Good luck to all who intend to volunteer to re-elect the man who is cutting into the very fabric of the Democratic Party.
Hope you all have a strong tolerance for hangups, complaints, and invective.
All your scripts that will mention the Supreme Court appointments will fall on deaf ears.
Why?
Because everyone has parents and LOTS of people are either on Social Security and Medicare or about to get on them( or were about to get on them) or know someone who this directly affects.
This manufactured crisis - which could have and has been handled completely separately from any 'grand bargain' in the past is going to enrage people.
I made the decision back when the Bush/Obama tax cuts were extended that I was done with volunteering in the next national election cycle and to focus upon state and local races in'12 unless someone primaries the current occupant in the White House.
After today, I am convinced that those phone banks OFA will work to set up will be as vacant as some of the pictures of the McCain phone banking efforts that were pathetically photographed back in '08.
Now might be a good time to reflect upon why the Whig Party collapsed in the 19th century in America
The Whig Party ran Zachary Taylor in 1848 for the presidency. This election began the collapse of the Whig Party. Taylor, a southern slaveholder, divided the Whigs into Northern and Southern factions. As tensions increased over slavery's expansion in the late 1840s and the early 1850s, Northern Whigs could not support a slaveowner. The Democratic Party nominated Lewis Cass, a former Ohioan. Southern Democrats could not support a Northern candidate. In the end, Taylor won, thanks to numerous Southern Democrats voting for him, but the Whig Party was in decline. The Whigs ran Winfield Scott in 1852. Scott lost to Franklin Pierce, and the growing tensions over slavery prevented the party from ever running another candidate for the presidency. The party divided, with most Southern Whigs joining the Democratic Party and Northern Whigs joining the Free Soil Party.
Barack Obama's choices, and what I seem to observe as his demands upon politicians to achieve what he himself is characterizing as a 'grand baragin', is dividing factions of the Democratic Party, just as the Whigs divided into Northern and Southern factions.
We are, it is evident on this site and elsewhere on the progressive blogosphere, divided into 2 camps: Democrats who identify with the foundational programs of the New Deal and Great Society, and those who identify as supporters of Barack Obama.
He can't win with just one group of us supporting him.
The broader implication is that regardless of what occurs in 2012, the Democratic Party is now as fragile as the Whigs.
This 'grand bargain' is viewed by many as a betrayal of what this Party stands for.
It is out in the open for all to see: it's a battle between neo-liberals and those that recognize that neo-liberalism has eaten away at the poor and middle class advances of the 20th century.
This 'grand bargain is not good for the Democratic Party.
This 'grand bargain' is not good for the country.
And you who still have the impetus to support this grand bargain and this man for the Presidency are going to hear how awful it is when you make that trek to your phone bank location.
I'd say good luck, but I think you deserve to listen to the outrage.