What has happened to the Democratic Party?

And reccing a change to "here's the dem party vision...."

WAY TOO MANY "progressives" stayed home in 2010 ALLOWING the RePukes to take over the House and many State Houses, thus allowing them to gerrymander the districts, and now we are STUCK with them in the House. Those "progressives" stayed home and bitched over lack of purity though we had the MOST PROGRESS in government from 08 to 10 in decades. So, now they continue to whine and bitch and attack Obama and some Dems because they MUST find ways to try to work with the REPUBLICAN CONTROLLED HOUSE OF REPS that became Republican-controlled due to "progressives" staying home and bitching in 2010.

Much on your list would be great and much has been proposed but WILL NOT GET VOTES FROM THE RePUKES. So you are running around in circles chasing your tail.

Put the blame right where it belongs: on the "progressives" who bitched and whined and pissed and moaned in 2010, stayed home to "protest" lack of absolute purity, allowed the RePukes to win the House and many State Houses, and are now continuing to bitch.

Moral of the story: QUIT THE BITCHING OVER PERFECT PURITY AND GET THE HELL OUT AND VOTE. Don't like being FORCED to negotiate with RePukes? Then stop bitching and stop staying home in mid term elections and stop ALLOWING them to win. TeaLEFTISM is as bad as right wing TeaISM. The only difference is that right winger TeaNUTS crawl through hurricanes to VOTE. TeaLEFTISTS stay home and bitch delusionally thinking they are "protesting" but all they are really doing is allowing the TeaRightWingers to WIN which just makes them bitch even louder. Round and round and round they go.

people of modest means were belittled by Obama's appointees("fuck the UAW&quot and I don't blame them for staying home.
Most here didn't; I didn't; but I hold no bitterness towards those who voted 3rd party or said, "I'l not going to be a sucker". Obama's administration bears most of the blame for the turnout abetted by huge sums fed by the RWers and a steady flow of hate from the media.

Do we have numbers and statistics on that assertion?

staying home.

Neither could really be considered as the Progressive base.

I don't.

Even assuming it's a wild guess, it's no worse a guess than saying that it was Purity Patrol Progressives who stayed home.

But...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/11/democrats_lost_big_because_you.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/9652962/US-election-Why-Americas-fate-lies-at-the-hands-of-independent-voters.html

campaign promises of 2008 and were turned off in 2010. I think the politically active progressives voted. I voted to cast my ballot against Virginia Foxx, for example, and to support local Dems; I bet most people who vote each election did too but I have no stats.
Good point.

on the table so often.

...let alone political battles.

This is like blaming Nader for Florida in 2000. Gore ran a terrible campaign, as did Kerry in 2004--and both those guys should have been fantastic candidates. And let's not even get started on Martha Coakley, and the wonderful legacy her entitled campaigning style has left us.

The country needs an FDR, but Obama wants to be Bill Clinton. That's too bad for those of us who would like casual voters to be inspired to elect Democratic majorities....

Quite far from B.C. IMHO, as B.C. knew how to negotiate.

now.

-NAFTA and Free Trade
-Telecommunications Act
-Glass-Stegall
-DOMA/Don't Ask Don't Tell

Just a few examples. He couldn't even get Health Care reform on the floor.

I'm not saying Obama is a good negotiator either. He was made to look like an idiot during HCR because he negotiated against himself.

He's the guy who goes to the car lot, finds out the sticker price is $15,000, says "Okay I'll give you $14,999.99" and when the dealer says no, offers $16,000 until they end up at a $20,000 sale.

Both of them are total failures at negotiating and I think it's because they both have the same fatal flaw: They want the Republicans to like them too much. They think if they can get these assholes to like them, they can work with them more. But even though he gave them the farm, Republicans never stopped going after Clinton and certainly didn't prevent an impeachment from happening. And they're not stopping the tea partiers from making their attacks on Obama's birthplace or any other character attacks they can make either.

Wanting to be liked is a horrendous flaw for someone who is supposed to represent the people because ultimately they are concerned about being liked in their inner circle and with people they are around regularly more than us whom they do not see on a day to day basis.

Democrats held the presidency and both houses of Congress, yet delivered little but a dramatic perma-bailout of the bankers, a huge wet kiss to the health insurance industry (just check their stock prices) whose benefits are unclear to most Americans and which was exactly what Candidate Obama proclaimed to be a hideous idea, an unending depression, and more shoveling of cash from the 99% to the 1%.

The audacity of hope was replaced by the timidity of "nope... No we can't".

Can you forgive voters for feeling a tad disillusioned after being power-mooned like that?

That being said - somehow that W fella seemed to get plenty of awful stuff done with a far worse position in Congress. Because he wanted to get it done.

to be immediately superceded by another the next with the horror of Day 1 forgotten. It worked...worked to the detriment of the 99% and many of the world's innocent people.

W did what he needed to do to get the job done.

The perverse thing here is that, like FDR, Obama has an incredible ability to persuade people through his words. When he wants to.

if this administration had been more willing to turn its back on the likes of useless corporatist fake Democrats like Rahm Emanuel and Arne Duncan...more willing to say "We don't really feel you're a Democrat." to centrist/corporatist bootlickers who are more opposed to the Republicans than in support of the Democrats.

They had the Presidency and both chambers of Congress and they squandered them being moderate. They gave us no reason to turn-out. Perhaps they'll learn their lesson for 2014 and 2018 and 2022...and get some spine to stand on a platform that means something, even if it shrinks the base by making us less palatable to fake-Democrats and mere anti-Republicans.

Many liberals here want to deny it, but it IS ultimately the fault of people on the Left for not showing up in droves for the midterms. I have my own reservations about Obama and the Democratic Party's agenda, but there's nobody else to choose from, and the GOP's agenda and what they've been trying to do to women, gays, low-income, and minorities should've been enough motivation alone to get to the polls. People call themselves "sending a message" by sitting out elections or voting 3rd party, but that's not going do anything except make the enemy stronger. The media doesn't give a crap if people don't vote. And the wingnuts, like you said, gets out and vote no matter what. And Rachel Maddow even said once that if you don't vote, then you are fulfilling someone else's plan.

invent the reality you want. You can start by fighting gerrymandering in the states. Quit being chauferred to battle after battle by the republican machine. Take the keys to the car and give them to the people by stopping the gerrymandering in thee states which allows non-repreasentative to be unaccountable to the people. In Ohio we had about the same nummber of people voting for and against Obama and about same number of democrat and republicans but we got 4 democrats and 12 republicans due to gerrymandering. How do you think Boehner keeps his job? Something smells here and across the Nation and that stink comes from gerrymandering robbing the citizens of their votes. Vote suppression is worse than voter suppression and much more successful.

Show me some data on that. You got a link which proves this meme of "progressives stayed home" in 2010?

Because I highly doubt it is true.

Lots of people ALWAYS stay home in the off year elections. Here's what I know about turnout in my own county (approximately)

2004 - 26,000
2006 - 18,000
2008 - 26,000
2010 - 18,000
2012 - 26,000

About 8,000 people stay home every election where there is not a President on the ballot. 2010 was no different than any other off year election in that regard.

However, there were two differences between 2006 and 2010. In 2010, Democrats were fired up to stop the Bush agenda and Republicans were discouraged or complacent. Plus the media kept reporting the self-fulfilling prophecy "Democrats are gonna re-take the House". In 2010, the opposite was the case. Republicans were fired up and Democrats were complacent (or discouraged) and the media again made a self-fulfilling prophecy that "Republicans are gonna re-take the House". One thing about those self-fulfilling prophecies is that there is a portion, not a huge portion, but a 4 or 5% portion that "goes with the flow". Enough of a portion to tip some elections whichever way the media wind blows them.

But progressives are not really part of that group of sheeple.

But the large point is twofold.

First, Obama and Democrats do not need to work with Republicans to make the Bush tax cuts expire. That will happen if Democrats do NOTHING.

Second, Obama and Democrats do not need Republican help to PROPOSE progressive ideas and to make THOSE IDEAS part of the public discussion. From the very start, Obama's ideas have been awful, First, because he proposes to keep 78% of the Bush tax cuts, with almost half of those tax cuts going to the rich. Second, because he accepts the Republican frame about the deficit and embraces things like Simpson Bowles.

You cannot blame Republicans for that. Those are straight up choices by Obama. It isn't Republicans who are keeping progressive ideas off the table - it is Obama and the Democrats who refuse to fight him.

As I said before - where is Kucinich? Where is Baldwin? Where is Wareen, and Whitehouse and Sherrod Brown? Where's Grayson? Hath not progressives mouths?

I voted for the lesser of two evils in 2008 & again in 2010 & again in 2012. You know what it's getting me? A party that is drifting further & further to the right.



I'm sick of this shit.

Call us all the names you want, but don't blame lack of turnout on people who expect the party to stand for something.

What a fucking idiotic thing to do.

despite their disappointments, did vote and as a result we saved the seats of almost all of the Progressive Dems in Congress.

Otoh, we have no control over what Independents do other than providing them with a reason to vote for Democrats. That was not apparent to them in 2010.

RNInMaine's post is a bald-faced lie, and I hope that he and the rest of the right-wingers get exactly what they want - a far-right agenda along the same trajectory of Bush

In my experience it wasn’t the progressives that stayed home in 2010. If there is one solid component to the Democratic Party, it’s the Democratic Wing. We are doing the GOTV calling and door to door canvassing EVERY ELECTION. If anyone stayed home it was the right-wing nuts of the party.

If you are not progressive what do you call yourself? Heavens we should mislabel you as The Third Way or a DLC Democrat. So what do you call yourself, please? And on which specific issues do you part from the progressives?

You claim that the list provided in the OP “IS on the agenda”. Really, show us.

I always wonder why a Democrat would try so hard to disparage progressives. Seem they are trying to sow dissension and split the Party. Is that your goal?

Need to be asked. I was thinking the same thing.

and that specific post was a drive by fer sure, but a lot of those items are on the Democratic Party Platform. But it's like having a guide-book, not a rule-book?

very extensive platform and being on the agenda. The OP proposals are very specific and need to be where we start our bargaining.

RepubliCONS never even refer to it as Social Security, it's always "entitlements". If Social Security is touched you can kiss the party that touched it goodbye.

It would balance out the complaint OP's from the do nothing wing of our party.

...and THAT kind of whiny denial is the Blue Print for continual Losing.

[font size=3]"We didn't win because the voters were stupid.
It was ALL somebody else's fault.
We did everything right.
Fuck all those OTHER assholes who made us lose."[/font]

It is the JOB of leadership to WIN elections.
It is the JOB of Leadership to Motivate the Troops.

If the troops are NOT motivated,
it is the JOB of Leadership to KNOW this,
to account for this,
and to make a plan to DEAL with this.

It is NOT the job of the troops to motivate themselves.

While Blaming the Voters may FEEL GOOD to you,
it is NOT a good plan for winning the next election.
In fact, it is counter productive.
The Voters will always be stupid.
THAT is The Given in the election equation.
Crying about it, or scapegoating another group won't change that....EVER.

When an election is lost,
the responsibility for that Loss lies squarely on the shoulders of LEADERSHIP,
and nobody else.

The Good News is that IF Leadership has the courage to assess their failures,
the courage to assume that responsibility,
and the good judgement to diagnose the exact nature of their failure,
the problem CAN and WILL be corrected.

The Stupid Voters will ALWAYS be Stupid Voters.
THAT can't be corrected.
Blaming the voters for being stupid will NEVER solve the problem or change anything.


Harry Truman understood that simple Law of Winning Elections:

sore need of some courageous leadership at this point in time. Leadership that is willing to make hard choices and unwilling to compromise when the most vulnerable Americans are under attack.

...and many of them are right here on DU, sorry to say.

of patience with the apologists is growing with each and every new insult to the intelligence of the American people.

I wish I'd said that!

propagated here? Thanks to the fact that no matter how disappointed they were they still went out and voted, MOST of the Progressive members of Congress retained their seats.

It was Independents who stayed home, NOT Progressives.

and get the rest of the morons to believe it

Blaming the voters, and the base in particular, is a losing strategy right out of the gate.

The lesson of 2010, a lesson the fickle faction you speak for failed to grasp once again, was that when the Democrats fail to fight for the change they were elected to implement, people don't bother. That's the fact. That's the reality.

The party has about a year to fix their failed strategy of assuming that their supporters are as stupid the the republican's supporters. There is a difference between the parties, the problem is that the Democratic hasn't figured that out.

sorry to blow holes in your bullshit narrative, but what you claim is the opposite of what actually happened.

Democrats Try to Crack Mystery of the Missing Voters

A popular theory of this year's midterm election holds that Democrats took a shellacking in part because big chunks of the party's core liberal base, discouraged at the path of the Obama administration, stayed home rather than show up to vote as they did in 2008.

It's an interesting narrative. It also doesn't appear to be entirely accurate.

While it's correct that some key parts of the Democratic coalition—young voters and African-Americans among them—didn't perform as they did in 2008, evidence emerging as the dust settles from this month's election suggests the bigger hole in the side of the Democratic ship came from moderates in the political center who didn't show up. (Those absences were in addition to the wave of independent swing voters also from the center who, exit polls showed, turned out but switched their votes to the Republicans.)

<more>

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559504575630453372436666.html

to support the banks and their wealthy bondholders on the theory that their wealth will trickle down, provide them trillions of dollars in taxpayer backup from which raked profits of billions of taxpayer dollars and paid hundreds and hundreds of millions in bonuses from taxpayer dollars to people for defrauding the American people, an Inspector General of TARP who joins a long line of people documenting the support of the wealthy at the expense of the rest of the country by the Treasury Department, as well as a general unwillingness to investigate those who cause our financial crisis,

from 2009...

A.I.G. Planning Huge Bonuses After $170 Billion Bailout
WASHINGTON — The American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in bonuses by Sunday to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.

Edward M. Liddy, the government-appointed chairman of A.I.G., argued that some bonuses were needed to keep the most
skilled executives.

Word of the bonuses last week stirred such deep consternation inside the Obama administration that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told the firm they were unacceptable and demanded they be renegotiated, a senior administration official said. But the bonuses will go forward because lawyers said the firm was contractually obligated to pay them.

The payments to A.I.G.’s financial products unit are in addition to $121 million in previously scheduled bonuses for the company’s senior executives and 6,400 employees across the sprawling corporation. Mr. Geithner last week pressured A.I.G. to cut the $9.6 million going to the top 50 executives in half and tie the rest to performance...

here

.

getting the hell out in the streets by the thousands and protest. Shut his country down for 90-days, no work, no spending any money except what it takes to get by. The democratic party has moved too far to the right and has let the repugs get their message (lies) out. Voting is good, but we can't wait any longer. Voting every 2-4 years will not cut it any longer. It is now time for a fight.

The ones who stayed home were the occasional voters that we had to practically drag to the polls in 2008.

The economy was in collapse, the banking system corrupt, the stock market out of control, the housing market going under, jobs going overseas, spending out of control, tax evasion on a grand scale, and what did the Democrats do??

Not only did we have the opportunity to change the system, we had the responsibility to change it and we failed. We accepted responses from our Party that should disgrace most thinking Americans, especially Democrats. The cult of personality cannot be a substitute for this failure.

Yes, many are in denial. We have only strengthened those that are strangling this nation and now the President is on his way back to Washington to make another deal that we cannot afford.

I am not ashamed to say that I voted for Obama twice. The first time was because I had hope that he would be a transformative President. He was not. The second time was because the alternatives were simply crazy and unacceptable. That does not excuse the Democratic Party. Nor does it excuse my participation in this "democracy"...

mistakes are being made by number one, aided and abetted by certain factions within the Party. It will be a very bad January, methinks; quite possibly the worst ever for the Democratic Party.

FDR - New Deal; Truman - Fair Deal; Obama - Mis-Deal

Says you

ETA: If you continue to vote out of fear of Republicans, as opposed to voting for a platform that you actually like.

And here we are.

I don't think it's worked out very well for working Americans. Some may disagree.

We are seeing the end result of thirty years of triangulation and recruitment of Republicans.
The Democratic party has become an annex to the Republican party, Democrats are the Republicans that will beat you with a bat rather than a sword, they are the "nice" republicans.

The party of labor, the poor, and the elderly is little more than a memory and those Democrats like myself that belonged to it are awaiting the arrival of a party like the Democratic party was 40 years ago when we the "unwashed" non-banker Democrats first joined.

sure

For a while I thought all you could see was the color of the tie rather than the Republican origins of the Heritage Foundation policy being sold like so much snake oil.

Congratulations on awakening from the slumber!
We have either a party to take back from the conservatives or a new one to form and support,
either way we need all hands on it and all eyes finally opened.

Maybe that should be the new Democratic Party slogan! "We're the nice Republicans!" It fits like a fucking glove.

What DOES the Democratic party stand for? You're right that all we hear about is the right's view of how things OUGHT to be and how much we can stand in the way of that vision. It's like asking to be cannon fodder to shield the retreat.

Where is OUR vision? Not only does Obama fill-in-the-blanks FOR republican spending cuts, but he also doesn't give them progressive ideals to hurl spitefully away. I wonder how the public would react to Boehner brushing aside actual ideas that could help them in their daily lives? I'd like to find out and trumpet the results to the high heavens! But, as RB said, that's not REALISTIC. Third way logic to its core. We must punish ourselves. That's the third way mantra so conservatives maintain a death grip on our cultural and national souls.

Everybody happy?

... but he also doesn't give them progressive ideals to hurl spitefully away.

huh?

I blame the progressives who stayed home in 2010. They are the same ones complaining about the situation now and I fear they will stay home in 2014. Don't complain, vote.

As the GOP is discovering, no party is entiteled to anyone's free vote. If Democrats want the progressive vote they need to earn it.

They haven't even tried.

They absolutely indeed deserve the blame. When Republicans are pissed they don't complain they vote. As much as I can't stand republicans, we need to take a page out of their playbook and vote. If you do not vote, you do not have the right to complain as far as I'm concerned.

The ones complaining now are the ones that stayed home in 2010 and they'll likely do it again if they feel they're not being heard.

It's the payback of the fringe...the margin needed to win is the margin of the fringe, so the fringe can make demands and the base had better be prepared to meet them or lose.

Same deal in both parties on both extremes. The difference is that the GOP knows they have to play ball with the Tea Party but the Democrats are to this point too-dull to realize that unless they want to lose in 2014 they need to listen to the left more often than not, even when the left says "Murder the centrist/corporatist agenda."

The GOP is now essentially owned by their fringe, and what the fringe wants is definately not what the nation (or even the center) wants. Their war with the party is playing out on the left-right spectrum. The Democrats aren't bothering with that. They aren't trying to win the center, they are trying to win the TOP.

In any case let's be clear about one thing:

The stuff that so-called progressives are asking for isn't all that radical or all that left. They are, for the most part, overwhelmingly popular with the American people. We're not asking for free ponies and flying freaking cars here. And if some are demanding that we immediately shut down all the power plants and replace them with solar highways and unicorns no one is paying attention anyway.

We want reasonable and rational changes to problems that pretty much everyone in the nation agrees are real. Everyone knows healthcare is a disaster, and other than a few diehard Obama defenders, everyone knows Obamacare isn't the answer. Everyone wants to see it fixed. So let's fix it.

The same thing applies to basically everything I listed. The American people are tired of endless wars. They are tired of the wealth inequality. They are tired of seeing one set of laws for wealthy corporations and their owners, and another for everyone else. They are tired of looking at great damns and bridges and thinking "Why can't be build things like that anymore?"

They are tired of trying to compete with people earning twelve cents a day.

They are tired of a nation who's biggest employer is Walmart, followed by McDonalds. They are tired of wishing they could land one of those Walmart jobs themselves. So this is not exactly a hard sell here. The Titanic has gone down, the rich are sitting off on the horizon in their lifeboats sipping Brandy and watching the show. And the guys in the water drowning, the 99%, they are more than willing to listen to suggestions.

We reelected Obama expecting him to order the boats to return for the rest of us. But so far he is too busy offering refills to the guys in the boats to worry about the folks drowning.

We definitely need more voices like yours here. I'm so sick of third-way, republican lite I could poop. Like you said, it's not about purity. I think it's about fairness. Democrats should stand for the things you listed: the poor, labour unions, pro-equality, pro-woman, etc. I sometimes wonder if some people here shouldn't just come out as Republicans and get it over with.

In fact, I complain to the very third way moderates I have to vote for (and I complain on this forum).

But how is voting for more Republicans in Democratic clothes going to bring about the changes this country needs? Even the President - who called himself an 80's moderate Republican - urged us to push him. Just voting isn't going to move the party back to the left where it once was. We need to PUSH it to the left.

Like it or not the Bvar22's post is right. Trying to shift the blame to the progressives isn't going to change that.

so tired of this bullshit meme put out by centrists to cover the ass of the centrists that actually did stay home.

and if you can't acknowledge that you're part of the problem. We are so tired of seeing the same BULL CRAP from folks like you. If people had not stayed home the tea party never would have taken over, you can never convince me other wise and we need to keep shaming them until they admit that they were wrong and I don't have to be exposed to their crap either

post something to discredit the link I posted, because otherwise you are talking out of your fucking ass. prove me wrong. go right on ahead and fucking do it.

Democrats Try to Crack Mystery of the Missing Voters

A popular theory of this year's midterm election holds that Democrats took a shellacking in part because big chunks of the party's core liberal base, discouraged at the path of the Obama administration, stayed home rather than show up to vote as they did in 2008.

It's an interesting narrative. It also doesn't appear to be entirely accurate.

While it's correct that some key parts of the Democratic coalition—young voters and African-Americans among them—didn't perform as they did in 2008, evidence emerging as the dust settles from this month's election suggests the bigger hole in the side of the Democratic ship came from moderates in the political center who didn't show up. (Those absences were in addition to the wave of independent swing voters also from the center who, exit polls showed, turned out but switched their votes to the Republicans.)

<more>

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559504575630453372436666.html

I think that the public forgot about bush very quickly.
Voting was down by tens of millions of voters, IIRC.

Asking for facts, statistics, or sources to support a fantasy post is no longer the standard at DU.
You are just being a bully.

Karl Rove catapulted us into the 21st Century with this proclamation:
When the World hands us an Inconvenient Reality, "We create our OWN reality!"

instead of the Repukes. They are a particularly self-loathing bunch, who want to take money from the poor, lay people off, spend a fortune on war, do away with public schools, and kill unions, but can't bring themselves to outlaw abortion, so they call themselves Dems.

I voted for Obama twice, and twice now he has won overwhelming victories.

No President in my lifetime has had a more powerful mandate.

In his first term he used that mandate to fight, not for me, but for insurance companies profits. He fought his ass off for them. He fought to make sure BP was allowed to decide for themselves when the Gulf was clean enough. He fought to make sure no bankers faced justice or even lost their mega-bonus checks. He fought to add more free trade agreements. Off the top of my head I cannot think of anything he didn't cave on. Monsanto, Goldman, BP, his administration was an open door for the people pillaging this country. Bailouts for bankers and bullshit for everyone else.

But I voted for him again, thinking THIS time -- not having to face reelection -- we would see the real Obama. And I'll admit it, I was swayed by all the campaign rhetoric. He asked if we wanted to all be in this together, or all in this alone. I voted for together.

I expected him to come out of the gate with a PLAN.

I expected him to go on national TV with that plan and his mandate, and sell it to the American people. Instead all I have seen is cute pictures of him posing with kids, and proposals that might as well have been written by the Heritage foundation and the Kock brothers.

* Where's the proposal to END these FTAs and bring the jobs back home? We tried it and, as predicted, it was a disaster. End it.
* Where's the proposal to tax capital gains as income? Without that any tax hike on the mega-wealthy is a joke
* Where's the proposal for single payer? Obamacare is nothing more than welfare for insurance companies. End that nonsense. Allow anyone to purchase Medicare and medicaide. Or better yet, just make it free. We actually can afford it.
* Where's the proposal for REAL infrastructure spending? Our country's infrastructure is falling apart, it needs to be fixed, so fix it.
* Where's the proposal for eliminating the cap on social security?
* Where's the proposal for LOWERING the retirement age? We don't need seniors working, we need them not working.
* Where's the proposal for free eductation? Why not, right? We can afford it from one to twelve, but somehow a couple more is impossible.
* Where's the proposal to simply end the damn wars and bring our men and women home? Instead, we are looking to pick a new fight -- this time with Iran.
* Where's the proposal to actually end poverty and homelessness. None of this nickle and dime stuff, we can do this if we want to.

I don't want to hear how impossible all this is. Everyone knows the GOP is off its rocker, put that stuff out there, sell it to the people, and if you do it right the GOP will either pass it or get obliterated in the midterms.

We have to decide what kind of country we want. We CAN decide these things. And none of it is impossible. It's not even that difficult or expensive. No, expensive is what we are doing now... which is to say: nothing new. And that's where it has to start. Change can only happen if we change. We cannot comtinue doing the same things, panding to the same few people, and hoping that somehow things will magically get better. That the fine folks at Goldman Sachs will decide they have enough.

I want Obama and the Democrat party to lead. If not, fuck em, if they want to govern like the GOP they can vanish with the GOP.

Nuff said.

That hurts.

Obama works for and what he will do for his employer.

Welcome to DU.

but the president then, as now, hides in the WH and leaks details of his rightward lurch, so no one believes a word of what he said in the campaign.

Nicely stated, but you might want to edit this sentence

especially with the gop house willing to go along with those things.

he is the best republican the democrats could vote for, i am a so called progressive or liberal and i always vote, rain or shine, the alternative as we saw with the 2010 election is devastating. we just need to move the party back to the left and fuck people like rahm emanuel and all those pukes who keep moving us to the right. vote them out. it takes time but we can keep plugging away at it.

What happened to our party? Where is it?

parents, by a large margin, like the school(s) their kids go to. It's similar to Americans giving low marks to Congress but returning their district Representatives.

because the rich keep that to themselves. We think what we have is good enough because we do not know how good the others are. The republicans decry that small class rooms, teachers with masters degrees, and high level curriculum is not important and do not make a difference but that is exactly what they have and we do not. I will give them this. Not even they allow their children to be creative and think outside the box. No. Their children must learn how to be CEOs and how to milk every dollar out of every consumer and every employee. I guess creative and critical thinking isn't conducive for creating a master and servant society.

top notch engineering and science schools. Public education can, and should, be of the highest caliber and should be the municipal priority with or without help from the federal government.
And, we have to stop underpaying and over working teachers.

that's the problem. There are advanced classes for those who pursue them. My daughter has taken advanced history and is now taking advanced biology and advanced chemistry, but where is the hope of expectation for the rest of the students. Now not all students are going to be MIT bound but our core curriculum and class sizes do not even give most of them a chance. I have found that my kids are the most inspired when they are being taught by teachers who have masters degrees. They have an in depth knowledge of their subject and have been taught teaching techniques that enhance learning. Special schools and special programs are good for a few students but we need to figure out how to reach millions more students.

college prep and the G was general education but a student could be accepted at a college from the G Course too.
The school had almost 3000 boys, grades 9 - 12, and was mostly math, science(except biology) and manual arts cluding wood joinery, foundry and forge, sheet metal, and surveying. Mechanical drawing was on the schedule for 3 years.
Everyone, A, B and G took these shop courses. The curriculum was light on languages and social sciences.
It was also, I'm pretty sure, the first high school in a major metropolitan area to be racially integrated(1952).
The neighborhood high schools were good too with college prep and fairly small classes.
This, to me, shows what can be done if people value the leveling factor of universal public education.

republicans are allowed to frame the direction and arguments. Hence, the democratic party of today is often reactionary. Bold unshakable visions for the future are needed, no caving, no compromising, no walking into republican traps. That said, often this direction is missing IMO.

I am so tired of a lack of our own ideas, as well. I only wish Someone in charge would read this.

is: Why is this happening?
I concur with the author.....
It's bad enuf the question even has to be asked--but Why is this not happening. Something is ominously "off". So the answers cannot be "softened" because those very answers may not be exactly what we want to hear.

I think I might be searching for rationale to excuse the Dem Failures, but yet----is anything in DC Politics "accidental and unforeseen"?
fwiw. this "missing element" has been "visible" in the Dem Party a Lot longer than just since Nov 6, 2012, imo

Let me say that another way. Until the general public figures out what is wrong. Many of us recognize that what is wrong is that many Democrats represent the 1%.

Progressives must take control of the Democratic Party and push out the oligarch controlled Third Way'ers.

Perhaps one approach: If they're acting on behalf of and for the Corporations as the GOP does, then we should confront them and do so as bluntly as we do the other side.

As All (both sides) DC Lawmakers Created the "Fiscal Crises"--we saw the "real corporate defenders" rise to the top....they exposed themselves along with a few others who quietly faded out of MSM sight....then we have Pelosi who "assigned her particular brand of logic" agreeing the Chained CPI would (LOL) Strengthen SocSec"...we begin to see who, on the Dem side is really behind the same outside interests the GOP is...there'll be more in the coming days.....
And Pelosi must understand when you get less money--It's a gd CUT and ultimately Weakens the program--but then I'm damned certain Pelosi already knows this fact.
Durbin, POTUS along with a handful of other Dems need to be watched--along with others like Rendell who are simply using common established talking points in the debate to convince us "of shared sacrifice" without so much as mentioning what "the people" have already sacrificed in Trillions to help the poor ailing higly profitable Banks/Wall Street/Wars/Banks/Real Estate Moguls and etc---
Their Votes Count--Their Interviews Count--Floor Speeches Matter regardless of Which party they come from.
The offered excuses and finger pointing means nothing after the harm ensues.

Too many democratic politicians have been bought off by the 1% and we will never get policy that represents the people until we get corporate america out of our politics. People are outraged at the prospect of the mingling of church and state but some seem to be comfortable with the prospect of the mingling of corporations and state even within the democratic party. Get the oligarchs out.

Let's stop worrying about what's been lost in the Democratic party and start planning for the future. I disagree with those who feel we must compromise with Republican ideas; when something is wrong, it's wrong. Scaling back the social safety net for average Americans when they are just scraping by is wrong, and middle-class is not anywhere close to $200,000/year. Yes, we must face reality, but the reality is that the Bush tax cuts were never paid for and were part of a plan to provide the excuse to cut back on social programs and increase the power of the status quo. As was mentioned, there are simple ways to make Social Security solvent with things like raising the maximum income levels on which Social Security taxes are paid. It is wrong to not require stricter gun laws on obvious errors like gun shows and assault rifles, whether they improve gun violence or not. It is wrong to weaken unions and worker's rights, taking away any hope of common people to get decent jobs with decent pay and benefits while weakening the middle class. And the list goes on.

We need to enable progressive candidates to enter primary contests. Candidates that can hold their own against well-polished Republican erroneous rhetoric. Candidates that can articulate the Progressive view in such a way that the common people once again realize that it is the Democratic view that represents them and shows that Republican ideas are for the privileged few that don't have to worry about retirement, health care, or education. We need to support the Ralph Naders, Bill Moyers', and, yes, the Jon Stewarts so that people can hear and understand the Progressive view.

We need to forget about third party candidates (except for some state and local elections) because the electoral college is set up for independent candidates to loose. The time is now to find the next Democratic candidate to truly represent the people. I voted for Obama both times while holding my nose and will continue to vote against the conservative conspiracy, but we have to start having a choice in the primaries. Is there anyone out there who has any ideas?

I'm a realist when it comes to the concept of compromise but the republicans have been beating up the middle and low income people of this country for so long the scale is WAY off balance. The republicans will have to compromise a lot to come even close to balancing things out. Then we can talk about democrats compromising. But right now things are too out of balance to be talking about democrats compromising.

Democrats do not allow liberals to run in primaries, though.

Put enough money behind the right person that people are listening to, fill out the required paper work, and a person can get into a primary. True, the money needed to get a liberal/progressive candidate to win a primary is formidable, but not impossible. Winning the White House as a third party candidate IS impossible.

Now that we know that is wrong all possibilities lay before us. All it takes is enough people and you are right enough money. But as we've seen just a little money from enough people can do the trick.

Progressive Policy Institute.

He actually DID campaign on:

*Raising the CAP

*Making EFCA "The Law of the Land"

*A Public Option

*Renegotiation of NAFTA

*Giving all factions a voice in his administration




...but you have missed the point.
This is not about getting ALL these things,
or even some of them.
December was a FREE, Open Window, for the WINNERS to Dominate the Field with Democratic Wish Lists, and to SELL the Democratic Party without penalty for over reaching.

Instead, he Party Leadership FAILED to show up,
and abandoned the field to Boehner and the Republicans,
much like they abandoned the field during Tea Bagger Summer in 2009.

Instead of Democratic Party Policy dominating the Media and national Dialog,
The Republicans WON by having Boehners Plan B as the focus of the National Dialog.
This wasn't the Media's fault.
This WAS the Democrats fault.

In negotiations,
always, ALWAYS ask for much more than you are willing to accept.
By NOT putting a Democratic Vision On-the-Table
our initial Asking Price is
"We're just NOT going to give Boehner everything he wants."


Man, THAT is a HORRIBLE place to start the "negotiations".
We WON.
WE get to Set the Table,
NOT Boehner and the Republicans.

Although, on one level I agree with you.
Obama DID campaign as Not Quite as Bad as the Republicans.
I can understand why you are so happy,
but don't expect me to stop pushing for him to act like a DEMOCRAT.


[font color=firebrick size=3][center]"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for,
at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them."
--- Paul Wellstone[/font][/center]
[center][/font]
[font size=1]photo by bvar22
Shortly before Sen Wellstone was killed[/center][/font]

[font size=5 color=firebrick]Solidarity![/font]

Thanks for posting this!!! That's the question Democrats should be asking. Is the system completely bought off or is there even a memory left of what traditional Democratic party values are? What are the Democrats going to do with the mandate they received from the voters? Are they going to represent the interests of the middle-class and poor, restore our civil liberties and protect the environment.. Or are they going to continue to play "good cop bad cop theater" with a Republican party that in spite of what the media wants us to believe only represents 28% of the public)?

The American people get it. They understand that we cannot continue to do things as we have and expect different results, so they voted for a change.

So far, none have been proposed.

All we do now, all we have ever really done (in my lifetime anyway), is half-measures. We spend just enough to feel like we are doing something, but not enough to fix it. And we always, ALWAYS, make sure some rich cocksucker gets the lion's share of the scratch so that nothing ever really gets done. Nothing gets fixed and they can say "See, you can't fix it!"

But really people, this is EASY stuff. Banning guns is hard, we have the amend the constitution to pull that one off, but poverty? Healthcare? A safety net? Fixing our infrastructure? Imposing trade policies that support our nation? Ending the wars? Eliminating the police state nonsense? Legalizing weed? Addressing wealth imbalance?

These things just take a vote. And every one of them is POPULAR. The majority supports every one. In some cases it's almost universal. For example, even Republicans are now scared shitless of what the Patriot Act has become. And who, other than the most passionate neocon, doesn't want to bring our troops home? Who doesn't want to educate our kids?

We can have any kind of country we want. That's what a Democracy means. But it's going to mean change. We can't fix healthcare and still leave the same system in place. That's impossible. Nor can we end all these wars while continue to blow the crap out of the rest of the world. Our bridges and dams are not going to magically fix themselves, we have to hire workers and pay them and actually fix the things. And not by hiring Halliburton or some other mega-corp. There are tens or thousands of them in desperate need of just that -- they are literally dangerous. We probably need a million people working on just that. Maybe more. And we need them now.

And you know what? If you want to sell something here, you damn well aught to build it here. I understand that this will cut into a few people's bonuses, but I am okay with this.

And speaking of bonuses, we need to stop talking exclusively about taxing the income of these wealthy jerks. We need to go after their capital gains, and tax those like income as well.

Change.

Not change as in cutting grandma's social security so Mitt Romney can buy another palace.

Welcome to DU. I hope you will be writing OP's, too.

Keep the posts coming.

Last edited Wed Dec 26, 2012, 03:42 PM - Edit history (3)

this is the most important thread on DU right now.

It seems that if we could get a majority of progressives in the house we might be able to move on some of these issues .. of which I agree totally with Shred. This is as severe a right wing Republican as it gets .. and unless we unseat these thug and braindead idiots, replacing them with progressives .. there will be nothing happening in Congress.

Another thing: It's all about what we/they are teaching our young, soon to be leaders, about the Constitution, about Marxism, about Socialism, about FDR, about Abe Lincoln, about Political science. Not all college professors are on the progressive side of the fence .. and I find that very scary.

what is happening in the Atlanta metro area, is that there are many many people moving in from Northern states, predominantly African American and Hispanic. Slowly but surely it is having great influence in the Democratic voting block.

What is more important, is how the Republicans have managed to redistrict is so many states throughout the nation .. to their benefit no doubt. We have to figure a way to regain control of these districts.

If we wait until that point the whole thing will have already collapsed around us, you must not be paying attention to the amount of debt we are racking up 16.4 trillion as of today, thinking ahead to getting full control of both houses before moving on our ideas is ludacris we may be dealing with 20 -25 trillion in debt by that point.....

This needs to promoted loud and long until implemented.

Exactly, glad I found this post... This is my point, I know I have been on the right indoctrinated by talk radio and fox news the right is the one stearing the ship of this debate..... Somehow they have been allowed to claim that it is government spending that is the problem and then force Democrats to claim that it is simply the rich not paying their fair share..... As Democratic politicians run around declaring that this problem is simple to fix just tax the rich more they fail to address the root problem that the Repubs have made the central issue that being the debt and deficit.

There is some real math to consider in exactly what is being negotiated.

Raising rates 250K and above impacting the rich only net = 65 Billion
Closing Loopholes/deduction that impact the rich only net = 100 Billion
Capital Gains increase to 25% net = 50 Billion
Significant reduction in DOD budget we'll say 25 percent = 175 Billion

So we have net = 390 Billion

The President is recommending additional stimulus spending of 250 Billion to promote job growth.

Which leaves a net = 140 Billion

The deficits have been consistently over 1 trillion per year and are projected to continue on this path. The interest rates on the national debt is 1.5% and is historically low compared to the norm of 5-6 percent.

If we really want to talk about defict reductions and seriously getting the country back on track we should not be afraid to press the envelope and discuss what is necessary to meeting all needs.

Where is the discussion on a VAT?
Where is the discussion on increasing tax rates to historical normal rates i.e. 60 percent?
Where is the discussion on wealth confiscation?
Where is the discussion on government regualting how much medicine should cost?

We are never going to solve the problems unless we get serious about what is required.

We need a new new deal...