How could the Democratic Party leadership from top to bottom take their eye off the ball at any stage in the election process in Massachusetts and lose their 60th vote in the U.S. Senate?
I was tracking the results city by city. Even as late as the call by CNN the election might have been pulled out if turnout in Boston and Cambridge, which went heavily for Coakly, had met the State average. And this was pretty consistent the voters in liberal cities, which is where you would think the machine had the best resources came out 8-9 points fewer than they did in all the small towns.
The image is a bit incongruous given that an alter-Hitler is speaking the words. The words are, however, on the money. It’s not all Obama. The Dems in the Congress act and talk like a bunch of spinless sychophants to entrenched power. Geithner could probably get more done than any of the bunch of them. Problem being who’s best interests would he represent. The Democratic leadership have to learn to represent the masses and then to communicate that representation to them.
By the way, the same clip with a script of Hitler complaining that his Porsche Panamera is late arriving is much funnier.
Movie Guy – I have no idea. But I do know they keep Rahm in place, and therefore (as Larry Wilborne said in another context two nights ago) have never discovered shame.
Real-life ramification:
MA voters will see their taxes and fees go up, as all the subsidies that Senator Kerry managed to get in the Federal bill for MA are now at best a bargaining chip. (If Scott Brown were voting for the voters of MA–who, like HI, have health care but pay on a state level–he would be the 60th vote for the bill as it stands. Fortunately, Scott Brown will not cast a “Yes” vote in his three years in office.)
It’s not politics that he’s ignoring. He’s not practicing any form of leadership. He must think he’s little more than a cheerleader. It’s the jerks around him, Emanuel for one, who are practicing politics. Unfortunately it’s the politics of deception rather than that of winning. He’s got to stop playing to financial power and start showing the people that he is genuinely on their side. Action would be far better than his nice words.
Perhaps you underestimate the mind-twisting abilities of the plutocrats and their propaganda machine. Americans are as a whole not terribly bright and many have no understanding of their own interests in any abstract way so they are quite easily duped. Most media represents the plutocracy to a greater or lesser extend. Virtually no media is populist in the socialist sense.
Okay but who is in charge of the Republican party? Seems rather headless to me. The plutocrats run their propaganda machines outside party organizations. Tea Party stuff, you know. Screamers, etc., etc.
Those of us who attended some of the demonstrations kept trying to tell you that things were changing. But, too often we got the standard talking points responses. Wrong numbers attending being accepted. Attention to a handful of radical signs without looking at the others. Believing the spin that those attending were not regular, tax paying voters. Just inflamed them/us more.
What has happened is the electorate is tired of the partisanship, the lying, the failure to represent, and the DC inner circle maneuvering. It isn’t a left or right (Dem/Repub) issue, it is a backlash against the failure to lead where the electorate wanted. Dems listened too much to their far left constituencies (dKos, HuffPo, etc) and Repubs got too greedy, and both parties’ leaders were far too arrogant. As a result the “professional” politicians in DC got too powerful, too rich and too insulated from their electorate.
Dems were shocked and revolted by the early reactions to the open houses, Repubs played to them, but neither were convinced of the depth and breadth of the feelings. I suspect after MA, both parties know that their future is reliant not on their party affiliation, but on their ability to please their voters.
National politicians failed, are failing, and if they continue to fail to please their voters, will no longer have a job. Next I suspect we will see some action taken on those who go from capital hill to lobby jobs. But that may be stretching the impact/influence of this anger a bit far.
The silent majority has learned a lesson about silence, and don’t expect them to go back to being complacent for some time. Current Dem leadership is targeted, Reid, Pelosi, Boxer, and Hoyer all have targets painted upon them. Some will no longer have jobs after Nov.
The plutocracy has coopted the Democrats as well as the GOP…… only to a lesser extent. There is still some resistence in the Democrat party. But Congress as a whole can easily be bought and virtually all the propaganda machines outside the parties are extremely right wing. Leftish thought exists almost exclusively on the net and most Americans don’t spend much time reading political ideas on the net. They are passive and watch TV or listen to radio.
To please the voters you have to know what the voters want. If the voters are confused and send contradictory signals, how are you doing to “please” them? I think the issue is more extra party propaganda that is basically disguised extreme right wing stuff. The Tea Party stuff, the nihilistic screaming stuff, the stuff that Koch, etc fund and pay for.
GregL, this kind of thinking: “Maybe Obama will wake up and finally lead the Democratic Party rather than ignoring politics?” is the problem. The Prez leads the country! He has been far too political and provided far too little leadership except for the liberal/progressive agenda.
He has failed, unless there is a major shift in his agenda. It isn’t too late for him to recover, but I’m not sure that he can because his beliefs are too different from the average voter’s.
Nancy, there is a lot of soul searching going on, but to say it was am internal Dem strife issue ignores the political headwinds represented by the demonstrations. All incumbents are watching this election.
The liberal/progressive agenda has been rejected, but there is deep animosity against nealy all incumbents.
Can’t go for the “aren’t particularly bright” thing, though it is pretty commonly heard. Just to build the argument from the ground up, if we come around to understanding that women aren’t intellectually deficient, blacks aren’t intellectually sub-par, that in fact no subset of humans is incapable of higher thought. It cannot be that we as a group are dim, if no particular constitutuent of the group is dim.
More importantly, assigning our fellow citizens to “not particularly bright” is tantamount to giving up on them or turning Straussian to lie them into what is good for them.
Now that I’ve gotten my single uncynical thought out of the way, I have to say, we aren’t going to get anywhere with “The Democratic leadership have to learn to represent the masses and then to communicate that representation to them.” I mean, why exactly must people who occupy some of the most powerful governmental positions in the US “have to learn” to do anything but what they have always done? They don’t “have to”. We have to make them, and figuring out how to do that is the trick. Publicly funded campaigns might be a step in that direction.
Re plutocratic propaganda: if you go to the Drudge Report page (his site is all slanted way to the Right with a choice of articles overwhelminigly snide or critical of Obama and the Democrats, etc.;a real scumbag site)you will usually find some ad there attacking things that might help the poor. Right now there is one asking people to defeat “Obamacare”. I doubt it is officially put there by the GOP, but rather something the Koch group and his ilk would pay for. I think there is a lot of that stuff around, all paid for by plutocrats. They funded the Tea Parties and the screamers, etc., etc. No wonder the masses are confused about what they want. They, frankly, are lied to much of the time and their heads are full of misinformation and downright lies. Most of it serving the interests of the people who are giving them the shaft, amazingly enough.
Obama has only provided leadership “for the liberal/progressive agenda?”
Really? On what planet did that happen on?
Leadership is not mouthing platitudes intended to placate the liberal/progressive agenda and then proceeding to do the opposite by embracing the exact policies that he ran against in order to get liberal/progressive votes.
Obama never has been and never will be a liberal/progressive. He is a right-leaning moderate. Just ask Brad DeLong, Paul Krugman and others, who tell us so.
Glenn Greenwald did a great job of tearing apart this particular meme:
Tao said: “Glenn Greenwald did a great job of tearing apart this particular meme: ” He did? What I saw was wome whining that the left got nothing. While all the while ignoring simple thnbgs like the list of losses were actually attempts that failed.
A conservative or moderate would look at the same list and say they should never have been attempted, because they represent only the wishes/views of the left. We are still a center right nation. Far left changes can not be implemented rapidly, and that is the issue.
No, we’re a nation with cognitive dissonance. Voters want big government projects and benefits for themselves and not a dime for the other guy. Voters want low taxes for themselves and high taxes for everyone else. Voters want an isolationist country that also engages in perpetual war with radical Islam. Voters want a melting pot and a wall between the US and Mexico. Voters want cheap imports and “Made in USA” products. Teabag protesters hold up signs with swastikas and hammer-and-sickles right next to each other and don’t see the contradiction. Voters demand more personal freedom while they vote to ban gay rights. Voters want a pumped up economy but don’t want deficits. Voters are nitwits. Always have been and always will be.
Voter are scared and when they get scared they get angry. Angry voters are not always smart voters. No one ever said that voters weren’t scared and angry. The point some of us were making about teabagger rallies is that they stoked angry. Of course, that was by design. That’s what the GOP organizers were counting on. As to the size of teabagger rallies, I seem to recall that a few weeks ago there was a teabagger rally in DC that only drew two people.
The state with “universal” health insurance (note the importance of the word insurance and not care) rejects the candidate in favor of nationwide “universal” health insurance (except for illegal alliens) and goes with the candidate that will vote against it. Enough said.
Can we chalk up MoveOn.org as a leftwing propoganda site? Up until January 2009 they incessantly posted about getting our troops out of the Middle East. Haven’t heard a peep since then. We’re still bombing innocent civilians like we did in Kosove under Bill Jeff’s presidency. But if you got a D after your name it is ok to the folks who MovedOn from MoveOn.org.
Of course opinions about what is propaganda vary. Sensible opinion such as getting our imperial armies out of Muslim nations seems just that to me: sensible opinion. If you of course endorse our war on Islam it is propaganda. You like the war? You think we should continue to occupy Muslim nations and kill the inhabitants? PS; it isn’t easy to get out once you’ve been stupid enough to get in. Biden is now going to Iraq to try to mediate disputes between Shiites and Sunnis. I trust the Pentagon would hope we don’t have to occupy Iraq again with 100,000+ troops when most of our troops are now in Afghanistan, and getting nowhere.
Speaking of Obama, I tend to think it was probably a mistake for him to go to Mass. to support Coakley. It reminded the screamers and racists there that she was the “black candidate” (preferred by #1 black). It gave the screamers the opportunity to grossly insult Obama and his office with the demonstration I linked to on another post…probably the most outrageous “shout down” any President has ever faced. The “just below the surface” racism of Mass was very above the surface there. I also suspect people with no jobs tend to let their racism come to the surface. It is convenient the blame the “black” for their troubles.
Obama, Allies Now Seek Pared-Down Health Care Bill– AP Chastened by the Democratic Senate loss in Massachusetts, President Barack Obama and congressional allies signaled Wednesday they will try to scale back his sweeping health care overhaul in an effort to at least keep parts of it alive.
In truth there isn’t much at all left to it. It had been reduced to a barebones minimum and now not even that. You can see the power here of the plutocracy that has America in a python-like strangle hold. The victim was about to breath a wee bit but the python tightened its coils around the victim and stopped that immediately. Fat chance that Crazyamerica will ever escape the python’s grasp.
2slugs, scared? No! Angry? Some. Frustrated, disappointed, and willing to fight to get political representratives that work for them, and not the party, special interest du jour, and themselves.
Tea bagger rallies did not stoke anger, they were mostly due to frustration.
You persist in thiinking these rallies were GOP{ driven. They were not early on. Repubs were the lesser of the two evils in many of the rally goesrs minds, so the GOP recognized early on their position compared to the Dems.
But, you keep believing your viewpoint, and I’ll believe mine. To date, mine is reality based. Yours not so much.
Mass drivers are threats to themselves and others on the roads.
Mass folk are not liberal at all, see de facto segregation and busing riots in the 70’s. Outside of Cambridge you may think you are in Alabama.
Over 50% of Mass voters are independent. The dems claim two thirds of half the registered voters.
The governors are usually republican: Mitt Romney, Wells etc.
Mass has a serious amount of warfare welfare especially in the metro areas, as well as a large yuppie population. Fox news is constant in the caferterias.
Lots of second story cottagers in Mass. Serfs aspiring to get a bigger cottage.
Any set of fans who chant Yankees suck is not representative of a couth citizenry.
There are enough mindless talking heads on radio with enough repeaters running around…..
The Pats did not make the play offs, huge depression should have held off the election.
Mass has become more like Kansas.
Yankees Suck bumper stickers.
Can the US vote to seceed Mass?
Some of the above is tongue in cheek, but not much.
You missed the point Tao was making, the “left” acquiesed to Obama’s team, liberdems demands, blue dog wants, and everyone else’s requests. The left never demanded and neither did the moderate Obama, which is the true fault of the Dems.
As I stated to Senator Durbin of Illinois at “Showdown in Chicago;” it would be nice if the party of the majority, the Democrats, began to act as the party of the majority rather than the party of the minority of the past presidency. There is not unity in effort or vision and there is a group of special interests who are only interested in authoring their demands into the bill.
If the House is smart, they would pass the Senate Healthcare Bill and laugh at Brown.
Run said: “If the House is smart, they would pass the Senate Healthcare Bill and laugh at Brown.“, and be out of office in Nov. with a chance to be out for a generation or more.
Decentralizing control of the all forms of the main stream media is an important step in wrenching control of the Congress from the money machine. There is a pervasive and pernicious public relatons industry in this country which is known by the term of think tanks. They are thought to produce objective research on social and economic issues. Think tank is appropriate only in so far as there is lots of thought going on in those offices with the aim of shaping public opinion rather than measuring public thought and behavior. It is a propagandist phenomenon. That PR industry is beginning to seep into journalism. Rather than report on the true nature of think tanks and their efforts at opinion control, journalism is becoming bedfellows with that industry. The concentration of media control is at the center of this degradation of journalism. Powerful financial interests are served on all sides of an insidious effort to control all debate and shape all public opinion.
“He has been far too political and provided far too little leadership except for the liberal/progressive agenda.” CoRev
There in we have the problem. You see Obama as playing to the liberal/progressive side of the continuum and I, a populist/progressive, see him in just the opposite way. He has tried too hard to lean right in an effort to build a “concensus” with a right of center group that wants no such agreement. Apparently he’s impressing no one. We don’t need a concensus builder. We need a tough leader with a clear vision of the best action to take. One that will stake his re-election on the outcome of that clear effort. He’s currently in a fog.
Well, we’re seeing some fallout and Democratic Party candidate concern around the country…all the way to California.
Boxer sought to reassure supporters that she knew she had a battle ahead. “Every state is now in play, absolutely,” she told reporters in Washington. The lesson from Massachusetts, she said, is “never, ever, ever take an election for granted.”
“Everybody takes what is going on seriously,” said Democratic political strategist Jason Kinney. “There is a strong anti-incumbent movement afoot, and in some sense an anti-Democratic-establishment movement. I don’t care if you are running for U.S. Senate or city council. If you don’t spend your energy running as far from Washington as possible, you do so at your own peril.”
The ‘universal health insurance’ in Massachusetts had not resulted in reducing cost. Instead, it went up by over 9% last year compared to the national average of 7%. A plan that will give health insurance to more people at a higher cost is not what the voters want. Health care reform is finished.
“PS; it isn’t easy to get out once you’ve been stupid enough to get in.”
Do what we did in Vietnam, just get up and leave. Will innocent people die when we leave? Yes. But that is true if we leave today, if we leave tomorrow, or if we leave 100 years from now. The only difference is how many additional deaths do we incur because we stand in the line of fire for another day.
I called Obama out during the campaign, saying we wouldn’t leave the quagmire in Iraq for atleast 4 more years if he was elected (and it looks like I am going to be right).
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. Just different special interest groups getting paid off (teacher’s unions, big pharma, big insurance, etc.)
What Krugman doesn’t entirely understand is that Obama is a black who wants to be accepted and liked by whites. He’s a black with a black’s lack of self confidence. Compare him to Roosevelt who was filled with aristocratic self confidence and you can understand where he comes from. When the Left opted to elect Obama they didn’t take this into consideration. They thought he would change the black/white psychology in the USA. He hasn’t.
Obama becoming a populist today is likely to come across as in the Movie Jerry when sport agent Bob Sugar tries to hug his client Troy Aikman to show that he too has a heart. This would be another example of life imitating kitschy art.
Jack said: “We don’t need a concensus builder. We need a tough leader with a clear vision of the best action to take. One that will stake his re-election on the outcome of that clear effort.” But, he was elected as a consensus builder. So he loses support there, because he has followed the partisan path you espouse.
On healthcare he has been your tough leader going against the wishes of the majority electorate. That message has been sent since summer, but he has persisted. He, and the Dems have lost even more support there.
What is apparent from outside the Lib/progressive movement is that those members are never satisfied. He is your candidate in so many ways. A brief list: 1) no war on terror, at least use of the term, 2) trials for terrorists, 3) constitutional rights for terrorists, 4) attempting to close Gitmo, 5) attempting to pass the atrocious health care bill as it was depleted of qualtiy and replete with pork and other payoffs, and 6) increased payoffs to groups in the quest for “fairness”. These are not conservative nor even moderate issues.
After his attempts to implement these inititiates failed, far left libs/progressives are complaining he did not go far nor fast enough. Then complain that he is continuing the successful policies that GWB implemented for national security. He is trying to keep all of safe. His efforts are less successful than Bush’s were as we have seen fourteen deaths and nearly 300 more on Chrismas day, but still libs/progressives complain that he is folowing those policies at all.
To conclude, libs/progressives are completely out of step with the average American voter, and they want their president to be in that same place. Regretably, they have gotten their wish.
“But, he was elected as a consensus builder. So he loses support there, because he has followed the partisan path you espouse.” CoRev
WARNING!!! Hard hat area. Protective gear required. Straw arguments being constructed above. Read with caution as they are easily de-constructed by the builder of the claim. Read same at your own misled peril.
After two terms of Bush and neo-con devolution one comes to the conclusion that the electorate was voting for a consensus builder only as a glaring example of Orwellian double-speak. For example: “What is apparent from outside the Lib/progressive movement is that those members are never satisfied. He is your candidate in so many ways. A brief list: 1) no war on terror, at least use of the term,….”
Try sticking with the truth. It helps to keep a conversation amicable. We expect scum like Cheney, Steele and Peter King to lie. They don’t know the difference. Here we expect an effort at the truth.
1. Continued wars both in Iraq and Afghanistan, increased troop presences. 2. What’s wrong with trying criminals? I don’t understand this. 3. Rights are inalienable, people have them, the question is whether you will respect those rights, and if you intend to have your rights respected, you have to respect those of others, particularly the right to due process. 4. Attempting being the operative word. 5. The senate screwed that one up royally, one committee instead of railing through the bill tried for months to get some republican any republican to sign on to it, and the bill that came out wasn’t one that 60 democrats would agree on. You needed to build consensus in the party and instead you built a monster that no one liked. 6. I’m not sure what this is even in reference to.
It was a mistake, but it was a mistake because he associated himself with a losing cause.
If you’re not from here and you’re talking about how racist we are in Boston based on things that happened in the 1960s, then you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about and should stop.
“But, he was elected as a consensus builder. So he loses support there, because he has followed the partisan path you espouse.” CoRev
WARNING!!! Hard hat area. Protective gear required. Straw arguments being constructed above. Read with caution as they are easily de-constructed by the builder of the claim. Read same at your own misled peril.
After two terms of Bush and neo-con devolution one comes to the conclusion that the electorate was voting for a consensus builder only as a glaring example of Orwellian double-speak. For example: “What is apparent from outside the Lib/progressive movement is that those members are never satisfied. He is your candidate in so many ways. A brief list: 1) no war on terror, at least use of the term,….”
Try sticking with the truth. It helps to keep a conversation amicable. We expect scum like Cheney, Steele and Peter King to lie. They don’t know the difference. Here we expect an effort at the truth.
This is totally insane. You need to take several steps back and a few days ban to cool off might be in order if anyone here has the ability to do that.
Jack, that’s a pretty weak rebuttal on only one of my points, “use of the term global war on terror”. I didn’t mention use of the term, “terror.” I said global war on terror. Are you denying that the pentagon directed components to drop the term? Are you denying that the Dir. Homeland Security changed the term?
You started off by suggesting that Obama was elected as a consensus builder. That may be your opinion, but is one that is virtually unsupportable. Neither you, nor I, can suggest in any accurate way what country wide motive may have been the reason for Obama’s election. You then proceded to build a case to support that Obama is not such a consensus builder and that he has been leaning far to the left of center to accomodate that ideology. That is absurd in the extreme.
Jack, you are really reaching here. I brought up consensus because it was your point. But, if you think that his campaign on hope and change (change the DC partisan environment) wasn’t an appeal to consensus for the voters. OK.
Again, though, why ignore all the other points, instead of splitting rhetorical hairs?
It’s already up:
Hitler Finds Out Scott Brown Won Massachusetts Senate Seat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4aQCiRjvZY&feature=player_embedded
.
I am asking this question again:
How could the Democratic Party leadership from top to bottom take their eye off the ball at any stage in the election process in Massachusetts and lose their 60th vote in the U.S. Senate?
How will the Dem leadership live this down?
Maybe Obama will wake up and finally lead the Democratic Party rather than ignoring politics?
Or maybe not.
The Dems are not an organized political party, just as Will Rogers said. One opinion of how this happened is on DKos. FYI. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/19/827160/-My-Mom-is-a-Democratic-machine-operative-in-Bostonheres-her-explanation Clearly, if no one is in charge, no one is really to blame. Right?
I was tracking the results city by city. Even as late as the call by CNN the election might have been pulled out if turnout in Boston and Cambridge, which went heavily for Coakly, had met the State average. And this was pretty consistent the voters in liberal cities, which is where you would think the machine had the best resources came out 8-9 points fewer than they did in all the small towns.
The image is a bit incongruous given that an alter-Hitler is speaking the words. The words are, however, on the money. It’s not all Obama. The Dems in the Congress act and talk like a bunch of spinless sychophants to entrenched power. Geithner could probably get more done than any of the bunch of them. Problem being who’s best interests would he represent. The Democratic leadership have to learn to represent the masses and then to communicate that representation to them.
By the way, the same clip with a script of Hitler complaining that his Porsche Panamera is late arriving is much funnier.
Movie Guy – I have no idea. But I do know they keep Rahm in place, and therefore (as Larry Wilborne said in another context two nights ago) have never discovered shame.
Real-life ramification:
MA voters will see their taxes and fees go up, as all the subsidies that Senator Kerry managed to get in the Federal bill for MA are now at best a bargaining chip. (If Scott Brown were voting for the voters of MA–who, like HI, have health care but pay on a state level–he would be the 60th vote for the bill as it stands. Fortunately, Scott Brown will not cast a “Yes” vote in his three years in office.)
the meaning and impact of the MA senate election.
It’s hard to put into words the magnitude of this. I’ll let some of today’s titles tell the story:
“Little Guy to Washington: Drop Dead”
“Has Obama become Radioactive?”
“Massachusetts Earthquake puts Everything in Play”
“Why the Great and Growing Backlash?”
“Barack Obama’s One Year Presidency”
“A Revolution Begins”
“A Political Inflection Point”
Hyperbolic? Perhaps. Probably. But still……..
It’s not politics that he’s ignoring. He’s not practicing any form of leadership. He must think he’s little more than a cheerleader. It’s the jerks around him, Emanuel for one, who are practicing politics. Unfortunately it’s the politics of deception rather than that of winning. He’s got to stop playing to financial power and start showing the people that he is genuinely on their side. Action would be far better than his nice words.
Perhaps you underestimate the mind-twisting abilities of the plutocrats and their propaganda machine. Americans are as a whole not terribly bright and many have no understanding of their own interests in any abstract way so they are quite easily duped. Most media represents the plutocracy to a greater or lesser extend. Virtually no media is populist in the socialist sense.
warprofiteers=warmongers
Okay but who is in charge of the Republican party? Seems rather headless to me. The plutocrats run their propaganda machines outside party organizations. Tea Party stuff, you know. Screamers, etc., etc.
warprofiteers=warmongers
Those of us who attended some of the demonstrations kept trying to tell you that things were changing. But, too often we got the standard talking points responses. Wrong numbers attending being accepted. Attention to a handful of radical signs without looking at the others. Believing the spin that those attending were not regular, tax paying voters. Just inflamed them/us more.
What has happened is the electorate is tired of the partisanship, the lying, the failure to represent, and the DC inner circle maneuvering. It isn’t a left or right (Dem/Repub) issue, it is a backlash against the failure to lead where the electorate wanted. Dems listened too much to their far left constituencies (dKos, HuffPo, etc) and Repubs got too greedy, and both parties’ leaders were far too arrogant. As a result the “professional” politicians in DC got too powerful, too rich and too insulated from their electorate.
Dems were shocked and revolted by the early reactions to the open houses, Repubs played to them, but neither were convinced of the depth and breadth of the feelings. I suspect after MA, both parties know that their future is reliant not on their party affiliation, but on their ability to please their voters.
National politicians failed, are failing, and if they continue to fail to please their voters, will no longer have a job. Next I suspect we will see some action taken on those who go from capital hill to lobby jobs. But that may be stretching the impact/influence of this anger a bit far.
The silent majority has learned a lesson about silence, and don’t expect them to go back to being complacent for some time. Current Dem leadership is targeted, Reid, Pelosi, Boxer, and Hoyer all have targets painted upon them. Some will no longer have jobs after Nov.
The plutocracy has coopted the Democrats as well as the GOP…… only to a lesser extent. There is still some resistence in the Democrat party. But Congress as a whole can easily be bought and virtually all the propaganda machines outside the parties are extremely right wing. Leftish thought exists almost exclusively on the net and most Americans don’t spend much time reading political ideas on the net. They are passive and watch TV or listen to radio.
warprofiteers=warmongers
OMG that is hilarious!
To please the voters you have to know what the voters want. If the voters are confused and send contradictory signals, how are you doing to “please” them? I think the issue is more extra party propaganda that is basically disguised extreme right wing stuff. The Tea Party stuff, the nihilistic screaming stuff, the stuff that Koch, etc fund and pay for.
warprofiteers=warmongers
sorry for the typos
“going to…”
“funds”
GregL, this kind of thinking: “Maybe Obama will wake up and finally lead the Democratic Party rather than ignoring politics?” is the problem. The Prez leads the country! He has been far too political and provided far too little leadership except for the liberal/progressive agenda.
He has failed, unless there is a major shift in his agenda. It isn’t too late for him to recover, but I’m not sure that he can because his beliefs are too different from the average voter’s.
Nancy, there is a lot of soul searching going on, but to say it was am internal Dem strife issue ignores the political headwinds represented by the demonstrations. All incumbents are watching this election.
The liberal/progressive agenda has been rejected, but there is deep animosity against nealy all incumbents.
Can’t go for the “aren’t particularly bright” thing, though it is pretty commonly heard. Just to build the argument from the ground up, if we come around to understanding that women aren’t intellectually deficient, blacks aren’t intellectually sub-par, that in fact no subset of humans is incapable of higher thought. It cannot be that we as a group are dim, if no particular constitutuent of the group is dim.
More importantly, assigning our fellow citizens to “not particularly bright” is tantamount to giving up on them or turning Straussian to lie them into what is good for them.
Now that I’ve gotten my single uncynical thought out of the way, I have to say, we aren’t going to get anywhere with “The Democratic leadership have to learn to represent the masses and then to communicate that representation to them.” I mean, why exactly must people who occupy some of the most powerful governmental positions in the US “have to learn” to do anything but what they have always done? They don’t “have to”. We have to make them, and figuring out how to do that is the trick. Publicly funded campaigns might be a step in that direction.
Re plutocratic propaganda: if you go to the Drudge Report page (his site is all slanted way to the Right with a choice of articles overwhelminigly snide or critical of Obama and the Democrats, etc.;a real scumbag site)you will usually find some ad there attacking things that might help the poor. Right now there is one asking people to defeat “Obamacare”. I doubt it is officially put there by the GOP, but rather something the Koch group and his ilk would pay for. I think there is a lot of that stuff around, all paid for by plutocrats. They funded the Tea Parties and the screamers, etc., etc. No wonder the masses are confused about what they want. They, frankly, are lied to much of the time and their heads are full of misinformation and downright lies. Most of it serving the interests of the people who are giving them the shaft, amazingly enough.
warprofiteers=warmongers
The GOP should not over read this and get too confident.
The Democrats should not underread this, and think it was a freak of nature event.
Both parties have much to be embarassed about.
Obama has only provided leadership “for the liberal/progressive agenda?”
Really? On what planet did that happen on?
Leadership is not mouthing platitudes intended to placate the liberal/progressive agenda and then proceeding to do the opposite by embracing the exact policies that he ran against in order to get liberal/progressive votes.
Obama never has been and never will be a liberal/progressive. He is a right-leaning moderate. Just ask Brad DeLong, Paul Krugman and others, who tell us so.
Glenn Greenwald did a great job of tearing apart this particular meme:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/20/left/index.html
save_the_rustbelt
Both parties have much to be embarassed about.
That’s the way I felt after we elected Obama.
Tao said: “Glenn Greenwald did a great job of tearing apart this particular meme: ” He did? What I saw was wome whining that the left got nothing. While all the while ignoring simple thnbgs like the list of losses were actually attempts that failed.
A conservative or moderate would look at the same list and say they should never have been attempted, because they represent only the wishes/views of the left. We are still a center right nation. Far left changes can not be implemented rapidly, and that is the issue.
Rusty, “Both parties have much to be embarassed about.” I hope both party’s incumbents are receiving this message.
CoRev,
We are still a center right nation.
No, we’re a nation with cognitive dissonance. Voters want big government projects and benefits for themselves and not a dime for the other guy. Voters want low taxes for themselves and high taxes for everyone else. Voters want an isolationist country that also engages in perpetual war with radical Islam. Voters want a melting pot and a wall between the US and Mexico. Voters want cheap imports and “Made in USA” products. Teabag protesters hold up signs with swastikas and hammer-and-sickles right next to each other and don’t see the contradiction. Voters demand more personal freedom while they vote to ban gay rights. Voters want a pumped up economy but don’t want deficits. Voters are nitwits. Always have been and always will be.
Ken,
Didn’t Scott Brown vote for Romney’s healthcare reform, which is almost identical to the Senate bill?
CoRev,
Voter are scared and when they get scared they get angry. Angry voters are not always smart voters. No one ever said that voters weren’t scared and angry. The point some of us were making about teabagger rallies is that they stoked angry. Of course, that was by design. That’s what the GOP organizers were counting on. As to the size of teabagger rallies, I seem to recall that a few weeks ago there was a teabagger rally in DC that only drew two people.
The state with “universal” health insurance (note the importance of the word insurance and not care) rejects the candidate in favor of nationwide “universal” health insurance (except for illegal alliens) and goes with the candidate that will vote against it. Enough said.
Can we chalk up MoveOn.org as a leftwing propoganda site? Up until January 2009 they incessantly posted about getting our troops out of the Middle East. Haven’t heard a peep since then. We’re still bombing innocent civilians like we did in Kosove under Bill Jeff’s presidency. But if you got a D after your name it is ok to the folks who MovedOn from MoveOn.org.
Of course opinions about what is propaganda vary. Sensible opinion such as getting our imperial armies out of Muslim nations seems just that to me: sensible opinion. If you of course endorse our war on Islam it is propaganda. You like the war? You think we should continue to occupy Muslim nations and kill the inhabitants? PS; it isn’t easy to get out once you’ve been stupid enough to get in. Biden is now going to Iraq to try to mediate disputes between Shiites and Sunnis. I trust the Pentagon would hope we don’t have to occupy Iraq again with 100,000+ troops when most of our troops are now in Afghanistan, and getting nowhere.
warprofiteers=warmongers
Speaking of Obama, I tend to think it was probably a mistake for him to go to Mass. to support Coakley. It reminded the screamers and racists there that she was the “black candidate” (preferred by #1 black). It gave the screamers the opportunity to grossly insult Obama and his office with the demonstration I linked to on another post…probably the most outrageous “shout down” any President has ever faced. The “just below the surface” racism of Mass was very above the surface there. I also suspect people with no jobs tend to let their racism come to the surface. It is convenient the blame the “black” for their troubles.
warprofiteers=warmongers
Obama, Allies Now Seek Pared-Down Health Care Bill– AP
Chastened by the Democratic Senate loss in Massachusetts, President Barack Obama and congressional allies signaled Wednesday they will try to scale back his sweeping health care overhaul in an effort to at least keep parts of it alive.
In truth there isn’t much at all left to it. It had been reduced to a barebones minimum and now not even that. You can see the power here of the plutocracy that has America in a python-like strangle hold. The victim was about to breath a wee bit but the python tightened its coils around the victim and stopped that immediately. Fat chance that Crazyamerica will ever escape the python’s grasp.
warprofiteers=warmongers
Here’s some of the stuff you see on the Drudge site:
http://www.authenticgop.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=T_shirts
I like the Obama=snob one best. Says a lot about whoever funds all this. Related to the Koch people?
warprofiteers=warmongers
2slugs, scared? No! Angry? Some. Frustrated, disappointed, and willing to fight to get political representratives that work for them, and not the party, special interest du jour, and themselves.
Tea bagger rallies did not stoke anger, they were mostly due to frustration.
You persist in thiinking these rallies were GOP{ driven. They were not early on. Repubs were the lesser of the two evils in many of the rally goesrs minds, so the GOP recognized early on their position compared to the Dems.
But, you keep believing your viewpoint, and I’ll believe mine. To date, mine is reality based. Yours not so much.
CoRev,
Glad you find a little humor………………..
MG,
I am a New Yorker with long ties to Boston.
Some observations:
Mass drivers are threats to themselves and others on the roads.
Mass folk are not liberal at all, see de facto segregation and busing riots in the 70’s. Outside of Cambridge you may think you are in Alabama.
Over 50% of Mass voters are independent. The dems claim two thirds of half the registered voters.
The governors are usually republican: Mitt Romney, Wells etc.
Mass has a serious amount of warfare welfare especially in the metro areas, as well as a large yuppie population. Fox news is constant in the caferterias.
Lots of second story cottagers in Mass. Serfs aspiring to get a bigger cottage.
Any set of fans who chant Yankees suck is not representative of a couth citizenry.
There are enough mindless talking heads on radio with enough repeaters running around…..
The Pats did not make the play offs, huge depression should have held off the election.
Mass has become more like Kansas.
Yankees Suck bumper stickers.
Can the US vote to seceed Mass?
Some of the above is tongue in cheek, but not much.
Ghandi and Ben Franklin warned against the dictatorship of the masses.
Ghandi particularly warned against the majority determining moral issues.
But, the US won’t go parliamentary.
Cantab,
“That’s the way I felt after we elected Obama.”
I felt that way about Obama when he went along with Mc Chrystal sending 30,000 more troops to spend our treasure for W’s mistakes.
CoRev:
You missed the point Tao was making, the “left” acquiesed to Obama’s team, liberdems demands, blue dog wants, and everyone else’s requests. The left never demanded and neither did the moderate Obama, which is the true fault of the Dems.
As I stated to Senator Durbin of Illinois at “Showdown in Chicago;” it would be nice if the party of the majority, the Democrats, began to act as the party of the majority rather than the party of the minority of the past presidency. There is not unity in effort or vision and there is a group of special interests who are only interested in authoring their demands into the bill.
If the House is smart, they would pass the Senate Healthcare Bill and laugh at Brown.
ilsm,
Obama promised to do so during the campaign. John Kerry made the same promise 4 years earlier.
Voter are scared and when they get scared they get angry. Angry voters are not always smart voters.
I didn’t see the anger in Massachusetts. Howerver, I think we can explain Obama’s election as a result of stupid anger.
That is so, but taking Mc Chrystal’s powdered prince of a generals’ advice!!!
Obma should have given a better excuse than “I can’t let Karzai go down so fast after I become president”.
Avoiding the inevitable defeat………………….. Is nothing more than prolonging it.
Yes, but its better. Its not designed to nationalize healthcare one step at a time.
And 2slugs, shows us with disrespect and arrogance why the Dem brand is being trampled. That one is worth a Sheesh!
Run said: “If the House is smart, they would pass the Senate Healthcare Bill and laugh at Brown.“, and be out of office in Nov. with a chance to be out for a generation or more.
Self preservation kicks in eventually.
Mad Marg,
warprofiteers=warmongers
This looks like an unimaginative attempt to copy buff’s line. Please come us with something that flows better.
Marg if I may suggest:
militarism=warprofiteers=warmongers=imperialism
Decentralizing control of the all forms of the main stream media is an important step in wrenching control of the Congress from the money machine. There is a pervasive and pernicious public relatons industry in this country which is known by the term of think tanks. They are thought to produce objective research on social and economic issues. Think tank is appropriate only in so far as there is lots of thought going on in those offices with the aim of shaping public opinion rather than measuring public thought and behavior. It is a propagandist phenomenon. That PR industry is beginning to seep into journalism. Rather than report on the true nature of think tanks and their efforts at opinion control, journalism is becoming bedfellows with that industry. The concentration of media control is at the center of this degradation of journalism. Powerful financial interests are served on all sides of an insidious effort to control all debate and shape all public opinion.
“He has been far too political and provided far too little leadership except for the liberal/progressive agenda.” CoRev
There in we have the problem. You see Obama as playing to the liberal/progressive side of the continuum and I, a populist/progressive, see him in just the opposite way. He has tried too hard to lean right in an effort to build a “concensus” with a right of center group that wants no such agreement. Apparently he’s impressing no one. We don’t need a concensus builder. We need a tough leader with a clear vision of the best action to take. One that will stake his re-election on the outcome of that clear effort. He’s currently in a fog.
No just one state at a time.
But that wouldn’t be a step. Buh wah?
Sammy Happiness is a Warm Gun.
Curl up.
Well, we’re seeing some fallout and Democratic Party candidate concern around the country…all the way to California.
Boxer sought to reassure supporters that she knew she had a battle ahead. “Every state is now in play, absolutely,” she told reporters in Washington. The lesson from Massachusetts, she said, is “never, ever, ever take an election for granted.”
“Everybody takes what is going on seriously,” said Democratic political strategist Jason Kinney. “There is a strong anti-incumbent movement afoot, and in some sense an anti-Democratic-establishment movement. I don’t care if you are running for U.S. Senate or city council. If you don’t spend your energy running as far from Washington as possible, you do so at your own peril.”
For California Democrats, GOP upset in Massachusetts is a cause for worry
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cal-dems21-2010jan21,0,1247401.story
The ‘universal health insurance’ in Massachusetts had not resulted in reducing cost. Instead, it went up by over 9% last year compared to the national average of 7%. A plan that will give health insurance to more people at a higher cost is not what the voters want. Health care reform is finished.
“PS; it isn’t easy to get out once you’ve been stupid enough to get in.”
Do what we did in Vietnam, just get up and leave. Will innocent people die when we leave? Yes. But that is true if we leave today, if we leave tomorrow, or if we leave 100 years from now. The only difference is how many additional deaths do we incur because we stand in the line of fire for another day.
I called Obama out during the campaign, saying we wouldn’t leave the quagmire in Iraq for atleast 4 more years if he was elected (and it looks like I am going to be right).
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. Just different special interest groups getting paid off (teacher’s unions, big pharma, big insurance, etc.)
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/he-wasnt-the-one-weve-been-waiting-for/
What Krugman doesn’t entirely understand is that Obama is a black who wants to be accepted and liked by whites. He’s a black with a black’s lack of self confidence. Compare him to Roosevelt who was filled with aristocratic self confidence and you can understand where he comes from. When the Left opted to elect Obama they didn’t take this into consideration. They thought he would change the black/white psychology in the USA. He hasn’t.
warprofitters=warmongers
Obama becoming a populist today is likely to come across as in the Movie Jerry when sport agent Bob Sugar tries to hug his client Troy Aikman to show that he too has a heart. This would be another example of life imitating kitschy art.
Jack said: “We don’t need a concensus builder. We need a tough leader with a clear vision of the best action to take. One that will stake his re-election on the outcome of that clear effort.” But, he was elected as a consensus builder. So he loses support there, because he has followed the partisan path you espouse.
On healthcare he has been your tough leader going against the wishes of the majority electorate. That message has been sent since summer, but he has persisted. He, and the Dems have lost even more support there.
What is apparent from outside the Lib/progressive movement is that those members are never satisfied. He is your candidate in so many ways. A brief list: 1) no war on terror, at least use of the term, 2) trials for terrorists, 3) constitutional rights for terrorists, 4) attempting to close Gitmo, 5) attempting to pass the atrocious health care bill as it was depleted of qualtiy and replete with pork and other payoffs, and 6) increased payoffs to groups in the quest for “fairness”. These are not conservative nor even moderate issues.
After his attempts to implement these inititiates failed, far left libs/progressives are complaining he did not go far nor fast enough. Then complain that he is continuing the successful policies that GWB implemented for national security. He is trying to keep all of safe. His efforts are less successful than Bush’s were as we have seen fourteen deaths and nearly 300 more on Chrismas day, but still libs/progressives complain that he is folowing those policies at all.
To conclude, libs/progressives are completely out of step with the average American voter, and they want their president to be in that same place. Regretably, they have gotten their wish.
Marg,
He’s [Obama] a black with a black’s lack of self confidence.
This is not credible.
“But, he was elected as a consensus builder. So he loses support there, because he has followed the partisan path you espouse.” CoRev
WARNING!!! Hard hat area. Protective gear required. Straw arguments being constructed above. Read with caution as they are easily de-constructed by the builder of the claim. Read same at your own misled peril.
After two terms of Bush and neo-con devolution one comes to the conclusion that the electorate was voting for a consensus builder only as a glaring example of Orwellian double-speak. For example:
“What is apparent from outside the Lib/progressive movement is that those members are never satisfied. He is your candidate in so many ways. A brief list: 1) no war on terror, at least use of the term,….”
Have you been sleeping through some propagandist night mare? Try this presentation for an example of same: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxRnSZ8HB7M
Try sticking with the truth. It helps to keep a conversation amicable. We expect scum like Cheney, Steele and Peter King to lie. They don’t know the difference. Here we expect an effort at the truth.
1. Continued wars both in Iraq and Afghanistan, increased troop presences.
2. What’s wrong with trying criminals? I don’t understand this.
3. Rights are inalienable, people have them, the question is whether you will respect those rights, and if you intend to have your rights respected, you have to respect those of others, particularly the right to due process.
4. Attempting being the operative word.
5. The senate screwed that one up royally, one committee instead of railing through the bill tried for months to get some republican any republican to sign on to it, and the bill that came out wasn’t one that 60 democrats would agree on. You needed to build consensus in the party and instead you built a monster that no one liked.
6. I’m not sure what this is even in reference to.
It was a mistake, but it was a mistake because he associated himself with a losing cause.
If you’re not from here and you’re talking about how racist we are in Boston based on things that happened in the 1960s, then you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about and should stop.
Some things are worth repeating:
“But, he was elected as a consensus builder. So he loses support there, because he has followed the partisan path you espouse.” CoRev
WARNING!!! Hard hat area. Protective gear required. Straw arguments being constructed above. Read with caution as they are easily de-constructed by the builder of the claim. Read same at your own misled peril.
After two terms of Bush and neo-con devolution one comes to the conclusion that the electorate was voting for a consensus builder only as a glaring example of Orwellian double-speak. For example:
“What is apparent from outside the Lib/progressive movement is that those members are never satisfied. He is your candidate in so many ways. A brief list: 1) no war on terror, at least use of the term,….”
Have you been sleeping through some propagandist night mare? Try this presentation for an example of same: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxRnSZ8HB7M
Try sticking with the truth. It helps to keep a conversation amicable. We expect scum like Cheney, Steele and Peter King to lie. They don’t know the difference. Here we expect an effort at the truth.
This is totally insane. You need to take several steps back and a few days ban to cool off might be in order if anyone here has the ability to do that.
Jack, that’s a pretty weak rebuttal on only one of my points, “use of the term global war on terror”. I didn’t mention use of the term, “terror.” I said global war on terror. Are you denying that the pentagon directed components to drop the term? Are you denying that the Dir. Homeland Security changed the term?
How about my other points?
You started off by suggesting that Obama was elected as a consensus builder. That may be your opinion, but is one that is virtually unsupportable. Neither you, nor I, can suggest in any accurate way what country wide motive may have been the reason for Obama’s election. You then proceded to build a case to support that Obama is not such a consensus builder and that he has been leaning far to the left of center to accomodate that ideology. That is absurd in the extreme.
Jack, you are really reaching here. I brought up consensus because it was your point. But, if you think that his campaign on hope and change (change the DC partisan environment) wasn’t an appeal to consensus for the voters. OK.
Again, though, why ignore all the other points, instead of splitting rhetorical hairs?