Democrats: Are We the Knee-Jerk Party or Just Jerks?

Does anyone recall where we posted the accomplishments of the congress and the Obama Administration over the past year?

Adlib, Glen Greenwald just repeated your case in your great post, American Crash.

It’s important to look at the underlying grievances in acts of terror but that is not justifying them.

You know what Republicans were called in the mid 19th century? Ones that held similar views to this crop?

Know Nothings.

Reid is as sexy as ear wax.

All problems stem from insensitive, jerk, Libruls pokin’ fun at the Midwesterners and Southerners for being a bunch of incestuous, drooling, drawling gumps on the Tay Vay.

This period of American history can be called “Revenge of the Gumps” brought to you by its corporate sponsors.

Now with extra progressive stain-lifting power!!

GREAT assessment, Marion! I think you’ve nailed it, and I like the thoughtful reflection you’ve given to the background to Dem wimpiness coupled with the need for compromise. Compromise is not wimpy. To have a legitimate government, you HAVE to pay attention to the other side, to honor their concerns. You don’t have to give away the store – people did elect whom they elected for a reason – but you cannot trod on the others with hobnail boots without consequence.

I see the Dems getting a spine, and I’m happy about that. I also see Obama publicly reaching out to the Republicans, and I’m happy about that, too, because I think each time he does, and they say “NO” it strengthens, not weakens, our move forward. “We tried. Look at how stubborn they are! We need to move on even if they won’t”

My beef is indeed with the very public people such as Maher (I think I am the one, at least one of the ones, who says they don’t give a rat’s ass about people) and the unseen but mouthy armchair “liberals” who have some hobby horse that has not yet passed that makes them threaten to sit out the next election. As if THAT makes sense!

My greatest hope is that the Reeps are self immolating. The split in several primaries next week between not just competing candidates within the party but the inclusion of tea bag people as well, means that it is very likely that they will get the WORST candidates imaginable or push people such as Rick Perry so far to the extreme right that the rank and file voters will just say NO to the party again.

Last night on MSNBC one commentator noted that the Republicans see Brown’s victory as a signal that all is turning their way without noticing that the party members who are part of the tea bag movement are running up the hill toward THEM bent on destroying even the extra conservative mainstream party people. They seem oblivious to their own party’s radical fragmentation. The leaders are Frankenstein. Teabaggers are the Monster, and it’s gaining on ’em.

One note – the tea bag folks seem to be, like the Christian Coalition before them, to be running for local offices. We did a great job in the 1990s of “outing” them, so we need to keep our eyes on that level of governance, too. No toe hold for wingnuts!!!

I now have forgotten which of us so brilliantly looked at the teabag demographics and posted that they are whiter, more male, more wealthy, and only 11% of the populace. We should take heart from that. They are not a threat to solid and principled Dems but ARE a threat to entrenched Republicans. These are the same people (perhaps actually the VERY same people) who supported George Wallce and Curtis LeMay couple of decades ago. They are containable. They are internally divided as well as divisive to the Republican party, and while they cannot be dismissed out of hand, they need to be located in time and space as the relatively small force they are.

That said, their BEST role is finally – FINALLY – galvanizing the Dems to be more assertive. If you have Bayh, Nelson, Landrieu all signing on to a bill that may well include a public option, we are succeeding in rebuilding the party’s spine.

Remember JFK – he was a traditional Cold War Dem who morphed into a very new kind of president in his three years. The Dems themselves had to grow since they were emerging from a decade of threats from anti-communist fervor, from McCarthy and HUAC, and were as wimpy then as they are now. But the crises of the time – civil rights, the first days of Vietnam, rotten judgments in Cuba, etc. – pushed them to become what they were for the succeeding years. I would argue that the disaster of the Bay of Pigs led to the careful and nearly miraculous outcomes of the Missile Crisis. Kennedy totally changed the approach from military intervention to negotiation with the USSR, and nuclear holocaust was averted. (Years ago the late “Saturday Review” had an outstanding story on the process that averted war. Kennedy was brilliant in what went on, receptive to negotiation, and it may, IMHO, have contributed to his assassination.)

I never could precisely figure out why the Dems picked Carter who was, observably, NOT a strong Dem and who did not keep the faith with traditional Dem policies or constituencies. His failure was predictable, though I still believe the Iran Contra mess proves the point that Reagan deliberately negotiated with Iran to KEEP the hostages so Carter would be defeated. There IS a word for that. Starts with T. So I don’t blame Carter entirely, but he betrayed working people time and again, supported the rise of the global economy and all that implies about selling out manufacturing and thus unions, and was the true father of deregulation that laid the ground for Reagan. I look on him as the last mod Republican, not a failed Dem.

And from that point on until now, Dems swallowed the Kool Aid of globalization and deregulation right along with the Republicans. The only difference between the parties was around a few social programs and social values. Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas” is spot on – if both parties are selling out ordinary people, then the one with the ‘values’ structure will prevail. If people don’t have jobs or economic security, they will find God and go with the flow.

Well, Dems have to come home. We have to have leaders that support the guys and gals living in small towns (you know, the “real” America of Palin’s assertion) in the South as well as North, with God and guns and no real jobs.

We got sidetracked into trying to regulate ordinary people’s lives around their values as much as the right tries to regulate sex. We have to see a distinction between hunters supplying protein to their families and the Saturday Night specials. We have to honor people’s right to worship (not taking over the PUBLIC space) and stop the sneering and lumping of all people of faith together. We have to bring back manufacturing and other solid, middle class income jobs. We have to stop making clean and green an elite-only way of life. And – all who know my history of commitment to women’s reproductive rights, hang on – we DO have to understand that we can’t say this is a woman’s PRIVATE moral decision that must remain hers alone AND insist that it is ‘just’ a medical procedure that everyone should pay for with federal dollars. We just cannot have that both ways since it dishonors the deep beliefs of many other WOMEN. It’s an unnecessary wedge between women and an untenable argument we can never uphold with honor.

I detest the lefty folks (I being one of the lefty types) who simply hate everything. We need not only a spine for the party officials but a heart. We can create a compassionate world, but it will never work if we sneer at the people who like country music, drink beer from long necks, ride in pick up trucks because they do the hard work. We can no longer throw away the auto workers and steel workers, the mechanics and machinists, the foundry and welding operators. These people and their INDUSTRIES are our survival.

What we CAN do is meld our green perspectives with those industries. We can honor workers by helping them become owner-managers of the plants and corpoations. We can accept that if we drink chardonnay and they drink beer, that’s just a matter of taste, not character. And we can stop assuming that those people – blue collar WHITE guys – are not worthy of our concern. Everyone is worthy of our concern.

Even Sarah.

Then we will regrow the party, and more to the point, the process of democracy. We will start speaking for real Americans, not just corporate interests. And, given the SCOTUS ruling on corporate speech, we’d better declare ourselves FOR THE PEOPLE now, because it won’t be long before we will have to ask the 19th-century question:

Which side are you on?

I apologize for posting these clips of Clinton, but, damn, he

A very thought provoking piece, Marion.

I think you’re perhaps a bit rough on the Dems. I’m not a Democrat — I’m an independent — but I think the party has very specific problems that are very hard to deal with.

First, the media is not Dem friendly. Studies show that Republicans appear as guests on the talking heads programs 3 times as often as Dems. If you watch the way the GOP is treated, it’s always with kid gloves and deference — except on MSNBC where the hosts treat both sides the way journalists are supposed to treat politicians.

News coverage is no better. Dems routinely get slammed for the same actions that are painted as reasonable or even laudable when at the hands of the GOP. I think most Dems are oblivious to this — which is another problem.

Second, there are a lot of wolves in sheep’s clothing in the party. And I have to say, Bayh is one of those people. Look at the WAY he left — waiting until there was no time for the PEOPLE of Indiana to have a say in who their Democratic nominee would be. That is not the action of someone who cares about the public. That is the action of a royalist — someone who thinks the people are too stupid to govern themselves.

There’s nothing about being a Democrat that prevents people from being paid off by lobbyists. As long as there’s so much money allowed to flow into politics — and thanks SCOTUS for making this problem even worse — we’re always going to have to wonder whose side these folks are really on.

Third, the Dems are, for the most part, serious about governance. These are serious people. And when they talk about government, they sound serious. That comes off as elite, boring, intellectual, distant, aloof — but this is the way serious people sound. We’ve been so dumbed down by television hacks, we have forgotten how people are supposed to sound when they talk about serious topics.

I’m always struck by the level of intelligence and decorum when I look at old news clips of political discussions from the 50s and 60s. The difference is stunning. I don’t know when we became a country that only pays attention to people who act like cartoons. (Sarah Palin being the latest best example of this.)

My complaints with the Dems relate mostly to the fact that it takes them too long to believe what people tell them. The back and forth with the public option is a perfect illustration. The voters expressed themselves pretty clearly in 2006 and 2008, but the Dems still don’t believe what’s right in front of their eyes. They’re stuck in the D.C. bubble of pollsters and consultants. They’re paying too much attention to media hacks. And they’re not using the common sense they were born with.

Perhaps democratic voters are too reactive, as you say. But I think all voters are reactive. And in our current environment of bad money and bad media, when you have two parties — one interested in governance and the other only interested in politics — the party genuinely trying to govern is going to be at a disadvantage. And always will be until the voters get a whole lot more interested in policy and how their government works.

Bill Clinton, who knows a thing or two about voter backlash: