Tag: Democrats

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz talking at the AM950 Blue State Bash on Saturday night to a crowd of progressive talk radio fans in Minnesota lets go with both barrels at Robert Gibbs, at Barack Obama, at the “people who have infiltrated the Democratic progressive movement“, and at the whole delusional idea of bipartisanship.

“I told him he was full of sh*t is what I told him,” Schultz said. “And then he gave me the Dick Cheney f-bomb the same way Senator Leahy got it on the Senate floor. I told Robert Gibbs, I said, ‘I’m sorry you’re swearing at me, but I’m just trying to help you out.”

“I’m telling you, you’re losing your base,” he continued. “Do you understand that you’re losing your base? And that the American people don’t want public option, the American people want single-payer!?’“

Watch this…

It may be time to utter the “unutterable”.

There’s a phenomenon called “core accretion” in the world of astrophysicists.  It refers to the process by which little planets become big planets during solar system formation.  

During this process, the biggest and strongest of the planetesimals gobble up the smaller ones.  And the character of the new planet takes on the combined character of all the rocks it has accreted in the process.

It works a little like this:

If the Democrats continue to take this country the direction they’ve been taking it all the way through 2010, it may be time that the Democrats are done.  If the Democrats were supplanted by another Party or Parties, what would happen next?  What to do, this would bring chaos and political defeat!

Not really.

Democrats suck.  They do not learn that good policy is good politics.

As Ian Welsh says,

The Democratic reaction to losing Kennedy’s seat will be to do exactly what voters were punishing them for.

From a perspective of operant conditioning or other theories of what constitutes rational behavior i.e., the theory of learning to “earn rewards” and “avoid punishments,” the behavior of Democrats is what behavioral learning theorists refer to as “misbehavior,” because it doesn’t fit their theory of what rational behavior should be like, dammit!, assuming, of course, that behavior is rational in the first place.  In plainer, descriptive language this behavior might more simply be called “working for pain” or “earning pain.”  Earning pain is a real phenomenon in both rats and humans.  And can be downright amusing to watch in the human case.

Struggling against a sea of troubles, a once-in-a-lifetime president having a once-in-a-lifetime mandate for real change, Barack Obama, has made the counter-intuitive and unpopular decision to stay the course.  

On war, health care, the economy, on justice and accountability, on the rule of law itself, Barack Obama, and Democrats more generally, have opted to stay the course.  They view staying the course as the safe option.  Freeze when Republicans are in power, and run to electoral safety when they are out.  Just like rats irrationally yet repeatedly running between electrified grids and freezing after each shock, in various states and fits of fear, if I may deign to notice.

Following an epidemic of fraud, a tsunami of foreclosures (with a second tsunami in short order), and record gambling losses transferred to the public balance sheet, former Fed vice-chairman Alan Blinder is scared:  

My fear is that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a sturdier and safer financial system is slipping away.

There will be no consumer protection legislation.  No clawbacks of ill-gotten gains.  No regulation of on- or off-balance sheet financial instruments.  And no prosecutions of fraud.

Scott Horton’s expose of obvious war crimes will also go unheeded.

Barack Obama will not be content to simply re-arrange the deck chairs, he’ll say.   Americans do not run from their troubles, but take them head-on, he’ll say.  What he means is,

All ahead flank!

And all ahead flank it will be.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is an article that was originally posted on my blog a few days ago. I’m posting it here at DD as a followup to my previous diary about the need for ballot access reform.

*******************

A few days ago, I discussed the need for ballot access reform as a crucial first step in opening up the American political system and removing the shackles placed upon it by the Republican and Democratic parties. Today, I’d like to discuss another equally important element of political reform which I believe is a necessary co-requisite to ballot access liberalization: electoral fusion.

Fusion balloting, which is also referred to as cross-endorsement or open ballot voting, refers to the practice of allowing multiple political parties to nominate the same candidate for the same office. This cross-endorsement can open up several possibilities for minor parties operating within the constraints of a political system like ours here in America, in which two parties are dominant: these minor parties might, for example, choose to cross-endorse candidates nominated by one of the two major parties, or to cross-nominate each other’s candidates, or to run their own candidates without any cross-endorsements, depending on what their political and strategic priorities are. At present, fusion balloting doesn’t affect most voters because it’s only allowed in eight states: Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, New York, Oregon South Carolina, and Vermont.

Original article, by Barry Grey, via World Socialist Web Site:

In an op-ed piece published January 10 entitled “The Other Plot to Wreck America,” New York Times columnist Frank Rich denounces the criminal actions of Wall Street executives and the official cover-up of their operations. He correctly asserts that the havoc created by the bankers poses a threat to the American people “on a more devastating scale than any Al Qaeda attack.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is an article that was originally posted on my blog a few days ago. I’m reposting it here as a self-introduction of sorts for those of you who I haven’t ran into over at Daily Kos, as well as an invitation to participate in what I hope will be an ongoing dialogue about the general need for political reform.

* * * * * * * * *

Over the last few decades or so, America has gradually trended toward the kind of stagnation that has laid low great empires throughout history. This is reflected in the gradual erosion of the American middle class and the increasing stratification of wealth within our country over the last few decades, as our elected leaders have prioritized the interests of concentrated wealth and the handful of individuals who control it over the interests of the people. The stagnation in which we are currently mired is a function of the death grip on political power maintained by the Republican and Democratic parties, who have been allowed to game the political system to their advantage to an extent not seen in any other democracy. As I have stated elsewhere, I believe that if we are to steer this country away from disaster we must first clear the path for economic and social reform by achieving fundamental systemic changes to break the two-party duopoly and replace it with an open multiparty democracy. One of the first, and certainly one of the most important, elements in that systemic reform must be the liberalization of ballot access laws at the federal and state level.