I don’t really care if the latest bill to pay for the Highway Trust Fund is Congress at its worst because what’s worse than a stupid funding mechanism is no mechanism at all.
This Congress is perpetually on the verge of failing to do the most basic things, like pay our bills, keep our agencies open and functioning, and maintaining our roads and bridges. This isn’t going to change until the Republicans are no longer in control of any part of the government. So, I’m used to it. And all I want is for us to avoid defaulting on our debt or having to stop repair crews on our interstate highways.
I know my expectations are low, but it’s been a long time since I had any positive aspirations in politics. For me, it’s all about mitigation, mitigation, mitigation. Every day we keep the GOP out of power is a good day. I have not forgotten waking each day during the Bush administration to find ten articles on different ways that the Republicans were ruining the world.
My first thought when I saw the headline on twitter was: Well yeah, they could control both chambers.
They probably will….
New Election Lab forecast suggests 86 percent chance that GOP wins Senate.
If that happens, I’ll avoid all news until 2016.
(Well, at least they’ve conceded that Hagen beats the RWNJ NC nominated, and Hagen was possibly the weakest DEM incumbent running this year.)
My “model” says that Begich, Pryor, and Landreiu are re-elected. The Georgia GOP Senate seat likely stays in their hands. KY too close to call, but Grimes is going to keep running until the polls open on election day and Mitch won’t be able to keep up at that pace. In the end, Harkin pulls it out for Braley.
Not likely. Looking at the polls for individual Senate seats we are competitive in GA and KY for pick-ups and polls have us up in many of the red states. I think we end up losing a net of 2 seats leaving us with a majority.
Then we’d have a version of the ’47-48 “do nothing Congress” that saddled this country with the Taft-Hartley Act and the National Security Act of 1947. Or the ones that repealed huge swaths of New Deal legislation from 1994-2000.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve made a fortune selling pitchforks, if a mob is about to use one on you. Marie Antoinette and her cohort had no idea what was coming (ever the lady, Marie apologized to the headsman for stumbling at the steps of the guillotine. that, is grace and dignity)
From time to time the Tree of Liberty needs to watered with the blood of tyrants, and as Obama said the other day… it’s only July.
No fear.
For “conservative” voters, it is a victory when Congress fails to do the most basic things, and when the national gub’mint has been effectively paralyzed. This is a positive good, as their decades of rightwing sewage gobbling has assured them. And the ordinary boob voter appears not to care that the (Repub) Congress fails to do the most basic things, or that the gub’mint has ground to a halt.
Esteem for Congress is at all-time lows, and the answer for the American boob is to give complete control of Congress to Repubs. Flawless logic. There are a variety of reasons for this, from corporate propaganda spread as “news” to the ocean of plutocrat money available to pollute elections to an unfortunate draw of states with senate elections. But human spite is also a large contributing factor to our all too evident national failure. In any event, it is plain that we can no longer reform ourselves. The common good has no purchase, and cannot even be understood any longer.
Will Obama be able to replicate the same success Bushco had when faced with a (supposedly hostile) Dem Congress? Bush ended up prevailing in that battle, the Dem Congress was a paper tiger, because Dems quail before actually wrecking the national gub’mint and tearing national institutions to shreds. Thus, Bushco was still able to prevail on most of its war and national security agenda 2006-08. There was never a threat to shut down the Empire.
Repubs, of course, have no such basic morality or civilization, they are political barbarians. They also have their corporate media and Rightwing Noise Machine. Clinton was the last example of a Dem prez facing the Repub hyenas un-aided, but Repubs have cast aside several levels of civilization from those days.
My guess is that come next January, Booman be returning to the days of multiple articles on Repubs ruining the world, that Obama will not be able to veto every eruption of insanity. There will be horrible poison pills in too many must-do bills. He will have a very tough row to hoe.
Most Americans either do not know that the country is faced with a rising American fascist party, or do not not care. One can’t really tell which.
The only people who know are the actual fascists themselves. But they don’t think of themselves as fascists.
Yes. Indeed. Congress could be like the Wisconsin legislature 2011-2013, the Michigan legislature, or the North Carolina legislature where “states rights” means local government is irrelevant.
I’m thoroughly sick of reading about the lunatics on the right. It’s the same old story with different names. What I hunger for is news about Democrats – not how they’re doing in the polls, but what they’re doing and what they’re proposing to do for the country. They seem to be hunkered down in a bunker to dodge the slings and arrows from the right and to avoid having to reveal their real centrist neoliberal agenda to the “base”. I want to hear Elizabeth Warren’s words coming out of the mouth of Michael Bennet. That would make me really happy.
PS – Thank you all for your patience with my trouble recommending comments. I finally figured it out.
Tell us what the problem was. Inquiring minds what to know.
Don’t think most Democrats can handle the truth about what elected Democrats are doing and have been doing for the past two decades. The DEM pols just hope they aren’t sitting in the hot seat when the chickens come home to roost as they lucked out with when the financial system melted down almost a decade after the deregulation legislation passed under the watch of a Democratic POTUS.
this. Most Democrats are allergic to standing FOR anything, they want us to suck it up (again) and vote for “slightly less bad”.