Thirty years of supply-side economics has put us into a depression.

They never balanced the budget. They never created the jobs they promised. They never intended to.

They wanted to put the country so far into debt that they could break the back of the socialist government created under FDR and LBJ. They wanted to make it impossible to spend on anything except servicing the debt. They wanted to destroy government. They wanted to drown it in a bathtub.

After thirty years, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Not only have they broken the back of government spending on social programs, they have also broken the back of labor and the middle class. Workers now beg for jobs that pay half of what they used to make. Who is this good for? Certainly not the workers.

Democrats need to recognize the gravity of what we are facing. We cannot operate on the same politics and policies of the past. It is a new paradigm. We, the People, are being attacked by the corporatist supply-siders in their quest to control all the wealth in this country.

Many Democrats like to call it the "Bush Depression" but it started 20 years before George W Bush. However, it was Dubya Bush that put the final nail in the coffin. We are in deep decline that will take many years and a different political strategy to free ourselves from their yoke.

If we are to make any progress, we must first identify the reality of the situation. These are not normal times and this is not a normal "recession". It requires new thinking and new leadership. Otherwise, we will be treading water for many years to come. It is time to face the truth.

Until we take big business and their campaign contributions out of government, nothing will change. Without campaign finance reform, what hope do we have?? That should be the first step.

...we need campaign finance reform, I would think?

then we had the citizens united ruling.

They are firmly against us. See many Dems in DC who don't want to break the back of FDR's social programs & the middle class.

"We" have no representation, and will be victims until we really have some.

As Democrats, the 'real Democrats', we have to face the reality that they aren't "we".

Nothing illustrates this better than the calls for the resignation of Anthony Weiner. The ones calling for his resignation don't have a clue that Weiner is defending 'real Democrats' and the American people from depredations by Wall Street and the multinationals.

But I see signs that this is changing. The voter is coming to the realization that the "D" and "R" no longer mean what they did in decades past.

Clinton tried to fix it, and Bush the Lesser finally shoved it down into the drain.

http://factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-under-clinton/

http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/New/html/20000112_1.html

So I'm not sure where you get "thirty years" from, and your statement that "they" never balanced the budget.

If the 2000 election had not been stolen it's safe to say that we would be a lot better off today.

even when they were not in power, they were still pressing their supply-side religion.

The legacy of Ronald Reagan's presidency continues to haunt us even today.

The "starve the beast" agenda of the right-wing continued while Clinton was President, it doesn't mean that he perpetuated it but the Republicans held a majority in Congress during his term. In fact, they are the ones who pushed the repeal to Glass-Steagal which were put in place after the Great Depression in order to help ensure that the financial industry practices that led to the Great Recession of 2007 don't occur.

NAFTA, welfare "reform," three strikes, two strikes, proto-PATRIOT Acts, IP bill, signing on for the Summers-Rubin-Gramm financial deregulations that set the stage for this decade's banking disasters, faking the inflation statistics to simulate GDP "growth," no peace dividend, rising defense budgets in the final years, another eight years focusing on the usual personal politics bullshit instead of the unfolding millennial crises of energy and ecology, selling everyone on how great their lives are in a vicious capitalist economy, sure: Clinton was the best Republican president ever.

the dominance of supply side is an effect of what is primarily wrong with this nation, not the cause.

this all started in the early 1790s.

Pretenders don't know this. REAL Democrats do.

when he wants to play nice with Republicans while pretending their supply-side philosophy has validity. The country is being destroyed. We can not afford to play Mr. Nice Guy, President Obama.

Obama should relish their hatred.

30 years ago I was laid off and my neighbors were out buying imported and non-union versions of what I made before I was laid off.

I tried to explain to them what was going to going to eventually happen if they kept it up but they didn't want to get it.

They still don't get it. Too stupid I guess?

The Republicans couldn't have accomplished this without the assistance of some very foolish people who call themselves Dems and scream solidarity now.

Don

...riding the Deregulation & Free Trade Horse when it dropped dead.

I NEVER expected the "Hope & Change" administration to resurrect the dead horse,
and try to whip a few more miles (dollars) out of the dead & rotting "Free Trade/Free Markets/Trickle Down" corpse.



Who will STAND and FIGHT for THIS American Majority?
You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their excuses!

to keep pouring more gas on the fire.

I said 30 years ago that Raygun and his ilk/backers would be the death of this country and everything I have seen since bears out the truth of that long-ago prediction.

Rayguns won the election. Daddy was a prescient man. He also said the night Nixon resigned that the GOOPers would never forget the Democrats forced him out of the White House and they never have.