Reply #45: This ain't Teddy's senate anymore. [View All]

All that stuff was okay twenty years ago. All the hand shaking and cigars over port in the Senate drawing room. Back then republicans played by the same rules. They all played club house.

Starting with the neocon takeover of the republican party, the rules changed. Some still glad hand and refer to their Democratic opponents as sir and honorable. They shake hands and make deals. Then the back out and do just the opposite of what they said they would do. That leaves the nicey nice Dems with an oily hand and no leverage.

Then there are the total new bloods. They don't play by any rules except defeat everything the Democrats do. Don't agree on anything and obstruct everything.

That is why Teddy got screwed on NCLB. He envisioned a true education revision. He shook hands across the aisle and then his good buddies with the red ties stabbed him in the back by screwing up the bill so that it became a cornerstone of the neocon attack on public schools.

Tell me the last piece of progressive legislation that got through the Senate because the Dems played nice. Under O'Neill politics was local. Kennedy wanted it to be personal. Today it is viral. John Dean showed how to use the community to get things done. He went up against the club and beat them senseless. Then his mistake was that he thought that once he showed them how, they would understand. They didn't. They don't. And they are still losing every battle with the neocons.