A highly articulate, front-page Daily Kos post describes the problem and misses the entire point

another tragically myopic daily kos front page post, this one by hunter...

the problem, as he sees it...

In battle after battle the House and Senate Dems have made it crystal clear that they do not give a flying shit about their base. They wish we'd just curl up and die. They're happy to have the free help spreading their points, but that help does not reciprocate in any way. There's not a damn thing they'll do on our behalf, or on behalf of the voters who made their regained power possible -- not one thing. They'll even sell out Move On by name -- and all in fear of this mythical overwhelming conservative tide of voters who will wag their fingers sternly and supposedly dangerously at the slightest provocation. They spend a hell of a lot more time worrying about what the racists think about brown people, and the religious extremists think about non-extremists, and the corporate lobbyists think about corporate needs, than they've ever once worried about any of us. Their strategy is all about placating, of all fucking things, the Republican base. That's who they're absolutely obsessed with: making sure the Republicans aren't mad at them, that thirty percent of voters who would rather join militias and drift off into the countryside than vote against hardcore Republicanism anyway.

They really have learned nothing, in their decade-plus of being out of power. Not a damn thing. They're still obsessed with strategic, plodding, inoffensive timidity as the answer to all possible situations and questions. We can only be glad that the civil rights battles are largely over for black Americans, because these people would sell out absolutely anyone and anything in order to continue their consultant-honed strategy of taking absolutely no stand on anything the slightest bit difficult.

It seems hard to come to any other conclusion but that a large part of the party, people like Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer foremost in that group, wants to cripple and kill us every bit as much as the Republicans do, all for the lazy-assed sake of avoiding hard fights on hard issues and being able to go back to the milquetoast, visionless blandfest that the party is at this point rightfully famous for. And the majority of the rest are more interested in their goddamn strategists than their goddamn consciences.

and that terribly mistaken point...?

It is crystal clear that the Congressional Democrats are divided and incapable at best, and incompetent at worst. We have been through month after month of similar "showdowns", followed by similar collapses. This time, it at least has a financial price attached: if the Democrats are willing to sell out on the one overriding issue that brought them back into power, in the 2006 elections, at least we know they are able to use it as bargaining chip for other issues. Somehow, that is the exact opposite of comforting.

How do we work for them, in the next election, knowing that on the central issue the last election, they are unapologetically uninterested? Nationwide, Democrats were thrust into power in an overwhelming tide due to voter anger over the course of the war, and over the governance of the nation in general. What is there, in 2008, to vote for? What possible credibility do Democrats have over Republicans in ending the war, after time after time after time of abandoning all responsibility for it?

ok, fine... i'll keep banging my lonely drum... i'll continue to play the voice crying in the desert... hey...! what's yet another exercise in futility...? here goes...

the dems are NOT INCOMPETENT... they're NOT ACTING OUT OF FEAR... they're NOT "LAZY-ASSED" ABOUT "AVOIDING HARD FIGHTS"... and they're certainly NOT "OBSESSED WITH STRATEGIC, PLODDING, INOFFENSIVE TIMIDITY"...

one more time...

THE DEMOCRATS ARE COLLABORATIONISTS, CO-CONSPIRATORS, and TRAITORS.*

the sooner the united states fully wakes up to this tragic fact, the sooner we can get on with hosing the accumulated sewage and encrusted excrement off of the principles that were designed to make the united states a bright beacon of truth and hope to all of humanity...

* qualifier: not ALL democrats, to be sure, but a sickeningly large majority, and, to be fair, not ALL republicans, to be sure, but an even more sickening and even larger majority...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet