This occurred to me after I received a response to my comment in icebergslim's diary " TIME TO LET THE REPUBLICANS GO."
First, the comment:
Why do we insist on playing ball with them? (1+ / 0-)
I mean, I know Jesus talked about turning the other cheek, but at this rate I'd have thought we ran out of cheeks months ago.
At some point, the fight for bipartisanship has to come second after using our majority to actually accomplish stuff. That's right. We voted the Republicans out. So why the insistence on making nicey nice? We know they're useless. That's why we so decisively showed them the door.
/infuriated
-------------------
And the response:
I'm convinced that's what's behind a lot (1+ / 0-)
of the drop in polls recently. Disapproval is climbing not because people think Repubs are right, but because Dems are not giving them what they demanded - Change.
by sherlyle on Sun Aug 30, 2009 at 09:16:00 AM PDT
This is a message that desperately needs to get out, because sherlyle is completely correct. The poll numbers for Democrats aren't dropping because people are slowly realizing that the Republicans had it right all along. Heavens, no.
People are pissed because we voted for CHANGE, but the change is nowhere to be found.
Hell, if we thought the Republicans were such visionary leaders, we'd have voted for them in the past two elections. Instead, we saw them for the hateful, fear-mongering, myopic tools that they have perpetually proven themselves to be, and so we voted them the f*** out.
And now we, dear believers that we are, are patiently waiting for Obama to step up-- like we know he can, like we desperately wish he would-- and issue a world-class smackdown on the Party of No. We campaigned and donated and proselytized and canvassed on his behalf. We were tired of the swampy mire of the last eight years, and we know enough about the American Dream to know that you can get to the mountain top with a little hard work and dedication.
Obama and his administration would be remiss in forgetting that.
Unfortunately, his MO, after we pulled out all the stops to get him fairly elected-- after we spoke out with finality about who we believed would be better-suited to run this country-- has been to forego action in the hopes of bipartisanship.
Pardon the terrible pun, but the bipartisanship is never coming back to port. That ship, sadly, has sailed. The Republicans not only refuse to do anything helpful, they take pride in their obstructionism. Their number one goal has nothing to do with helping the nation or its people, but instead revolves around this obsession with destroying Obama and anything he hopes to accomplish. And they've had the better part of a decade to fine-tune their spin machine, and they think it's working.
Look at the polls. Forget the biased wording of the questions, the political leanings of the institutions posing those questions, or the networks that parrot off whatever results suit them the best. The numbers say that the people are falling out of love with Obama, that the honeymoon is over, that finally America is realizing that universal healthcare is devil Nazi socialism.
That's not what the polls are saying AT ALL. The polls, I now see, are reflecting that we are beginning to feel a little misled.
For starters, there's a powerful amount of bad will towards King George, which is what helped Obama get elected in the first place, but yet he refuses to prosecute our former war-criminal-in-chief. Secondly, Obama has kept himself surrounded by people we find troubling, like Geithner, Summers, et. al., who made bailing out the failed banks an immediate priority (and remarkable, isn't it, how swiftly that particular goal was achieved, whereas the healthcare debacle could go on forever). And then there's this naive idea about bipartisanship.
All the while, we tell ourselves that Obama's got some master plan; that he's playing a very calculated chess game; that he's waiting for the perfect moment to deliver the greatest "gotcha!" moment in American politics. But our patience is wearing thin. We didn't vote for Republican hand-holding. If the Repubs don't like what we're going to do now that we're in power, well, now they know how we felt for the last excruciating eight years.
We can't let the spin machine turn "dropping Democratic numbers" into "success for the Republicans". The threat of another right-wing takeover in 2010 or 2012 makes me physically ill, and legitimately afraid.
We need to make it known that what we're opposing is futile efforts and time wasted trying to reach out to a party that will bite off our hand if given the chance. We need to make it known that what we want is our hope and faith in this administration restored. No concessions, no compromise-- which, incidentally, is not how I'd ideally like my government to function, but the right wing has left us no choice.
The Democrats desperately need a message. I think this is it.