One thing any communicator should keep in mind is whether they're really saying anything, whether it's really going to move anything anywhere. What have I heard on the Rec List about Obama caving in that I haven't heard a half-dozen times before?
And based on what new information? To what end? What's the dynamic we're trying to create here, the movement of an audience from one point to another?
If we can't answer that, if all this serves to do is vent more fear and anxiety, then all it does is convince many people, especially people like me, that not a lot of people around here are serious about much more than talk.
That might not be the actual case, in terms of motives and sentiments. Folks criticizing Obama probably have a point. But that that point has been made. Is it useful to make a point again and again, when the sentiment seems to just be there anyway?
Years worth of Bush bullshit, of his breakdown of good government have left me very impatient with rhetoric. I've seen plenty of it. I've seen plenty of talk as to how bad things are, as to how ugly things are. After a certain point of getting all this stuff shovelled into my head through endless rants, it just stops being interesting or tolerable.
Why do we Democrats need to constantly repeat the same political dogmas to ourselves, even if they're true? Wouldn't we, at some point, basically agree on the need to rein in Wall Street? Wouldn't we agree that spending cuts should be fought, that revenues need to increase, and first among the rich?
It seems to me, sometimes, that we're pushing these points at each other, for lack of people outside our political group to push them on. Folks, we're preaching to the choir here, and at some point, being treated like you have to take remedial liberalism becomes off-putting.
When Bill Moyers' NOW was on, I found that off-putting, too, because Moyers and his associate would simply deliver that philosophy in that same sort of remedial class tone. Much as I agreed with them, it just seemed stupefying rather than electrifying to have my sentiments delivered like that.
For my part, the why is not a problem. I believe much of what I read here, if we're talking flat facts. I know how bad things are, and I want to do something.
Take note of that: I want to do something. I want to come up with arguments that help shoot down the GOP's attacks, that help convince people to take our side. I want to win elections and support candidates who can help us take back Congress. I want to figure out how to take the staggeringly imperfect Democratic Party that is the legacy of thirty years of the ascendence of the Cult of Conservatism, and reforge it into the party that it needs to be to win.
The last thing I want to do is just see a site like this go to waste with people posting one "Obama caves" article after another. Obama's not our biggest problem. Our biggest problem is a Congress of lackluster Democrats and fiercely, insanely obstructionist Republicans. Our biggest problem is that we seem to be committed to our own self-defeat, out of the mistaken belief that if we continue the losing streak, politicians trained to defer to Republicans will somehow move in our direction by default, and tell us they're sorry.
Our biggest problem is that even when a majority of people supporting us in spirit and sentiment, the legacies of Conservative Cultism are still strong, confounding us, and the number of committed Democrats remains low, and our other problems aren't waiting for these problems to get better.
Raging against Obama successfully, destroying him or convincing him to fight still leaves us with Republicans in the majority, ready to block many legitimate plans and solutions, and with Democrats in Washington whose first instincts may be to join the Republicans, or make a deal favorable to the GOP.
We need to consider what our long term game plan is, and what sacrifices to our short term desires might be necessary to get what we want long term. A Democratic Republic is going to demand of us that we sacrifice enough of what we want to get the votes from other political groups, inside and outside of our party, to make progress overall.
The steps towards a world we feel is better will not all be big giant steps. Sometimes, we'll need to just about kill ourselves holding our ground or buying an inch's worth of progress. But if we don't make those fights, struggle through those trials, we might not be in a position to do any better later. Already, this past half-year, we've had to endure one of the most trying times we've had in a long time, all the worse for the fact that we still hold some control where it counts.
Until State Houses and legislatures are back in our hands, Until Congress once again is fully Democratic, we'll have the spirit to do what we want, but not the means, and that will tear us apart.
Today's instant information culture, with its RSS, ADD, and Twitter fed short term mindset has us perpetually locked into the next second, while the next year might as well be a thousand years into the future.
The dunes are constantly shifting, and following them, we get lost in this desert of thoughtless reaction. Meanwhile, our better organized, institutionally entrenched opponents set the tune, pushing one round of bullshit after another. We're chasing their plans around the tree, while making none of our own.
We're going to have to retake the establishment for ourselves. We're going to have to turn the Republican's plans on themselves, and start motivating and channeling people towards electing the folks who get us what we want.
We must resign ourselves to the fact that the fight is not going to be without reverses, nor without great resistance from the other side. We're going to have to accept that as we start out, the defaults in our party and outside of it are not going to work in our favor. We're going to have to realize that our will has to outlast theirs, and for the long term, and without their advantages at first.
And through it all, we're going to have to keep enough cool to keep our heads, to keep our plans going.
Personally, at this point, I think the number one priority is restoring the majority in the House of Representatives, and preserving, perhaps expanding it in the Senate. If we can put a Congress back in power that offers less resistance to us, we can at the very least stop worrying about failures to increase the debt limit, or crap like that. We can stop worrying about the Republicans forcing onerous deals on us on its account, or trying to shut down the government. We can let the Republicans fall to the Tea Party, and become a toxic, undrinkable brew.
In fact, beating the Republicans in the next few elections is key, I think, to getting us past the culture of obstruction that has taken hold there. Republicans have to get used to the idea of us being in charge, and weary of the endless lack of opportunities to look good for their constituents.
But getting this done will be very frustrating, and it will mean voting for some that don't deserve it on their own account. It will mean tolerating some crappy deals in the short term.
But make no mistake, if you think we were served shit sandwiches in the first two years of the Obama administration, just look at what's on the menu now. The compromises are worse, and threaten more. Instead of having to deal with watered down and subverted liberal legislation, instead we have to fend off far-right bullshit the likes of which we've never seen. You can't tell me that things are better for us now, because we lost, and so many Democrats were held accountable. The problem was, so many Republicans were rewarded as well, and rewarded with power they now use against us.
We cannot afford to think of political power merely in ideological fervor. Republicans can afford to do that because they've got the numbers to back them up, and elected officials who are significantly more conformist and lockstep than we are.
We have to break that rigid wall of theirs, assault the integrity of their system, using its own brittle rigidity against it.
We have to quit aspiring to their political conformity, and start using it against them, to break up their voting blocks. Quit dividing ourselves struggling for supremacy, and stard dividing them to our advantage.
I don't know. I'm going to cut this short, but the point here is that we have to stop considering our political situation in such a self-mutilating manner. We have to start choosing the necessary battles to fight in order to regain the power we need to get what we want.