Warning this is going to be a very controversial diary, but Progressives really need a little strong medicine to cure the AFFLICTION that is slowly tearing away at my Democratic party.
I have written several diaries in the past that detailed my frustration with those who would countenance going after Democrats who are not Liberal Progressive enough. Each time I have done this, I get comments from my Lefty Brethren asking why I am blaming Progressives? So it's Progressives fault?, and other comments along those lines. I was always kowtowed by these comments and have tried to explain to them that I am not blaming progressives, but no more.
Please repeat and blog, repeat and blog..."Democrats going after Democratic seats is STUPID...DEMOCRATS going after REPUBLICAN SEATS IS SMART!"
Party Building is not primarying someone who agrees with you 60%-80% of the time vs someone who agrees with you NONE of the time!
With MAJORITIES in both Houses of Congress and the Office of the Presidency, there are Democrats hellbent on destroying that advantage because of the strategies of some Progressives entities like FireDogLake trying to "Out Left" each other.
They say that its because the President and conservative Dems in congress aren't being Liberal Progressive enough with passing policies that are important to Progressives. Well I am calling BS on that line of logic as its not that the policies are bad, in the eyes of these groups it's because what's passed is not perfect enough.
Peter Connolly writing for HuffPost says the Democratic party is in full Civil War mode.
Founded in 1946 by leading liberals such as J. K. Galbraith, Walter Reuther, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Eleanor Roosevelt, the Americans for Democratic Action ("ADA") is America's oldest liberal organization. Each year, the ADA performs the useful service of rating the "liberal" quotient of each member of Congress's voting record based on "key" votes. Such surveys can be questioned as a measure of a politician's commitment or effectiveness but are a reasonable indicator of his or her ideological stance on most issues which actually come before Congress. For example, for 2009, Barney Frank got a 100 percent score for his House votes while Eric Cantor received a zero score, about what one would expect.
It will also surprise no one to learn that Representative John Boozman (R-AR), this year's Arkansas Republican Senate nominee, also received a zero grade from the ADA for his 2009 House votes. But, in light of recent events, it is disconcerting to learn that Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) got a 95 percent score for her 2009 Senate voting record, one short of perfect. She voted for the stimulus bill, and with the Administration on every key health care vote and on every other vote viewed as important by the ADA, except for the Durbin mortgage "cramdown" amendment, which deprived her of 100 percent.
Yes a 95% rating by the oldest Liberal Activist group in the US and progressives supported a $10 million hit job on her. It is inexplicable that labor would spend that money on a Democrat and not a Republican.
Like I mentioned above its like all these Liberal/Progressive groups are trying to OUT LEFT each other. By trying to demonstrate their Bona Fides and in some cases increase their traffic, these Progressives are moving the entire party too far left of where the electorate is and as a result on the fence Independents WILL vote for Republicans in swing Districts.
John Chait at The New Republic writes:
I've been writing for several months about the curious sense of disappointment afflicting liberals —the belief that they've been let down by a president who is, in fact, racking up historical achievements. Part of the reason for liberal dismay in an ahistorical understanding of how progress works. In the liberal memory, political success is bathed in golden-hued triumph. In reality, it is a grubby, stop-and-start process that looks pretty ugly up close.
Chait nails it...Some Progressives are suffering from a strange fever that blinds them to the achievements that this administration has accomplished in the first 18 months of his Presidency, namely Health Care Reform. This doesn't even include what's in the pipeline with Financial Regulation, which no matter what happens to it in conference will be a historic achievement for this or any President, getting two very large pieces of Legislation passed within the first two years is amazing. Also, by next year the Senate will pass the Nuclear treaty with Russia which will be the third major piece of Changethis President will have made.
All these bills are not perfect, but they certainly move the ball forward and is probably the best thing we can get with a congress that is highly influenced by special interests and a caucus as diverse as the Democrats.
A lot of Progressives hew to the line that if they don't get everything and I mean everything, size, shape, and color, then they got nothing at all.
Michael Tomaskey writes:
The despair has taken many guises. There is the disappointment, wholly ingenuous and therefore shot with some pathos, of the rank-and-file progressive voter who really did get swept up in the overbaked rhetoric of 2008 and came somehow to believe that Obama possessed unearthly powers and ought to have been able to set everything right in seven or eight months, a year tops. There is in other instances the welled-up anger of what we might call professional disgruntleists: people on the left who "just knew" that Obama wasn’t all that he was cracked up to be–or, more pointedly, that he cracked himself up to be–and have taken each apostasy and sell out, on single-payer or the banks or the Copenhagen summit or what have you, as proof that they were right all along.
the way liberals interpret and talk about history today. The five-alarm political culture in which we live now forces upon us a certain kind of response to current events: Every little flare-up is elevated to roiling controversy, and every minor setback a potential death blow to the progressive cause, every departure from the sacred codex of Keynes not a mere delay or strategic feint or hindrance but an act of treachery
A historical reading tells us that liberal policies take time.
Actual history is slower, more tedious, and certainly less uplifting. It’s not for Obama’s sake, but for liberalism’s over the long haul, that we need to consider this reality and proceed in full awareness of it.
Chait points out that Rachel Maddow is showing symptoms of this strange affliction.
Rachel Maddow offered a perfect example of the phenomenon the other night. She delivered her fantasy version of the speech President Obama should have given. It was filled with unequivocal liberal rhetoric. I was struck by this portion, explaining how she would pass an energy bill:
The United States Senate will pass an energy bill. This year. The Senate version of the bill will not expand offshore drilling. The earlier targets in that bill for energy efficiency and for renewable energy-sources will be doubled or tripled.
If Senators use the filibuster to stop the bill, we will pass it by reconciliation, which still ensures a majority vote. If there are elements of the bill that cannot procedurally be passed by reconciliation, if those elements can be instituted by executive order, I will institute them by executive order.
In reality, you can't pass any of the climate bill by reconciliation. Democrats didn't write reconciliation instructions permitting them to do so, and very little of its could be passed through reconciliation, which only allows budgetary decisions. Maddow's response is to pass the rest by executive order. But you can't change those laws through executive order, either. That's not how our system of government works, nor is it how our system should work.
If Maddow's speech had to hew to the reality of Senate rules and the Constitution, she'd be left where Obama is: ineffectually pleading to get whatever she can get out of a Senate that has nowhere near enough votes to pass even a stripped-down cap and trade bill. It may be nice to imagine that all political difficulties could be swept away by a president who just spoke with enough force and determination. It's a recurrent liberal fantasy —Michael Moore imagined such a speech a few months ago, Michael Douglas delivers such a speech in "The American President." I would love to eliminate the filibuster and create more accountable parties. But even if that happens, there will be a legislative branch that has a strong say in what passes or doesn't pass. And that's good! We wouldn't want to live in a world where a president can remake vast swaths of policy merely be decreeing it.
I wrote another diary a few weeks ago detailing why I thought Democrats would not lose the House. However, today, polling tells me I should still be worried as Progressives are signaling that they will not come to the polls because of a lack of enthusiasm relative to Republicans.
Today Gallup has a new poll showing the enthusiasm gap is widening.
An average of 59% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have said they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting this year compared with past elections, the highest average Gallup has found in a midterm election year for either party since the question was first asked in 1994.
Compared to Previous Elections, Are You More Enthusiastic About Voting Than Usual, or Less Enthusiastic?
The prior high for a party group was 50% more enthusiastic for Democrats in 2006, which is the only one of the last five midterm election years in which Democrats have had an enthusiasm advantage. In that election, Democrats won back control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1994.
Republicans' net score of +14 more enthusiastic in the latest poll compared with the Democrats' net score of '-21 represents the largest relative party advantage Gallup has measured in a single midterm election-year poll. More generally, Republicans have shown a decided relative advantage in enthusiasm throughout 2010, averaging a net score of +28, compared with Democrats' net score of 0.
Progressives give a variety of reasons why they are disappointed, lack of a Public Option, despite the President never promising such a thing. Card Check, despite the fact that the votes in congress aren't there. DADT, Immigration reform, and Financial regulation either not coming soon enough or not being tough enough (on the banks) as progressives would like.
I liken it to more of a disappointment in policies that are not perfect. We heard a lot from the President during the HCR debate that we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Well unless progressive voters break out of this strange sickness that 80% is failure, then next January or February "Speaker Boehner" will be introducing the President at the next State of The Union Speech.