Gays dropped their votes to Dems significantly from 2008 levels. Hispanics voted for Democrats at about 2008 levels despite horrible policies against them. You only have leverage if you are willing to defect in a high profile fashion.
Category: Democratic Party Page 3 of 7
Ok, another edition of pointing out the painfully obvious.
Most votes in Congress are Kabuki. There was never any chance that Bush tax cuts weren’t going to be extended, and this was obvious far before the election, for example. Unions were never going to get the Employee Free Choice Act.
Also, stop paying attention to who votes for what. If a Dem votes against an obnoxious bill, it is almost always because leadership has released them to vote against it. Close votes almost never really are.
Dozens of Dems in the House promised not to vote for a health care bill without a public option. Leave aside what you think of it, given that they broke that promise as a group, why would you trust them on anything?
Obama in specific, and the Congressional leadership in general thinks that their problem in 2010 with the base was because they didn’t have enough show votes which failed. So they’re going to have a lot of show votes. But virtually everything that passes is essentially what Obama wants to pass. (For example, the stimulus bill was essentially identical to Obama’s original stimulus bill.)
If Obama wasn’t black, he’d be a “moderate” Republican. He is not a progressive, not a liberal and neither is Harry Reid. Pelosi would be liberal in a different world, but she will do what the President tells her to do, she’s a good soldier. Originally she wasn’t going to pass TARP, for example, unless an equal percentage of Republicans voted for it, but when Obama came out in favor of it, she fell into line.
There is no constituency in Congress for liberal policy. None. Even those who prefer liberal policy, like Sanders and Pelosi, will not do anything to actually make sure it happens, or to stop conservative policy.
This is why I generally don’t write about legislative fights any more. There is no point, the outcome is usually determined long before the actual vote, and everything you see is just theater for the rubes.
We are past the point where legislative actions matter. At this point, assuming the political system can be reformed at all, you require new leadership, capable of holding legislators to principles. You require outside groups who will hold legislators responsible, which means not micro-politics groups. Virtually ever micro-politics group, that is any group which looks after one interest or one constituency, will sell out liberal interests. So you have teachers unions accepting wages paid for by cutting food stamps (ie. starving the children they teach) and you have the auto workers endorsing the Korean-US trade deal which is bad for everyone but them.
A movement of the left made up of self-interested groups is no movement at all. The first, second and last rule of movement politics is solidarity. Any movement made of people or groups which will sell out the rest of the movement is not a movement, and they will be played off against each other to give cover for the worst sort of policy. If you are interested only in your own issue, whether that is environmental, gay rights, women’s rights, immigration, trade, unionization or whatever, then you are part of the problem and your willingness to betray is why the left fails over and over again.
Hang together, or hang separately, as Ben Franklin said.
The left has chosen to hang separately.
Seriously, Jerome was, in Democratic terms, the centrist’s centrist.
I’ve ended my hyper-partisan allegiance to the Democratic Party. In moving beyond the past decade’s partisan affair with Democrats, I am ready for a real revolution to happen in this country.
It has got to happen over the next two years, and its going to take progressives, libertarians, tea partiers, coffee partiers, conservatives… everyone that is not part of the problem (the financial/political/military elite). Get radical, first by moving beyond attachment to a single party or a political identity. Radicalize them both, go independent; whatever, and if that’s not you too, then get out of the way.
Of course, I’d say a political identity in terms of an ideology is important, still, given Jerome’s self-confessed prior hyper-identification with the Democratic party, this is rather remarkable.
Peter Dauo has a pair of well received articles on how the left, and specifically bloggers, have brought down the Obama administration. This is in contrast to what many see as the attempt by the White House to portray left wingers as responsible for Democratic losses.
What?
Look, if the left is so powerful that is is responisble for Democratic fortunes, well, that’s not something we should shrink from. We should say “Yes, we can destroy Democratic prospects. If you don’t do what we want, we WILL do so.”
Powerful groups get what they want, weak groups don’t. If the White House wants to portray us as that powerful, we should embrace that description, because it is a blade which cuts both ways.
And there is an argument for it. While certainly the economy is factor one, the people whom left-wing bloggers reach are the sort of folks who traditionally don’t just vote, they volunteer, they give money and they are themselves influentials, who convince others to be enthusiastic, vote, volunteer and give. When, last year, I felt parts of the blogosphere lose their patience with Obama, I knew it would cost him, and it has.
Don’t run from this, embrace it, wrap yourself in it. You are part of the left, and the left is capable of destroying governments which don’t do what it wants. And this is good, because objectively Obama has not fixed the economy, has presided over further destruction of civil rights, has reduced access to abortion, and so on.
Powerful people and interests give away nothing they don’t want to unless they are forced to by others with power. The left is either powerful and willing to use that power or it is nothing.
Now that virtually everyone of any importance, up to and including the President has told you that they hate you, that you are a bunch of unrealistic ingrates who need to be drug tested, I trust no one still thinks the White House doesn’t hate the left’s guts, and that it comes from the very top, from the President?
I’m going to write on this at greater length, but the point folks need to get through their heads and burrowed down into their hearts and spleens is that Democratic politicians as a rule, despise you. This isn’t just about the White House, Democrats in the Senate and in the House have done everything short of spit in your face, over and over again, as when Nancy Pelosi snuck an up or down vote on the catfood comission’s findings into the lame duck sessions.
Not just that, but for whatever reason, these folks either don’t care about winning elections or are so incompetent they can’t see the obvious. Everyone with any track record of being, y’know, right, told them the stimulus was too small and every political consultant knows the economy is the most important thing to reelection chances, yet they passed an inadequate stimulus anyway. In a midterm election where they need the base to come out, they have spent the last six months insulting the base and engaging in policy after policy meant to enrage it. They could have, for example, put off filing a brief arguing that government secrecy allows the president to assassinate any American he wants anytime until after the election, but they chose not to.
It is, for whatever reason, more important to Democrats to “hippie punch” than it is for them to win elections. It is more important for them to serve Wall Street, even if Wall Street gives more money to Republicans, than it is to win elections. Further, they are very happy to do very non-liberal things, like restrict abortion rights, forbid drug reimportation, gut net neutrality or try and cut social security.
It is not clear how many of them somewhere deep in their shriveled hearts feel they are actually liberals, but what is clear is that it doesn’t matter, because they won’t act on it, even when they control the Presidency, the House and the Senate.
Incompetent. Ideologically right wing, only moderately less right wing than the Republicans.
This is your Democratic party. These people are the problem. As long as they are around, the problem can never be solved. If it could be, they would have done so. This means, sorry folks, that the only hope for liberalism and for America to avoid a complete economic meltdown, is for Democrats to be swept out of power and for as many Dems who aren’t reliable progressives to lose their seats as possible.
Yes, the Republicans will do worse things, but that’s going to happen anyway. And in some cases, as with Social Security, it is better to have Republicans in power, because it is easier to fight Republican efforts to gut SS than it is to fight Democratic efforts to do so.
I know a lot of people don’t like this calculus, but the math is clear. These Democrats cannot or will not deliver. They cannot or will not do what needs to be done. They have to go.
More on this in a future essay, for now just understand this: the people who control the Democratic party despise you. Loathe you. They think you’re the sort of frightened sheep who will keep voting for them, keep giving them money and help, as long as they promise to be just a little better than the Republicans.
Are they right?