But the bottom line is this: the Democrats are afraid of the Republicans.

[phantom power]

Now, after a year-plus of that and just nine weeks away from the voting, the terms of debate are set. The Democrats are just now trotting out arguments. They're tying the Republicans to George W Bush, who is still unpopular. This may work, but they should have been doing this from the beginning, as the GOP did to Carter in the early Reagan days, and as the Tories recently did with that arresting web ad about Labour's Legacy.

But the bottom line is this: the Democrats are afraid of the Republicans. They – all of them, from Obama on down – are afraid of Rush Limbaugh and Michele Bachmann and you name it. You hear Democratic operatives talk strategy, and there's always a "logical" reason why this or that aggressive attack might not work. But it's nothing to do with logic. They're just afraid. Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman who wants the government out of everything, is a good case in point. It's been revealed that her family farm has received $250,000 in federal subsidies. If she were a Democrat, the Republicans would make sure the entire country knew it.

But the Democrats won't do things like that. If they had for the past 20 months, Americans would be talking about a president who, all things considered, is doing his best against quasi-insane and hypocritical opposition. But they're telling each other a different story. And the Democrats will go on not learning the lesson of the price of their fear.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/22/us-democrats-fright-club

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/tomasky-they-are-just-afraid.html

[ThatPoetGuy]

1. Yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

[apnu]

2. Hit the nail on the head.

Democrats are afraid to lead and afraid to fight the opposition. Even when the country overwhelmingly gave them a lease to do so.

[deutsey]

42. Reminds me of a Simpsons episode

At a Democratic Party rally, the banner hanging over the stage proclaimed something like: "We Can't Govern!"

The banner at the Repubican rally said: "We're Just Plain Evil!"

[Parker CA]

3. Bam! Nailed it. Haven't heard a peep about Bachman's $250k subsidy. Pathetic.

[pipi_k]

4. Wellll...I'm not so sure that's true...

I think the real problem is that Republicans, for the most part, know how to appeal to the batshit crazies out there in the world.

And I'm thinking there are way fewer batshit crazy Democrats than batshit crazy Republicans.


:+

[felinetta]

10. Also, it is extremely difficult to argue with Repigs who are batshit crazy. They are irrational and

it is almost impossible to have an intelligent conversation
with a batshit loon.

[nashville_brook]

17. especially if you can't use the word "batshit."

[county worker]

33. We use logic and they use lies. The public cannot think in logical terms but can sure suck up a

good lie.

Here is where I went wrong, I thought that we would continue to build on past progressive gains. I thought the Vietnam war would teach all a lesson about going to war frivolously, I thought that the civil rights movement would end discrimination for ever, and a lot of other things like that. But the lies are destroying all we have gained.

The right learned to tell lies with their noise machine and appeal not to logic but emotion. We can't do that.

[valerief]

5. But the Republocrats fear no one, because the world is their theater. nt

[nc4bo]

6. Guess it doesn't matter that the American public voted a certain way in 2008..

Mandate, Shamdate.

The people spoke on that day. Pretty damn loud and clear or so I thought. We did have that mandate thing going on, didn't we?

So what's really the problem?

[w4rma]

7. This is DLC message crafting. They don't really want to attack the real problems, because the DLCers

are in the pocket of them.

The DLC has to be vague with their message crafting. Rely on generalities so that they can proclaim, after the fact, that they didn't outright lie to anyone. They support 'free' trade and 'globalization' and are anti-union. They are *not* on our side and as long as they are dominant in this administration and at the DNC and Democratic Congressional Committees, we'll get this smoke blown up our collective butts.

They are a cancer. They are slimy. They are saboteurs. And, Rahm needs to be the first to go. All of this sounds like messaging directly from his mouth.

[COLGATE4]

8. Too sad, but you're absolutely correct

We are the original "bring a water pistol to a knife fight" party. Our leadership pisses themselves every time one of the Rethug talking heads unloads on them. The worst part is that we have no effective way to fight this echo chamber on cable or AM radio - Air America never got off the ground, and hosts like Big Ed are very few and far between. That means that we can't use surrogates, as the Rethugs do when they really want to get odious, giving their leadership 'plausible deni ability'. We on the other hand are limited to a few usually wimpy 'Democrat spokespersons' when Faux decides to let a Democrat even be heard. This leaves the job squarely on our political leaders, but they seem almost to a man(woman) to be gun-shy about confronting the Rethug assholes. The only one who didn't, Howard Dean was marginalized by our own party and put out to pasture for being too confrontational - now we have Tim Kaine (example which proves the point). I don't pretend to understand why - just pisses me off royally that this is the way it is.

[walldude]

9. The question is.. WHY?

Repugs have damn near sunk the country, they have done nothing right in the last 30 years. They have been dismantling every safety net ever built for this country. The left in this country has been constantly proven right time and time again. So why then would we spend time being "bi-partisan"? Why would any Democrat care one iota what Republicans think? Republicans spent 8 years laughing at the people on the left, laughing at them, calling them Un-American, Traitors, terrorist sympathizers and whatever other pathetic crap they could come up with.

So after all that what do the Democrats do when they finally are given the means to fix things ? Capitulate. Nice. And Democrats can't figure out why the "Far left" is upset. :crazy:

[Scuba]

11. +1

[Winterblues]

12. 1994 absolutely devastated the Democrats

It was a complete shock. Democrats did not expect nor were they prepared for such a slaughter. Since then they have been extremely frightened of a repeat...They do not understand yet today why the American people threw them out en masse. They thought they were secure in their positions and were doing a good job. Rush Limbaugh didn't think so and was very vocal about it without any opposition from Democrats..I am not sure if any Democrat from that era will ever get over it. I know I won't, but it did the opposite for me. It made me want to fight, not cower..

[kentuck]

15. The atmosphere was similar to now...

amongst many Democrats.

They were pissed off to the max at Bill Clinton's compromises with the Republicans and his conservative politics. So they sat out.

[Winterblues]

19. What compromise had Clinton done in his first year?

My memory is most if not all the compromises came after that Democratic slaughter..Democrats seemed to be falling all over themselves to do what Republicans were demanding after they took such an ass kicking...Still are IMO

[kenfrequed]

29. The soil was sown before then...

The DLC was pushing Democrats to continually abandon populism, liberalism, and their allies for a decade leading up to their 1994 defeat. Afterwards they convinced a bunch of rather pliable Dem's into going along with Battered Party Syndrome and we have had kind of milquetoast and unispiring lot ever since.

Sure, in Minnesota we have put in a few exceptions at times and there are always bright spots here and there but oddly the DLC sorts sway the cowardly far more readily.

[Papa Boule]

31. Yeah, that's my belief

1994, and maybe it goes back to 1980. A couple of "stunner" elections and the accepted insider wisdom became "the nation is right wing and we must appease them." It would take a couple of stunner elections in the opposite direction to shake out this entrenched belief system. I suppose this last election was interpreted as an anomaly.

[disillusioned73]

32. Bingo - bango!!!

:toast:

[myrna minx]

13. K&R n/t

[leeroysphitz]

14. Let me kill this meme before it even gets started. Dems aren't afraid, they are complicit. n/t

They have been giving their corporate paymasters everything that their fat greedy hearts desire all the while blaming it on those evil republicans...

They all need to GO. If we keep getting our apples from the same old barrel they will keep being rotten.

[Hydra]

36. +1000

During the Bush Administration, lots of people preferred to think Bush and his people were stupid rather than malevolent. Now, people would prefer to think that the Obama Administration is naive, inexperienced or cowardly rather than calculating and complicit with people who don't have our best interests at heart.

It wasn't true then and it isn't true now. What is happening is deliberate, sanctioned, and we're not invited to the table.

[gratuitous]

16. They're certainly more afraid of setting off the right wing crazies

They're more afraid of offending the unpredictable sensibilities of the right-wing nutzoids than they are of disappointing the very clear instruction they get from their own base. This causes them to concoct remarkable strategies that neither appease the crazies (who can never be appeased) nor satisfy their own base (who are always dissuaded from holding their elected officials accountable).

[nashville_brook]

18. afraid of rw crazees, or the biz interests rw crazees support?

[TheKentuckian]

20. Afraid my ass. They don't fight back because they largely agree and are held back by constituency

Their job is to play pied piper and get us to go along with the uniparty grand agenda by hook or crook.

[Fumesucker]

34. +1,000,000

[scarletwoman]

45. Exactly! nt

[Poboy]

21. Dry POWDER!

[blindpig]

22. A convenient excuse....

for collusion.

[Blue Owl]

23. That Mitch McConnell is one menacing mofo

n/t

[Edweird]

24. You are confusing fear with complicity.

DLC=GOP

[joeybee12]

25. They're cowards and they never learn from their mistakes....KNR

[bbgrunt]

26. cowards or accomplices? stupid or evil?...see Jon Stewart

[NYC Liberal]

27. Maybe it's because the GOP's tactics have gotten them...

where?

-Lost the election in 1996 and lost seats Congress.
-Lost seats in the 1998 midterms.
-Bush lost in 2000 and the GOP lost seats in both houses of Congress.
-Bush barely won in 2004.
-The GOP lost the House and Senate in 2006.
-McCain lost the election in 2008, and the GOP lost even more seats in Congress

This meme of the Dems being afraid comes up all the time, yet the fact is the GOP hasn't done all that great with their supposedly "great" messaging.

I'd really rather NOT act like Republicans as some here apparently want us to. I don't want Dems passing legislation in the middle of the night or keeping votes open for hours to twist arms or have Obama issue signing statements saying he's going to ignore the law.

Also, to quote the beginning of the article:

Question: among Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, which one had the highest approval rating at this 20-month mark in his presidency? The answer is Obama, who, at 44% or 45%, is a few points better than each of those predecessors was. The Bushes were both more popular, but they were governing under special circumstances – George HW Bush was launching the Persian gulf war in his 20th month in office, and his son was still wearing the post-11 September halo.

Now consider Obama's list of legislative accomplishments, which, even accounting for the negative political impact of the still-unpopular healthcare reform, is substantial. Financial reform and the stimulus (which Republicans inveigh against in Washington and then, once back in their districts, celebrate by cutting the ribbons on highways rebuilt with stimulus money) are only the best known of a long list. One piece of legislation reformed the student loan system in the US, which had been mired in a scandal that cost taxpayers billions of dollars. In calmer times this bill, the largest change to higher education financing in the US in 50 years, would have been politically meaningful. Now, no one even remembers it happened.

[depakid]

43. Wow

Republicans controlled Congress for 12 years and you have the temerity to post this apologia?

[anarch]

28. moreover, Dems seem unwilling to try to appeal to stupidity

whereas the opposition pretty much only appeals to stupidity. And the fact is, there are a great many stupid people, and many of them do indeed vote. Reliance on the stupidity of the masses, and the manipulation of raw emotions (primarily fear) are the basic tools of the Republican party. I don't know how we can ever really combat this effectively.

[Drale]

30. Im a nerd

Call me a nerd if you want but "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering". It rings true over and over, just look at the whole fear of muslims going on right now. We must not fear the repulicans or anyone, no matter how crazy and prone to violence they are.

[TheKentuckian]

35. You are right

[Ramulux]

37. Bingo

Dude nails it. I have said it a million different times, the democrats should have been playing offense from the beginning and screaming from the top of their lungs about the batshit insane ideas that many of the republican candidates have. They have miserably failed in the messaging department and I honestly think Robert Gibbs should be fired, not just because of his retarded professional left comments but because he has failed at his job which is to sell this administrations achievements to the public.

[swilton]

38. I don't buy the fear card

I don't think they are afraid of the Republicans as much as they are ideologically in bed with the Republicans. They use the fear card as a fig-leaf.

[newtothegame]

39. Self delete nt

[Poboy]

40. ttt

[deutsey]

41. Very insightful

I'm always surprised that the Democrats are always surprised by the successful smears and attacks launched by the GOP and the right.

Why they never seem to have a strategy to counteract these attacks (let alone have a proactive strategy that will actually put the right on the defensive for a change), is maddening and depressing.

I've felt since the 2000 election theft that the Dems always seem to gear up for a heated game of hockey, while the Republicans are out on the rink waiting for them in a machine-gun nest.

Actually, on edit: I felt that way going back to at least the '80s, with minor blips of optimism here and there that quickly disappear.

[tomp]

44. no, the bottom line is the democrats ARE the republicans. nt