Barney Frank pointed out that when the economy began to collapse in September 2008, the Democrats were willing to help President Bush, but that the Republicans refused to offer any help to President Obama once he took office. That’s true, but let’s ask a different question. Which was a bigger national disaster? The 2008 economic collapse or 9/11?
Because, the Democrats were very deferential to President Bush in the aftermath of 9/11. They certainly did not adopt a strategy of defeating Bush in 2004 at all costs. Most of us fault the Democrats for being too deferential, but they at least recognized that we had suffered a disaster and that we only have one administration at a time. Plus, you couldn’t blame the Democrats for 9/11 in the same way that you could justifiably blame the Republicans for the Great Recession. The Democrats didn’t offer their help to Bush out of guilt, but out of a combination of patriotism and cowardice. The Republicans denied their help to Obama out of pure political calculation.
Frank is right of course. At the same time, Democrats have done a terrible job of selling their values and priorities. Look at how they ran from Obamacare two years ago and were slaughtered.
Finally, we’re seeing our side willing to go to the mat in defense of its values and agenda. If we aren’t willing to stand behind our agenda, why should anyone trust us?
We could have and should have relentlessly called the Republicans out for their treasonous priorities over the last four years. We’re so used to bending over because, heavens, we’ve got to be sure we’re being fair and reasonable, no wonder the opposition has no respect.
When it looked for a time (after Brown was elected in Massachusetts) like the Democrats were going to walk away from health care reform rather than push it through with reconciliation, I was ready to give up on the party and politics entirely. I called Senators offices and told their staff members that their bosses needed to stop being such pussies.
Then when House members were threatening to walk away because it wasn’t pure enough, I was convince we were going to find a way to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. I remember, in frustration, calling my representative at the time, Raul Grijalva, who knew me by name and by face, and demanding he stop being pure as the driven snow and just vote for the damn thing.
How much of the problem do you think revolves around organized messaging? Frank Luntz was instrumental in selling the Iraq invasion to the American people because he put together the carefully formed talking points and the Republicans were organized enough for all to meet and learn the language.
Remember “Eeverything changed since 9/11.” and how that was the response to every hard question any reporter asked of a Republican?
I don’t think that’s the core of the issue. After the Voting Rights Act was signed, there was a major political realignment that took decades to play out. During that time, a lot of Democrats learned that the best way to survive was to pretend to be Republican. When Clinton signed on, it set the standard. Party discipline became a thing of the past and it was every man for himself.
I was never a big fan of Clinton. The guy always seemed core-less and soulless, the kind of guy who would happily play golf with Karl Rove or Lee Atwater if the opportunity arose. He held the presidency for 8 years, but at what price?
In 2010, a whole slew of blue dogs were blown out. The lesson seems to have been that there’s no safety in triangulation. Finally, after all these years, it seems we’re rediscovering the importance of party unity and messaging. The Republicans figured it out when Gingrich lead them to the promised land.
In 2010, a whole slew of blue dogs were blown out. The lesson seems to have been that there’s no safety in triangulation.
Tell that to Steve Israel.
During that time, a lot of Democrats learned that the best way to survive was to pretend to be Republican.
This isn’t new. Democrats fell into wimp mode during Truman’s time too, in those early cold war red scare years. Remember his quote: “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.”
I think, in both cases, there is a link to “being afraid of the voters” and “being afraid I can’t get enough big money support”. I suggest that if magically we could wave a wand and have publicly financed elections that Democratic politicians might suddenly evolve backbones on issues of importance to their base.
“Stop being such pussies” is the right message. We need to be able to say things like that without people complaining about words.
They weren’t running from Obamacare. They were running from Obama. And all that succeeded in doing was legitimating in the public mind that Obama was a scary liberal. And constraining what the President could do.
Well, now the record can speak, can’t it. And it shows those nervous nellies to be (1) out of office and (2) fools.
“Plus, you couldn’t blame the Democrats for 9/11 in the same way that you could justifiably blame the Republicans for the Great Recession.”
I may be willing to let some Dems off the hook for some things in cooperating with the Bush admin. But I will never let John Kerry off the hook for his yea vote on the authorization of force in Iraq. It is curious how the old films of Kerry after returning from Vietnam portrays a hero speaking truth to power in declaring the war based on a lie and how the American people were being manipulated.
He knew the basis for Iraq invasion was weak if not a lie. But he held his finger up to the fickle political winds of the time and calculated that if he was to have a shot at the Prez office in 2004, he had to be all for murderous crime in 2002.
So did Edwards and Clinton, just to make sure the record is accurate here.
Yes, they did. And as much as I liked them both in 2008 for other reasons, that was a significant bad mark on their records. It’s barely possible that they were even more misled than the rest of us, but I have trouble believing the votes were anything other than political CYA’ing.
None of them listened to Bob Graham, who was in their ballpark so to speak(as compared to say Feingold).
“So did Edwards and Clinton”
Well… I’m talking about the combination of Kerry’s experience in Vietnam, his testimony and outspoken challenge of militarism in the US at an earlier point of his life with his capitulation to militarism later in 2002 during the vote and his clumsy campaign rationalizing his vote. It was a major hypocracy. It contributed to Dem defeat in 2004. Edwards and Clinton didn’t have those earlier experiences.
I know Edwards and Clinton voted for the AUMF. Edwards came from a conservative constituency and later admitted the mistake. Clinton should have know better and later never really admitted an error on her part.
What I meant is that Kerry faced the results of mindless US militarism face to face and spoke to it eloquently:
Read his speech from 1971 or watch that video again and ask yourself how someone can flip-flop on that. I believe Edwards is someone that never really learned the lessons from the Vietnam experience. But Kerry is someone who learned from it, but then turned his back on what he KNEW in his bones.
The monstrousness of today’s “conservative” Repubs presents so many targets, so many fronts, that one hardly knows where to attack. Frank’s astute (and very telling) observation just opens up another one.
The difference between the two parties’ responses to RECENT national catastrophes is so divergent that perhaps even Arthur G would acknowledge a possible partisan difference, haha. In Sept, 2001, a falsely-and-fraudulently-elected, 5-4 Supreme Court majority-selected, first-in-a-hundred-years electoral college prez was already falling precipitiously in the polls, and had just lost control of the senate due to Repub lunacy with Jeffords.
Due to sublime indifference, sloth and rank incompetence, this inept prez allowed a massive attack to wreak destruction on the nation. And we all know how all elected Dems responded to 9/11—with absolute and largely unconditional support for this illegitimate Repub fool and his criminal VP, passing many new “national security” statutes and the blanket AUMF. And Cheney never looked back.
Ditto the economic collapse of late 2008, where Goldman-Sachs Hank fell to his knees before Madame Speaker Pelosi, begging her DEMS to pass the crucial bankster bailout that basically stopped a global financial meltdown and second Great Depression. Which they (very promptly) did. These are unequivocal facts. Again, Dems offered a (despised and complicit) Repub prez the crucial political support the nation needed to avert catastrophe.
And Jan 2009, as 600,000 jobs are shed per month and GNP is dropping by double digits, at rates not seen since the Great Depression? THEN we have these “conservative” Repub monsters, including megalomaniacal liar Paul Ryan, meeting as a secret cabal to hatch an un-American policy of “absolute obstruction” to the new (legimately elected) Dem prez, at a time of absolute economic calamity, that (quite frankly) was a far greater danger to the health and security of the nation than the (one off) 9/11 attack by a small band of radical islamist terrorists.
This is a MASSIVE behavioral discrepancy, and part-time lunchmeat salesman Ryan was one of the principal Repub architects of it, according to recent reports. Emphasizing the divergent ways that Dems and Repubs have responded to recent national catastrophes would aid the forgetful and the weakminded in understanding and synthesizing just what today’s Repubs (Ryan especially) are all about, and what a perverted, demented and deranged “party” they have actually morphed into. Party over country, always.
I hope someone is listening to Barney.
that’s not going to change, regardless of the outcome of the election:
Hell, you could justifiably blame Repubs for that. It was arguably the greatest national security failure since Pearl Harbor. But the Dems — understandably, I guess — didn’t want to politicize it … so the Repubs did. They turned their failure into a huge political blank check, and it’s gotten to the point where they claim with a straight face that “George Bush kept us safe”.
The Republicans politicized it, yes indeedy. And still keep the demonstrably false “He kept us safe.” story about George W. Bush going.
Some of the published insider accounts of the Bush White House suggested that they were deathly afraid in the first days after 9/11 that they’d get blamed. After all, that’s what they’d have done if Gore were in office. Then they realized they were not only going to be blame-free but they were going to get carte blanche for their bullying for quite a long time and, like the bullies they are, began bullying the Dems for being too weak on terror, etc.
Do you remember the broad wingnut reaction to the creation of the 9/11 commission? Bush got to choose the commission members, totally bipartisan, and of course it made perfect sense to have such a commission. And yet fox and the other paid wingnuts acted like it was the most anti-american, partisan, evil witch hunt in human history.
Plus, you couldn’t blame the Democrats for 9/11
The Republicans did anyway. I blame them for stampeding for the
EnablingPATRIOT Act and the invasion ofPolandIraq afterward.