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When did the Democratic party jump the shark?

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StarryNite Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 07:07 PM
Original message
When did the Democratic party jump the shark?
:shrug: :grr:
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Tesha Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 07:09 PM
Response to Original message
1. December 12th, 2000: When they didn't fight the blatant theft of the election.
Edited on Tue May-22-07 07:15 PM by Tesha
December 12th, 2000: When they didn't fight the blatant
theft of the election by the blatant Republican partisans
on the Supreme Court.

Our democracy died that day and the Democratic Party was
willing to sit back and enjoy such minor power and privilege
that they had managed to hang on to, rather than standing
up and fighting for what was right.

Remember the Congressional Black Caucus and how much support
they got from the Democratic Senatorial Caucus? The cowardly
actions of the Democrats in the Senate set the tone for
*EVERYTHING* that has happened since.

Tesha
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StarryNite Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 07:12 PM
Response to Reply #1
4. Yeah, I think you're right.
:cry:
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deutsey Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 08:46 PM
Response to Reply #1
16. Precisely...Precisely.. n/t
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ecstatic Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 08:47 PM
Response to Reply #1
17. I agree. The CBC stood for what was right even though they didn't have the votes
They were betrayed by the Senate and ever since then we've had more of the same.
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More Than A Feeling Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 07:09 PM
Response to Original message
2. They've come a long way, baby!
Seven years ago, Joe Lieberman was our VP candidate.
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chimpymustgo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 07:11 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. Maybe that's the tipping point: when Lieberman was named to the ticket.
Sorry Al. We love you now. You've seen the light. But dayum. That may have been the shark jump.
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tridim Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 07:14 PM
Response to Original message
5. I don't know, but they failed America today
and I will never let them forget.

I was one of the "Give them some time" people until about Noon today. My strong support didn't help at all, and in fact resulted in a nothing more than a big stinking pile of shit on America's doorstep.

Fuck you Dems.
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StarryNite Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 07:18 PM
Response to Reply #5
6. I know just how you feel.
What in the hell were they thinking? bush's numbers are in the toilet. Most Americans hate this god awful 'war' and want our troops home now. Yet they bend over for bush.
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Gabi Hayes Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 07:20 PM
Response to Original message
7. 1977, when they refused to back Jimmy Carter in any way, shape, or form, beginning
Edited on Tue May-22-07 07:21 PM by Gabi Hayes
with their refusal to even allow Ted Sorenson's name to come to the Senate floor for a vote as DCIA

follow that with their torpedoing of his far-seeing energy policy, as expressed in this prescient speech:

''That is the concept of the energy policy we will present on Wednesday. Our national energy plan is based on ten fundamental principles.

*The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices.

*The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

*The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems -- wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once.

*The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve.

*The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve, just as the consumers will. The energy producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer.

*The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it.

*The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement costs of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford.

*The eighth principle is that government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason I am working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy, to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy.

*The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can't continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy.

*The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century.

These ten principles have guided the development of the policy I would describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday.

Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals, to measure our progress toward a stable energy system.

These are the goals we set for 1985:

--Reduce the annual growth rate in our energy demand to less than two percent.

--Reduce gasoline consumption by ten percent below its current level.

--Cut in half the portion of United States oil which is imported, from a potential level of 16 million barrels to six million barrels a day.

--Establish a strategic petroleum reserve of one billion barrels, more than six months' supply.

--Increase our coal production by about two thirds to more than 1 billion tons a year.

--Insulate 90 percent of American homes and all new buildings.

--Use solar energy in more than two and one-half million houses.

We will monitor our progress toward these goals year by year. Our plan will call for stricter conservation measures if we fall behind.

I cant tell you that these measures will be easy, nor will they be popular. But I think most of you realize that a policy which does not ask for changes or sacrifices would not be an effective policy.''

here's the whole thing. read it and weep for what could have been, but his OWN PARTY went against him! care to guess why?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html

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StarryNite Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 07:31 PM
Response to Reply #7
8. Jimmy was often thought of as a wimp
Ironically he is one of the few that has the guts to speak the truth about *.
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yurbud Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 08:48 PM
Response to Reply #7
18. I thought of the crap they gave Carter AND Clinton everytime the GOP rubber stamped Bush
Right after Clinton was inaugurated, a bunch of congressional dems went to see him and lay down the law about how things were going to be.

Clinton had the last laugh--I think all the guys at that meeting were out of Congress by 1996.
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KT2000 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 08:55 PM
Response to Reply #7
22. You are right
It was heartbreaking during the time and I have been hoping for better ever since.
I remember going to hear my Dem congressman speak then and it was lots of ridicule of Carter.

Two sides of the same coin??
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Individualist Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 07:43 PM
Response to Original message
9. When they decided to dance to the DLC's tune
:puke:
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Matsubara Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 08:33 PM
Response to Original message
10. I would say when Jimmy Carter collapsed into a pile of cardigans...
Edited on Tue May-22-07 08:34 PM by Matsubara
I know he has been canonized as a great savior because of his work since leaving office, and all that he has done is truly laudable, but as president he showed incredibly poor leadership skills.

(And many of us seem to forget that Carter was NOT a liberal)

It was as though he thought that in the wake of Nixon, all he had to do was to be a good manager and not be corrupt, but the presidency entails a lot more than that.

He started out okay, and his energy-saving ideas were sound. Too bad he wasn't able to do more to help cement those things into our national daily routines.

He brokered the peace deal between Egypt and Israel - historic and improtant, his greatest legacy, but just a faraway feel-good story to the average American.

Then came stagflation with high interest rates and his tepid response.

And his ultimate failure, the Iran hostage crisis, which he let fester ineffectually for far too long. His last minute military attempt crashed and burned, and instead or immediately launching an even bigger attempt, he gave up.

Everybody I knew at the time, democrat and republican was disgusted by his handling of the crisis, so it was no wonder that an idiot actor won by a landslide.

And then while the republicans were getting ever more slick and media-savvy, who did the dems nominate in successive elections?

in 1984, a midwestern liberal policy wonk who looked like a college professor, and bored people just as much...

in 1988, a tiny, swarthy little Massachusetts liberal with huge eyebrows, a penchant for oversized helmets and little national appeal

It was as if the dems WANTED to lose.

Then finally, in 1992, we finally had an appealing candidate, but by then, the Reagan-Bush juggernaut had already driven the US so far to the right, Pinochet might have been a contender. It looked bad, but then, there were riots, the deficit was exploding, and Bush looked helpless, and (YAY!) Ross Perot jumped on the scene. His entry into the race was enough to give Clinton a fighting chance, and once in office, people realized that not all democrats were whimpering little mongrels, that some had backbones. There was a lot to criticize about Clinton, but overall, he knew how to act like a president, and it was no surprise that he won re-election handily.


But the party never REALLY jumped the shark, though, it's just been in a long funk. The GOP, however, may have jumped the shark for good when they picked an idiot like POS Bush for their nominee. They will be paying for that choice for a LONG time to come.
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LBJDemocrat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 08:46 PM
Response to Reply #10
15. "There was a lot to criticize about Clinton, but overall, he knew how to act like a president"
The presidency shouldn't be primarily about acting. Clinton did to the Democratic Party what Tony Blair did to Britain's Labour Party.
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Matsubara Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 08:54 PM
Response to Reply #15
21. Today, you can't just do one or the other.
I agree with you on the state of the party. But without the "act" you cannot win. Period. The American people are NOT going to elect or support some nebbishy policy wonk, no matter how brilliant and correct his ideas are. I don't like it, but that's the game, and the democrats have got to learn to play if they are going to win.

That is why Kucinich is a hopeless candidate. Of all the candidates, his ideas are the most sound and correct, but of all the candidates, he is least electable, and if he were elected, he is the most lacking in skills to rally the people (and more importantly, the Congress) to enacting any of his agenda.

It sucks, but looks, image control, speaking skills, people skills, media savvy and spin are all more important than policiy ideals when it comes to getting elected, and being in office does not let the politician off the hook, he's got to keep it up 24/7. Too bad Clinton forgot that when that zaftig aide came into his office...
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AzDar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 08:38 PM
Response to Original message
11. How about all the assholes who refused to get behind Ned Lamont?
They gave us Judas Lieberman.
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LBJDemocrat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 08:42 PM
Response to Original message
12. 1993
NAFTA. Bush isn't the only president responsible for the pathetic job situation today.
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HiFructosePronSyrup Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 08:43 PM
Response to Original message
13. The democratic party's fine.
Individual members, the Lieberman types, can fuck off.
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LoZoccolo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 08:45 PM
Response to Original message
14. When they supported slavery in the 1800s.
After that, it un-jumped the shark and is fine now.
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ikojo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 08:49 PM
Response to Original message
19. In the 1990s when Clinton signed
NAFTA and welfare "reform" into law.

It was probably before that but those are the moments when I realized both parties served the same corporate masters.
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Adenoid_Hynkel Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 08:51 PM
Response to Original message
20. Clinton
triangulated the soul out of the party. it took the horrors of bush to reinvigorate the left enough to grab the party back
i fear we may lose it again if we allow hillary to be coronated as nominee
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Canuckistanian Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-22-07 11:23 PM
Response to Original message
23. June 7th, 1988
The day Dukakis secured the Democratic nomination for President.
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