Act Like The Majority
The current make-up of the House of Representatives should make it obvious that the Democratic Party has a mandate to change the way the government works. At this point the Democrats need to push their agenda and forget about making nice. If the minority party blocks progress or the Shrubbery vetoes a bill, that’s a Republan problem, not a Democratic problem. The people have voted, and expect their votes to count. The election showed what the polls have been saying, the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Congress has dropped in recent polling because they backed off. The voters want accountability.
Susie Madrak’s The Cowardly Lions excerpts an Arianna Huffington post at Alternet that lays it out. Democrats have been given an opportunity by the voters. If they don’t start using it and standing by their principles, voters won’t turn out. Democrats had better stop looking for compromises and worrying about what Republans will say about them, or they will return to minority status when the people who voted for them in 2006 stay home in 2008. The Hedgemony looks at compromise and bipartisanship as cowardice, not statesmanship.
Susie’s Surrender Monkeys has a Steve Benen post that covers the same ground.
No one is going to believe that the Democrats are right on national security until they demonstrate the courage of their convictions. There is no point in reaching out, as Democrats showed they have the votes to win. They just need to hold on to those votes and get those voters to turn out.
Some may ask: “What will you say if the troops are withdrawn and Iraq descends into chaos?” The response is: “Iraq has already descended into chaos, but if we withdraw Americans will neither be dying, nor killing. We are already blamed for the disaster, so staying or leaving won’t change that.”
4 comments
I hate to be cynical about this but I think they might well be acting like the majority party: DINOs.
This is “inside the Beltway”/DLC conventional wisdom push by consultants that is guaranteed to tick off the majority of voters. The only place swing voters exist is in the mind of these consultants. My gut feeling is that the “undecideds” are the extremes of both parties, not the center.
“My gut feeling is that the “undecideds” are the extremes of both parties, not the center.” – Bryan
That is my sense as well. Those who are conventionally named “independent” are by now no longer undecided. That in turn leads me to question the sincerity of the DLC wing of the party: do they really seek additional public support, or are they forsaking the public (along with any Democratic election victories) for the sake of increasing their own power? Who, exactly, are the DLC’s constituents, and how do they differ from those of Republicans?
The late great Molly Ivins used to say (quoting someone… Truman?) that given a choice between a “Republican” and a Republican, American voters will choose the Republican every time. If DINOs keep backing off on the public’s agenda the way they have recently done, they may learn that the hard way.
The DLC are corporate apologists. Corporations have become the problem not the solution. As BadTux recently noted, there are no more “American corporations”, they have all become multi-nationals and put their interests first.