Obama has been very clear that it’s up to us to set the tone and the direction for his Administration, and his (and the government’s) job is to lead the rest of the country the way we want. If we want progressive policies, we need to demand them loudly and clearly, right now. The problem is that our government is run by special interests that buy off elected officials on both sides of the aisle. Our Dems gave us a stimulus bill with precisely the sort of pork that breathes life into what should have been the moribund Republican Party.
Republicans are constantly scheming behind closed doors on two core goals: 1) Making our Dem leaders, especially our Prez, look bad in 2010 and worse in 2012, and 2) Protecting privilege, wealth, and the status quo that bolsters their personal and political power. They will sacrifice our country and the American people to obtain these two objectives. We are well on the way of becoming a third world nation, and unfortunately, we cannot compete against countries who don’t share our values (like not making our kids go to work and not selling our daughters to support the rest of the family.) The problem is that the super rich who run the world and who own our government have figured out that they can make a lot more money without those pesky economic policies that support our middle class and that are starting to be adopted in third world countries as well.
The economic crisis we’re experiencing is basically a result of the American democracy operating as a plutocracy. The Bush Administration created the downward spiral with years of deregulation of the banking industry followed by a hugely expensive occupation of Iraq that artificially propped up oil prices, ballooned our deficit and degraded our international standing while lowering the value of the dollar. But BushCo isn’t the only reason we’re where we are today, as a quick look at right wing propaganda shows. Republicans scream about wealth redistribution while stealing from the middle class to give tax breaks to the super rich. But liberals have foolishly given away the house on programs that created intergenerational poverty instead of providing a foundation for improving the size and stability of our middle class. In theory, we want to support the poor so they can help themselves and be upwardly mobile, but in practice we cause lower middle class and blue collar workers ("hard working Americans) to run to the Republican Party for what they perceive as more acceptance of their plight. Right wing criticisms are uniquely effective when strike a chord with a sliver of truth: Calling Dem policies "tax and spend" would be nowhere near as effective if the spending was clearly helping those who pay the bills. Both Dems a Repubs policies have failed because they degrade America’s most powerful asset, our middle class.
The primary problems Dems face are 1) Lack of agreement (or understanding) on what our party goals should be for the next two years, and 2) How to further our goals without those actions being used against us. As Democrats, we need to recognize that many of our Dem leaders are bought and paid for. The telecom industry switched their financial support & lobbing from Repubs to Dems last year, which may be why the stimulus bill has $650 million allocated for the Digital Converter Box Program to help transition from analog television. We need to prevent elected Dems from setting our Party up for failure with easily criticized pork as opposed to real stimulus programs.
We also have to eliminate our Party’s classic, historical impediments. This is an opportunity to cut back on spending that isn’t in our country’s best interests and/or is actively used against us by our critics (the Iraq occupation tops this list, and on the lower end, various programs in the stimulus bill that are clearly pork). This economic crisis is our chance to end policies for redistribution of wealth that Republicans created, and move forward with programs that actually fix the root of the economic crisis and that help the middle class (e.g. HOME/HOLC or the creation of a true Commonwealth Bank and/or legislation that would allow bankrupt homeowners to have their mortgages modified under court protection, or perhaps interest-rate subsidies to help lenders and borrowers agree on modified loan terms, and the ability of bankruptcy court judges to impose a settlement on lenders who aren't doing enough to prevent unnecessary foreclosures).
In addition, we need to move ahead quickly on mitigating the age old right wing nonsense that they bang us over the head with, including civil rights and tax breaks for the wealthy.
It's up to US to save this country -- not our corporate sponsored politicians, and not the super rich who are hellbent on turning our country into a third world non-competitor. Upper middle class Democrats seem to be hoping that if we throw enough money at our economic problems, their recent stock losses will somehow be returned to them. In reality, these Wall Street losses are like a ponzi scheme. Banksters just used TARP I to enrich themselves while foreclosing even more aggressivly on the very Americans who were footing the bill for the bailout. The business model is just plain wrong. It’s not sustainable in a world economy. In fact, rampant capitalism is what is killing us, and the sooner our upper middle class realizes they’re part of the group under the heel of the oppressors, the sooner we’ll come together and demand our government support US for a change.