Note to Rahm and his DLC ilk - You can thank yourselves for NJ and VA losses

[Hawkeye-X]

And throwing Dean under the bus.

Fuckers.

I'll take Dean's 50 state strategy over Rahm's Me-first strategy.

Hawkeye-X

[ingac70]

1. Bad candidates don't help. n/t

[Hawkeye-X]

4. In VA - the Dem primary

was Deeds, McAuliffe, and Moran.

I would have chosen Moran over McAwful and Deeds.

Hawkeye-X

[Connie_Corleone]

2. NJ and VA had 2 suck ass Democratic candidates.

Deeds ran away from Obama early on during the race and tried to act like he wasn't a Democrat. He was also against the public option.

And Corzine screwed himself.

That has nothing to do with Dean's 50 state strategy.

[progressivebydesign]

3. Actually, you can thank Corzine for the NJ loss. He was an AWFUL candidate.

I mean.. I would have stayed home from voting had I been living in NJ. Both of those candidates you mention were weak... it's not the DLC sometimes... it's candidates.

[tabbycat31]

14. who should have been primaried

[amandabeech]

31. Now, a Republican is going to be in charge of redistricting.

New Jersey may lose a seat, which will make redistricting nasty and hellish. We need a Dem in the state house just for this reason.

The time for complaining about the candidates ends on the general election day. If you want better candidates, you have to get involved in the primary.


When the general rolls around and redistricting is at hand, you just have to hold your nose and do it for the team.

I've done it enough times in my life to have earned the golden clothespin award.

But I don't regret having done it one bit.

[tritsofme]

5. Incredibly stupid post.

These elections have nothing to do with Dean or Emanuel.

[jgraz]

6. The fact that Repukes can win a race for dogcatcher should be an embarrassment to Dems

Seriously, how can anyone lose to a Republican after the last 8 years?

[notesdev]

7. bingo

After the royal mess the GOP left, if people are voting for them again so quickly the Dems must really, really suck. Where are the primary challenges?

[Horse with no Name]

20. because we had a mandate that we have sliced and diced into

the narrowest of a thin majority that is weak-kneed and knobby.
It takes real talent to do that.
If I hired someone and gave them the tools they needed to build a highly engineered state of the art airplane and then they worked behind closed doors for 9 months and then presented me with a cheap paper airplane in return, you can bet your ass I wouldn't vote for more of the same.
And that is what has happened.
We had a fucking mandate. We had political capital. Every bit was wasted and I don't even fucking have a pile of shit OR a pony to show for it.

[w4rma]

8. Dean would have been better as DNC chair for Deeds and VA for at least one reason: Gov. Kaine could

have spent more time in VA campaigning for Deeds.

[sandnsea]

9. OFA has staff in every state except WY & UT

There is still a 50 state strategy.

But without volunteers, it won't beat a right wing media.

[flyarm]

10. I believe Corzines Goldman Sach's ties killed him in NJ

and it is a loud reaction to the Goldman boys in this White House.
I belong to a large dem club in NJ and I will tell you there is huge anger here and I don't care what the media and pundits tell you..lots of Dems stayed home as a protest. Many dems I know here, lifelong liberals and progressives said they weren't going to vote and they said ..there is no difference..why bother.( I heard this so often the past 3 weeks, I couldn't keep count of it! and I heard it across the board..in restaurants and in line at the grocery store)

I live in two states, this is not my voting state ..so I was not involved in the vote in NJ , but I was a guest Corzines inauguration when he won this state...as in the past I worked hard in politics in the state of NJ. The atmosphere is distinctly changed among active democrats I know here. There is much anger, at taxes, unemployment, and health care, and national debt...the middle class is feeling a huge squeeze on everything across the board. All the car dealerships near me have closed down as have many retail stores. People can not find jobs, no matter how qualified they are.

Take heed Democratic party..people are angry, they are worried about their jobs, they are worried about their mortgages, and they are damn pissed off at the payoffs to the big boys while their problems are ignored.

White House , ignore your base at your own peril!

[girl gone mad]

15. I wish I could rec your post.

You hit the nail on the head.

[amandabeech]

32. Same here.

Please consider going over to the GP-Presidential forum and posting this.

A lot of folks over there need a dose of reality.

[eleny]

11. I've been thinking about this all evening

k&r

[Captain Hilts]

12. This has NOTHING to do with Emanuel. Sorry. Blame him for something else. nt

[flyarm]

13. It has alot to do with Rahm, but he is not the boss..it is the base being ignored!

and the fear among people of the national debt going through the roof and the people not feeling the help that the big boys on wall street have gotten. Many people I know dem and repub alike are pissed.

[sabrina 1]

17. For many Democrts it has a lot to do with the DLC/Rahm Emanuel

take-over, or rather hand-over of the party after it was Dean's strategy that actually worked. Why was Dean not given a role in the administration? He did far more to get Obama elected than Rahm, who sat on the sidelines because of his ties to the Clintons?

People are not blind. When a party deserts its base, the base or a good part of it, will eventually desert the party.

Rahm E. and his wing of the party have let their disdain for the base of the party be known for too many times. I could find quotes, but they're not that hard to look up. Maybe political operatives expect these tactics, but there are simply not enough of them to vote a party in or out.

Corzine should have easily won that race, but his ties to Goldman Sachs and the party's apparent blindness to the anger there is towards the crooks who tore this country down while profiting from it, made it a guaranteed loss.

Yet, the WH has embraced these same people who were a huge part of the problem. Those appointments, Summers, Geithner, Rahm Emanuel, the retention of Bush's appointee, Bernanke, and the caving in to Goldman Sachs' Henry Paulson, had a huge negative effect on those who worked so hard to get Obama elected.

Have they ever explained this betrayal? I haven't heard one word from Obama about why he has sought out these people. It was just done.

It has taught me that from now on I will want a list of people a candidate intends to install in his/her cabinet before I support them.

[Ignis]

26. Great answer.

Those appointments, Summers, Geithner, Rahm Emanuel, the retention of Bush's appointee, Bernanke, and the caving in to Goldman Sachs' Henry Paulson, had a huge negative effect on those who worked so hard to get Obama elected.

Not talking about the elephant in the room doesn't make it go away, nor does it convince people that "Change" is really on the bill.

[geek tragedy]

28. Corzine was DEEPLY unpopular and could not have 'easily'

won.

No person with the slightest knowledge of the state would claim otherwise.

[sabrina 1]

34. I already addressed one of the reasons he was unpopular

His ties to Goldman Sachs, and then his position on the Public Option. The public is sick and tired of these politicians, like Rahm Emanuel, Corzine et al who are tied to big business, to the Insurance Industry, to Wall St. I said he SHOULD have won easily, IF he was serving the people who elected him. Democrats will not support these people anymore. Rahm Emanuel's politics has never appealed to anyone but the DLC wing of the party. And whether you like it or not, Obama's choice of Emanuel was the beginning of many disappointments to those who elected him. And it's having an effect.

However, I blame Obama as he certainly knew him so there was nothing naive about the choice.

Political operatives can criticize the base all the want, as Rahm does on a regular basis, but without their base, Democrats will not remain in the majority for very long. And Rahm Emanuel is the wrong person for anyone to be listening to as far as getting out the vote. He's never been very good at that. People just don't like him, or his politics.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

16. Yeah, he should have just waved his magical "make the candidates not be shit" wand.

You know they hand those out at the secret DLC meetings where they all drink the blood of Samuel Gompers.

[sabrina 1]

18. He has a record of choosing the worst candidates

and working against the best when he DID have his hand in it. And his egotistical refusal to acknowledge that his strategy was a failure in terms of getting a majority, not working to win in various states eg, and that it was Dean's 50 state strategy that did work.

He's pretty much despised by a majority of Democrats, I mean the ones who vote. He was a very, very bad choice for COS and could end up helping to make this a one-term presidency with his 'ignore the base' philosophy.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

24. I fail to see how the NJ and VA losses have anything to do with him.

Perhaps you could enlighten me. With information.

[geek tragedy]

29. Did he choose Deeds or Corzine?

Answer: NO he didn't.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

30. It doesn't matter. It's his fault anyway.

He should have tied Deeds and Corzine up in the basement and recruited Kucinich and that guy from Brad Blog to run.

[sabrina 1]

33. Since I did not say he chose them, I'm not sure why

you asked me that question. What both of them did was to support the Rahm Emanuel wing of the party's position on the Public Option.

http://www.rpv.org/news_media/detail/do-wagner-and-shannon-oppose-public-option-too

RICHMOND - Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general Jody Wagner and Steve Shannon are now faced with a daunting choice in the wake of gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds' openly declaring opposition to a public option in health care legislation. Asked a question in the final debate about health care, Deeds quite clearly rejected the public option and then made the situation worse by offering muddled and meandering answers to reporters in a post-debate press gaggle. Wagner and Shannon must now decide whether they still support their party's standard bearer or attempt instead to repair their tattered relationship with their political base.

Considering that a majority of the public disagrees with that position, even if they were both popular candidates, that alone would have kept many Democrats and Independents from supporting them.

[Horse with no Name]

19. Rahm is a piece of shit

His placement in the administration served merely as a warning that we were going to be told to eat shit sandwiches, and like it.

[mod mom]

23. I really thought he was placed to diffuse his power. I'm losing faith about my

supposition. :(

You are correct: Rahm is a POS! I felt this way after how he treated Howard Dean after Dean's victorious strategy in '06. Too bad Rahm didn't learn something and totally miscalculated why the D's did well under Dr Dean's leadership!

[MattBaggins]

21. I will agree with you that pushing Dean aside was the stupidest

move the party has done in a long time.

I still think being associated with Goldman Sachs in this environment made Corrizine toxic.

[Kansas Wyatt]

22. What makes me furious....

Is that these so call 'intelligent' people will think now that the message is that 'they are NOT being Republican enough.'

So, in their infinite wisdom, will drift further to the right.

And after the 2010 & 2012 Elections, they will be scratching their heads wondering why people would vote against their 'best interests.'
I'm sorry I keep repeating that, but how fucking dumb do you have to be?

[invictus]

25. K&R

[geek tragedy]

27. How are New Jersey's property taxes and corruption Rahm's fault?

Creigh Deeds SUCKS. That isn't Rahm's fault.

Dear lord, people here blame everything on him.