Examine virtually every Bush scandal and it increasingly bears the mark not merely of Democratic capitulation, but Democratic participation.Evidence? He gives none. You would think, from a statement like this, that the majority of Dems voted for this piece of legislation.
To paraphrase It's a Wonderful Life: "Every time a progressive gives the Both-Parties-Are-The-Same speech, a Republican gets elected."
Greenwald goes on to imply that Pelosi and Reid voted for legislation they did not understand. In fact, they voted against the bill.
Much of this was undoubtedly the by-product of the Democratic Beltway consultant geniuses who insist that Democrats not resist the President's instructions on terrorism lest they look "weak."Names? Evidence? Or is Greenwald trying to catch imaginary butterflies? I engage in speculation often enough myself, but I always try to label it as such.
In fact, if Democratic "consultants" did so advise, the majority would have voted for the thing.
The Democrats who betrayed our interests come from red parts of the country, with a handful of exceptions, as discussed below. In my view, their behavior has nothing to do with the Democratic leadership or with any postulated turncoat consultants. It has to do with the folks back home. Don't blame Harry and Nancy; blame Billy-Bob and Peggy-Jean.
Time and again, I've tried to explain to you people that we still live in a conservative country. Folks may have turned against Bush, they may have turned against the war, and they may have voted for a Democratic Congress in 2006. But that doesn't change the disagreeable facts: The gun-totin' Jesus-lovin' folks who live in Tennessee, Texas, Kentucky, Indiana, Alabama, Georgia, Utah, Louisiana, Arizona and Okalahoma do not read Daily Kos or listen to Air America. They don't even listen to NPR. They still get much of their view of reality from the Rupert-and-Rush show.
plf515 over on Daily Kos (suggestion: when you choose a nick, pick one that everyone can pronounce), offers an extremely useful chart which explains the situation. He names the six who voted for this Bill who also won elections by comfortable margins in anti-Bush districts. Plf515 argues that Democrats should mount Lamont-style primary challenges against these six. I agree.
You should also red DownWith Tyranny's take, here. (You'll have to scroll down.)
Yeah, yeah, I know: This debacle is still all Nancy Pelosi's fault. Somehow, some way, it's all her fault. Bad Nancy! Bad Mommy! If she were a real leader, she would have used Jedi mind tricks to hypnotize everyone into compliance. "This isn't the Bill we're looking for. Move along."
4 comments:
Joe,
All your long time readers here have pretty much understood that you are a grouch (well most of the time) and you will tell anyone you want to go F*** themselves (and you are right about this being your blog and all) so anyone that comes here and posts a comment does it at their own risk.
But get a load of this:
posted on DU
WilliamPitt (1000+ posts) Sun Aug-05-07 04:41 AM
Original message
Hello, I must be going...
Edited on Sun Aug-05-07 04:45 AM by WilliamPitt
Yes, yes, welcome to yet another version of The Obligatory 'Goodbye DU' Thread...except not really...but yeah...only not.
Hm.
Usually, any self-respecting 'Goodbye DU' thread has to be all angst-riddled and pissed and sodden with raging comments like "You all suck because you don't agree with my passionate flame-thread which got locked or sent to some sub forum about Israel 9/11 Impeachment Guns Taxes Dean Gore Nader I want everything to be about Electronic Voting Ice-Shelves PETA Religion Hillary Obama Iraq Iran Fleets Blarg Fuggle Nuff Bloog Zart Yaaaaaaaaag!"
Yeah...um, no. Sorry to disappoint. I'm actually not pissed. Not at all. Just tired. See, I started out here hoping I'd found like minds. For a while, I thought I had found them. For a while, I had found them. That was six years ago.
Six. Fucking. Years.
Amazing to say it like that. And it was amazing. And we all were assholes now and again, me and you, yeah...but assholes on the side of right for America, and we were fractious and dizzy, but to me, it felt like DU had mission and purpose.
Maybe it still does. But I don't feel it anymore. And I'm not judging when I say this. It could be me. I have my mission:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
...but it seems like this was the most unpopular thing ever posted here. Cool. No stress. Seriously. It would be disheartening if anyone took this thread here as some kind of "Waaaaah, my thread didn't do well, waaaaaah" thing. God help me, not the case...but that above link had my personal mission statement in there, and it managed to prove to not be a DU kind of mission, if the comments are evidence.
I make no judgments. I'm not mad. When I posted it, I'd already pretty much decided this departure needed to happen. The reaction to that thread was just a kind of "Ahhh, yes..." confirmation of what I already knew. It's pretty much a no-brainer conclusion. My mission has nothing to do with the mindset here anymore. Period. End of file. Hard to miss.
Like I said: COOL. Time will tell who's right and who's awful, or whatever pejorative I've called you or you've called me, even though we're on the same side. I just don't have any more time for this place, and this place has no use for me, and you know that's true, so shhh.....
I have thanked this place in each book I've written, and will do so in every one to come. You are all AMAZING BLESSED PATRIOTS, and the nation will rise or fall on the heat of your breath, sort of, but only if that breath is followed up with action and muscle and tactics and precision and patience...etc. You know what the next three words are.
Thank you for everything. EVERYTHING. I'm at william.pitt@truthout.org if you need to reach me. I'm going to ask the Admins to granite-cookie me, because I'm addicted, and therefore need to cut the vein-arm off at the elbow.
Maybe I'm all wrong...but I know what my mission is, and I must do my best to fulfill it...and it doesn't seem to fit here anymore...and I can catch beatings in my bedroom, right?
I love you guys. Kick ass, take names, chew gum.
Peace.
Now, that suprised me!
See Joe, you are not the only one with rotten readers!
What, me grouchy?
Ah, he's not such a grouch. Just lick his nose and he melts. (And I'm sorry to see William Pitt go.)
-- Bella (Joseph's dog)
Cannon, you're misunderstanding both the critics of Democratic Party politics-as-usual, and the American electorate.
The capitulation of the Democratic Party at the Federal level is hardly anything new. Although I could point to examples that go further back in history, I think that perhaps the most telling example relates to the attempt to impeach Bill Clinton in the late 1990s.
The Republicans never had the votes to win that. It was clear from the outset. Yet the President and the Democrats in the House and Senate ran scared from them, for more than two years. What followed was petty, tawdry, and totally unnecessary- but it wasn't 100% the fault of the Republicans...because the Democratic leadership could have simply told them to pound sand.
Additionally, Bill Clinton was in fact guilty of lying under oath. It's certainly possible to make the strong argument that his false statements didn't involve matters of governmental policy or the public business- in fact, I'd say that's undeniable. But in the strict, letter-of-the-law sense, he did lie. And the guidelines of the letter of the law are nowhere more direct unambiguous than in the process of swearing an oath. People who swear oaths in the course of their duties to the government typically feel obliged to take them very seriously indeed- including elected and appointed officials of the various levels of government, members of the armed forces, the courts, and the police.
Without getting into the ongoing travesty of the considerable number of other people holding positions of trust who have betrayed those oaths and escape detection and/or punishment- it should be apparent that President Clinton, the most powerful elected official in the country, was caught red-handed in lying under oath.
Personally, I think Bill Clinton should have been completely candid- and more than a bit cutting- in his responses to his inquisitors. He could have used the opportunity to demonstrate exactly how out of touch and unpopular such nosy social reactionaries really are with the American public- a fact handily borne out by the public opinion polls, which continued to give him remarkably high approval ratings throughout the course of the Lewinsky scandal, even after the facts of the affair had been laid out in exhaustive detail.
But that isn't what Bill Clinton did. He lied, and then he got caught. He should have uncomplicated matters as efficiently as possible, by resigning and turning over the presidency to an entirely capable vice president, Al Gore.
That would have put the Democrats at a huge advantage over the Republicans, by the time of the 2000 elections.
But this was not done.
Instead, Bill Clinton sought to enlist- quite successfully- the entire apparatus of the Democratic Party in dissembling on his behalf. The record of their defense of him did them no credit, either in terms of their integrity or their honor. Simply as political strategy, it represented a triumph of fealty to the personalist charisma of a single leader over both principles and pragmatism. And that paid the Democratic Party no dividends in the years following, to understate the point.
And- to return to my opening point- simply in terms of a partisan political showdown, all the drama was unnecessary. The Republicans didn't have the votes, the entire proceeding was a loser from the outset..well, that's how it turned out, hmm?
But Bill Clinton and the Democrats panicked.
And that's part of a pattern...I've observed the Democratic Party long enough to get acquainted with the entire gamut of excuses, which basically boil down to "Unless we have both the White House and 2/3 majorities in both Houses of Congress, our hands are tied!!!"
Well, dream on...I happen to think that while the American people are much less politically and socially conservative than the hype- (a hype shared by both you and the National Review, curiously enough)- there is a strong popular animus against the half-hearted, the less than forthright, the hypocritical, and the politically passive-aggressive. And that isn't anything that the Democrats can fix simply by conjuring horror scenarios of Republican political victory.
The first step is to admit that you have a problem.
If you think I'm wrong in my observations, by all means, feel free to correct me.
Post a Comment