I wrote a couple of comments today that I wanted to expand a little bit on, not having any grandiose notions that anyone will read them or want to respond, because all I feel today is bitterness and disgust, and I realize that few want to read that kind of negativism.
I am beyond saddened by the trouncing we got both at the top of the Wisconsin tickets this week and the irredeemably foolish California "primaries." Scott Walker publicly, repeatedly, and without remorse states that his main ambition is to destroy the livelihood of public servants in his state, and--let's face it--cleared his recall hurdle easily. (Yes, it cost "him" plenty of money, but that's a cheap commodity when the richest folks in the country are footing the bill. Considering the tax cuts over the last 30 years, we actually paid for his campaign, making his victory doubly and ironically sickening.) In California, Democrats can't get their act together enough to figure out how this whole "Top Two" election works, and are on their way to losing at least one, if not several, fairly easy holds or pickups.
Republicans, since at least 1980, have simply been better at politics than Democrats have, and until they finish off destroying the country, will continue to prove it. The Presidential election shows this off to great effect. Mitt Romney is by far the most obvious panderer we have had running for President in the last century+, and you know what? He is running neck and neck in national polls with a sitting President who is not a complete tool, or a criminal, or openly killing citizens. (Yes, I know national polls mean nothing in our electoral system. That's not my point.) By any standard we have, fully 1/2 of the voters in our country think he is as worthy of being our President as Barack Obama is. What does that say about our country? That 1/2 of us are stupid, or ignorant, or mean-spirited, or lazy, and maybe a few other denigrating adjectives as well.
It takes an incredible amount of effort for Democrats to win anything these days, because Republicans are easily motivated to vote, and wholly without conscience (as I put it in my earlier comment, think "Terminator 1"), and apparently, are just as numerous as we are. And when we do win, we don't do anything with it that is clearly different, making it all the more difficult to win the next time around. (For those of you who are thinking about doing it, please don't send the list of accomplishments. They are obviously not useful as political tools, given the polling numbers. 1/2 the people in the country don't believe them, and some of the other 1/2 aren't convinced either. Just stop it. It's not working.) We take standard political options "off the table" so we can "look forward" and "work together" with the folks who have no compunction about destroying us using any means possible, and for what? So we can be ennobled by some vague notion that we aren't "stooping to their level"? What good will that do us when the rest of the New Deal is dismantled and we return to Second World status, at best? Nobility is great if you can afford it, but we don't have that luxury anymore, if we ever did.
A good loser is still a loser.
I don't think we have it in us to win in the realm of politics, and I don't necessarily blame anybody in particular, although I certainly feel massively let down by the leaders of the Democratic Party. And no, I don't believe I should have to "make them" do their own freaking jobs. In theory, we voted to put them there and fight for us in the first place;
we already did our part. When FDR said that, he was talking to union leaders, not to the public at large. In other words, he was speaking to the already organized heads of labor, whose jobs were to speak for us--we don't have a modern equivalent, because previous Democratic politicians consciously abandoned the labor movement. Expecting the public
en masse to "make" anyone do anything is a fool's errand, because we are all already working--if we're lucky, that is--our own individual full-time jobs to stave off starvation and homelessness.
Don't ask me for my solution, because I don't think there is one, and no, I don't think a diary like this is "helpful", whatever that means. Personally, I think we're too late to save the country. I know that what we've been doing for 30 years doesn't work; I don't see us "turning the ship around, which takes a long time." All that being said, I am not quitting, and will continue to vote, etc. etc. And finally, if this isn't the right forum for this kind of venting, I'm sorry to have taken your time, but if it is, feel free to vent away with me in the comments.