| Okay, so it's late at night and I'm waiting for my Ambien to kick in, so maybe my eyes are deceiving me. Susan Demas just wrote a scathing opinion piece about the state of the Democratic party this election year. And, unless I'm too sleepy to see straight, I think she totally nailed it.
Democrats worst enemy isn't the red-faced tea partiers. It's the fact that a good chunk of their base, which turned out in droves in 2008, is planning to stay home. You would think they would be motivated to stand up against truly crazy GOP candidates. But most liberals seem more content to crucify Barack Obama than devise any semblance of an electoral strategy.
As someone who has worked on most of President Obama's major legislative campaigns over the past year, I am in a unique position to say that he has caved in and allowed some truly murky issues to seep into his sweeping policy initiatives. But in that acknowledgment, we are missing the point. The point is that he actually had the balls to try to implement sweeping change in the first place. And that he got many of his initiatives to pass.
Health care, Wall Street reform, equal pay for women, expanded coverage for children, pulling out of the war in Iraq, and streamlining student loans. These are all huge policy issues that no political leader since Lyndon B. Johnson ever had the guts to take on. So Obama came up a little short in some areas. So what? At least he tried. The man is the President, not the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Polls overwhelmingly show that Americans hate tax breaks for the rich. Why Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid haven't held votes repeatedly on these George W. Bush tax cuts that are set to expire is beyond me. Is it class warfare? Yes, and an extremely popular form of it. But Wall Street can breathe a sigh of relief that Democrats are too [pussy-foot] to exploit it.
The bottom line is, if we are too weak to win, we deserve to lose. This isn't your grandmother's sewing club. Its not kids soccer. It's the NFL. Politics is a blood sport. If you can't take a couple of hits, don't put on the uniform. Saddle up Democrats. It's time to win or be governed by witchcraft.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100927/OPINION01/9270321/1008/opinion01/Moping-liberals-may-give-election-to-GOP |
