That is the mood of The People
Throw the bums out.
Now you can try to argue with The People. You can say The People are wrong. You can decry the lack of political sophistication of The People. And some of “the Pragmatists” here do.
But you can’t win elections without The People, it just isn’t…..Pragmatic…..to think you can.
The people want change. Not because they are stupid or unsophisticated, but because, very simply, things suck.
And if The Democrats don’t stop things from sucking, The People will throw them out. And no amount of clever parsing or desperate pleading is going to change that.
The People voted for Change….and they ain’t getting it.
And past a certain point, they don’t REALLY care why.
And they sure son;t care about excuses.
So if The Dems don’t want to get their asses Thrown Out, they better start delivering Change.
Period.
End of Story.
And their is NOTHING short of The People seeing real change that is going to change that.
Not pointing out that Obama is better than McCain or Bush or any of the other rationalizations the “Pragmatists” use to shout down the people at Daily Kos….or Other Blogs…..when they point it out.
This is a blog about electing Democrats, they say. Great.
You wanna elect Democrats? Then you better push and pressure their asses from here to November to PRODUCE.
Newsie wrote a good diary recently about being positive and praising the Dems when they do good. Great! You Pragmatists should do that, we need that, I praise that….go for it.
But that is NOT going to change the mood of the voters, of The People.
NLinStPaul wrote a good diary about how….after a completely wasted year of what every savvy political observer correctly said would be a disastrous policy of Bipartisanship…..Obama is actually, finally, starting to challenge the Republicans head on. Finally.
Scads of people have written about how The Senate is the problem.
All these things are true.
And none of them matter.
Except in so far as they produce the Change that The People…THE VOTERS want to see.
There has been talk of the White House FINALLY starting to lead, instead of deferring to the Senate.
And that is exactly what the The People want. And is exactly what the “Purists” here have been been pushing for all along.
Obama challenging and pushing the Republicans AND the Democrats. to live up to the promise of his campaign.
Because that. is. Change.
I support President Obama taking on the Repubs, I support President Obama taking the leadership of the Dems away from Harry Reid. As long as he is fighting for change, I support him.
I ALSO support throwing the bums who will NOT give us Change out.
Not to give power to the Repubs.
But because putting that kind of pressure on the Bums who are obstructing the Change we all want is the ONLY thing that they will understand.
And thus the only thing that will work.
If that is too nuanced a position for the “Pragmatists” at Daily Kos, so be it.
And if the Pragmatists would rather support the FAILED Democratic Establishment and tell the voters, The People, that they are wrong and should support The Dems no matter what….well….have fun with that.
You will get to do plenty of fundraising to try to get the Dem majority back in 2012.
Because this is not just a blog for electing democrats, as the “Pragmatists” continuously point out. It is also a blog to reform them.
And any pragmatist should be able to see that without citizen pressure, they won’t reform themselves.
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I’ve got nothing left to say there anymore.
of all the Obama accomplishments for this year.
To be fair, Obama’s first year in office hasn’t been a complete record of nothing being accomplished.
But some of these lists — ayayayay. I wish they’d constrain themselves to true accomplishments.
Some of them are accomplishments, but not ones which would be noticed as a change in the lives of everyday Americans. Some of them are of the nature of keeping the house, which is on fire, from blowing up in a fiery paroxysm of death. Which is good, don’t get me wrong. But we’re still headed for the fiery paroxysm of death thing, just at a slower rate. You might forgive some for wanting to just get it over with.
Yeah, thanks Obama and the Democrats. I guess. I suppose, if I get beaten to within an inch of my life by a raging homophobe, for example, it’s more likely that said homophobe will be prosecuted and punished (thanks Democrats!), but that won’t keep me from dying on the street. It doesn’t do much to really combat the homophobic attitudes that are out there and stops this from happening in the first god damn place, especially when many Democrats and the Obama administration itself engaged in actions and rhetoric that can arguably be described as comforting homophobes, like talking Alcee Hastings out of starting a DADT repeal in the house, the homophobic DOMA brief and Rick Warren…
And so it goes. I suppose women can thank the Democrats and Obama for passing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, but what happens when a woman needs an abortion and can’t get one because of raging anti-abortion attitudes and laws like the Stupak Amendment? Is this change women can believe in? Or is it one-percenting?
And then some of the claims of change and Obama’s accomplishments merely insult your intelligence. No, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars aren’t over yet, and increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan isn’t change you can take to the bank.
(By the way, here’s a clue for earnest pragmatists: when compiling a list of “real change” it might be a good idea to leave off the things that would be likely to make an ordinary average American laugh in incredulous contempt, even if you as a pragmatist believe it. Get some basic human nature reasoning and try not to be technocratically dense as lead. Bare technicalities that don’t matter a whit where the rubber meets the road (e.g. “reality”) won’t make people believe you any more and will damage your credibility).
Some of the claims are incomplete and halfhearted and prone to backfire because of too much in the way of loopholes granted to corporatists.
Oh and please, please spare me the “expressed support for” and “speech” type accomplishments. They don’t count with me, and they won’t count with a single voter in November who hasn’t already decided to vote for the Democrats, or in 2012.
At best a lot of what is going on with the Obama/Democratic accomplishments this year is giving with one hand and taking with the other. When change was talked about in the Obama campaign, it wasn’t anemic halfhearted change and it wasn’t change that we might only begin to see a whisper of in our real lives after a decade or more.
When bipartisanship with evil bastards is put over the will of the people, what one expects to happen I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna like it.
Also watching police chiefs and CEOs (Infraguard) bailing out of their positions well before normal retirement and not being able to give good excuses for it. Like they know something, heard something, been to some top secret briefing or whatever.
Obama simply wants Republican buy-in for his corporatist agenda by ‘challenging’ the Goopers to pass crummy Democratic bills that 15 years ago would have been crummy Republican ones.
Obama’s ‘head on’ approach is NOT something we should be cheering, because on the extremely unlikely chance that it works and the Goopers actually do work with Obama, the results will include some very anti-Progressive changes like gutting Social Security.
So lots of people are pissed off about the Democrats’ failure to deliver, despite holding a large congressional majority and the presidency. In the 2010 elections, a lot of voters will either stay home, or vote against the Dems in protest. We already saw this in the MA Senate election.
My proposition? Support the Green Party. Give those discouraged progressives and those pissed-off independents somewhere to turn that isn’t the GOP.
The corporate media has a ready-made storyline: “Dems lose seats as America goes back to the right”. Let’s change the storyline to “Dems lose seats after failure to deliver on campaign pledges.” Make them feel how badly they need to deliver for their base. That, my friends, is how you can change the Democratic Party.
While you’re at it, you can help build an independent progressive party that doesn’t take corporate money. You know, that crazy party that opposed the wars, supports Medicare for all, and isn’t cool with destroying our home planet.
Worst case scenario: Dems lose their blue dog seats and Congress descends into partisan gridlock. Don’t worry, the blue team will still have veto power. I also get the feeling that they’d suddenly be a lot more interested in instant runoff voting.
What do you say?