Sorry, Joe. We need to END republicanism, not partner with them

Democratic principles need to dominate the political arena, not sidle up beside republicans looking for some reciprocal grope. Republicanism is not just an opposition party, it is a dangerous and destructive philosophy. Put into practice, it is naked corporatism, unquenchable militarism, unashamed discrimination, and anti-democratic tyranny. This republican class who is in power right now is the worst in my lifetime; nothing but a front for their corporate masters.

They are putting our nation at risk and threatening the health of the earth itself. They intend to roll back and eliminate much of the progress that's been made by government on behalf of the least fortunate among us. This shouldn't be just a battle to just sit a couple of rungs above them. They need to be disenfranchised from successfully promoting and furthering their agenda.

"Reaching out" to them will be regarded by these thugs as acceptance and acquiescence. They need to be taken down, and their supporters need to understand we're not willing to subject the nation, any more, to the consequences of the republican party's elaborate con job masquerading as policy.

I can see the republicans standing with the Democrats we elect to carry out our progressive agenda...Smiling, shaking hands...SOMEONE in that arrangement has to lose. The issues and concerns we face break down into longstanding efforts to bring about changes which have been obstructed by a republican agenda which is designed to derail those efforts, not replace them with something more accommodating to the needs of the nation. All of their proposals are phony, disguised as legitimate legislation, designed to derail the 'change' Democratic voters say they want. That's the real world.

There is no republican class in power to work with. Their agenda is a sham designed to obstruct the changes we want and need. It may sound wonderful to imagine that comity and respect will transcend all of that, but, if don't have a Democratic majority large enough to overcome their filibusters, we'll be just as stymied as we are today.

We shouldn't pretend that there aren't specific issues which form a dividing line. Most of these, on the Democratic side, are long standing efforts to provide basic needs and to uphold or establish basic rights which the republicans obstruct with whatever position or strategy suits the moment, often completely running over their previous philosophy, like their former objections to 'nation-building', or conservatives' former support of privacy rights.

What the Vice President left unsaid today is that many of the compromises he's seeking may well make sense in the political arena - like clearing some untidy backlog of unfinished business - yet, most of those compromises threaten divide many in the country from the Democratic party which has pledged and fought to support and defend these opportunistically-discarded initiatives in the past. That 'partisanship' was a NECESSARY response to republican obstructionism.

These days, our party doesn't have a progressive agenda; it has a timid and defensive one in the face of an extreme republican opposition, and I reject any implication that our Democratic politics has EVER been unnecessarily confrontational. These 'lifelong republicans' need to be CHALLENGED and discredited when they try and push their obstructionist, industry enabling agenda, not mollycoddled.