Or with friends like this, who needs enemies.
Reading over diaries on Dailykos, I'm frustrated and surprised with all the negativism leveled on Democrats, in general, and President Obama about everything that's not done.
If you really want to push for change, we - the people who voted these guys in - need to focus on the positives, because we're doing some of the dirty work for Republicans by jumping on Democrats in Congress and this Administration.
If you want to know why Republicans dominate the media and national debates, it's because they and their supporters are focused.
Republicans have a solid messaging machine in the media, because whatever media outlets they have work in lock-step to push the same agenda.
Administrations don't push an agenda, the interest groups, who support the Administration are the ones, who get to push the agenda. Reagan gave an outlet for Robertson and Falwell on social issues and supply-siders and anti-tax nuts on economic issues. They are the ones, who have lionized Reagan beyond anything he did. They are the ones, who kept pushing the conservative message in the 1980's. The message wasn't driven exclusively by the White House.
A significant number of Americans view the estate tax, as a "death tax", because right-wing nuts like Grover Norquist kept pushing the idea to repeal it and the right-wing media jumped to support his cause. There's no right-wing media outlet around, who will ever accept the estate tax as an important way for people to pay the government back, for creating a country and culture, which allowed them to amass great wealth.
Bush & Co. coordinated this with their supporters - Fox News, right-wing pundits, Christian conservatives etc. - better than any Administration, in their early years and during his 2000 and 2004 campaigns.
Right now Obama and the Democrats are getting no unified support from the liberal base. We get frustrated that our agenda isn't enacted. Single payer was taken off the table, but so what? Do the anti-minimum wage nuts give up because they haven't been able to repeal the minimum wage? Nope, they keep plugging away in Wall Street Journal editorial pages. The anti-estate tax nuts kept plugging away to do away with the estate tax and so far they "won", with 2010 not having the estate tax in place for the first time in decades.
If we want to push an agenda, we need to quit all the hand-ringing about not being ignored and focus on what's been done, which is a lot more than most President's have done in a comparable amount of time and keep plugging away about the benefits of our agenda. We don't need to do the work of conservatives and Republicans for them, by endlessly criticizing the Administration.
Stay positive. There's a lot getting done, but more won't be done, if we - the supporters - pack it in.