A strong two-party system has led to two very lazy parties.

[Poll_Blind]

They know damned well that most people gloriously afflicted with strong political convictions would rather eat sawdust than vote for the other party. And like two giant competing brands, over time, they have started making deals between themselves. In business this is called horizontal price fixing.

While both parties will enshrine their opposing views on abortion rights or gay marriage or any of those other hot-button issues, it's getting harder and harder to fool yourself into believing that there is much difference (collectively) between the parties on dealing with Wall Street or Big Pharma or the Health Insurance industry or The War on Terror™

While there are differences, all too frequently I am reminded of this graph from the Washington Post showing the difference between the Bush tax plan and the Obama tax plan. Why is that?

Isn't that a deliciously simple, yet perplexing question?

And while we're at it, why does Wall Street seem to be able to call the shots even as we soak up the damage from their failed schemes? Or why did the Healthcare industry show us to the door when we demanded real change?

It's because we elected representatives who (for the most part) all went into the job with arguably the highest aspirations to make a real change, but over time learned that Wall Street and the Healthcare industry, etc., were more to be feared than were their constituency.

And here's where I pull the rug out from underneath you and we both fall into the Bottomless Pit Of Truth: It's our fucking fault. We elected them and thought that was all we had to do. Well, sometimes you get lucky and it is. But that apparently isn't going to be the case this time so we might as well all have a Plan B.

And Plan B is this: Keep fighting and remember:

You owe your vote to no-one except the motherfucker who delivers.

Forget that or get wrapped up in my-political-party-as-my-baseball-team and you will be a pauper in a team jersey forever. Right now corporations have more control in politics than ever before and it's only going to get worse. They have unheard-of financial clout but they still cannot force you to vote for a particular candidate: That's your choice and you still get to make it. All the money in the world doesn't mean jack shit for a political candidate unless they can get the votes. And that's where you and your buddies come in: Because each of you happen to have a vote. So treat it like the precious, powerful thing it is.

If your representative is not fearful of losing your vote, you're doing something wrong.

We've still got a little ways until November. Get active. Get involved. No political candidate, no party, no anything is guaranteed your vote. They have to work for it. And that means they have to work for you or risk being shipped back to work at the family car dealership.

I am not particularly pleased with a fair amount of the things that President Obama has done (or not done, as the case may be) since taking office. But just as he inspired hope in me during the campaign, he also imparted a nugget of wisdom which has gold in it, in a message delivered to the NetRoots Nation 2010 conference. Like the captured U.S. airman who blinked out T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code during his televised North Vietnamise interrogation, the President makes it clear what our part is to help effect change:

Keep making your voices heard. To keep holding me accountable. To keep up the fight. Change is hard. But if we've learned anything over these last 18 months it's the change is possible. It's possible when folks like you remember that fundamental truth of our democracy: That change doesn't come from the top down. It comes from the bottom up. From the NetRoots, from the grassroots. From every American who loves their country and believes they can make a difference."

PB

[DrDan]

1. I hate the thought that I, as a progressive, can be taken for granted

Yet that is exactly how I feel with regard to the current administration. I sense they are confident that they have my vote, as well as all other progressives because they know we could never, ever vote R.

Hence the move to the middle to firm up that set of votes.

It is all politics, all the time.

[Poll_Blind]

2. It's both parties. Look at what kind of freakshow the Republican party has...

...turned into. I see the Democratic party sliding away into some weird thing I don't recognize and then I realize as long as half the voters hold their nose and vote R and the other half hold their nose and vote D, there's no incentive for either party to be creative, try different ideas, or do that mythical pandering to the people I see in the old B&W movies.

Again, there should be less nose-holding and more vote-dangling. But it means people have to get off their asses and do that. If we don't demand more of our public officials we're simply not going to get it.

By the way, I have known more than a few decent...absolutely decent Americans...who also happened to be conservatives. That's just their world view. And they're not Rush or Glenn Beck or Ann Coulter freaks either. And they've become marginalized as well because they've sat on their ass and bizarre little warts in their party have grown to cancerous proportions. Not just Progressives, but all of the American spectrum of political representation needs to get hungry to please the American people again.

As painful as it is to say, it's not going to overhaul itself.

PB