Thinking about groups like the Patrick Henry Think Tank

The one with the chart that scores politicians according to some of their votes but not all. The one that thinks our greatest leaders are all folks no one has heard of unless they live in that Congressional district.

I was thinking that having such people would be the Leftist equivalent of having the neocons. I think things would be just as crazed, just coming from a different direction. I wonder if democracy would be suffering in the same way.

Would that be a fair assessment do you think? That going too far to the left would be just as disasterous as going too far to the right in regard to our country?

such as votes rather than on subjective criteria.

I tend to agree with most of the things that they present, and these things are not that far left.

I am getting more and more tired by the fact that the Democratic Party in general and some of his pols more than others seem to think that you cant hold a principled opposition and that you have to find a compromise.

There are subjects where you cannot find a compromise, and should not. Let the votes be counted, and explain to people that a bill is so bad that it cannot be brought to a compromise, it has to be redone.

Some senators do that better than others. This chart shows the Senators and Congresspeople who oppose the most on principle.

I know the bills will pass anyway, but why some Democrats want to vote YES on these bills is beyond me. Do they have no principles?

That they grade on the fact that only Boxer stood up on Jan 6th when many of us accept that only one Senator was needed.

That they are telling me that people I don't know are my leaders, and that I should give money to them or that these people are automatically qualified to be president. .

That these people keep telling me I shouldn't be supporting Reid.

These things bug me.

I prefer sites like www.vote-smart.org that don't tell me which votes are important, and don't tell me what to think about these votes. I see all the votes and can make my own decisions.

Too many good people are scoring way too low on their chart. Conyers isn't even in their top ten.

I'm more concerned with Gwen Moore. She's one county away from me, and she's a good Congressperson. If I support anyone, it's going to be her.

Maybe too far left is the wrong way to put it. I don't like how unrealistic and ideologically pure they try to be. It seems myopic.

They are what they are, and frankly they are as good as any other people, and at least, they do not bother with charisma, being from the South, ..., all criteria that are all too present on DU.

The only two questions that I have when I support a candidate are the following":

- can he do the job? (in 2004, Kerry was by far the best one in the Democratic field).

- how does he stand on issues and are these issues compatible with what I stand for? Once again, Kerry was the highest on these issues.

I think this chart is perfect to show the gap there is between how people vote and how they are perceived. This is great because a lot of DUers confuse agressivity and voting record.

It is clear that they are fairly agressive, but I guess they somewhere reach my need for an opposition party.

I'm not concerned with charisma and being from the south either. If it seems someone is pandering, like Hillary, it bothers me. I don't care how much name recognition she has yadda yadda. I don't particularly like her.

It's whether or not you can do the job. John Kerry could do the job. And his rating on their chart sucks. Therefore, there is something wrong with their criteria in my book.

on edit: okay, compared to the other Senators, his score isn't too bad. But I like Durbin and Dodd, and their scores suck. I like Reid, and they are calling for his resignation.

not in absolute. TThe problem is not in the votes they choose, but in the number of points they add or substract. It is obvious that the numbers are way too big. The score may not be very representative, but the range is very representative of where people stand.

However, I have had a problem with Reid for a long time now, and it has been compounded with the two last filibusters (Owen and Bolton). For Bolton, he spent so much time apologizing for voting against cloture that he really sounded wishy-washy. He is not really an opposition leader, tries his best but does not succeed. Final, he sounds angry, but not principled.

"I think this chart is perfect to show the gap there is between how people vote and how they are perceived. This is great because a lot of DUers confuse agressivity and voting record."

horsetrading

There was an article in the Denver Post this weekend about Diana DeGette and the recently passed "stem cell" bill in the House. DeGette cosponsered the bill with a Republican, but couldn't get it brought up for a vote in the Republican controlled House - so she traded a "yes" vote on the budget bill, (which she normally would have voted "no" on)to get a Republican to bring the bill up to Hastert. This sort of thing goes on a lot, and it's also why I think PHTT is pretty useless. You can't make a "scorecard" based solely on objective criteria, because none of us really knows what is going on behind the scenes in politics. IMO.

This is exactly the problem. Most people will never see that, and they will have problems understanding why the Republicans' s bill is wrong with so many Democrats voting YES.

We need an opposition party, which means we should not be afraid to oppose what is bad, rather than to make compromises and apologize when you oppose a bill.

to be more pure than Senate members? The House seems so much more partisan, and there are so many of them, and when you are in the minority it seems you might as well vote your conscience, as the minority has no rights anyway.

Not to mention, some folks like Landrieu need to represent their constituents, who are in some cases more conservative than some on the left would like.

Not to mention not taking into account past history. A bunch of Californians in love with Dennis, unaware that when he ran for his seat, he was pro-life in his stances and in favor of DOMA. Catholic, doncha know. According to a GLBT poster over at DailyKos, that was why he/she didn't support Dennis. I found that back history interesting.

So shouldn't that sort of stuff be included in the chart somehow?

It's all too simplistic for me.

mostly because the districts are gerrymandered to the point where they don't have to answer to an opposition. It's the major thing wrong with the House - the founding fathers meant for it to be the most responsive body and it's become the least. The courts really need to step in and make gerrymandering illegal. It's completely unbalanced our system of government.

Even in the House, though, there are things going on behind the scenes we don't know about - especially in the really big bills - like the energy bill for instance. It's quite likely that a Democrat in my state, John Salazar, will vote for the Bush Energy bill. Why?
One reason is that he's in a fairly competitive district. Another is that the Bush Administration has threatened to cut money for energy projects in this district (western slope, CO), where energy concerns are the biggest employer. Who should the congressman respond to? "Principle" or bringing money and jobs into his district? For his constituents, Republican and Democrat alike?

Kucinich - It's always been hard for me to support Dennis exactly because he was anti-abortion. Very much so, in fact, for 5 of the 8 years he's been in the House. It's not that he's changed, I can accept that. It's that he used elective office to force his religious beliefs on people through the legislative process. In my book that's just wrong, and I can't get past it. That would give him a lifetime negative on my chart...

See, that's where I think that vote would represent OUR failure, not Salazar's. If WE, as citizens, can't target your area of Colorado and win people over to an environmentally responsible oil and gas policy, then Salazar has no real choice in his vote. I don't blame him, I blame US.

BTW, do you know if there are any oil/gas platforms in the national parks in Colorado? They are supposed to be in 12 national parks and I can't find which ones.

http://www.climateark.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=14211

Bush also wants to open two in Utah up to drilling, not sure which ones. Moab, I think amd maybe Canyons Nat'l Park.

Sometimes they get labeled as parks, maybe that's what has happened. I'd sure like to get the specifics. Drilling in National Parks is much more powerful, if that is what is happening.

They are talking about drilling in wilderness areas at Gulf Shores National Seashore. Actual designated wilderness areas. Unbelievable.

and not wholly about the Patrick Henry Think Tank, whom I've expressed a low regard for in the past.

There is a certain segment of the left just as ideologically blinkered and narrow in their thinking as any right wing freeptoid. They are, in fact, over represented here at DU, which is one of the reasons I so often take refuge here in the Kerry forum, where everyone seems a hell of a lot more grounded in reality.

I had an exchange yesterday that I have to admit just has me seething. The inability to see (and accept as possibly valid) someone else's POV. The unbearable smugness. An ivory tower moral superiority that absolutely sets my teeth on edge....

Liberal elitism... I know that's kind of a right wing term - but, it exists. And I wonder if these people understand how much of a turn off it is for people who live out here in the real world. People who have to get their hands dirty making real, pragmatic political decisions.

I can't talk with these people any more than I can talk with some fundy right winger. Which is sad, because we basically share the same ideals.

But, ultimately, I don't want their hands any nearer the levers of power than I want George Bush and his band of psychopaths.

I am tired of the Democrats being unable to be an opposition party, and thinking it is necessary to try to change bills rather than say plainly that the bill is flawed.

I am tired of people on DU spending their time thinking that a good president is somebody who will appeal to most people (preferably being a Southerner), but who cares how much to the right he or she is.

If Clinton is the thing to imitate, I have a problem, and I supported Kerry because he is not like Clinton and stands for some principles, as we can see in his votes.

is that it is bad to be too narrow to be able to see more than one point of view--whether it is left, center or right.

You can keep to your principles and still be able to look at something from another perspective. Principles should inform policies--they don't change, but policies(ways to solve problems) can and must.

The lefties at DU seem unable to do this, so they are unable to ever discard one viewpoint when another one comes along that is better or more correct. That is the weakness of the far-right, and also of the far-left.

I think that is what some of us object to. Also tired of people who don't understand that one person's good idea is another person's pork. Any time somebody posts on hydrogen here, for example, somebody will say it's a waste and doesn't work. But Fedex and a shipping company in Canada have put hydrogen trucks in service. California has a hydrogen fuel plan, you saw where I posted that the other day. So should we listen to that handful of people who say hydrogen is pork? And why do they have to be so enamored with their own opinion that they can't consider they might be wrong. If there's a little of this or that in a bill, and that means the difference between the greater good passing, then so be it. Do you know the bankruptcy bill actually does have a provision for low income people? Nobody earning less than the median income is going to be affected. It really doesn't hurt poor people at all. I'm not saying the bill is good, it pisses me off because it treats humans differently than corporations; but it isn't quite the attack on the poor some have made it out to be.

I am tired of people on DU who think we can promote a socialist platform and win rural areas. It makes no sense. Rural people rejected the Democratic platform because they believe it is socialist. How would going more socialist be the solution? I am also tired of people who don't understand Montana economic populism is a whole different animal than NYC economic populism.

Finally, I am mostly tired of people who don't understand that when the party lays out a position, our job is to find something within that position to get on board with. If you want to change a bill, change it through advocating your own ideas. If you can't, then maybe your ideas are the problem.

It may not be perfect, but it's a helluva lot better than the alternative.

money to prove they earn less than the minimum. The previous bill let to the judge the latitude to decide who was under or over the minimum.

The bankruptcy bill does hurt low-income people by forcing them to go through a more complex and more expensive procedure to declare bankruptcy. Of course, those who supported the bill try to tell us that people who earned a lot of money did not pay their bills before and will now. In fact, there was never a bill that say that people who had the means to pay their bill would not pay them. The only thing who changes is that what was the responsibility of a judge able to judge different situations (and particularly those who are at the limit) will now be imposed by a law without any exception for exceptional cases.

At the same time, rich people can hide their assets in trusts.

Nobody is talking about knee-jerk opposition here. We are talking about saying that a bill is bad beyond repair when it is bad beyond repair, rather than trying to change it (just as Wyden did when he refused to vote the energy bill out of committee because it did not solve the problem). Some Democrats do not know how to do that, and they just look as if they stood for nothing.

This has nothing to do with Socialism, as most people do not have the slightest idea what Socialism is. Socialism would not work in the states because the word frightens people before they even try to understand what it is. It is a knee-jerk opposition to a word.

Point being, arguing the bankruptcy bill might have worked had we argued it on the basis of privilege to corporations that the working people don't have. We made a hair-splitting argument about the poor and then wondered why it didn't work. We also ignored the needs of main street businesses, which also hurt. Kneejerk leftist responses.

People do not kneejerk against socialism, they know what it is and they don't want it. Keep thinking people really really enjoy going to the welfare office, and keep losing.

This is not constructive at all. We will need all goodwill to beat Bush and we need to focus on what we have in common, not excommunicating each others.

Getting rid of Dems who are fairly decent. Working against ourselves for the sake of an idea that not all the country shares. Understanding what Montana needs as well as New York.

All I can say is if someone wants to work against a Democrat and oust them, there better be another Democrat's butt in that seat when they're done or I will be peeved.

Sometimes, it is nice for people who are more progressive to see that their representatives represent them rather than people from Montana (no offense to Montana).

It seems that there are only two types of people: those who want do everything by the Montana side and those who want to do everything from the ultra-left side. When you are in the middle (as I am), you begin to wonder if you even belong to this party or if you better go somewhere else (assuming there is a somewhere else). You get jeered by both sides: for being an idealist or for being too compromising.

I think that's everybody's point! :)

That is EXACTLY what I was thinking re: finger near the button. Neither extreme is desirable in my book. I was just using the PHTT as a hook to hang my post on. They exemplify that pov for me.