If Independents are moving to the right,walk me through how Progressive candidates will be elected..

[HipChick]

[ShortnFiery]

1. This is NOT about right vs. left but entrenched power vs. new blood. eom

[HipChick]

2. so how is it that a Teabagger scum takes a dem seat?

[DrDan]

6. you hit it on the head - the elitist thought that the D's owned that seat

so just select a D candidate and the race is over.

Didn't exactly work out that way, did it.

[cali]

9. that's too easy

a) coakley ran a terrible campaign. she came across as arrogant out of touch and entititled
b) brown ran a very good campaign- and he ran as a moderate beholden to no one. bullshit, but he sold it.
c) people don't know or are forgetting the role that dem state politician corruption played in this election. In MA, it's a big deal.

[malaise]

12. Actually I think this is about Dems failing to understand the party's principles

and their fugging mandate from 08. It is also about Dick Armey, misinformation and disinformation - and a lot of cash behind it.
I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that the RWs are using the same tactics they have used in developing countries - control the airways, distort their message, buy the voters, bully the opposition. Dems have helped by not understanding their mandate. The Shock Doctrine is well on its way in America.

[tekisui]

3. Showing spine? Campaigning like they want it?

Showing the American people that they are the ones who actually represent their interests?

Making the difference between us and the pukes quite obvious.

BULLSHIT on the idea that the country is moving right.

[DrDan]

4. are they moving to the right . . . or simply away from R/D candidates?

I think the latter. There is a general distrust of both parties right now - a thought that there is so little difference, that a vote for one is a vote of either.

[Chulanowa]

10. I heard that before. What was it, 2000?

Yes, Gore would have been just as bad as Bush. Let's vote Nader!

Remember that? I'm sure you do. Think there is a single person you know who wouldn't think you're crazy if you said that phrase today?

People who can't tell the differences between the parties are idiots who need to be converted to tiger food ASAP, for the good of the rest of us who have an awareness level somewhere above cauliflower.

Maybe if "liberals" would stop helping the teabaggers spread this particular fertilizer, we could keep the weeds of idiocy from sprouting?

[DrDan]

14. let's not forget it was "Gore/Lieberman"

Keep your head in the sand and ignore current feelings toward our party, as well as our opponents. See where that will get us next year.

Let's not blame liberals - they/we only want what we voted for only to see transparancy with the transition from R to D.

[girl gone mad]

5. Independents aren't "moving to the right"

They're rejecting crony capitalist policies.

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Gman]

7. Um... well they won't, but at least we have our principles!

and we didn't sell out to the DLC and corporations!

LOL!

[mmonk]

8. Better yet, walk me through how giving up the progressive cause

is good. People think there has been liberal and progressive legislation enacted in the last 40 years that can be blamed for America's problems. The problem with that is it isn't true. We have to fight back and educate. Otherwise, surrender and be happy.

[paulflorez]

34. Don't give up progressive causes, but persue them the right way

Healthcare is a political third rail. Writing the bill should have been 100% transparent, televised on C-SPAN. When people don't trust D or R the wrong way to do something is outside the view of the people. We could have had a moderately progressive bill, maybe even some Republican support from moderates, but that was seen as too slow an potentially not progressive enough. Look what we have now.

The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act was progressive legislation, it passed, but Congress gets no credit for that, they're still not "progressive" enough.

[DeSwiss]

Gettin' the Mule's Attention

Gettin' the Mule's Attention - http://www.mikelockett.com/stories.php?action=view&id=2">As Retold by Dr. Mike Lockett, The Normal Storyteller

It wasn't that long ago when a farmer looked to buy a mule from his neighbor. He asked the neighbor if the mule had any particular problems.

"No," was what his neighbor replied. "This mule will do anything you ask him to do. All you have to do is ask him nicely." Then he added, "Just make certain you never mistreat my mule if you buy him." The price was fair, and the mule looked healthy, so the farmer bought the mule.

The very next day, the farmer wanted to begin his spring plowing and break some new sod that was pretty thick with prairie grass. So, he burned off the top layer of grass and sharpened his plow blades so the horse could pull the plow through the tough roots and ready the field for planting. He hitched the mule to the plow and said, "Git up!"

The mule, however, had no intention of pulling that plow and paid no attention to the farmer at all. The farmer tried talking nicely until his face nearly turned blue. Then he stomped angrily over to the farm where he bought the mule.

"I think you lied to me," he told his neighbor. "You said all I had to do was talk nicely, and the mule would do anything I asked of him."

That's when the neighbor picked up a wooden two-by-four that was leaning against his barn. He strode right over to the farmer's house without saying a word. He walked right up to the mule and hit it in the head with the two-by-four. After walloping the mule, the man walked up by the mule's ear and whispered, "Please pull that plow."

The mule started moving as fast as he could, pulling that steel plow through the tough prairie sod. "I thought you told me to never mistreat your mule," the farmer told his neighbor with a questioning look on his face.

The farmer hesitated and said, "Like I said - talkin' nice to him works every time. But, sometimes you have to get his attention first."

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. Good question

[Political Heretic]

13. Independents vote for leadership and guts, not the status quo and stagnant inaction.

It's not about moving to the "right" or "left" on issues.... independents go wherever they think there is someone who is no-nonsense and ready to cut through the shit in washington and get things (they're not always even clear on what they mean by "things") done, who will do it without back-door dealing or inside-the-beltway elitism, that will stick to their guns....

Independent voters go right when they think they've got than in a candidate and they go left when they think they've got that in a candidate.

This has much more to do with the independent vote, by and large, than any set of policy positions.

[HipChick]

18. like 8yrs of Bush?

or vote to put a grinning Teabagger sitting in the WH in 2012? Fuck that...

[Political Heretic]

23. Hey genius, independent voters didn't swing en masse to bush in either election.

Not in 2000 not in 2004.

It was split.

What unites independents above policy or politics, is people with an anti-establishment populism that promises to be tough and get things done in washington, and pure national politics of the bullshitting and the insider-baseball backroom wheeling and dealing for fat cats... every time.

[TxRider]

26. So that's how Obama got independents to swing to him?

You said... every time.

Your right to a degree. But what independents want now is leadership and action to bring more jobs.

Not more spending on lower priority items, which is what HCR is now with unemployment so high.

[Political Heretic]

27. Yes. It is. "But what independents want now is leadership and action"

That's what they always want thanks for agreeing with me. :)

[Johonny]

28. then why vote for the party that

has done nothing but block action the past year? If anything even less action is about to take place now. Obama had more action on health care than anyone in the last 50 years. I don't see how you can be right.

[Political Heretic]

30. Because, they don't blame the minority, and neither do I

[JVS]

31. After losing half of their retirement accounts, people would have swung to Scooby Doo rather...

than vote for another Republican.

[tavalon]

15. This was a stupid ass punishment vote

The kind that cuts one nose off to spite one's nose. They want the Democrats to get a message that they're angry and they haven't thought through was this fucker will do when in Washington. Vote in haste, repent in leisure.

[Political Heretic]

24. Maybe we sould stop deserving to be punished instead of resenting the punishment

[dkf]

17. Electing progressives or following a progressive agenda simply puts people on the same page so we

Can pass something that isn't status quo. The hcr really was more of the same because it kept the same corrupt businesses in control of our health. THAT is the tragedy of what they were/are forcing down our throats.

[Junkdrawer]

19. If Democrats turn out in large numbers and yet are still "Diebolded"....

NO progressive seat is safe. Now, I imagine that a few progressives will be kept as window dressing, but all serve at the pleasure of the Media/Party/Corporate elites.

[Political Heretic]

25. The election wasn't stolen.

:eyes:

[Maru Kitteh]

33. Whiney little infants cry "stolen" every time an election doesn't go the way they like

And they do it on the right and the left.

[TankLV]

20. No - it's about the ever increasing "low attention span"

and NEED for the "quick fix" and "quick satisfaction"

The SHEEPLE have been conditioned to DEMAND the "quick payback" and if thay have to wait more than a MINUTE, then they move onto something else - the TV remote was the beginning - people unwilling to sit and watch the WHOLE program or a good portion of it but instead constantly flipping thru the dial without WATCHING anything!!!

All the short quick cuts to the MTV music videos and it's graduation into movies was the next incarnation - when was the last time you saw a movie where the scene remained glued to the actors for any length of time so you could get really immersed into what was happening - now it's all quick clips and epilictic seasure inducing flashes of just milliseconds of anything...

So now the sheeple acutally REWARD the idiots WHO CAUSED THIS MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE because the ADULTS we put in charge to fix THEIR MESS that caused DECADES to assemble didn't do it in a few months...

And the SELF GRATIFICATION poster boy - the NAKID BOY HIMBO candidate himself - is the winner...

[DCBob]

21. The non-stop bashing of Dems and Obama by right-wing media is working...

The simple minded/un-informed are easily manipulated by the words "socialism", "big government", "more taxes", "bankrupt the country", etc, especially when they see and hear it 7x24x365.

[Igel]

22. I think your presupposition is wrong.

Independents aren't moving the right.

They've merely voted--this time at least--for the candidate on the right-side of the political spectrum. A binary choice system is a very bad way to gauge whether the electorate is moving or not.

I think the country's pretty much been in the same place for the last 20 years; it may have shifted, but it's not always easy to ascertain how (because such changes don't have to happen across the entire set of policies covered by a political party0. It's just voted for some things that fit into what the majority in the middle want (bolstered by a majority on one side or another) or voted against things that it didn't want. This looks like big political swings. But again, given such a crude way of measuring things it's going to look like big swings.

Moreover, given that so many bring their confirmation biases and perceptions in which they've invested so much time and effort and emotion, sorting it out is made much harder--and, should anybody actually sort it out reasonably well, s/he'd be attacked by everybody else at the party.

[Winterblues]

29. It isn't so much to the Right as it is anti-incumbent

Democrats need to explain in no uncertain terms how they will effect Change or Change is going to affect them. People are sick and tired of watching huge corporations get away with the rape and pillage of America without any accountability. Laws have been broken and no one will be held accountable. Torture has been committed in our name and no one will be held accountable..I am sick of it....I will no longer support anyone Republican or Democrat that refuses to address such issues.. Change means exactly that CHANGE.

[anonymous171]

32. Independents don't lean right or left. They vote for who they think is the best

That's how Obama won them over back in 2008.