First Year Post Mortem: Obama Admin needed to operate as though it had a hostile Senate

[ddeclue]

It needed to treat the Senate as though it were hostile and instead of trying to compromise its principles to get a bill passed it should have gone for the public option on health care (NOT insurance) reform, it should have gone for re-regulation of the financial industry, and it should have bailed out MAIN street instead of WALL street.

Why?

Because we really don't have a Democratic majority in the Senate. There are 15 Blue Dog "Democrats" there that need to go - Bayh, Landreiu, Lincoln, Baccus, Nelson, Nelson, Lieberman, et. al. who consistently screw us over at crunch time but then pretend to be a Democrat to get elected. These "Blue Dogs" are ALSO why it was so easy for Bush to get things passed when we either had only a 2 vote minority or a 6 vote "majority" under the Bush Administration.

The reality folks is that we really only have 45 DEMOCRATS in the Senate.

The ONLY way to deal with this situation is to NOT compromise and to go instead with what those who elected you expected.

Yes you will likely fail to pass a lot of it but it would be better to be true to your base and let everyone see that you are being screwed over by these Blue Dogs than compromise and water down the bill so much that no one likes it and it still doesn't pass.

All this compromising and still ending up with nothing is WHY we lost the Massachusetts race, it's also why we lost in NJ and VA last year as well.

WEAKNESS is NOT rewarded.

Compromise is WEAKNESS.

Until we clean house and purge these Blue Dogs from our ranks and elect real Democrats instead, the general public will continue to think we have a majority but because of incompetence can't pass anything. We need to stop padding our numbers with the disloyal and the unreliable Blue Dogs. If the general public were to realize we only had 45 votes then they'd quickly come to the conclusion that the problem was not that we were incompetent but rather that there were not enough votes to pass DEMOCRATIC legislation.

Obama now needs to STOP compromising and going to the right and instead start putting up the non compromised bills that the base elected him to put up: SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE, A JOBS BILL THAT PUTS PEOPLE BACK TO WORK ON PUBLIC PROJECTS, AN EDUCATION BILL THAT PAYS TO SEND THEM TO COLLEGE, A TRADE POLICY THAT STOPS SHORT CIRCUITING LABOR, SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS.

He needs to MAKE the Republicans and Blue Dogs get up every day of their lives and read from the phone book to prevent these things from passing. They shouldn't simply be allowed to phone their filibuster in to the chamber. Make them stand before the American public day after day on C-SPAN and show us they are against decent health care, decent jobs and college educations for average working people.

Eventually they will either cave in or be tarred and feathered at their next election for opposing what the average American family actually wants.

THAT is the ONLY way to fix this mess.

[T Wolf]

1. BIG assumption that Obama WANTS to push liberal policies. There is little evidence of that. nt

[Toasterlad]

2. Agreed, But the OP's Point Is Valid Nonetheless.

Too many DINOs in Congress. The Democrats never really had a majority.

[madrchsod]

3. jimmy carter syndrome

obama-rahm underestimated the senate ability to be obstructionists. of course i am assuming that obama- rahm actually meant what they said about change.

[NuttyFluffers]

4. we had all those blue dogs from needless DLC interference...

if the real progressives weren't destroyed by party money starvation during primaries then things would be different. this is why you want quality candidates over quality. and it is also why DLC triangulation is anathema to regaining power, particularly when the nation is fomenting real populist anger.

these are silly excuses of pre-made failures caused by poor strategic interference from the fifth column members in the party. we got to suck it up, dump the losers, go back to what wins and emotionally sync with the emotional times. discount the public's feelings at your peril; human psychology trumps political machinations each and every time -- unless the goal is exactly this, that we have a group among us who actively desire us to lose and stay disconnected. qui bono? obviously not the progressives and liberals, so it obviously cannot be them. again, qui bono, who benefits?

this is very easy human psych 101...