This is the future of the Democratic Party, this site? Not right now it isn't. It's found the same solution to the compromises that Republicans forced on the Democrats when I was a kid: drop out, declare it's worth nothing. Burn down any Democratic leader who compromises, which basically means everybody.
Folks have to realize that this is feedback cycle. When Democrats had both majorities Congress, we didn't have to worry about somebody forcing bad deals on us, at least not to this degree. But disappointed in Compromised legislation during the last Congress, many of us decided to stay home, not to try and convince our neighbors to vote for Democrats.
We expressed our displeasure, our disappointment.
And got more results not to love in the process. This isn't group therapy, folks. This isn't vent and heal. This is a game where if you let your emotions cloud your political judgment, you will find yourself in a worse position. Your best response is not to leave, it is, as I said in my other diary today, to commit yourself to leading your party, and changing how it does policy.
All Republicans have to do to remain popular with their base is be selfish little brats, letting nothing pass they don't want to, compromising on nothing. In most situations, they have it easy.
We never do. Why? Because we have to care. We have to get results. They, as long as they keep striking blows against big government, don't have to do much of anything but say no. If you say yes, though, you have to take a political risk.
Far too much of the closemindedness of that party is echoed here. Far too much of the "my way or the highway" notion of how government should work is in operation here. The truth of the matter is, that kind of politics only works in opposition. As the Tea Party amply illustrated by knee-capping Boehner throughout these negotiations, that's not a way to govern.
Anybody expecting that the victory of the Republican Party in the House wasn't going to set the menu to shit-sandwich specials wasn't paying attention, wasn't noting the inordinate pull of the Tea Party, nor listening to the kind of crap Republicans were actually saying.
I get a hefty dose of it, day in an day out over at Watchblog, my main blog. I spend many a day arguing with these people, and the thought you have that they are the least bit interested in admitting defeat or compromising is erroneous. Get tougher with them, and they'll just keep on being jackasses. Only by brute political force can you rein today's Republicans in. You can't intimidate them the way you fantasize about doing.
In short, all this get-tough bullshit won't get the results we want.
Nor, do I think, that scapegoating Obama for the weakness of a government, of a party, will be all that productive. For the time being, the most important political battle is keeping the Republican party out of the majority. Letting them into the majority means endless obstruction, endless traumatic experiences like this Debt Ceiling debate, more shock doctrine politics, and more shit sandwich deals forced on us to keep the worst from happening.
We can spout the theory, the often valid theories of our politics off all we want to, but if we want even a chance of getting that stuff through, we have to get the numbers to at least set the agenda, if nothing else. At the very least, our initial ambitions can be to stop the bleeding, and give America the chance to Recover from more than a quarter decade of policy failure from the right.
But you don't get to lead if you've left. You don't get to drop out of the system, and command the same respect. You don't get to influence an election unless you vote. You don't get to change policy in Congress unless you elect majorities. You don't get to be able to push back Republican fundraising and corporate political activity if you don't donate. You don't get to lose elections and be surprised when policy goes all to hell, and what you value is endangered.
I have seen the Republican Party get ever so much more intense in its politics, ever more extreme in its policies, and ever more desperate to rip power out of our hands and destroy everything we hope for, the more this last decade has progressed. And it's not Democratic Party weakness that fuels this. These people self motivate. These people hate what you bring to the table, and fear your coming to power.
At the same time, though, they can't completely ignore what their policy leaders did wrong. So, instead, they will scapegoat us for it, and vote for people who are more conservative, since they've been told that the problem with the last majority was that people weren't conservative enough.
They will continue to get more and more out of touch with reality, pulling stunts like the ones they have done with our debt limit, even as it endangers the nation's economy for years to come. They'll do this because they think your rise to power will destroy the nation, so like a jealous husband, they'll bring a gun to the argument, to make sure that if they can't have power in the nation, nobody can.
I have tried to reason with people like this for seven years now, going on eight in December. It has only gotten more difficult as time has gone on, and the times when I'm not arguing politics are the happier ones.
Unfortunately, people here have become so wrapped up in our standard issue, late-twentieth century Democratic Party inferiority complex that we've decided that blasting Obama and declaring the end of Keynesian economics is the better part of political activism.
Let me rephrase that: faced with a fanatical, difficult to negotiation with, hostile, malicious, often stupid and unwise political opposition, our great political idea is to confront their politicians with ever so angrier and more hostile Democrats.
Which means, what , exactly? That the next time we have a debt ceiling debate, we're the ones willing to take the country to hell, to hold it ransom for our political beliefs?
No. I am sick of the suggestion that what we need is to be more partisan, at least in that manner. To me, it seems like we're only going to copy the greater of our adversaries' flaws, inherit their failure to work and play well with others, their arrogance with anybody else than their own political brothers and sisters.
No, what we need to be is a political movement, broad and beyond the Democratic party, to take this country in another direction. What we need to do is stop telling people that they need to vote for us for an election, and start telling them that they need to commit to creating, over the long term, a movement powerful enough to force back and force down the cancerous conservative movement of today.
I does not seem right to me that we should reward the country by reserving so much of our political anger for our own people, when they would not have considered such huge cuts in the absence of a callous use of the debt ceiling as leverage. It does not seem right to me that we should weaken ourselves further, attack our President further, sink ourselves further into self-gratifying paranoia and despair, when we plainly have a committed, hostile, and right now too powerful enemy to contend with beyond ourselves.
We can leave the political stage, can navel gaze about our internal politics, blaming that for our current situation, or we can focus our attention on those we really need to beat to get what we want and avoid what we don't.