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Wednesday, January 20, 2010

This useless bunch of wusses never wanted to get anything done
Posted by Jill | 7:30 PM
And now we know.

Why actually DO anything, when you can rake in some corporate contributions, get government-paid health care and a guaranteed pension and work 4 days a week?

Ladies and gentlemen, your Democratic Party, as told by a Capitol Hill staffer in an e-mail sent to Josh Marshall:
My background is like probably the majority of staffers I know. I came to DC, from a far superior climate and quality of life, because I wanted to save the world. I arrived, and took a job in the House, at what I still view as the nadir of Congress - in 1996. Republicans had recently taken over Congress and had 230 seats in the House and 52 in the Senate. Democrats were in a state of shock and we watched (because that was essentially all we could do) in horror as they systematically went after nearly every institution of civil governance culminating in nearly removing the President from office via an entirely trumped-up charge. They had destroyed the Democrats in 1994 because they simply couldn't deliver - the BTU tax went down, health care went down, and finally the Crime Bill failed because it had such laughably wacky ideas as "midnight basketball" as a crime prevention measure (something with is widely approved of today and is completely noncontroversial). As a young LA, it was amazingly dispiriting. Literally nothing we proposed could get passed - we couldn't even get votes. Every bill came to the floor under a closed rule so we couldn't propose amendments and our Senate colleagues faced a full amendment tree on every bill such that unless they had Republican patron they couldn't get votes either. Kennedy fought like hell for things like minimum wage and sometimes could arm-wrestle a procedural vote win out of them but things would just die in the hands of the Hammer in the House. Eventually, my boss got fed up and retired and I went over to the Administration where I thought I might be able to get more accomplished.

[snip]

It was disheartening when it seemed that Reid was allowing McConnell's disingenuous narrative of "it's always taken 60 votes to get anything done" to take hold, but we were later even saved from that when Specter switched. But it seems we've spent the entire year moving our own goalposts farther away. Things have gotten so bad that in roaming the halls today it feels exactly as if we lost the Majority last night.

The worst is that I can't help but feel like the main emotion people in the caucus are feeling is relief at this turn of events. Now they have a ready excuse for not getting anything done. While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas. They're afraid to actually implement them and face the judgement of the voters. That's the scariest dynamic and what makes me think this will all come crashing down around us in November.

I believe President Clinton provided some crucial insight when he said, "people would rather be with someone who is strong and wrong than weak and right." It's not that people are uninterested in who's right or wrong, it's that people will only follow leaders who seem to actually believe in what they are doing. Democrats have missed this essential fact.

Go read the whole thing.

Oh, there are a few bright spots, like Al Franken and Alan Grayson and Bernie Sanders. But they are but mere voices in the wind. In Pennsylvania we have a Senate race between a real Democrat in Joe Sestak and the self-serving Arlen Specter. And guess which one the Democratic hackocracy is supporting. (Hint: It's not Sestak.)

Barack Obama ran on a progressive agenda in 2008 -- and won. So what on earth ever made him think that what he ran on wasn't really what this country wanted?

Here's what it's come to: I'm in the car on the way home from work after an 11-hour day. I'm on the Garden State Parkway, which has been in the midst of some inexplicable construction project since last summer, which has now turned into three narrow lanes, no shoulder, nothing between me and the Passaic River but a concrete divider, and a bunch of Komatsu heavy equipment sitting unused in the middle of the road. All this in a state with a new governor who pledges to cut spending. I think about my town, where the old cronies are out and one of them is now mayor, with a bunch of new cronies taking the jobs because they know where the money is being hidden. And then I hear on NPR about the conciliatory remarks made by Scott Brown today. And it's the closest thing I have to hope that maybe we are only 90% in a world of shit instead of 100%.

And oh yeah. What Busted said.

UPDATE: Dispatch from the Great Minds Think Alike file.

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3 comments
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3 Comments:
Blogger Phil said...
Yer such a sweety.
Go read my latest rant about those fuck heads at the FBI and the stupid fucks at WAPO.

best wishes, Busted
1/21/10, 3:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
This is why I was against voting for the Dems again.
1/21/10, 8:59 AM  
Anonymous AlphaHuskyAlpha said...
Which is why I was against voting for the Dems again.
1/21/10, 8:59 AM  
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