Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
In last year's elections Progressives everywhere gave their time, money and passion to do several things to change this country for the better. One of them was to take over the White House with a historical new and inspirational candidate. Another was to hold our newly won majorities in the House of Representatives. Lastly, we fought to give our leaders in the Senate a fillibuster-proof majority and end their slide towards becoming an American version of the "House of Lords".
Well, although Republican maneuvering and trying to upend the will of the voters of Minnesota delayed it for a while, it turns out we accomplished all three. However, as is becoming commonplace to the Democratic Party we are always trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Yes, because of the Corporate stain on some of "our" members we are now told that this last victory does not count. All we hear now is how sixty votes in the Senate really means squat.
Yes, welcome to a new day in Washington and let the excuses begin:
After eight months in limbo, Al Franken is poised to be sworn in as the 60th Democratic senator — cause for celebration among party activists, the lefty blogosphere and his fellow Democrats planning to give him a hero’s welcome at Tuesday’s caucus lunch.
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) isn’t feeling especially giddy — and he’s trying to bridge the gap between his herd-the-cats daily reality and rising expectations that he’s just been appointed overlord of a filibuster-proof Democratic kingdom.
For his part, Reid is doing his best to tamp down expectations that Franken’s seating gives him license to trample the 40 Republicans in the upper chamber.
"We have 60 votes on paper," he told The New York Times on Thursday. "But we cannot bulldoze anybody; it doesn’t work that way. My caucus doesn’t allow it. And we have a very diverse group of senators philosophically. I am not this morning suddenly flexing my muscles."
http://www.politico.com/...
Yes, leave it to the "leaders" of our party to be handed a huge victory and a mandate for change by American voters and immediately proceed to push the chicken-switch. The same party that embraces Arlen Specter like some kind of god refuses to acknowledge the efforts of their own base in giving them victory.
Luckily, not all Democrats are like that, and some actually show (gasps) a backbone:
He’s not alone. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), sponsor of the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act, has been telling union leaders that Franken’s presence could accelerate the push to create a compromise bill more quickly than Reid’s 2010 timeline, according to people familiar with the situation.
"Since the beginning of the year, Harry’s been telling us that he can’t do this or that until Franken gets here — Well, Al’s here!" said one staffer for a liberal senator.
Despite real leaders like Tom Harkin, cowardice and corporate apolegism persists:
Then there are a handful of members on Reid’s right flank — Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, Indiana’s Evan Bayh and wild-card independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut — who tend to be loyal but could buck him on health care reform or climate change legislation.
Add endangered 2010 candidates Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), and the number of rock-solid cloture votes in Reid’s pocket drops to between 52 and 54.
So, we are all finding out that the basics of addition and subtraction we learned in grammar school are all wrong. Sixty is really fifty-two or fifty-three in our Corporate-controlled government. God forbid we dig a trench and bear down for a fight to bring real progress to this country, a mandate we were given and if we fail on will result in our party being branded cowardly and weak by another generation of American voters. Unfortunately they may have a point.
Yes, sixty votes in the Senate shows the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. Just think for one minute what would have happened if Mitch McConnell would have had sixty votes to foward the agenda of George W. Bush. The resulting neo-facist wet dream would have definately changed this country.
We would all be working for Halliburton for $.50 an hour. Children in China and Southeast Asia would be locked in sweatshops working twenty-three and a half hours a day, but they would be allowed to stop long enough to eat their slice of bread and drink their cup of water. Many thousands of Union workers would be herded into "re-education" camps to learn why they are too fat and sassy and should just do what they are told and take a few crumbs home to their families. American soldiers would be fighting and dying in Iraq, Afganistan, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Canada and Massachusetts.
The Senate would be renamed the House of Lords and be filled with lobbyists from Wal-Mart, and any Insurance company you could name. The House of Representatives would be disolved because we all know these working-class idiots don't know how to vote. Every Corporation in America would take the whole American economy in the form of Corporate Welfare to the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes on the money that they recieved from the taxes of working Americans which would be 80% on a family of four making less than $50,000 a year. Dick Cheney would tell us all to go f%$# ourselves if we did not like it.
This is the really frustrating part. When Republicans win, their greedy enablers and their misled neo-facist, Corporate-controlled idiots win. They do wonderful things like starting wars in the wrong country and de-regulating their greedy buddies to steal from working men and women all while crashing our economy into the ditch.
When Democrats win, there are just enough of them that want to be Republicans and are controlled by the same forces that drive the neo-facist movement, the Republican Party that Republicans win. This means that no matter who wins, the Corporations, Insurance companies, and the greediest and least patriotic among us always win. When you have bought and paid for your government that is what you get. Your bases are covered even when you lose.
The difference between Republicans and Democrats is painfully obvious and deeply troubling. No matter what happens the status-quo is maintained and the working man and woman in this country sees their rights further stripped because one party has horrible ideas that destroy this country and fight like hell for them, and one party talks a good game and then is too cowardly to fight for what they were elected to do.
And the vicious cycle continues...