People want change, and they want it yesterday. People are pissed. If you don't give them change, they will take it out on you. No matter what position you claim to take on the issues.
THE END.
They were already pissed, frustrated, and battered prior to November 2008. They voted for BIG change, not incremental change.
Yes, Obama might be doing some good things, but those little good things do not provide the immediate, necessary security that people are right to demand.
Bayh, Webb, Frank, et. al. are fitting the stereotype of the weak-kneed, conviction-free Democrat who hasn't the gumption to govern. These clowns think that if you get elected to change shit in a leftist fashion, and then you fuck it up by staying centrist, that the answer is to become a Republican.
That this idea is taken seriously at all, and at the highest levels of our politics, shows how warped the Democratic Party's thinking is.
If the choice is between a snake in the grass Republican and a spineless, ineffectual Democrat, many people will pick the Republican. Especially when the Democrat is the incumbent.
People are going to continue to boot out of office any and all politicians who do not vote for immediate, real change. We will cycle between lunatic, fringe element Republicans and cowardly, unable-to-take-a-stand Democrats until something gives.
We can go to the extreme of governance by tea partiers, we can generate a Democratic Party that is pissed and ready to kick ass, or we can continue to vascilate in the netherworld between those two in which we steadily drift further to the right.
If the right is firm, and the left caves, guess which direction we go?
And the fact that many Democrats who have been elected to office cannot see this is nothing short of flabbergasting. It boggles the mind.
The Democratic Party will either locate a spine (and a frigging conviction, for God's sake) or will be destroyed in November, and we will see Obama's presidency be Bill Clinton 2.0.
We are right. We know we're right. We should be loud and angry about what is happening in this country! We should be angry with our own party!
Apologia is suicide. Blaming anything other than so-called "centrism" is suicide.
We lost in Massachusetts, and will lose big in November, because the Democrats REFUSE to change anything of major consequence.
I'm sorry, but Joe Scarborough is right: stem cell research doesn't cut it. In another time it might; when people need food and heat and clothing and shelter yesterday, or a year ago, these other issues simply will not do. You can get upset at Joe, or myself, or others who say the same thing, but if you do you will be setting yourself up for massive losses.
And if you think the current health care bill in the Senate is real change, the inarguable fact is that the American people have simply not been convinced to agree with you.
The Democratic Party will now either move to the center and both:
- Kill itself in November, and
- Sabotage the ability of future progressives to enact progressive legislation
or the Democratic Party will begin doing the kinds of things that people expected them to do when they cast votes in 2006 and 2008.
That is the clear-cut message from last night, from sinking approval ratings, from general angst and anger that is not subsiding in this country.