Is their any reason to even bother trying "bipartisanship"?

[Ken Burch]

In the Nineties, "bipartisanship" meant we caved in on everything and the GOP caved on nothing.

We can assume it will mean that again. There will never be any such thing as a "moderate Republican" for us to work with again.

Given that, why reduce ourselves to that level of irrelevance and absurdity again?

We can WIN on our principles and we can get things done afterwords by DEFENDING our principles.

Face it, "bipartisanship" just means surrender.

Let's be effective and let's make victory matter, people.

[saracat]

1. Not really. It hasn't been working out so well.Bipartisanship only works

if you carry a "big stick". As Edwards says, "you can't nice " them into submission". Vote Edwards!

[TransitJohn]

2. Absolutely not.

We need to do the serious work it's going to take to make this a better United States. The gawddamn raving lunatic GOPers can sit in the corner, lament and go pound sand. They should be the ones making plans to leave the U. S., not we progressives.

[TahitiNut]

3. First, let the GOP show "bipartisanship" on IMPEACHMENT.

After all, they got cooperation from the Dmes in the 90s when it was about a BLOW JOB. Let them show reciprocity for WAR CRIMES.

[aquart]

4. This government only functions with compromise.

It became a terrible mess under the one-party system of the Republicans. We don't want that.

However, the word bipartisan shall not cross my lips. Neither will anything relating to power sharing. If we have the power, we exercise it. If we need Republican votes, we negotiate as we've done since the Congress began.

We DON'T ignore a portion of our citizenry because they choose to vote differently. We don't become, well, at least we try not to show it, bigots toward Republicans. It's the same thing as any other bigotry, hating for perceived difference.

The Clintons are KNOWN for not bad-mouthing enemies (funny how they've become racists) which is how they can make friends of enemies. Obama swears he'll sit down with anyone.

So whoever wins, we will have a government that avails itself of all its members. (I just realized I assume a Democrat will win. That's because the Democrat will win.)

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. The Clintons are known for pushing through the Republican

economic agenda, often over the objections of the majority of Dems. The Clintons are known for shutting down the BCCI and Iran/Contra investigations, and then making friends of the criminals who committed those crimes.

A LOT of bipartisanship in the 90s.

[aquart]

31. If there was a majority of Dems, why didn't they object with their votes?

[RaleighNCDUer]

51. You misunderstand. The Dems were in the minority, and the majority

of that minority party objected to the Republican platform that Clinton supported - i.e., NAFTA, etc.

[krispos42]

5. No, because it goes something like this:

Man sees woman on the street. Man says "Hey, get naked."

Woman: No.

M: Okay, let's compromise then. Let's work together to achieve a bi-partisan, mutually-agreed-to solution. Get naked from the waist up.

W: Well, I'm not really comfortable with that.

M: Listen, I'm trying to work with you hear. I have come more than halfway here, in the spirit of bipartisanship, to reach a solution that takes both sides into account. I am reaching across the aisle here, and I think the voters would like to see this proposed compromise worked out.

W: <sigh> Okay, fine.

M: Excellent. It is wonderful that we were able to compromise on this issue, to break the gridlock that characterizes the inside of the Beltway. Now spread this Hershey's syrup all over your bosoms.

W: No!

M: Okay, let's compromise....

How it should go is something like this:

Man sees woman on the street. Man says "Hey, get naked."

Woman: No.

M: Okay, let's compromise then. Let's work together to achieve a bi-partisan, mutually-agreed-to solution. Get naked from the waist up.

W: No, the entire concept is flawed.

M: Listen, I'm trying to work with you hear. I have come more than halfway here, in the spirit of bipartisanship, to reach a solution that takes both sides into account. I am reaching across the aisle here, and I think the voters would like to see this proposed compromise worked out. Take your shirt off but leave your bra on.

W: If the entire concept is flawed, then all parts of the concept is also flawed. I will not further a flawed concept.

M: I can't believe how incredibly partisan you're being. The voters demand that progress be made on this issue. Unbotton your shirt and show some cleavage.

W: <kicks M in the groin; M goes down, clutching his privates> Now listen, pervert, shut your pie-hole and keep your hands to yourself. <kicks M in stomach> Get naked.

M: Fuck you!

W: In the spirit of partisanship and undoing two decades of your destructive politics, <kicks M in stomach again> GET NAKED!

THAT'S how it needs to be done...

[sandnsea]

10. So

You think there's never a situation where a particular woman might want to get naked with a particular man?

[Ken Burch]

11. Not on the street. And not just because the man demanded it.

You completely missed the point of the exercise.

[sandnsea]

16. Never? No way for a mutually agreeable outcome?

You sure?

I didn't miss the point.

[Ken Burch]

18. The scenario was a demand for rape. Not a date.

There's no way walking up to a woman and saying "get naked" can lead to a "mutually agreeable outcome".

And the first example showed the way the GOP acted and Clinton responded throughout the Nineties. It's what "bipartisanship" is always going to mean with an opposition like the one we face. We need to be the woman in the second example. Got it?

[sandnsea]

20. I beg to differ

If done by your husband with the right glean in his eye, I expect nakedness to follow relatively quickly. Maybe not right out in the street, but that's where the negotiations come in.

[Ken Burch]

22. The scenario was a man who was a complete stranger to the woman

walking up and saying this. That's nothing at all like a husband using the line as an ironic seduction technique.

Anyway, why are you belaboring this point?

[sandnsea]

23. You made assumptions about the individuals

The post didn't say they were strangers, or that the man was a rapist. A man used a couple of different unsuccessful tactics to get a woman naked. By eliminating assumptions, you begin to think about finding an area of common interest. Progress follows.

[Ken Burch]

27. You CAN assume that any man who just walks up to a woman and says "get naked" is a pig.

Any man who would do that on the street is incapable of being a decent human being.

[sandnsea]

29. And that kind of hate and judgment is the problem

because I just gave you an example where your assumption is flat wrong and you can't accept it. This kind of rigidity is as big a problem as the rigidity of the right making judgments about people.

[Ken Burch]

35. You're also forgetting the fact that the woman is repeatedly saying "no"

And the man is repeatedly refusing to take "no" for an answer.

Still just seeing this as the cute way that big loveable lug makes his move?
:puke:

[sandnsea]

39. The same scenario can look different

If you have more information about the dynamics going on. Maybe it's a doctor who needs to see a wound and has nothing to do with sex. The point is the same, when you remove assumptions and prejudices, you can see a situation in a new light and make progress. That's what everybody needs to do, even the left. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but the left is not always right either.

[bettyellen]

48. what dopey rationalizations u came up with- a wife that says no to (public) sex still means no....

you knew that yourself i'm sure, till you went after straws to grasp at.
this is a huge stretch for a story that begins a man walks up to a woman....
oh jeeze, so idiotic- a doctor then- was the wound on her boobs yet he asked her to remove all her clothes in public... because?

no prior relationship is hinted at it.... it's not a riddle, stop pretending it is, what a load of horseshit you posted!

[tbyg52]

47. The R's ain't my spouse, nor the spouse of this country! nt

[krispos42]

36. Not at all

However as a general rule men are much more obnixious about seeing women naked then vice versa. And with that in mind, considering how arrogent and obnoxious Republicans are, I thought it was a good fit to the stereotypical sex-crazed male asshole.

For example, I'm pretty sure if I tried this with you, I'm pretty sure the end result would be similar.

[Dogmudgeon]

6. Sure

We can help the few remaining Republicans who are semi-intelligent to build a new and better ideology during their coming 35-year political exile.

--p!

[Ravy]

8. We don't seem to be doing singlepartisanship too well at the moment....

maybe we should work on that first.

[Ken Burch]

15. No arguement there.

n/t.

[sandnsea]

9. Please describe winning on principles

What would it look like to you win health care legislation on principle?

[Ken Burch]

13. Single-payer. Or at least, introducing single-payer

As a way to mobilize general support for some sort of real universal healthcare.

Perhaps some sort of compromise in the end, but never again a Nineties-style compromise(which is the kind HRC and Obama specialize in) where we just do what the right wants(this is on general principles, I'm not singling out health care.)

[sandnsea]

17. perhaps some sort of compromise, that's cute

Seriously, I was looking for something a little more step by step, month by month, that sort of thing.

[Ken Burch]

19. Introducing a single-payer program, directly challenging the insurance companies

And the pharmaceutical industry on the notion that they are entitled to squeeze every last penny out of the health care consumer. Bringing a "Million Gurney March" to Washington, to fill the streets with the victims of Republican/big money health care values.
Mobilizing from below to make those above do the right thing.

That is, rejecting the notion that we, as Democrats and progressives, never have the right to set the agenda. The last Democratic administration accepted that notion on every issue that mattered, and that's why we ended up with a Democratic president who governed as an Eisenhower Republican(to borrow a phrase he himself use in a cabinet meeting to set the pathetic tone he expected the administration to follow).

We need to act like we do have support, that we do have the right to work for what we want, and that we ARE the majority. That's the way to success. "Bipartisanship", as the Nineties proved, is the way to irrelevance and failure. All bipartisanship for the rest of eternity has to be just like the Nineties. It can never be progressive or positive.

[sandnsea]

21. Your question is about DC, Congress

Them, what would it look like with them.

[Ken Burch]

24. But you do it from the bottom up, you lay out the vision, you present it to Congress

And then you bring the public in to make Congress do the right thing.

And since we can assume that there's nobody now in the Republican party(and that there likely never will be) that would be interested in a meaningful bipartisan compromise, the approach I've lined out is the only way to get it through.

You do it from below, and you make the leaders follow.

No conservatives or "centrists" will ever again be sweet-talked into passing anything worthwhile.

[sandnsea]

26. Something like this

Bring the people together who want to state their priorities, but the meeting would be on CSPAN and the American people would know who is motivated by greed, who is negotiating in bad faith, and who is working against the interests of everyday Americans. Then, "having triumphed over the drug and insurance companies in the court of public opinion, the legislative victories will follow."

[Ken Burch]

28. Fine, that's not bad. But it's also a moot point, since Republicans and DLC Dems

would never participate in such a meeting. They'd only have press conferences before their "phrase of the day" backdrops to issue their unchangeable positions and refuse to take questions.

[sandnsea]

30. "bring the public in to make Congress do the right thing"

Isn't that what you said?? Obama is talking about doing the exact thing YOU described as the best way to move forward on health care legislation.

[unhappycamper]

12. Nope.

Can't think of a single one. :shrug:

[Selatius]

14. I'll give you the short definition of "bipartisanship" in a way everybody can understand.

You have two guys who are holding you hostage. The first guy says that it isn't worth it to torture you. The second guy says that you should be brutally sodomized with a broomstick, pistol whipped, burned, beaten with sticks, and ultimately have your body broken.

Bipartisanship would be the first guy and the second guy negotiating. OK, you will be burned, beaten with sticks, and pistol whipped, but you won't be sodomized with a broomstick. That's bipartisanship. Both parties came to an agreement.

Get the picture?

[Blue-Jay]

25. I'm thnking that a Battle Royale would be more appropriate.

Last one standing gets to propose legislation. Survival of the fittest! No quarter! No surrender!

[tom_paine]

32. No. "Bipartisanship" is impossible with authoritarian totalitarians.

Nor is compromise.

That is what people failt to realize around here with all that touchy, feely "oh please, don't hate the haters" bullshit.

Actually, we need a healthy dose of hate and zealotry right now, and I point to the abolitionists as one of many examples. We need t to counter the hate and zealotry on the other side.

Dies anyone REALLY think the Bushies would have given up slavery if Yankee & Midwestern Liberals like John Brown hadn't HATED them and helped force the Civil War?

Crazy to think of a thundering "evangelical" John Brown as a Liberal, but that's what he was, and we could use some more people like him today.

[H2O Man]

33. Perhaps it depends

on the situation. One could subscribe to a rigid point of view -- that it is always either good or bad -- but rigid thinking might not be beneficial to real, living human beings under many circumstances.

I live in rural, upstate New York. In 2006, we had serious flooding in a large region of the Susquehanna & Delaware River valleys. It created emergency conditions. People worked together in those days and weeks. Then, in the months that followed, local communities had to coordinate on a county level, to deal with the state and federal government agencies. We did the best for families here by combining the talents of both democrats and republicans.

There are environmental issues that I have worked on for decades. One case involved a couple of SuperFund Sites. The EPA used to "rank" sites, and these were among the worst in the nation. They leaked toxic wastes into local water reservoirs and wells, and also into the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers. Those rivers impact everyone downstream. PCBs and TCE are not selective in who they poison.

I helped the families that lived closest to the SuperFund Sites to organize. Some were democrats, some were republicans. Many of the families had little children. We dealt with the often frustrating bureaucracy of the EPA. The local situation became significant nation-wide, when it was used by the defense industries that polluted the area as a test case for avoiding responsibility for the clean-up.

There were times when bureaucrats in the EPA who fancied themselves as liberals were as dishonest as could be. And there were times when a conservative attorney in the Justice Department went out of his way to help provide us with information we needed. My belief is that one hand washes the other, and I likewise provided him with information he could not otherwise have found.

We also had the help of environmental attorney Robert Kennedy, Jr. When I read through this thread, I thought about his book, "Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and his Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy" (2004). In it, he tells of how republican audiences tend to be very suppotive of his message. But he also identifies how a specific group of republicans has betrayed the country, and how they threaten our form of government.

We face a number of threats today, from the neighborhood level right up to the national level. Some are as natural as the flooding of 2006, and some are as man-made as a toxic waste dump site. They pose threats to everyone in our communities, counties, states and nation -- including democrats, republicans and their unregistered children who live down the stream of time. And the truth is that we are not protected by some imaginary "flood wall" which will allow a select group to survive while another is washed away.

[Perry Logan]

34. After the botched fascist coup of 2000-2006, there can be no bipartisan ANYTHING.

[Blarch]

37. H20 mans post about hate comes to mind.

He had 62 recs with words like these...

"We must unite, and work towards making our society safe and just.... We need to put our differences behind us, to the greatest extent possible, and focus on what we have in common. And then, and only then, can we move towards that higher ground"

I agree with your view, and reject H20 mans view.

H20 man seems to think we should work with the people who want the constitution shredded, he thinks we need to treat them as equals. I say fuck that. We tried that and it doesn't work.

[H2O Man]

42. Tao Te Ching

Knowing ignorance is strength;
Ignoring knowledge is sickness.
-- Lao Tse

[TahitiNut]

45. (sigh) There just aren't enough 'Quarantine' signs to go around.

:rofl:

[H2O Man]

49. It is almost

always sad when people attempt short-cuts to logical thinking. Our friend is nice enough to provide evidence of this. "Quarantine" would work. Or "Bridge Out!"

[Didereaux]

38. Bi-partisanship can occur only in the middle. Fringes can never co-exist they are...

by their own definitions always mutually exclusive. This is why it is so puzzling to me that the Obama supporters bash and thrash 'centrists' when in fact Obama himself says he will work across party lines. His views(excepting religion) are very 'centrist' and indeed he has a good relations with centrist Repugs as well as Dem centrists. neither of those groups have good relations with fringes at either end of the spectrum. This is also the base that Bloomberg appeals to.

[TahitiNut]

46. Where is the 'middle' between torture and no torture?

Where is the 'middle' between suspension of habeas corpus and adherence to habeas corpus? Where is the middle between invading and occupying a soveriegn nation that posed no imminent threat and not occupying a soveriegn nation that posed no imminent threat? Where is the middle between warrantless spying on citizens and no warrantless spying on citizens?

There is no 'middle' between Right and Wrong. There is no 'middle' between Honor and Dishonor.

[Buns_of_Fire]

40. As Amy Wong (of Futurama) once wisely said,

"Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight times..."

I'd as soon be "bipartisan" with a rattler. And it would probably have roughly the same results.

[EFerrari]

41. "It's more of a guideline than a rule". -- Venkman.

[BooScout]

43. Hell no.....

fuck em.....they don't reach across the aisle to us why whould we reac across the aisle to them?

[bemildred]

44. "Bipartisanship" is just a code word for selling out the people that elected you. nt

[sojourner]

50. that is my take.......surrender and weakness before the mighty $$$