What happens when we don't show up?

[kaygore]

Perhaps the Republican Party collapsed too quickly. Perhaps we need another 4-8 years of Republican greed and then we will finally take to the streets.

The attitude of the Democrats on health care reform will doom the party. I have volunteered and bankrupted myself to get Democrats in office and they simply laugh at us.

Our tax dollars go from us to the IRS to bail out vested interests to the pockets of these elected bastards but we don't get the benefit. The bailout money is being used to buy politicians to keep the status quo.

I am speechless that the Obama administration would be so naive as to fall for the insurance and drug companies' ploy. Anything less than a public option into which anyone can buy will be a sell out.

I don't want to hear all the supposed positive things that Obama has done since he has gained office. Health care reform is critical and if he sells us out on this then he is as much of a fraud as the Republicans, at least they are honest about being whores, liars, and thieves.

There is no single issue where the cost-benefits are as clear as they are with getting the insurance companies out of the health business and controlling the drug companies as they do in most every other nations.

Sell us out on usury of banks and credit card companies--OK, I'll stop using credit.

Keep our troops in foreign lands in perpetuity, OK, I am too old to go to war.

Put no real restrictions back on Wall Street and the financial institution, OK, I never trusted Wall Street anyway and I'll keep my money under my mattress.

But health...now that's something that does impact me. I do not take ANY over the counter or prescription drugs (or illegal ones), I exercise daily, I don't drink or smoke, I eat an organic, plant-based diet of food that I primarily cook from scratch. I'm doing my part to keep healthy. I want my government to do their part and put the best interests of the people before the golden cow of special interests.

I am mad and I am not going to take it any more and don't bother to flame me on how wonderful Obama is or how cute his kids and dog are. I walked over 500 miles for the sell out, I volunteered for the primaries and the election in several states at my own expense, I had engraved invitation to the inauguration in a viewing primo section, etc., etc., etc. Now is the time for true greatness and anything less is nothing. It is simply NOT enough to be the first Black president. Be one of the great presidents. Seize the moment.

[leftstreet]

1. Nothing. "The Left has nowhere to go"

"If you want to pull the party--the major party that is closest to the way you're thinking--to what you're thinking, YOU MUST, YOU MUST show them that you're capable of not voting for them. If you don't show them you're capable of not voting for them, they don't...have...to listen to you. I promise you that. I worked within the Democratic Party. I didn't listen, or have to listen, to anything on the left while I was working in the Democratic Party, because the left had nowhere to go."

....Laurence O'Donnell

[kaygore]

2. So that's what happens when we don't show up!

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

3. I am with you all the way kaygore!

The Dems cannot possibly believe that the American public will sit back for more feeble, token re-toolings of our current completely broken system. They were elected to DELIVER!

[Lasher]

4. The last thing in the world we need is another 4-8 years of Republican greed

And I would swim a river of snot to prevent it.

[ldf]

19. and the democratic leadership knows it

and are COUNTING on it.

we are money in the bank.

we whine, we complain, and we no longer even wince when being tossed under the bus.

yet we STILL go vote for them.

THIS american has had enough.

it is shit, or get off the pot, time. and it is not just obama, it is the whole democratic party.

if it doesn't happen now, it will NEVER happen. if "change" doesn't happen, and the republicans DO get back in, we can kiss what is left of our country, and the noble experiment it represents, goodbye.

our options are extremely limited. the republicans are NEVER going to cooperate in any way, shape or fashion. the will obstruct EVERYTHING obama tries to do. and obama, knowing that, will continue to go the "bipartisan" route, the "centrist" route, the "take the high road" route.

the republicans have played dirty for so long that "taking the high road" shouldn't even be an option.

apparently americans LOVE the gutter because they (a HUGE number of them) sat on their asses while we were lied into war, threw our personal liberties out the window, and used the u.s. constitution as toilet paper. we watch gutter tv. we are ALL about celebrity. we would, easily, rather watch a ball game than watch a serious addressing of an issue. americans are superficial, shallow, selfish, greedy and IGNORANT. we are EXACTLY the type of public saint ronnie started to create in the 80s. get rid of organized labor so corporations could pay low wages, dumb down the masses by destroying critical education, sidetrack the masses by a complete reframing of issues based on hatefilled religious "morals". the republicans won, and they WERE quite successful in a complete reframing of all the issues.

meanwhile, the democrats, still, and always, act as the proverbial "cat herding" party. even when we get a chance we can NOT walk in lockstep, even if it IS for the good.

even now, with obama making good efforts at addressing SOME of the issues, fellow democrats are organizing against him. WE. DO. NOT. LEARN.

but I am older, and not going to be around TOO much longer, and quite frankly, am beginning to not give a shit anymore. i have voted straight democratic all my life, with one exception, which i greatly regret. i voted for ford over carter for two reasons. i liked betty ford, and thought that if gerald listened to her pillowtalk everynight, he would be be a good president. and i was very uncomfortable about jimmy carter's religiosity.

i loved betty, but boy was i wrong on that one. carter may end up being the best president we ever had. but, i learn.

still, a perfect storm has created an opportunity to address ALL the concerns we need to address. if we don't, and end up only addressing the concerns backed by the democratic leadership (resulting in retaining the status quo), we will have blown the only chance we will get.

our democratic leaders need to know that there is a growing disaffected number who view this point in time as one of those forks in the road that are history changing choices. we can take the right path, or not. we can embrace real change, or we can continue to allow our democratic leaders to continue to be the self serving professional politicians that they have become.

and i can no longer vote my approval to continuing business as usual, with "change" that is all dressed up with superficial window dressings, just so the base can be pulled from under the bus just long enough to supply the money and the votes, for a continuation of more of the same.

2008 was THE LAST TIME MY VOTE WILL BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED.

and if we sit at home, all those self serving democratic leaders who care about nothing but being reelected, will lose. that may ultimately by what is needed. it will hurt, but i will not be a party to the outrage that current american politics has become.

AND i think that there are a lot of people out there who feel like i do. we are watching and waiting. and we will be judge and jury of our party.

/rant

[Lasher]

20. I'll give that rant a 9.8.

I wish I could differ with your assessment but I cannot. Like you say, however, our choices are extremely limited. This is particularly true of general elections. And the presidential primary circuses are designed with a deliberate intention of limiting the will of the people. But maybe we can make more of a difference in other primary races, I don't know.

Sometimes I have had to hold my nose at the polls but I have always voted for Democrats and I have no regrets about that. You can say Democrats are bad and Republicans are worse, or you can say Democrats are better than Republicans; it means exactly the same thing.

Here's a thought that might make you feel better: Sarah Palin is not your VP, and is not touring the globe representing us all.

[BonnieJW]

5. K&R

[onenote]

6. the minimum wage doesn't get raised, schip doesn't get adjusted, etc, etc.

stem cell research ends, etc etc.

Individuals and families suffer.

If you believe that a few more years of suffering will actually result in some sea-change in our basic institutions, then maybe you believe the ends justify the means.

My take: you just get more suffering and then, as now, an attempt to reverse the tide until the dam breaks again.

[dflprincess]

7. I think you're being generous to suggest that

Obama is being naive and falling for the insurance and drug companies' ploy. He knows he's selling us out and he doesn't care because, like nearly every other Democrat, he thinks we don't have any where else to go.

He might be right, we may not have anywhere else to go - but he may also be in for a rude awakening come the midterms and we just don't show up at all.

Regardless with what happends with the current "Insurance Company and Campaign Donation Protection Act" everytime we get a call from the DSCC, DCCC, or a candidte make it clear that they won't see a dime of your money or a moment of your time until they sign on to a single payer system.

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. The thing to do at the midterms is not not show up,

but to show up and vote out the DLCers and back the candidates who back single-payer. We need to DRAG the party to the left.

[dflprincess]

13. That will work in the primaries

it won't work if the DLCer is the candidate in the general election

[derby378]

8. There's another option

Take over the party, piece by piece, from the precinct level all the way to the top. How many of you are willing to do this?

Howard Dean was on the right track as DNC Chair, but he faced massive opposition from the DLC and DSCC. He couldn't bring reform all by himself.

[TheCoxwain]

9. Dont count your chickens ..... they have gone undercover ... and they are about

as successful


look at the health care bill doing the cha cha in the congress ..

[kaygore]

11. Congress members are more accountable

as they stand for election every two years and they have a specific constituency. Perhaps we need to elect senate members every three years. I think that count, in part, on our having a short memory.

[Zodiak]

12. We tried that

Back in 2000.

The Democrats lost, and lost primarily because of their own cowardice and fecklessness.

Then they blamed the left for it. I hear echoes of that attitude every time Nader's name is mentioned on this site. The Democrats simply do not feel that they are accountable to the left at all.....they OWN the votes of the left, you know.....even when the left doesn't vote for them.

That attitude is one of the main reasons this country has went to hell in a hand-basket. The other main reason being Republican greed and unscrupulousness. That, and we citizens settle for no accountability. No strikes....no massive protests...no tar and feather parties.

I laugh at the disparity between what I was taught it meant to be American and what this country and its citizens have become.

[struggle4progress]

14. To reclaim the Party, begin at the local level: go for the city and county offices,

develop a progressive talent pool in the state legislatures, produce local and statewide grassroots issue-oriented activist organizations that can mobilize people between elections and for elections

Then we'll be able to kick butt

[lunatica]

15. I think you should copy your post and paste it into a letter to President Obama

As well as sending it to every newspaper to get it posted as an open letter.

Why waste such a good rant?

send it here, in the official White House web site

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

[MisterP]

16. here's one possibility I forecast (in a rant on an Alex Keaton thread):

the current forecast seems to be: GOP shrivels until it resembles Wallace's American Independents: white, homophobic, whose seats depend on appealing to fundies, gun nuts, wannabe soldiers, and whoever it is Steve Milloy's cretinous audience is
the rest could join the Dems (to keep the name, and thus the blinkers of loyalty--as we saw with the effulgent DU praise for Specter, the wankerrific Bob Casey, and, while he was considering running, the readily-aroused Chris Matthews)
an alternative is some sort of Unity, American, or National Party (which worked out so well in 1822-25), or a Grand Alliance like in Germany (under the ultra-progressive Merkel), post-1960 Colombia (hey, at least the Liberal party's in charge there! did you want Horacio SERPA to win???!!111), or post-1982 Honduras (Azcona was so better than Callejas! we must scream our Hope because democracy is working--not for any participation, mind you, but a ritual between two identical parties)
Either alternative would prove frustrating to America's repeatedly-withered--yet growing, once academic Marxists fully came out of the closet in the 80s--left wing. They would turn away from the "better-than-the-other" system, the fanatic personalism which ascribes all good to the sitting Leader, and the grit-toothed bare-tolerance of leftists and critics of Dems--who seem to rank below child molesters and tire-iron murderers to many Dems. This would create a new alignment or even party--not Socialists, as "liberal" has barely been rehabilitated (despite their absence in the actual halls of power)--but Progressives or Americans.
The Unity party would divert any popular movements to its own purposes: "Want to scare fanatic Repubs/homophobes/the NRA? Stock up on guns!" "Want to fight big HMOs? Endorse the Leader's HMO-written mandatory-health-insurance plan!" "Want to investigate Pelosi? You're a stooge!" "Want to protest? Rise up? Are a hothead who got overexcited in Seattle? You're an agent provocateur!" This totalizing pruning of any effective alternative, usually in favor of incrementalism and obeisance, is the core of "moderation": to create both a muddled policy that's half wrong and half right (the two seem to actually exist, even if not in any Manichean manner) while saying that it's "well-reasoned" and a compromise between two noble, rational, fundamentally equal sides. Sometimes moderation is endorsed because it's less offensive to the far right (and any African-American who votes in the South and part of North Carolina ought to kick themselves if they believe that). In short, this diversion and moderation is more damaging to any good change than a thousand Nixon-saluting, "pro-military," Kent-State-cheering Hard Hats or ten thousand Freepers waving Chairman Sarah's Little Pink Book and cheering Jumbotron videos of Afghan caves and shepherds being engulfed in high explosive.
The Greens (boo! hiss! teh evil!) will be absorbed by the Dems/Unity and then the Progressives: one commentator noted that "green" issues will be absorbed by all parties as the inevitable catastrophes rack up. However, the "pragmatics" will remain anthropocentric, solely concerned with how environmental damage affects Man, the Ape Who Is God's Viceregent: nature has no value by itself, anything that can't be scientifically measured is worthless, and flora and fauna exist to be used isntrumentally (the only valid question being conservation of natural "resources" for "sustainability"). They'll fight global warming, but don't want humanity to make too many sacrifices, and the only times they'll endorse a species is when they can potentially get something out of it (the Amazon-as-medicine-cabinet meme). The "deep" greens will persist in the notion that the ecosphere has an existence beyond one species and, as recent evidence may indicate, may actually have been running INDEPENDENTLY of humanity before 100,000 BC! The sole exceptions will be the fundies--only Gawd can change nature, so it can't be us. Other fundies include the tacky, SF-influenced semi-Raelians (Kurzweil, Bjorn Lomborg), who want to spread GM crops into the environment (it's our right--and you can't object, because plants have been bred, and that's the same as tossing in genes from other species, and each gene is a blueprint for an individual part, not instructions for the growth of an entire being, as those frothing geneticists and embryologists claim) and pray to their computers and O'Neill colony diagrams, awaiting the Rapture of the Nerds in the form of nanotech which will end pesky problems like, population explosion, desertification, and extinction (I swear, they're like some Sharper Image-derived cult).
(sorry about the rant)

The Unity moderate party would probably have those Dems who generally tell America to sit on it and spin: Baucus, Bayh, Begich, Michael Bennet, Cardin, Carper, Casey, Conrad, Dodd, Dorgan, Feinstein, Gillibrand, Inouye, Tim Johnson, probably Klobuchar, Kohl, Landrieu, maybe Lautenberg, Lieberman (or the Repubs), Lincoln, McCaskill, probably Menendez, Mikulski, Nelson and Nelson (or the Repubs), Pryor, Reid, Rockefeller, Schumer, Specter, Stabenow, Tester, probably Udall and Udall, Warner, Webb, Whitehouse, and maybe Byrd and Cantwell. These would be joined by the opportunistic moderates--Brownback, Collins, maybe Ensign and the great whore Lindsey Graham, "Peckerface" Gregg, McLame, and Snowe. It would have 39-45 Senators.
The Progressives would be Akaka, Bingaman, Boxer, probably Sherrod Brown, Durbin, Feingold, Harkin, Kenndy, probably Kerry, maybe Lautenberg, Leahy, Levin, Murray, Reed, Sanders, and Wyden. This would have 14-20 Senators; in the House it would be Kucinich-led. Its distribution is mostly New England, the Great Lakes cities, and the West Coast--all the "unwanted" parts of the US to the Repubs, and later probably to the "anti-elitist" (yet somehow always pro-Wall Street) Unity party. The Progressives would have to overcome no little regional slander about "far-out," "extremist" constituencies that won't play well with the gun-toting rural psychopaths of "Real Amerika" (disregarding the fact that, before the 1920 Klan-assisted Red Scare crackdown, the CPUSA's foothold was in OKLAHOMA, and that the 1890s Progressives ran North Carolina and did swimmingly in the Blue Ridge/Smokies until the Southern Dems successfully whipped up some race hatred).
The freshmen Burris, Hagan, Kaufman, Merkley, and Shaheen, I have no idea.

[lib2DaBone]

17. I agree.. we elected the Dems to perform...

It's a shame that we have to constantly push Obama and the Dem Party to the left. Instead of giving $5 trillion to Wall street , we should have have started intense alternative energy research. If we get stuck in Peak Oil before we have figured out a new fuel.. we are screwed. It dooent matter if you believe in Peak Oil or global warming.. they truth is we use more oil than we can produce, and it's way to expensive.


We are probablly screwed anyway..because it's too late. Unfortunately, the Dems let the has-been Repugs control the media, as they are now (and have done for the last 8 years). It's going to be impossible to get anything accomplished. Anyways.. can't go there now. It's not productive as I think everyone will agree.

We did the best we could with what we were offered. Can you imagine where we'd be now if Palin had been elected? I think by Fall the American people will have something to really worry about..like struggling to find food for their next meal.. as we sink deeper into this depression. It's gonna get ugly.

[Chiquitita]

18. Seems like the feeling is building...

Now that he's president is money just going to keep flowing through the same channels -- or, do you think he's expecting us to rise up and just scream ENOUGH?

See this article on Afghanistan:

The Politics of Escalation
by Tom Hayden & Joseph Gerson

Congressional leaders are cooperating with the Obama administration in quashing any serious criticism of growing military escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Indications are that there will be no benchmarks or conditions set on the more than $85 billion supplemental appropriation before Congress beginning this week. The administration, which once promised no more rushed supplemental appropriation, is rolling funds for war and swine flu into one package, while not yet disclosing how much is earmarked specifically for Afghanistan....
article and comments here:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/12-1

Here's a sample comment: "Deficits, such as those that pile up from unnecessary wars, don't matter, at least not to the oligarchs, because they have a plan. They first toyed with the idea during Bush's failed attempt at SS privatization, and we will see it again soon. The next scheme to divide the electorate will consist of inducing inter-generational warfare. The baby boomers will be demonized (we must ignore that other baby boomers will be doing most of the demonizing) and depicted as selfish and greedy for wanting their SS checks and their Medicare ("the baby boomers caused all the deficits after all"). The young will be convinced to vote for candidates who will severely curtail SS and Medicare, and the costs of all the wars will be easily paid for with the savings. So, the oligarchs have decided they can war away without worry!"