F---K Progressives. Screw Liberals. The message is that we are officially irrelevant

Before it was indirect.

But by doing this shit Obama and the rest of the Conservadems have officially enshrined the GOP Teabagger Agenda in stone.

And they are doing it willingly and, I suspect happily.

Liberalism is dead. At least within the template of the current Democratic Party.

IMPORTANT: I do not include all Democratic leaders in that. There are some great Democtratic Liberals and Progressives in Congress. But they too have basically been told to "Go to Hell."

Did you read....what you posted? Bills have to pass in the House of Representatives, he had to deal!:think:

It's always Democrats that allow their backs to get pushed to the wall, no matter which party has a majority.

the Republican side of it. It's like you've determined that they do not exist and you can pretend they don't.

A Republican House cannot turn out the right wing revolution they want. The Senate won't pass it and the President veto it. They are thus powerless to get their own agenda passed.

All they can do is mess with things the Dems need, like a raise in debt ceiling, from them.

It makes the same sense for the right to say that the House caved and should have done nothing. Or to say they are cowards for not passing bills that would pursue their agenda.

The sane Republicans know they have created a monster in the teabaggers. They may want to beat Obama, but they also don't want to be perceived as the party that deliberately tanked the economy.

That left an opening for Obama to quietly gather the sane Republicans, the full spectrum of Democrats and press for a coalition to push through a clean debt ceiling bill, and marginalize the kamikaze instincts of the teabaggers.

Tghe rest of the budget matters could still be fought, but not under the teabaggers threats.

My own frustration (which is shared by many people) is that instead of an approach like that, we played the same old partisan games with something that 85 percent of the population of all stripes wanted to happen, which swas to get beyond the debt ceiling and fight the other battles on their own terms.

And what do they demand for it? Will they threaten to blow up a grade school or nuke a city? Where does it end? Obviously this extortion is their new business model.

Did Bush 41? Did Saint Ronnie?

Maybe Obama should have run for a Congressional seat, so he could have more clout.


(insert sarcasm smiley here)

Politics is a process, nothing is "dead."

WHY CAN'T YOU SEE THAT???

Still, feel free to feel irrelevant.

Not that you are the Democratic Party. But you do typify the attitude of blind partisans who care about nothing beyond the D beside the name. Actual policy goals and ;political principles? Irrelevant.

else SHOULD count.

They insult centrists or moderates all the time here.

as if IRONY would strike a chord with that one :rofl:

Most of us ARE centrists!! Or what used to be centrists. The Thugs have moved the center while the Dems in Washington have gleefully allowed it to happen.

Hell, I'm a flaming liberal these days, compared to 20 years ago.

Bake

One of these days you'll wake up and see that you've been screwed royally, along with the rest of us.

Until then, please stop pissing on our legs and trying to tell us it's raining.

Bake

It's an excuse really. If you don't count, you don't have to do anything and can just blame others.

But this is a capstone to everything the Corporate Centrist Conservative Democrats have been doing since the 1980's

These brilliant schemes of theirs have brought us outsourcing and shipping America's productive capacity overseas, financial deregulation that caused the 2008 crash, Democratic support of the Iraq War that helped to create this deficit; policies that have helped to gut the middle class -- and a loss of the basic Democratic populist liberal identity that could have taken power back from the GOP.

Hyperbole? I don't think so. My cynicism is the result of seeing this pattern repeated over and over again for three decades.

With a Republican Senate and President you'll matter even less.

One thing that bothers me about the farther left; they think they should matter more than others.

With the same fervor as the Tea Party does.

Then we're totally fucked.

In a first past the post electoral system, my vote is simple an indication of my preference among the candidates likely to win.

I can disapprove a candidate's policies, but vote for them anyway in recognition of the fact that their opponents are worse.

Dead is dead. Fucked is fucked. Homeless is homeless.

If it gets bad enough then maybe there will be a refreshment of the tree of liberty with sangria rico. But either way it makes no difference to a growing percentage of the formerly represented. We are fucked with hope. We are fucked without it.

What fucking difference does it make. I'm saving my time, money and vote for someone who doesn't work for wall street.

much less hunt.

And you'll get exactly what you want.

If the left is irrelevant then our votes aren't needed; if our votes are needed, then we're not irrelevant.

Just as Bush was. It took a DLC-style Democratic president to set Social Security on the path to destruction.

So your threats about not voting Democratic are pretty hollow.

woman hear me roar!

Oh the drama!

I wish sometimes you would have a sense of drama and urgency about something other than reflexive defenses of all things Obama.

AND with a "sense of urgency and drama?"

We are allowed to support a Democratic President here. We want to continue to have one and get the House back. We're not going to sit here and be betrayed, yadda yadda.

I have had plenty of civil and useful discussions with people here I disagree with.

What I have a problem with is when people are locked into their position and only care to toss out cute quips and putdowns.

No offense, but you seem to be throwing out just as many putdowns as everybody else. Plus you seem to want to make sure you get the last word in every discussion, at least in this thread. Are you sure you're not locked in your position, too?

when people disagree but are civil about it and actually reply with substance, I respond similarly. I have had many good discussions like that here.

Because I don't see one anywhere....

Bake

Not with the fallout from this "deal."

And when that happens you will blame liberals, "firebaggers" anyone but your beloved you-know-who for failing miserably as a leader.

Read the facts and tell me how preserving Pell Grants and protecting SS & Medicare benefits is not liberal policy victories: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x729115

Obama will make further "adjustments" in his stated goals and will once again pressure congress why it is necessary to become even more Republican.

I would love to lose that wager, but experience so far does not make it seem likely.

and imposes a 14th Amendment debt-raising.

But he can't do that because he waited too long.

He knows better than you and I how to deal with this.

ended Bush tax cuts on the rich last year.

:nopity:

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...I mean...Obama.

well, Obama's didn't starve grandma YET, but i know he will someday.....

bunch of hooey.

Whine for one day. Drink yourself into a stupor and make obscene phone calls to your reps in Washington and send a nasty note to Obama's web page.

Then tomorrow we have to organize a tighter, meaner, smarter progressive machine.

The only thing good about this ridiculaous argument is that it is temporarily abated. We have to get ready for Round II- the Super Committee!!!!

I do think the deal - if Boehner can deliver the GOP - isn't as bad as DU is making it seem.

Still baffled as to why people can't understand this simple fact. Really, it's not rocket science.

ODS clouding all reason and judgement!

Obama is just a symptom of a larger problem.

If Obama shared a determination to reverse the mess that conservatism has brought to the US and advance society through basic liberal values, he would have the admiration of most here.

He doesn't so he doesn't.

to get more liberals elected to Congress. Congress is where these decisions are made. Look at what's happening in the states! It is a direct result of people not working to help elect more progressives to state legislatures. It's the same problem with Congress.

So now we have the Teabaggers dominating Congress and people are angry about not having more liberal policy outcomes! Elections have consequences!!!

I hope we learned a valuable lesson from last year.

thanks. going to have a couple more:toast:

I disagree that this is an awful deal, but the key heading into the future is getting more progressives in Washington. Then, we can reverse anything we don't like about this deal. You can't get anything progressive out of a Teabagger House.

But, some seem too happy just to stay home all day and whine. That is not productive.

There will be a preordained conclusion, progressives will whine, but in the end The Corporate Conservative Democratic Machine will prevail in collusion with the GOP.

The Debt Ceiling process has never been a fight and they bushwhacked us. We were not prepared, we were not unified and rather then engage in the fight, we were satisfied to sit back and let the GOP/Teabaggers make jerks of themselves with infighting. Progressives were hopeful rather then active.

We learned a lot about the opposition, both GOP and Dem. The Teabaggers are a problem for the GOP and are willing to wound a Repub as well as a Dem. We know that Obama may nod in our direction but if we want anything out of him, we have to be aggressive.

Like I said, we were wounded today, but we lived to fight another day. I'm thinking the Super Committee is the next opportunity to take it to them. We had better get it together.

It was a distinct possibility since the election in 2010.

They could have and should have headed it off at the pass months ago. And it would have been possible to do if the will had been there.

I predict another surprise attack from this Idiot Committee, and another futile battle of liberals and progressives against Obama and the ConservaDems. The outcome will be the same.

I hope you turn out to be right, and I am wrong. But experience tells me otherwise.

Set our priorities and organize.

The Bush Tax cuts are now toast. No way they will be able to defend tax breaks for rich on the heels of the Committee where they will overplay their hand.

As sonn as they go back to Ryan-esque cuts, we will once again gain the upper hand and we should be ready to use it.

Lawrence O'Donnell predicted this would happen right after the 2010 election.

...in and out of Congress, they'd exert more of an influence.

There aren't. They don't. Thirty-five senators. Maybe forty. A hundred and ten reps, probably less. With those numbers you need others.

Coalition government sucks.

Seriously, what is in this deal that is so ridiculously bad? I don't think it's a good deal per se, don't get me wrong, but I have seen so many people hear going around screaming about how Obama is Benedict Arnold and how liberalism is dead. Give me a break. What a joke. What was he supposed to do?

And don't give me the "we're negotiating with terrorists!@!1!" crap. There's a thing called the Constitution. We have to follow it. To make a bill a law, if School House Rock is to be believed, it has to pass both Houses of Congress. One is dominated by Teabaggers. As much as that sucks and will make any legislation that gets out of Congress center-right at best, it's how it works.

Liberalism is not dead. I feel like some on the left always feel victimized and betrayed, even though reality is much more complex. Give me a break.

What is so ridiculously bad is that we DID allow a handful of extremist Teabaggers to defeat the Party that controls the White House and has a majority of the Senate.

Or was it a defeat? President Obama and some (not all) Democratic leaders seemed quite willing to advance the GOP agenda.

And this is just a replay of what has happened many times.

The goalposts keep getting pushed further and further to the right, no matter which party is in charge.

They feel betrayed, as well. I'm not going to argue this was the best of all outcomes. It certainly was not. But, to think that we'd get most of what we wanted when the House of Representatives is filled with sociopathic Teabaggers is stupid. And to suggest that President Obama wants to kill liberalism and destroy all things Democratic is not backed up by reality.

quietly worked with Republicans to get the damned debt ceiling issue settled cleanly, and kept the other crap out of it to fight another day.

This should have been done without the nonsense, and even Republicans (except for the teabag sociopaths) don't want to allow the economy to be totally wrecked either.

Instead Obama jumped on the Teabaggers as an excuse to forge a GOP style "Grand Bargain" that should have had nothing to do with the debt ceiling.

Obama should've shot down the whole idea of a deal with raising the debt ceiling way back when some Republicans were suggesting that. I'm still hoping that maybe a clean vote will be passed in the final hours. But, unfortunately, he didn't. Or maybe he tried behind closed doors, but nothing worked, I don't know.

Because he didn't, the rest of the Republican Party, many (probably, at this point, most) Democrats in Congress, and credit agencies like S&P adopted the Republican narrative of "there must be cuts with a debt ceiling increase." So at that point, there was no choice.

The deal itself is not really that bad. I would never cut spending during a recession (it's too risky in a shaky economy), but it doesn't touch entitlements (at least for now), still allows for the Bush tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012, and the cuts are not nearly as drastic as some proposed. It's not a good deal, in my opinion, but considering the circumstances it could've been much worse. And I was almost expecting it to be.

As I said above, I hope you are right and that I am wrong on this.

I just feel so discouraged that we basically have advanced the conservative agenda with this, and further empowered the GOP, yet again. Maybe the final result is not the worst case scenario -- but it is too close to be anything but yet another defeat-- an unnecessary defeat. And frankly, I doubt that Obama and conservative Democrats even consider it a defeat. They may be quite happy to advance the conservative agenda....The fact that we have to even consider that possibility is the problem.

It's to the point where it's sick.

Folks like you are determined to be offended by those awful progressives and liberals who believe in principles more than empty partisanship.

Just claim to be a victim and blame others because the process is not to order as you'd like it.

No one else should matter and if it does not go your way, it's everyone else's fault.

I basically respond to people in the same manner they respond to me. I have even admitted being wrong, or at modified my opinions at times as a result.

But for those who just toss demeaning little bon mots, I respond in kind.

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...with too few principled Dems to stop the train wreck.

...and noticed that the House turned over.

This has escaped widespread notice here.

Or because the Senate blocked all the progress the House made?

But thank you for the talking point. I don't think I could ever have figured out the idiocy of the Administration without you!

because the House was too conservative. And many of the casualties were Blue Dogs. They weren't replaced with liberals, exactly.

Strip Baucus of his chairmanship and Health Insurance Reform might not suck. (Then again, there'd be Health CARE Reform instead of Health Insurance Reform--but HIR is what the Administration really wanted.)

The Party Leadership keeps repeating the line that the progressives will keep coming back because what else will they do? Well, it turns out that what they do is sit home and play with their kids.

Now I know why. BFF.

The Tea Parters are Mad as Hell But they will still vote GOP.

The Progressives are Mad as Hell But they will still vote DEM

Nothing has changed.

But I'm not so sure this will pass.

We are making Progress. It may be slow progress, but it's progress. It's simply unrealistic to expect anything other than a long, hard fight.

This regressive "bargain" is taking us steps backward, it is not moving ahead in any way -- and not even stalling or treading water.

That is not only the Republicans doing. Obama and too many other Democrats seem a little too eager to oblige them in pushing the whole spectrum to the right and making liberal progress impossible.

nt

the more the dust starts to settle on it, and this appears to be one big, sad excercise in congress acting like it is doing something when it in fact is doing pretty much NOTHING ...

And, somehow, this is a kick in the nuts to liberal?

Seriously?

That was taken off the table, and repkaced with some Grand Bargain based on GOP Conservative agenda.

Your way or the highway...how "liberal" of you. And yes it's all about you.

Although it would be more useful if you actually addressed the point to tell me why.

And you contradict yourself in your little insult.

How can I be simultaneously not be "speaking for myself" and also having it be "all about me"?

From Yahoo front page.

But I realizev that doesn't matter these days.

along with most other Democrats know our options are basically; stay home, vote Republican, or vote for a Democrat.

Out of those options I only see one that is practical for me. I don't support the Republicans and I don't want to do anything that helps them gain seats or an office. So I end up going out and voting for the Democrat.