The difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats truly believe in governing, and Republicans just want power. This statement, made by Robert Novak in the Lee Atwater documentary Boogie Men, perfectly captures the difference between Republicans and Democrats. As a fellow Democrat - who believes that government has a role in everyone's lives and that there are some things that only government can do properly - I know all of us are on the same page: Republicans need to be exposed as the ruthless incarnations of evil that they are and should never be allowed back in power again.
What worries me is what we are doing here instead. Day in, day out, we argue about how government should be run, and it turns one side against the other. There are two groups here, the vaulters and the incrementalists, and rather than fighting our common enemy, the Republicans, we are fighting against each other.
First, I will admit I am an incrementalist, a position I came at through a lot of hard work. I do believe that back when I was a kid I was a vaulter, but the path I had to take through life has worn that position down. As an incrementalist, I believe that most of the time change will come in small increments, and that, while we should never accept a small change as the goal, we should be proud and thankful for any change that leads us in a good direction. A vaulter (I suspect there is a better word but I cannot think of it) is someone who prefers to try for everything at once and will not be happy until their goal is reached.
I personally have no problem with vaulters. In fact, I think there needs to be a group of people always looking really far out to where we need to go and trying to get there in one giant stride, because occasionally it will happen. The end of slavery, the moon landing, and women's suffrage are three examples of where this happened. I just don't think most things will happen that way, and that some things will take time, and in most of those cases, we should be happy with the change that occurred because it means that more change can occur. The modern form of Social Security didn't happen all at once - "Most women and minorities were excluded from the benefits of unemployment insurance and old age pensions" - and it took a number of iterations to get it where it is today. There are other examples of incremental change throughout our history, though I will admit that the way blacks have been treated in this country has gone on for far too long.
Understand, though, that I agree with virtually every goal that you vaulters have. If suddenly we were able to implement every item on your list, I would be happy that they were implemented. It has never been about what is to be changed, but what the best way is to get there. And in a sane country with us facing so many problems, we would be in Congress arguing over the best way to implement them.
But it's not a sane country: There's a party willing to destroy this country to gain power - one of their leaders, Mitch McConnell, has openly admitted that his entire goal is to keep Obama to one term, even if he has to destroy the country to do it. In a sane country, the members of Congress would be looking at the good of the country to determine their votes, which is how legislation passed over the last 100+ years has gotten votes from both side. Instead, we have a treasonous party preventing votes from coming up that would benefit Americans.
I know that some of you are already either typing up a response or getting ready to type up one. One response will be some variation of "If Obama had just done ___." Another response will be "It's not us. The independents didn't turn out to vote." And there are probably some others. But my answer is that they miss the point. I'm not asking for justifications any more. I can come up with those on my own. What we need now is a plan to finally crush the Republicans, and therefore rein in the businesses that control them and the Teabaggers that want to.
One of the things we have to do is yell at the right people. We are yelling at each other, when we should be yelling at our congresspeople, our state representatives. (I live in Texas, I have a lot to yell about.) We need to be writing to our newspapers. And we need to get ready to ask more people to vote. Remember, states like Texas have been passing laws specifically directed at suppressing Democratic turnout - minorities, college students. Until we can get people in office to repeal them, we have to compensate for them.
It pisses the right off that a Democrat is in office, the fact that he's black is just their specific way of attacking him. Like us, they don't really care that he's black, it's just that while we think of it as a feature, to them it's just one more way of going after him. If Clinton had become president, they would have attacked her for her vagina and would have questioned whether every decision she made was just a third term for Bill.
One of our goals has to be keeping the Republicans out of office, and relieving them of what power they have. What you did in 2008 - the organizing, the getting out the vote - must happen every election, even midterm elections. And the unity we had, because we were both fighting for the country, must continue.
And maybe someday, we can be arguing over how to implement Universal Healthcare because the party that wanted to hold this country hostage for it's own purposes has no power to prevent it.