If Obama and Dems in Congress had shown more of a spine against Republicans...

[Barack_America]

...do you think our chances next week would be a lot better? Why or why not.

To me it seems like the attitude about Dems started going downhill when the White House and the Senate started prioritizing "bipartisanship" over achieving the substantive progressive agendas they campaigned on.

[movonne]

1. Who knows...I think Obama did what he could...we don't know

what is going on behind closed doors..

[LostInAnomie]

2. I was thinking about this the other day...

... and the sad thing is that I don't really think with the bunch of Dems we had in office there was much more spine to show. Election 2008 brought in a shit load of Blue Dogs to the house and a progressive agenda was literally not in their nature. The same goes for the Senate. The majority of the Dems would have been more than willing to go with a much more progressive agenda, but it wasn't in the nature of the additional senators we needed.

You have to go with the best you can get, and with the POS's we had in there, we couldn't get much.

[COLGATE4]

4. I agree with you to an extent, but you can't disregard the lack

of leadership Obama showed in trying to advance a truly progressive agenda. From the beginning his heart was set on compromise and 'bipartisanship' and it made him negotiate against himself time after time after time. We would certainly not have gotten all that we wanted, perhaps nowhere near it, but I can't help but think that if Obama had been more aggressive we would have done better than we did, Blue Dogs and all.

[LostInAnomie]

6. You still had to get them to vote for it.

That was the problem. The Blue Dogs were essentially Republicans that have brief moments of humanity. In the Senate, You had scum like Nelson, Lieberman, Lincoln, Bayh, and Landrieu that you couldn't beat into casting a progressive vote.

I'm sure the rest of the Senate and House would have been more than willing to vote for a better bill, but those fuckers fucked us all.

[Mayflower1]

7. How many presidents

have had both houses of Congress, even 60 votes in the Senate, and still we didn't get most of the things we wanted. Was it leadership? I just think it was a wasted -once in a generation- opportunity.

[Kurovski]

17. Welcome to the fantabulous DU, Mayflower1 !

:hi:

[DCKit]

3. Congressional Dems could have done a lot more to embarrass the (R)s.

I don't blame President Obama for walking the very thin line, but feel both Nancy and Harry have been ineffective.

[uponit7771]

5. Have you seen the RCP "enthusiam" polls? TIA

[Barack_America]

8. Yup. I wish I could say I'm surprised.

But it's understandably depressing to fight so hard to get people elected only to have them roll on their backs and refuse to fight in return for you.

[KharmaTrain]

9. The Biggest Losers Will Be Blue Dogs

Many who didn't vote with this administration 100% of the time or got in the way of more meaningful legislation passing. I see a bunch of these districts going red...so much for appeasing.

Bottom line is no matter what the House did with a dysfunctional Senate all the good work they did do was bottlenecked and watered down (many times by Democrats) that made the House look ineffective.

With Reid caving to Senate rules that allowed McConnell to call for 60 votes on everything that made just brining bills to the floor an arduous act. If there's a blame game to play here, it was and is weak leadership in the Senate that squandered the majorities and forced the administration to "compromise".

[Barack_America]

11. From your keyboard to God's ears.

Here's hoping for a purge of Republicans in our own party. Maybe it will encourage the remaining Dems to actually act like Dems.

[GeorgeSloter]

10. (First Post...hope its good!)

(First post...hope its good!)

I hate the absolute cowardice that many of our Democratic legislators have shown in terms of campaigning. Yes, the economy is still crappy. The health care bill still isn't popular. And certain segments of our population still want to gin up both gay and immigrant boogeymen to scare fellow igmos in society.

But you know what? When the worst of things went down, our side acted like the adults in the room. OUR side made some hard decisions on passing the Recovery Act and extending unemployment insurance. The other side basically said 'let them eat cake'. OUR side made the hard decisions on carrying on TARP and the car company bailouts. The other side foolishly said 'let them fail'. OUR side passed sweeping health care reforms that increased coverage access and fortified patient rights. The other side defended their heartless business models, and said 'hey, there's always the emergency room'.

For a fully-spined Democrat running for re-election or as a challenger, you had a litany of pro-Democratic memes to work with before trying to paint yourself as 'the most independent person in Congress' (Whatever, Bobby Bright). Teabaggers and hard-right Republicans have shown and told you that they're going to Washington to pick fights. But not Democrats...WE ARE THE ADULTS IN THE ROOM!!!!

[gulliver]

12. I doubt it.

I liked watching Obama tossing the Republicans around like rag dolls at their caucus retreat on health care. And it arguably resurrected HCR. Could he do that on everything? No way, imo.

The HCR barely squeaked by without the public option (which I am for), so I think we would have nothing if the public option had been included. I can easily see the sense Obama makes when he talks about the current HCR law as a framework and a beginning. To me, it is tangible and substantial and a big success.

I think Pelosi and Reid both lack movie star charisma, but then politics has almost no one with that. People with movie star charisma can make better money and have a lot more fun by being movie stars. Clinton is still the party's charisma guy, although when Obama lets it out, he can beat Clinton.

Lacking charisma, and in an environment where abject lying is rewarded, an entire cable network is devoted to vitriolic propaganda, and the American people are mired in a sometimes terrifying economic pit, Pelosi and Reid did very well. They did better than you or I could do, I'll bet. Then just extend that argument and ask who could have done better and left us in a better spot.

I don't see it. I think a lot of people fall into the trap of assuming that everyone knows everything or, paradoxically, is stupid. I sometimes have trouble deciding whether to clean the cat box or rake the leaves. Imagine how hard it would be to do what Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are trying to do with incredibly high stakes (as high as they get), constantly changing parameters, people attacking you from both sides...

No, I guess I think the balance of responsibility between Dem leaders and Dem voters was more than fair to the Dem voters and less than fair to the leaders. That's how I would call it anyway. Dem voters need to back their leaders more. Maybe then Dem leaders would not have to worry about their backs and could focus more on beating Republicans.

[Greyhound]

13. No doubt at all.

The voters spoke and they ignored them, choosing instead to preserve the perpetrators instead of helping the victims.

[donheld]

14. k & R

People always respect someone with spine unless it's yellow.

[laughingliberal]

15. The one place they went off the rails & blew it was with the stimulus bill.

There is no doubt that was a case where the Republicans were able to get the bill watered down in return for the 3 Republican votes we had to have.

Where they missed the boat was in claiming it as a big victory and saying it would keep unemployment from going above 8%. It was obvious it would not do that. What President Obama needed to do, at that point, was say he was happy some stimulus had passed and that it would slow the damage of the economic collapse but make it clear it was weaker than needed due to the demands of the Republicans and that it would not hold unemployment down as it would have had they been able to pass a bigger bill.

Had he done that, every bad unemployment report since 2009 could have been laid at the feet of the Republicans and our majorities would not be in any danger.

[Johonny]

16. No

polling shows time and time again Americans liked Democrats trying to get Republicans involved. When Obama talked about bipartisanship it polled well. Americans want more cooperation between the party's to actual do stuff. Since Obama did pass a lot of legislation even without much Republican help I'm not sure it's a complaint. The big question is why more Americans aren't informed of the things this congress did do and of the things that didn't pass, why don't more Americans understand the reason they didn't pass was generally Republicans complete refusal to vote on it? If your scenario was true then Americans would be trying to elect more progressives to Congress to override a timid president and the blue dogs in congress. Instead they are voting to basically end what progress the last congress did. This probably means while Americans say they want change, the majority are afraid of actually changing things. Most don't understand the actual "change" that occurred the last 30 years that needs to be corrected. Or worse most don't understand congress did change a lot of things in the last two years and had they pressed harder for more moderates in the Republican party and less blue dogs in the Democratic party they could actually get more change that would be positive for the majority of Americans.

For the record Obama has done a lot of what he campaigned on. Including gulp trying to push bipartisanship. It was one of those progressive agendas Obama campaigned on. He stressed over and over again he wanted to change the tone in Washington. :)

[depakid]

18. errr... care to back up those statements?

Obama and the Dems had a huge mandate for progressive policy changes. Republicans had a mandate to go sit in Siberia.

[RiverStone]

19. Yes - our chances would be better ! DUers pay attention...

Much of the public is far less informed; they just see the bullet points. Ya don't compromise with a bully, as much as we tried --- it obviously weakened our position.

Rec'd :hi: