Democrats are awash in bills and resolutions that are Anything-Buts

Heading For The Door
Huffington Post,

There is an old joke that Republicans run on what they believe (no matter how racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or plain stupid) and win. Democrats run on what they think will win elections, and lose. Maybe right now, after the Bush administration's little Vietnam The Sequel dragged the whole GOP by a narrow margin into the doldrums, people won't get this joke.

They will by 2008 though. In fact, the 2006 "victory" for Democrats was delivered by Republican voters, not Democrats. It was a vote against Bush and the war; not a vote for Democrats. And the Republicans can clean the neo-cons out to re-secure their white suburban base.... which they will... and they will beat the pants off of the Dems in 2008.
Mark my words.

Three days ago, the most intelligent and decent thing anyone said about the Iraq Occupation on the floor of the House was by Republican John Duncan of East Tennessee.

"If you're going the wrong way on the Interstate," he said, "you get off at the next exit." If I lived in Maryville, and 2008 rolled around with Democratic "exit strategies" and non-binding resolutions, Brother Duncan would get himself a left-wing poll worker.

Now, it seems, what the Democratic Party chiefs are devoting the most attention to is finding ways to quiet down their own left wing. That's why everything except cutting the money for the war has been put on the table. We are awash in bills and resolutions that are Anything-Buts. They don't want to be blamed for the defeat in Iraq, you see, and have that used against them as a stain on their collective manhood (even the women in leadership).

News flash. It's been 32 years since the helicopters were flying off of the embassy roof in Saigon, and there are still people who say that if we'd have just stayed and killed another million people, we could have won that war and salvaged the National Masculinity. You can't make a demagogue stop being what s/he is...cont'd

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stan-goff/headed-out-the-door_b_41404.html

It all makes more sense (and spares one the continuing sense of deep disappointment) if one looks at these two Parties as sports rivals both owned by the same elite, who hire the coaches and make the rules, recruit the players....and profit from the conflict.

Then all this dodging and feigning of 'dropped balls and interceptions' makes more sense than just a 'political strategy' that's failing.
It's more like throwing the game on purpose...

We are now locked on a dysfunctional, irrational standoff with reactionaries on one side undoing everything the other side does, and progressives who are so scared to lose an election or have the reactionaries attack them that they are basically paralyzed. I can see no way out of the political standoff. We will become a second rate power, falling behind other countries economically, socially and scientifically. Politically the US is a basket case of division.

When we elected someone locally, the comment was made "I'll have some bad votes." Why? I didn't work my ass off to elect someone who will vote poorly. Where are the true progressives?

Most people go into politics to do favors for friends to get rich themselves. It is true all the way down to the lowest local election. Dick Cheney and Halliburton are just the most naked case of it, but they are the exception not the rule. If someone has small potato scams going on, when they get to DC, it is just a matter of negotiating with the big boys.

By contrast, someone who has the common good in mind is going to meet resistence at the very lowest levels of government and might get as far as the house of representatives with body and soul in the same place, but reach much higher than that...

Being an honest politician is a little like standing up for Muslims civil rights the day after 9/11. Just because it's right doesn't make it easy or popular.

And how slim is their majority? Give me a break. I'll start bitching in a few months. Right now, I'm willing to give the people we elected a chance.

Or if they actually do something that throws a monkey wrench in Bush's Iran war plans.


until then, they are blowing smoke up our ass.

You are probably right in all particulars. I still have hope that Murtha will raise a big enough commotion to affect the money, but the signals are not positive.

be happy to do anything else.

Hell, Bush might even sign off on universal health care if it got the news off Iraq for a cycle.