Outgoing Democratic Governor Ted Strickland of my home state of Ohio gave an interview to The Huffington Post's Sam Stein, and he speaks words that I could not have said better.
Governor Strickland is terribly dismayed by the lack of fight in Democrats in Congress, and in our President.
This speaks for me:
Talking, unprompted, about the debate over the expiring Bush tax cuts, Strickland said he was dumbfounded at the party's inability to sell the idea that the rates for the wealthy should be allowed to expire.
"I mean, if we can't win that argument we might as well just fold up," he said. "These people are saying we are going to insist on tax cuts for the richest people in the country and we don't care if they are paid for, and we don't think it is a problem if it contributes to the deficit, but we are not going to vote to extend unemployment benefits to working people if they aren't paid for because they contribute to the deficit. I mean, what is wrong with that? How can it be more clear?"
It's like a nightmare. The Republicans develop and take the most craven position on an issue possible, and you sit there waiting for Democrats to stand up and just hit back on how stupid the Republican position is. And you wait...and you wait...and you wait...And you think, this can't be happening, right? I mean, it's a softball! Go on Meet the Press or Hardball or Maddow or whatever and knock it out of the park. But it never ever ever happens.
Where are the Democrats who care -- the Sanders and the Weiners and the Whitehouses and the Sherrod Browns -- on this? Why the ever-living hell aren't they on Sunday shows week aftr week blasting -- I mean, absolutely full frontal, no-holds-barred blasting the Republicans on their policies? Not personally, but on their policies. Nowhere. They are nowhere to be seen.
Instead, we get repeated viewings of John McCain, one of the most politically pliable and unprincipled men I have ever seen in Washington --and that's saying something -- sitting there on getting suckled on a routine basis on the Sunday Talk Shows. Where is the Democratic contingent, sitting there instead, or at least next to him?
Where is my President? I laugh out loud any time some Republican bleats that the President has gone on a "worldwide apology tour" through his foreign policy, but I will be goddamned if I can laugh at the humiliating, baseless, and stupid apology he issued yesterday to the likes of Cantor, Boehner and McConnell. It's really, really, really embarrassing.
There is no 11th dimensional chess move in acting like a simp. They are trying to destroy your entire Presidency, and you publicly state regret that you didn't work with your tormentors enough?
The apologizing is bad enough, but it's the groveling that will kill me. The groveling that will come when the likes of Boehner, McConnell, and Cantor sit at the table, unequivocally controlling the levers of power (make no mistake -- given the mushiness of Democrats in the Senate, McConnell is majority leader of that chamber).
Strickland again:
"I saw what CNN said after that meeting yesterday. A line saying the president said he should have been willing to work with the GOP earlier. What? After all of this you don't realize these people want to destroy you and your agenda?" he asked. "How many times do you have to be, you know, slapped in the face?"
Oh, Governor, not just how many times, but how hard. After the meeting yesterday, the contrast in responses by both sides couldn't be more telling. The President went out and bemoaned his lack of sufficient outreach, and he did so at precisely the same moment McConnell skulked back into his lair and drafted a ransom note that outlined the length, quality, and nature of -- excuse me -- the absolute fucking that President Obama could expect to receive from Republicans during the lame duck session.
"People are willing to stand with you if they see you fighting for them," said Strickland.
And yet, no one will stand.
I barely know how to react anymore. I really don't have the words to describe what the weakness of the Democrats does to me. Maybe I'll let the Governor have the last word.
"It cuts your heart out," he said, of the party's inability to make a unified, principled case for their priorities.
It cuts your heart out.