I think the problem is that the pendulum has barely budged.

[Hyper_Eye]

I posted this on http://www.leftinalabama.com/diary/5537/the-danger-of-mass-senate-loss-dems-might-learn-the-wrong-lesson">Left In Alabama which is a liberal blog for the couple of Democrats in my state that are working from the inside to change our local and national politics. While discussing the Senate loss one of the regular conservatives on the site made his case that this loss was due to the liberal agenda of the Obama administration and Democratic congress. I won't quote his entire statement (you can click the above link to see it) but he said:

People disliked Bush and certainly wanted a change from that, but didn't want the pendulum to swing all the way to the other side.

I felt a need to respond. I may have gone on a little longer than I intended but I was feeling a little bottled up. Here was my reponse:

I think the problem is that the pendulum has barely budged.

The healthcare bill is crap. It is nothing like what was promised and the Obama administration made it clear it wasn't going to be from the very start when they decided they were going to make deals with big pharma before the wheels of reform could even begin to spin. The bailouts have not unfrozen the credit markets but they have done a great job of making fat pockets fatter. While things are going the way Obama promised in Iraq the "surge" in Afghanistan is too little too late and merely a Bush policy in another country. So we aren't ramping up in the original unpopular war. We are ramping up in a newly unpopular war and somehow the last 8 years are erased because the whole thing has been branded "OBAMA". Gitmo is still operational, financial reform contains everything the bank lobby wants but none of the reform, don't ask don't tell is still the law of the land, and the Obama justice department is arguing Bush's position on wiretapping and discrimination cases.

In contrast we are on a great path in Iraq that was started before Obama took office. The path was started by the Iraqi government and forced on the Bush administration but it was pretty much what Obama was saying should happen. I give him some credit there. The stimulus is showing success but it needed to be bigger and they really need another one to keep a second dip from occurring. Good luck with that. The clunkers program that the right-wing likes to rip on was wildly successful. A couple of bones thrown to the liberals include stem cell research funding, the increase in SCHIP, and allowing for the legal system to legitimately lock away terrorists.

That is not the change that was promised. This administration promised transparency and a change from the status quo. With their back room dealings and scoffing at their liberal base they have come to encapsulate the status quo and all they are doing is feeding it. When you look at a Senate loss in Mass. these are the things you have to look at. If you think that a loss in such a liberal state is due to the lack of a conservative agenda you are simply out of your mind. The Democrats are not going to keep turning out with their hopes high when we get slapped down and told to wait our turn once our politicians enter office. Bush won in 2004 narrowly in Ohio with a 2% lead nationwide and he called it a mandate. He then made an attempt to completely change social security by privatizing it. In 2000 he lost the popular vote and he pushed through a record breaking tax cut... with reconciliation! We put Obama in office with an 8% advantage of 10 million votes! No mandate for him! He needs to play it cautious! That is incredibly frustrating.

As for the Senate loss... the new minimum and the number to remember is 60. That is what it will take to make the Senate move and that is why we won't see major legislation move under a Democratic congress for a long time to come. Of course Republicans get their agenda through with 51 votes or 50 + the vp. That is because elected Democrats are weak! They can't hold their ship together and strong arm the members who like to wander off. The Republicans whip their entire caucus into shape and they aren't afraid to hurt some feelings along the way. Deomcrats should not have wasted a single minute courting Republicans for the healthcare bill. They should have included a strong public option and told their caucus they are going to like it. As matter of fact, they should have started with single-payer and then negotiated towards a public option. They didn't play all their cards. Democrats fold with a royal flush! When you have a 60-vote (59 + Lieberman if that really counts) supermajority you use it or lose it. The Democrats blew it. They deserved this loss and I hope they are overwhelmingly shocked. Wake up! Pass real healthcare reform and real financial reform. That is what they are there to do and all they are doing is playing the same old games trying to get away with the same parlor tricks we have seen time and time again.

This loss was not about the tea party agenda. The tea party folks like to claim they are mad and fed up. It started because they were mad alright. They were mad they lost. Sour grapes is all that was. Obama barely had time to try out the White House bowling lanes before the tea parties were hoisting racist signs in parking lots all over the country. They are not the mainstream of America. The mainstream of America voted for Barack Obama. Barack Obama stabbed us in the eye. They deserve this loss and I hope it stings.

It has been hard for me to admit I feel this way but my frustration is too great to continue defending the indefensible. I hope these politicians figure out what we have been yelling in their ears for so long. I hope that for the sake of this country.

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Well said.

I still hold out a faint hope that Obama was truthful in what he said he wanted, and that the problems of his first year are the result of his overdependence upon the holdovers from the Clinton/DLC administration which was, after all, the last Dem administration and it did produce a strong economic turnaround.

My hope is that he is coming to understand that the strength of the economy under Clinton was in spite of the Neolib DLC policies, not because of them, and that traditional Democratic values such as he promoted in his campaign will still turn things around.

Though I must admit, that hope is fading.

[Hyper_Eye]

2. Well enough said to get unrecs!

I sure do love that feature.

Really I am still hopeful as well. It isn't healthy to bottle up ones frustration though. Obama still has plenty of time to turn this thing around. I hope he can grow a pair and make it happen.

[pansypoo53219]

3. it's trying

but the gnews and republikkklans are trying to push it back.

[Hyper_Eye]

4. The problem is the if it moves left of full-right people start screaming "SOCIALISM!!!"

And the media loves to show these people on television and make them look like the biggest force in politics. As Eisenhower once said, "Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

[Vincardog]

7. When the wing nutz start to scream our side needs to say "You have not seen anything yet". Then go

on to pass some real populist laws. Like repealing the Corporate "right" to be a person.

[Hyper_Eye]

8. Absolutely right. Lets show them a real liberal agenda! n/t

[cali]

5. good points, well said, but

I can only conclude that you know very little about MA politics. In the Senate race there, local issues and Coakley running an epically bad campaign, coupled with brown running a very good one and some really high profile dem corruption cases, had far more to do with the loss than Obama who is still polling fairly well there.

[Hyper_Eye]

6. I am aware of the disastrous campaign that was run there.

It had a huge amount to do with the result. It would be illogical though to deny that their is any national ramifications from this race. We ignore the implications of it at our peril. I don't live in MA and I can't affect the outcome of their election. That leaves me to be concerned with the national implications of it. And greatly concerned is exactly where I find myself.

I can contemplate the national issues without also going into the local reasons for the outcome. It seemed to me that my response was long enough as it was. See the link I posted for plenty of discussion of the race on a local level which followed.

[Hyper_Eye]

9. edit

[democrat0986]

10. K&R