Laura Flanders: When will Dem leaders stop dissing their base? David Obey is making a habit of it.

[marmar]

BLOG | Posted 06/14/2007 @ 09:17am
Idiot Liberals Strike Again
Laura Flanders


When will Democratic leaders stop dissing their base? David Obey is making a habit of it.

Earlier this year, the Wisconsin veteran, who heads up the House Appropriations Committee called anti-war workers, "idiot liberals" for calling for a cut off in funds for Bush's Iraq disaster. This week, Obey told advocates for youth to grow up and stop complaining about the millions of dollars his committee intends to shovel to deadly, discredited abstinence-only programs.

House Democrats will likely vote today to increase abstinence-only miseducation programs to $140 million, a larger increase than any put forward in the last three years of the Republican Congress. Obey told NPR it's all about pragmatism: the Appropriations Bill faces a veto threat from the President, and House Democrats need all the support they can get from Republicans. And there are quid pro quos: to secure a proposed $27 million increase for the family planning program Title X anti-choicers need to be bought off with $27 million for deadly abstinence.

"It's about people acting like adults and realizing that you can't just hold your breath until you get your own way," Obey told Morning Edition June 14th.

But that $27 million increase represents just a ten percent growth in the budget for Title X; it's a 30 percent increase for abstinence only. Besides, most sane Americans were expecting the purportedly pro-choice Democratic majority to cut off funding for this boondoggle not increase it.

Anyone who read Michael Reynolds' excellent piece on the Abstinence Gluttons knows the myriad ways in which these censorship programs stink. As a congressionally mandated report recently concluded, they're bad health policy, bad fiscal policy, and should be ended. As Reynolds' documented in depth, federal funding of "abstinence" also gifts billions of dollars to GOP partisans who not only mess with young minds but also campaign against Democrats and progressive priorities.

...(snip)...

"We are not your pawns," youth activists told House Democrats on the eve of the Committee's vote. Wagoner has some glum young progressive organizers in his office to explain the Democratic majority to. Said Wagoner "as an activist you expect to fight this in a conservative republican congress, but I can't tell you how infuriated, how angry I feel, having witnessed Democratic allies sell us out." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15

[wyldwolf]

1. When will Flanders and The Nation stop pretending they speak for "the base?"

[Cassandra]

2. When will you stop pretending...

that you do?

[wyldwolf]

5. when will you stop making absurd statements about me because you just have to say something?

[Cassandra]

7. Is the DLC suddenly the base?

And you're no slouch at saying something just to say something.

[wyldwolf]

9. has anyone said that? And, no, I don't make every statement a personal "gotcha" like you try to do.

[dionysus]

6. what bizzaro world do you live in where the base wants

to keep this fiasco going?

[wyldwolf]

10. LOL! I love it when you steal my lines. Hey, define "the base."

[Phredicles]

11. I have come to the conclusion that there's a difference between

"The liberal/progressive base", and "The Democratic Party base", which is by now perceptibly less liberal and less progressive.

I mean, we see poll after poll on this board showing how Obama and Edwards do better in a hypothetical general election with any Publican named, yet we also see one "Resistance Is Futile" poll after another showing Clinton in the lead for the Democratic nomination.

Given Clinton's running to the right of Edwards and Obama, I don't see what other conclusion one can reach than that the Democratic Party has fled its liberal moorings to its own electoral detriment.

Or, another way to put it: There's a difference between the Democratic Party's current base and those who would have liked to be its base. And it's only our absurdly ossified political system that forces liberals and the Democrtatic Party together, given the Democrats' efforts to cast themselves as the minisculely less odious alternative to the Republicans.

[wyldwolf]

19. except for one thing

Since the days of Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic party has consistantly been to the right of "progressives."

"Progressives" only half heartedly supported FDR. They ran against Harry Truman. They opposed the nomination of JFK. The '68 election was a fiasco. '72 saw the first presidential candidate embraced by the "progressive movement" of time lose in a landslide. "Progressives" challenged Carter's nomination on the floor of the DNC convention in 1980. 2000? Sheesh!

The "base" are reliable Democratic voters. Which subset of the party do you hear threaten to vote third party or sit out elections? It ain't the centrists.

[dionysus]

22. pretty easy.

70% of all americans want this war over yesterday.

That's pretty much all the dems with a few republicans thrown in.

You want to try and argue that it's the GOP who wants out of Iraq?

[dionysus]

23. by the way, I didn't realize that you trademarked the word "base"

[Tom Joad]

3. I do think that opposing this crazy miseducation project speaks for the base

I mean, if Dems don't support science over religious dogma... who will?

[n2doc]

4. When "the base" whomever they are, defeat these clowns in primaries.

Pols only respect power. IIf he gets defeated in 08, and replaced with a more progressive candidate, then the others may listen. But I don't expect that to happen.

[Phredicles]

8. Shit like Obey's sure reminds why I hate that our only choices are

The Nazi Party and the Nazi Appeasers' Party.

[pansypoo53219]

12. obey is a liberal

if you consider his district which is full of rite wingers. he also is reality based in the congress. he knows what can be done.

[HereSince1628]

13. The dissonance between rule by the people and rule by their representatives

is as old as elected parliaments.

I would have expected a "democratic" party would have a bias toward rule by the people, or at least rule by representatives sensitive to the manifest will of the people.

Unfortunately, this ain't the way it is. And their shift toward authority over the base just levers them ever more and more away from the most fundamental of democratic principles--rule by the people.

[Rydz777]

14. I met Obey some years ago. He's crusty and has a short fuse,

and no one knows better than he how to poke it to the Repubs. I've always had a lot of respect for him, but I also have a lot of sympathy for the frustration of those pressing the Congress for more action. He and others get bogged down in process, a game they enjoy playing, but what the public is waiting for is not the latest inside-the-beltway score but something more concrete - like stopping the war.

[depakid]

15. It's almost as if the Dems WANT TO LOSE

There's really no other way to understand the never ending pattern of legitimizing, enabling and VOTING FOR far right policies.

Other than to consider whether Nader was right- on issue after issue, there's proving to be little more than a dime's worth of difference between the parties.

[Red Knight]

16. Cracks in the party

True librals or progressives would love to see the party more toward the left but the truth is that the base HAS shifted a bit to the right as the party leaders have shifted to the right. They've followed. So what WAS the base is really more of a split base, and this is not to say that there haven't always been Dems more to the right than its base, but as the leaders have gone, the base has cracked and split to some degree with some sliding right with them.

The thread on Obama's foreign policy pretty much displays that.

The thing is--even the right is further to the right so as that lines move and the Dem leaders follow, chasing the ever elusive "independent" or "undecideds" of the middle the base will continue to evolve.

And it's true----if the progressives felt they could still have a voice in a Green Party they'd probably go there---but the domination of the two parties makes that a difficult choice.

Still, I think if the trend continues the Dems WILL lose a large part of their base---the progressives--that are often just taken for granted.

You'll miss me when I'm gone is kinda how that will play out because I'm not sure the right side of the party can win without them.

We'll find out.

[yurbud]

18. yep--you can have your chamber of commerce party with or without religious nuts

and no other choices.

If the Democrats wanted to get a reputation for toughness, they would not just stand up to Bush on the war, but pick some corporate bullies to neuter.

Instead, their "me too" attitude on war, defense spending, and trade makes them look like craven, second rate toadies who don't have the courage to lie big like the GOP.

[Totally Committed]

21. I agree almost entirely.

Great post, depakid. Not sure about Nader, but it is make or break time for this Party.

TC

P.S. Upon reflection: Maybe he was right to a certain extent, but he did go about it destructively, rather than constructively. And, there is no good reason for him to have repeated that detructive mode in 2004. I do see your point, though.

[yurbud]

17. if all democrats at least said what Obey did, it would be an improvement:

"I had to vote for this piece of shit because it was the only way to get the GOP to vote for something good."

That's at least an improvement over Democrats who pretend the piece of shit is a chocolate cupcake that they made especially for us.

[Hippo_Tron]

20. I'll admit that Democrats are between a rock and a hard place

They have a razor thin majority and a lame-duck President that has no desire to accomplish anything domestically . All he wants to do is continue this Iraq Quagmire and he could care less about anything else. Therefore he can veto everything he doesn't like because he doesn't need Congress to pass anything he wants. Furthermore he can let his approval ratings drop below 30% because he doesn't have to run for re-election.

I just hope they can increase their majority in the Senate in the next election.

[rodeodance]

24. yes and yes and yes

[LWolf]

25. Maybe when enough of

the "idiot liberal" base stops voting for them.

[sampsonblk]

26. Better to pass nothing!

Its better to pass nothing than to pass shit like this. Can't really complain about it later. Not if you voted for it when you had the chance to take a stand.