Progressive Canaries

[avaistheone1]

Take it from David Axelrod. “Almost the entire Republican margin is based on the enthusiasm gap,” the president’s senior adviser said last week. “And if Democrats come out in the same turnout as Republicans, it’s going to be a much different election.”

But we don’t get to have a different election. After more than 20 months of White House insistence that the only useful role for progressive canaries is to keep singing the president’s tune, the electoral coal mine is filled with the political equivalent of carbon monoxide and methane.

Like canaries in mines -- providing early warnings -- an increasing number of progressives reacted to politically toxic gases. The base was crumbling.

But the purportedly savvy guys at the top of the administration publicly expressed scorn for that base. Instead of viewing its continual erosion as a harbinger of disaster for the midterm election, the dismissive responses included gratuitous verbal swipes from the White House. But public insults have been the least of the problem. The essence has been the policies of governance.

http://www.counterpunch.org/solomon10152010.html





Norm Solomon nails it. This article speaks for me.

[avaistheone1]

1. I love this description of Democrats method of operation ...

Earlier this week, labor activist and author Amy B. Dean neatly summarized a key dynamic. “Every time the Democrats are too timid to promote a policy solution that the party’s base actually wants, they walk into a trap,” she wrote. “They end up passing something that is too insignificant to actually deal with the problem at hand but that nevertheless prompts hysterical denunciations from the right. Despite their efforts at moderation, they are vociferously condemned as ‘tax-and-spend liberals.’ At the same time, they have nothing to show for their efforts that might make them proud to have earned the label.”