Dems trounce Repubs in 2 straight elections & can't "spend political capital earned"? WTF?

[zonkers]

Is it because a black president has to mind his manners? Whats with all this pussyfooting? Where is the Dem leadership? Where did our head of steam go? To hell with bipartisanship. They don't believe in it, why should we? It is a suckers game. This "take the high road" strategy does not work in this age of 24-7 corporate controlled media.

They are running out the clock with Big Media carrying the torch just as they did during the ginned up run up to the Iraqi war.

Obama, Dems... ball in your court.

[DJ13]

1. Obama, Dems... ball in your court.... cant be

They dont seem to have any balls.

[mix]

2. With the Van Jones resignation, this administration is on the run...

...Obama's style of politics is naive and crippling his presidency. What happened to the tough "Chicago pol"? Or was that just another manufactured illusion? Fighting for a progressive agenda across the board is the only thing that will save his presidency, trying to work with republicans and conservative dems is a waste of time.

[AwakeAtLast]

3. I'm getting the feeling that Obama stumbled on one word

"Bipartisanship". :(

[kenny blankenship]

4. And maybe a related term: technocracy.

We have as Michael Lind puts it, "a demagogy gap." A technocratic approach to governance wilts before the onslaught of a passionate, mobilized opponent every time. The Republicans have organized chaos on tap, and can turn it out into the street with a snap of their fingers. We, on the other hand, have no visible leadership. The mystery of the missing leadership and the movement that never materialized demands an answer. We have soldiers waiting for orders. In fact they've been waiting so long that many no longer believe any order is coming. I know I was hoping for a gladiator not a conciliator. Because if there is one solid fact I know I can rely on it is that the Republicans are implacable on the issue of healthcare, (universal healthcare contradicts and invalidates their whole world view so they will stop at nothing to defeat it). And the interests that fund them are the reigning world champions at negotiating with one hand while lunging with a dagger in the other. The only thing that can overcome that combination of mob violence and Machiavellian skulduggery is to oppose it with a passionate, mass movement of your own. But that is not to Obama's taste apparently. That is not what a genteel Harvard professor does. As a highly intelligent cultivated man he tends to seek out persons like himself who can understand all the issues and master all the details on the other side - high level people from the various medical industry groups, the opposing party - to work out their differences in an exchange of their keen intellects. But what if he's all wrong? What if the main battles that decide the Health Care Reform War are not fought and won with witty ripostes over a White House tea? What if it's fought in the gutters of society, not in the salon?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/09/01/demagogy/index.html

Sept. 1, 2009 | "We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering," President Franklin Roosevelt told an audience in Madison Square Garden in 1936. "They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred."

Can anyone imagine President Barack Obama saying anything like that? The nickname of Roosevelt's successor in the White House, Harry Truman, was "Give-'Em-Hell Harry." As the Republican minority, backed by an avalanche of special-interest money, mobilizes to thwart the health reform agenda of the Democratic majority, maybe the time has come for "Give-'Em-Hell Barry."

< snip >

Whereas progressives and populists alike had been able to invoke the people against the interests, the mid-century liberals and many of their successors on the center-left to this day fear the people even more than they fear the interests. They worry that if liberals rile up the crowd against Wall Street, the rampaging mob, like the torch-bearing Transylvanian villagers in the old Universal Pictures Frankenstein movies, might turn on the universities or carry out political pogroms against minorities. When passion and polemic are ruled out as uncivil, when appeals to the people and their tradition are ruled out by liberalism's own theory of itself, it is hard to see how there can be a popular liberal politics, as distinct from a politics of brokering among interests or elite reforms from above. It follows that liberals should focus on keeping the public calm, while carrying out reforms on their behalf -- but without their participation -- on the basis of negotiations among politicians, public-spirited nonprofit activists, and enlightened interest groups. The Obama administration's approach to healthcare reform has followed this script exactly.

< snip >

You also can't fight and win a war without naming your enemies. In the case of healthcare, the enemies of the American people -- if I may be demagogic as well as accurate -- include rent-seeking insurance companies, rent-seeking pharma companies, and overcompensated doctors and hospitals.

[msongs]

5. kiss repub butt is not a long term growth strategy for dems is it? nt