Friday, March 21, 2014

What Digby Said



Well, actually one of Digby's running buddies over at Hullabaloo, but still:
...
For a young voter or voter of color, voting for Democrats isn't a matter of hope for a better future. It's basically a defensive crouch to prevent the insane sociopaths from taking over. To provide real hope, Democrats would have to start pushing for a $15 minimum wage, for basic universal income, for single-payer healthcare, for a green jobs Apollo Program, for student loan forgiveness, and similar policies.

As it is, there's no real reason for an infrequent Democratic voter to come to the polls. Sure, it's important to stop the likes of Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney from sitting in the White House, and appointing decent judges to the Supreme Court is nice.

But there's no way Democrats are going to solve their midterm problem without providing a real, positive vision for the country. If even hardcore activists like me see voting as a defensive rather than an offensive weapon, it's no surprise that many more apolitical people can scarcely be bothered to care.
Back in 2010 after the last midterm drubbing the Democrats took, I wrote a piece about how they had been crushed as a direct result of "buying into the core Centrist delusion that if Democrats (and only Democrats) would just compromise with the batshit Right...and then compromise some more...and then compromise a little more....and then compromise just a weeee bit more....the Randite Supermen could be appeased sufficiently to hold off nuking the global economy for a little while longer". I sided with a few other, radical, America-hating Liberals who suggested that if the Democrats want to actually win, then Barack Obama must resign from Cult of Centrism, quit trying to find common ground with people who want to destroy him --
Instead, the ideologically-lockstepping Right led by Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers have found in Obama their perfect patsy: the Democrat who seems constitutionally incapable of counter-punching, who can only feel comfortable while suspended between two opposing positions and who will, therefor, find a compromise between opposites even when he has to invent wholly fictional opposing views to which he can cede half the playing field.
-- and do the hardest thing of all:
 ...he must exceed his design specifications. This is not unprecedented, but like Franklin Roosevelt the capitalist-turned-social-Democrat or Abraham Lincoln the compromiser-turned-Emancipator, Obama must let go of a central pillar of his identity and embrace the brutal fact that our modern house divided against itself cannot stand.
If the Obama Administration can find ways of sanctioning Vladimir Putin's banker and chief of staff without putting American troops on the ground in Ukraine, surely the clever people up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue can come up with a few creative ways of publicly cockpunching the Party of Louis Gohmert and Jim Inhofe.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Digby speaks for herself. I'm a young voter, I think Obama has been great. There's only one thing I'm pissed about, the lack of a grand bargain. We were promised one. Slow the growth of social security, flatten the tax code. This is why I went for Obama, and it's why I want Clinton in 2012. The Republicans won't cut things for shit, they promise to and then they don't.

gratuitous said...

Hmmm. Give voters a reason to turn out for you, instead of just depending on your opponent to be so patently unsavory as to get folks to vote against your opponent. State your position, work your position, vote your position and enact your position, and people will turn out to vote for you, even in an off year?

Well, that's just crazy talk that is. It'll make George Will pull one of his frowniest faces, and nobody wants that. The Ghost of David Broder will rise up out of the DC swampland and roam Washington to feed on the souls of shrill hippies, if any can be found (souls, not hippies, which are positively everywhere and must be vigilantly guarded against).

Anonymous said...

Think of what it took for the dems to take congress in 06.
It is an easy exercise, just think of every horrific nightmare shrub pulled in his first term. Books were devoted to the subject.
....but it only took two years of a black president, cleaning up the mess, to erase the collective horror memories of shrubs exiting coup de grace: global economic collapse?
..and the repubs gained control of the house in 2010.
We are auguring down: A death spiral that ends with a veto overriding able congress and
and maybe even another fascist dunce in the White House.
The worlds biggest slow motion train wreck. A quicksand nightmare.
Have they not created enough poor people to counter the trend?
Oh yeah...the other demographic that doesn't turn out in midterms. The young and poor.
Republicans are expert at creating and exploiting both.

Mole said...

It's nice to know you're frustrated with Dems ineptitude with politics. I don't think it's because dems are dumb and can't take advantage of a winning issue.. I think they refuse to.

I think for senators and congress people to remain in the upper class they're selling the country to the highest bidder.. with the federal government beyond saving from itself.

I agree we have to vote Dems.. but it's not good to think they're going to do anything different except recycle old republican ideas that were good.

the only way to fix this is to work with the conservatives that know their party are looter and try to force a new amendment to separate corporate money from our policy.

If we don't, and if we really want progressive ideas.. you need to buy off republicans leaders

bluicebank said...

Amen to all that.

In a sane country, the positions/tactics of the Democratic Party would be more than enough to bury today's Republican Party. Dead men could win against your typical GOP troglodyte.

But no. Greatness is required. It usually is.

Capt. Bat Guano said...

Didgy has it right, I've been voting in self defense since I turned 18 in 1976 and I'm getting pretty damn sick of it.

Pinkamena said...

Looks like the troll train rolls on. The Poenon is going to keep up the emoleft lies until we are all either so sickened we stop reading DG for fear of having to see yet more self-righteous trolling, or we finally just give in and agree to punish the Democrats for the crime of not being compltely unelectable.

Horace Boothroyd III said...

@Pinky

Could you try that again, after the booze wears off?

Pinkamena said...

Horace, do your goddamn research. Read the comments over the past few days like I told you to last time you commented.

Notice how many times an anonymous commenter comes along with a sarcastic "yeah, let's vote for Dems who are obviously just like the GOP because I said so" attitude like the first one on this post.

Then try acting like an adult for five minutes.

Anonymous said...

What Pinky and her fellow Cescan Obots refuse to understand is that while their self-congratulatory and obvious superiority in exclaiming their vaunted "adultiness" is clearly a badge of honor, the stupidity and ignorance necessary to ignore the actual economic damage done by third way centrists like Clinton (both of them) and Obama is the bipartisanny fuzzy feeling that only comes from a politician selling out his/her base. The utter economic devastation of the poors and the middle class was clearly a goal of the right wing and yet we give Clinton a pass on NAFTA/Gramm Leach Bliley Act/Welfare Reform and Obama's TPP and the Grand Bargain. Notice how they all go in the opposite direction of the New Deal. And while the Clintons and Obama have been good on supplying crumbs they've been expert in removing the platter for all to share. Fuck your adult obstinance in the face of two faced rhetoric, policy and real world results. The only adults in the room? Fucking delusional children pretending to be adults is more like it. Morons.

Anonymous said...

@ anon 8:19
re: your comment
It was..TS;DR
(Too stupid, Didn't Read)

Anonymous said...

@anon12:06

re: your comment
It was..FU;DC
(Fuck you, Don't Care)

Pinkamena said...

My, seems I've pissed off the little purity troll. Good.