David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars:
...I blame the geniuses in the Democratic Party -- both in the White House and elsewhere -- who failed to establish firmly the narrative after the election that needed to be hammered home daily and relentlessly and fearlessly: that Americans had repudiated conservative rule because it had manifestly proven itself a failure. Instead, Democrats thought "bipartisanship" was more important. Sure it was.Then from a few days before the election there was Jodi Jacobson at Reality Check. She starts out saying she was a "soccer mom" for Obama but now has hung up her cleats (it's a metaphor - it means the Dems have lost her support).
This clearly was The Fox Election. This was a political victory entirely engineered by a fake "news network" that in reality is a relentless and powerful right-wing propaganda machine. Democrats need to wake up and figure out how they're going to beat it.
She explains her disappointment with the Obama administration.
I never thought for a split second that it would be easy for Obama to turn things around after eight years, or that any of it would happen over night.She goes on:
I certainly never thought it would happen without a fight.
But the bottom line is I expected him to fight. I expected him to understand that the change many of us sought was the use of political power for good, that we had delivered this Administration and the Democratic Party massive election turnout and a Democratic House and Senate to lead effectively, proactively, strongly, and vocally on economic change, health reform, climate change, energy use, education, women's rights, gay rights, science and evidence. This was not wishful thinking--Obama was on the record for every one of these things in the campaign. [Italics in original]
I did expect him to take action, not to spend months--in fact nearly two years--vacillating between preemptive compromises with a Republican party that set out on November 3rd, 2008 to destroy him before he even took the oath and continuous pleading with them to give him "their ideas." I think we already knew what those ideas were.One more on "bipartisanship" with the GOP:
I did expect him to put John Boehner, Mitch McConnel and the rest of the wrecking crew in their place, making them compromise with him, instead of the other way around.If there was an "enthusiasm gap" it's found in places described by Neiwart and Jacobson. Add to that the noise emanating from the propaganda machine known as Fox "News" and the Democratic Party's apparent lack of interest in denouncing every "death panel" lie, every "Obama raised taxes on everyone" lie and you get something close to last night's results.
Not surprising, really. But they blew it. Blew it big time. The biggest Congressional margins in decades and they blew it because they didn't realize that the GOP was never looking to play nice with them in the first place.
And because of that, for the next two years (at the very least) we'll be seeing House hearings on Climate-gate, Hawaiian Birth Certificates, and how Obama's racist Department of Justice turns a blind eye to voter intimidation when the intimidators are two black men in Philadelphia. We may even see hearings on how George Soros funded all that ACORN voter fraud.
And no compromises, no bipartisanship whatsoever from the GOP. John Boehner has already promised that one.
They blew it.
3 comments:
jobs jobs jobs
Obama set the tone and he took the rest of the party down with him. I think that's pretty clear. WE all knew that bipartisanship was impossible, so why didn't he? Politics is, and always has been, a brutal, bare-knuckled battleground. If there is "no crying in baseball," there is also "no whining in politics." Or to paraphrase Yoda, "This is no trying, there is only DOING!"
EVERY speech that Obama gave for the first year of his term should have included an indictment of the rapacious Republican/business class which got us into this mess. But he demurred. He went all Kumbaya on us. Did he REALLY come from Chicago? That's not the Chicago I know! When you have the bully pulpit, you freakin' use it! But he hung back. No one was indicted. No one went to jail. He sold of us down the road...
On the other hand, who are these "independents" anyway? I used to think that they represented a thoughtful group of voters who would cast their ballots after long and careful examination of the candidates and their issues. But no more. Now I believe they are the most wishy-washy, least-informed amongst -- the "wimpdependents," who blow in the wind.
They are people who recently voted OUT Santorum, but who have now voted IN Pat Toomey, an equally specious freak, who cares nothing about them at all. Who does that?
What to do? The Democrats need to either a) start their own network or b) begin a TV ad campaign NEXT WEEK which will continually hammer the Right. Don't they get it? People don't READ anymore; they go home and sit in front of their TVs -- and that's where they "learn" about things. Forget about winning over the WaPo or NY Times editorial pages; you need to win over the great "flat screen morons" of America....
Piltdown, from the WSJ
"A massive swing by independent voters propelled the Republican Party to a series of key victories, bringing the GOP back from a near-death experience just two years ago, and delivering a rebuke to the president who rode the same independent wave into the White House.
In House races nationally, Republicans won the votes of independents—voters who said they aren't affiliated with any party—by a 55% to 40% margin, a compilation of exit polls from across the country showed.
That represents a stunning reversal from the last midterm election, in 2006. In that voting, which brought Democrats to power in the House, independents favored Democratic candidates, 57% to 39%.
In other words, independents' preference did an almost complete turnabout over the last four years: They favored Democrats by 18 points then, Republicans by 15 points Tuesday.
Independents also were a crucial element of the coalition that President Barack Obama used to win the White House two years ago, when, according to exit polls, he carried them by 52% to 44%.
In a nutshell, these independents Tuesday made up about a quarter of all voters, and provided the margin of victory for the GOP, because voters who identify with the two major parties stayed largely in line. Some 92% of Democrats voted for the Democrat in their local House race, and 95% of Republicans voted for the GOP candidate."
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