single detail of every event in the federal government to “Obama wants this; otherwise it wouldn’t happen.” I do believe most of them have never worked in an organization with more than 20 employees.
Racism exists because the cultural training and reinforcements of racism are pervasive in American society in so many subtle ways. A person in America who thinks they are without racism is deluded. In America, there are repentant racists or unrepentant racists–and even immigrants from elsewhere soon become one or the other.
There are closeted racists who are self-consciously unrepentant. But most sincerely believe (even in the South) that they are not racists. But…for Obama to act tough (and without humor) with the GOP would result in the unself-conscious racists accepting the stereotype of an angry black man who seeks domination but has been thwarted. It’s not the out-and-out bigots that matter, it’s their enablers–and there are a heap of them in the corporate media. And in most white folks’ personal networks.
Attacking the GOP doesn’t expose them. What Obama has been about is exposing the GOP for what it is but pretends not to be. People begin to get that in fits and snatches that the corporate media moves quickly to paper over.
Which is why I have said that they need to send the gaffe-meister on a scorching attack of the Republicans. Oh, just another gaffe (like the GOP’s it wasn’t racist, it was only a joke). Biden sometimes slips up and tells the truth.
Racism in America is very subtle and ingrained. It takes a lot of self-awareness over time to deal with it. Which is why labeling folks (even rightly) as racists is beside the point. And the strangest people show up thinking Obama is a muslim radical. People you would never, from other contexts think, could be so misguided and who don’t seem conservative on other issues.
I’m not sure I buy that everyone is a racist of some sort. Sure we are all influenced by society and how it works, but to call that racism is a stretch.
I think the way I like to look at it is, “Have you acknowledged your privilege, and if so, how do we address the problems associated with it?” But then that’s where the standard bearer racists come out with you being a self-hating white heterosexual middle class male. Acknowledging it isn’t the same as being ashamed of course, and it’s the first step towards correcting those ingrained injustices.
There is a view that everyone is racist deep down inside. You can’t help it, so this view goes. Not just racist, but you are naturally predisposed to favor those who are like you in every possible way and think negatively of those who are not like you.
So, goes this line of thinking, you can either deny that this is part of you, ore you can accept it. “I am a racist. I am a racist by virtue of being human. But I am ALSO a committed anti-racist. I will fight those internal impulses by consciously fighting racism as part of who I am.”
I was first presented with this viewpoint in 1980. Being an impressionable freshman in college, I spent a lot of time thinking about it and talking about it. And I decided that I agreed with it. And I have tried very hard to live that viewpoint ever since.
I’ve seen a lot in those 30 years. Working in high-tech silicon valley (even now my company HQ is there) I’ve enjoyed the experience of, on many occasions, realizing that everyone was making decisions based on, as MLK once said, “the content of their character”. Back in 1992 we discussed RIFs and had to be very sensitive to the topic of race. Now it doesn’t even come up – evaluations are based on people’s abilities. Like so much of silicon valley we are a very diverse company.
On the other hand, I’ve sat on the board of my local community and was aware that when we’ve had minorities attend our meetings the other board members are uncomfortable. I’ve gone out of my way to welcome the visitors, but I’m always the only one who does so.
And on occasions when I’m with a group of whites who, for some reason or other, assumes I think like they do, I hear what they really think about Obama and race. For those people — well, they might as well be back in the south in the early 1960s. I tend not to get invited back to those gatherings.
So I’m not sure what to think. How many whites don’t see race when they think of Obama? And how many can’t see past his race? I don’t know – but I know there are a lot of both categories.
Racism operates on the personal and societal level – on the societal we solve it with laws. On the personal level it’s better described as “operating out of stereotypes” – and that includes all kinds of stereotypes, race, religion, gender, class, etc – to which day to day interactions is most helpful in eroding the stereotypes. The ideal of a “nonracial” society, as the South Africans put it, is not unattainable at all.
Racism is here to stay. But in the Obamatex it’s just an excuse for cowardice. I’m so glad that you “pragmatic” people weren’t walking on Washington and I’m so glad that MLK ignored your “don’t do too much, you’ll scare the white people” rhetoric. Obama knew what the presedency job entailed and he knew that he’d be targeted. If he’s afraid for his life (AKA coward) or if you’re afraid for his life, he should step down for the good of our nation. But Obama isn’t that patriotic. He’s just your average, selfish, “pull yourself up by bootstraps,” “I got mines,” “personal responsibility (for you)” old-skool “moderate” Republican. The only thing he’s doing is libeling the “liberal” name with extremely conservative policies and corruption. To top it all off, he’s a war criminal.
On the Jackie Robinson topic: Obama kept a very low profile during August, but seems to me (and I’ve been too immersed in work to pay as much attention as I’d have liked) surrogates were keeping a hum going re: the economy and jobs (via guest editorials, LTEs, occasional statements to the press). Obama also left space there where the absence of many Repubs from their town halls could be noticed. (contrast w. Bush during August always generated stories from the media camped out near his place in TX). just sayin.
August was also when Gadathfi fell.
yes. Obama stepped back from any self congratulation on that.
Heh, I knew Marx would become relevant again someday.
Is it a coincidence that capitalism went nuts again after the decline of communism?
“How can you convince them when the President is only taking the crisis(Jobs!!) seriously now?”
Normal people are only now starting to tune back into politics.
The change in the attainment standard was penny-ante peanuts compared to the effect of the Interstate Transport rules about NOx, as far as reducing ground-level ozone goes.
But for some reason, the people who first googled “ozone EPA” on September 3 when they decided that had a good angle for their self-indulgent Obama-bashing don’t seem to care about a rule that actually limited emissions of ozone-precursors, nearly as much as a rule that would require states to spend a couple of years drawing up plans that might or might not be able to lower ozone levels.
No, I don’t think it’s hyperbole, and I think it will be very hard to fix.
Here’s what Republicans know that progressives have not gotten.
The way to win the Presidency is to put enough local candidates up who will draw voter turnout and who will also vote up-ticket. The coattails really work in reverse.
Take back the city and county councils and legislatures and you likely have enough votes to take back the Congress and re-elect the President. All you have to do is sell folks on not splitting their ticket. With the “clear choices”, that should not be difficult.
Oh, and actually be concerned about electoral strategy and tactics instead of being fixated by philosophical and policy discussions in the midst of a campaign season.
It is somewhat depressing that the OFA organizing in North Carolina is being done by a paid contractor that is placing public advertisements for workers. Somewhat depressing and somewhat dangerous.
Also be aware that Koch and other anonymous donations are going to be working hard on local and state races in 2012 aiming to catch Democrats by surprise. Art Pope test ran this strategy on the Wake County (NC) School Board election in which “neighborhood schools” (resegregators) Tea Party activists took over the school board and forced the hiring of a new (white) superintendent. Look for more of this big money approach to local and state elections.
Isn’t that what the 50-State Strategy is all about?
It’s what the 192,480-precinct strategy is about.
The 50-state strategy was more about restarting some state Democratic party organizations that were almost moribund. There are some interesting articles from the Howard Dean days about how few people were in the leadership of state Democratic parties and how their primary purpose in some states seemed to be to make sure that it was dead. So the DNC put staff and consulting work and field organizers in place out of DNC, not state party funds. It had consequences for GOTV but it was not directly focused on short term gains but on effective process and presence.
Since Tim Kaine replaced Howard Dean, state parties have gone backward. And now they are struggling to get contributions from a lot of the donors that signed on between 2005 and 2009. The economy is a major reason, but the excitement got crushed by the inertia of the old guard.
We still need to rebuild the party institutions down to precinct committees. And reform a lot of the corrupt ones that can turn out the votes but do not have the respect of constituents outside of the party faithful.
BooMan,
Have you ever considered inviting this guy to blog here?
I consistently find myself learning new things and gaining new insights from his comments. He’s really an asset to the site.
Second that. I learn something useful from nearly every comment by THD, even when I disagree with them.
I brought this possibility up little while back and TarheelDem said he wasn’t interested.
Been tried for ages, and he hasn’t been interested. I’ve wanted him to come on since I lurked back in 2006-2007.
I’m willing to settle for THD making the comments section a must-read.
Still satisfied just to comment–and put up a diary whenever I have something longer to say. Ginning up something from scratch on a regular basis doesn’t appeal to me. I worked on writing deadlines for a quarter century. I’m glad I don’t have to do that anymore.
Appreciate your contribution to the comments – making them “must read” as noted above
I can only tell you what we are doing in NH since this is the state I am working in and live in. We, as in OFA, is actively working at the town level Democratic committees to re-energize where it’s needed, to reform where that is needed and to start all together where those are needed. And the main thrust of these committees is to first insure we win the local elections, then the state-wide candidates and then the Presidential in that order.
That is encouraging. It’s difficult to participate in Precinct meetings around here. The old guard isn’t great at telling folks accurately when and where they’re meeting.
But precincts are sort of artificial political geography in the South. We have townships, but they are mostly relicts of a Reconstruction law that set up school districts. There are no township officials.
The abandonment of the Democratic Party in the South has returned after the 2010 elections in which almost every Democrat ran away from the “socialist Muslim”. There are notable exceptions like Brad Miller who now has to duke it out in a primary with David Price. While Blue Dogs McIntyre and Shuler got safe districts. And Larry Kissell has been gerrymandered out of almost all of his district except his home town.
I’m glad reform is happening in New Hampshire. I wish it were happening in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. There is some movement in South Carolina, trying to recover from the embarrassment of Alvin Greene. And the lackluster candidate team that allowed him to slip through the primary. But there are too many established Democrats too comfortable with doing little or nothing.
We’re working in much the same way here as jsfox describes. I slithered into a precinct committee slot a few years ago and made myself “indispensable” to the Dem central committee with computer and communications skills. Now we have OFA coordinating joint activities with Dems for the first time. Also reaching out to the more conservative county to the east with ideas and support. The county to the west has Indiana University and is one of the few bright spots within the Indiana political scene. Of course, this kind of involvement requires quite a bit of commitment, but a small price, IMHO, given the alternative.
It’s not just a Southern issue. In the Seattle area, which is overwhelmingly Democratic, at the precinct level the Old Guard treats their positions, and those of the lazy, spineless elected officials they protect, as lifetime sinecures. It’s a major reason that even though the D’s have a solid majority in both houses of the state legislature, the actual legislation that gets passed is rarely progressive and often reactionary. The D’s in office there are mostly either from swing districts, or Seattle-area districts that are so safe they can do, or not do, anything they want. (And with a few heroic exceptions, they mail it in.) The ultimate consequence is that new blood at the precinct level is generally frowned upon and driven out, and the party infrastructure shrivels.
great to hear! where in NH are you working?
As was predicted when Obama took over.
Was. Was all about. And it worked so well we fired the guy who made it work and we all went home thinking the
battlewar was over.I think the real difference is that the people who are behind the
Tea Partylatest astroturf campaign are executing a strategy. They’ve been at it, steadily, for thirty years or more. Even when they seem to lose, they gain an inch or two towards the next assault.Meanwhile the Democrats are so wrapped up in tactical maneuvering that even when they seem to win something, as often as not they find themselves worse off in the next encounter.
They are playing the long game, on offense, always and everywhere. All too often we play defense, reacting to the latest bogeyman, rather than planning ahead.
Yep. The Amazing Atheist touched on that in his latest video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjj5_f4m8Ik&feature=feedf
Also, too with what Tarheel said.
An “Agenda” sounds too much like a laundry list platform document.
We need a common vision. One that is focused, unifying, and explainable in an elevator speech.
“Small government” is a vision. It doesn’t matter whether a GOPer wants small government because they don’t like taxes, don’t like desegregation, don’t like federal judges overturning state abortion and sodomy laws, or don’t like the fact that they can’t just up and create vigilantes to use their Second Amendment remedies on illegal immigration. They don’t have to want all of those, just one–and intensely– and they are in.
There are a number of common visions that progressives intuitively hold: equal justice under law, checks and balances on public and private power over individuals, separation of church (institution) and state (institution), independent (of partisan politics) judiciary, independent (of partisan politics) media, a public educated enough to maintain their liberty, transparent and open government.
I’ll not get into national security because that’s where the GOP vision of small government loses its wheels.
So what is the elevator speech that holds all that together? And why does it take such a long YouTube to say it?
BTW, the bit about low income whites is not exactly correct. Low income, really low income, whites who do vote tend to vote for Democrats. That bit in the YouTube was just rank elitism.
Yes it is true that the people making $15,000 and below generally do vote Democratic (usually 66-33). However, I think you’re being overly harsh in that he doesn’t say how they tend to vote, but explained the thinking behind the ones who do vote like that. I also don’t know the breakdown of white-black-hispanic vote by income, but check these two maps:
http://andrewgelman.com/movabletype/mlm/10graphs2008income.png
I think he has a point regardless of how you hash it, mate. Poorer whites are still much more likely to vote Democratic than wealthy whites, but the difference between white and non-white is too stark to ignore and belittle the point as elitist.
dude, what are you talking about? if there’s anything I’ve learned at the BMT, it’s “OFA’s got this”.
(seriously, I think 2010 should have been a major fucking wake-up call. And I think Kos nails it with his “whatever obama’s doing, it ain’t working” post last week).
HELL NO it’s not hyperbole.
in fact, this is what EVERY DAMN DEMOCRAT should be saying, BooMan.
in no.uncertain.terms
Good thing our party leader espouses politics and fancies himself “post-partisan.”
I’m not sure who Booman is trying to reach with these posts about how bad the GOP is and what’s at stake. Outside of the DLC and the White House itself, dems, liberals, progressives all agree on what the GOP is all about. There’s fervent disagreement on the left about what to do about GOP extremism, Obama’s strategy and tactics, and what policies to push. In other words, the most interesting question is “what is to be done” about this crisis; everyone on the left knows we are at an inflection point and a rare moment when our entire democratic experiment is vulnerable.
I’d be interested to hear Booman’s thoughts on what the best political strategy is going forward.
At this point I’m not sure if a political strategy will suffice. What’s gone wrong seems to be moving beyond politics toward the realm of epic fail.
Right, but we got here because of failed political strategies. Can we undo the damage? Perhaps. But more of the same is not a winning strategy.
See, I’m thinking we got here due to a number of overwhelming societal & cultural factors, not strictly because of failed political strategies.
In this case, our failures are much more profound; an adjustment to a ‘winning’ strategy doesn’t address the real reasons why we’re not served by our politics. In other words, we might ‘win’ — but what do we win?
That’s true. But in January 2009, with the right political strategies, a lot of this could have been avoided, a lot of those other failures could have been undone. Obama had a big mandate based on the size of his historic victory, we had majorities in both houses, and a crisis moment to set aside the old order and rebuild new institutions. Instead, in January 2009 “Obama’s moment” was seized by people like Dick Armey, Mitch McConnell and Ginni Thomas. Politically speaking, January 2009 wasn’t time to heal old wounds, it was time to pour salt on the wounds the GOP had incurred in 2006 and 2008.
this is too optimistic.
When I was in Law School we used to laugh at the Federalist Society nuts. They were never the Law Review types, and they always came from the South or from the Irish Catholic Community (I went to Law School in Boston, and a few students came from the part of Boston that was still furious about busing)
It is simply amazing how far their agenda has gotten in the last 24 months.
If Perry wins and appoints judges who buy into his 10th Amendment view of the World, a significant amount of Progressive legislation won’t be repealed, it will be declared unconstitutional.
A generation ago the reaction to Roe v Wade was to use the New Deal cases as an argument for judicial restraint. This was always an act, but a new generation of conservatives would have us return to a pre-New Deal view of economic regulation.
They are closer to succeeding than I think people realize.
This was always an act, but a new generation of conservatives would have us return to a pre-New Deal view of economic regulation.
Sadly, there are a number of Democrats in DC who agree with them? Meaning Blue Dogs .. and so on
Well, I’m sure that what you say is true. But part of the problem is the destruction of the Democratic brand. That is, the degree to which a person is willing to say “I am a Democrat, and am running on a platform to work with the president and help the American people” is considerably diminished.
Democrats do not run in the Bipartisan Party. They run as democrats. We have no one in the Democratic Party at the top of the ticket, and the person who is putatively there has burned a lot of bridges to the Democratic Party. It’s like no one in the WH ever thinks about how elections are won.
I agree with you totally. Not really more to say than that.
I agree it is critically important that the GOP not win.
I sure hope that on Thursday our milquetoast President rediscovers the fighting spirit that so many of us were attracted to way back when.
Barak: think of the GOP as Al Qaeda. That’s right. Because if they win, what they are going to do to America is far, far worse than what Al Qaeda could imagine. Treat the GOP leadership with the same fervor as he did bin Laden. These are not your colleagues that you should break bread and wine with – these are your enemies that you should crush. God knows, that’s what they think about you. And this is not a secret — they say it every freaking day in public.
Your OFA army is sitting on the sidelines, many or most of us demoralized. Remember those 100,000+ crowds who came out to see you in 2008? You couldn’t come close to those numbers today. Give us a reason to come back out again. Stop flirting with assholes like Lieberman, who pissed all over you last weekend. This is a war – act like it and we’ll follow your lead.
Coming late to party, but…
I’m not certain I agree with the thesis that the US will be better off if Dems win in 2012. I recall the Dems in opposition being a reasonably powerful force in checking the GOP’s worst abuses. In power, however, the Dems seem to be trying to “out-GOP” the GOP. The EPA ozone regulation is a good example — Bush had agreed to implement the standard partway, which drew lawsuits and ire from the organized environmental lobby. But that was the policy.
The Dems’ idea is to abandon the change altogether and wait for a better time to try again.
While it’s satisfying from a tribal perspective if “we” win, I’m not at all certain that we’ll get better policy from President Obama than President Romney.
Gutting entitlements? Check. Running rampant over science? Check. Ignoring the rule of law. Double check. How is this different in one regime vs. the other?