Is the White House so clueless that it would become even more "centrist" following a Coakley defeat?

[brentspeak]

At the very moment in time when the struggling American public yearns for another populist in the FDR-mold, will Obama stupidly believe the public wants another George Bush I?

[valerief]

1. They don't do anything out of cluelessness. They do what they want. nt

[inna]

46. good point. nt

[pnwmom]

2. No, the clueless ones are the progressives who thought that a win

by a right-wing slimeball like Brown would make it obvious that the country wanted to move to the left.

[brentspeak]

4. Which progressives are pushing for Brown to win?

Names?

[pnwmom]

12. Naming names here is against DU rules, remember?

But many have expressed the thought, as you seem to here, that Brown, the right-winger, will win because Coakley wasn't progressive enough.

I think, if it happens, it will be because she didn't run a great campaign -- and she isn't Ted Kennedy. And people are stupid.

[Codeine]

6. Precisely.

Their delusions get reinforced by echo chambers like this site and they convince themselves that America is far more Left than it really is. Sadly, our progressive views are outliers.

[Armstead]

9. Bullshit -- A majority believes in what we believe -- But there's no political support system for it

[Codeine]

14. Baloney.

We convince ourselves of this, but election results prove otherwise.

[Armstead]

35. Please see my post immediately below for my response

[Codeine]

37. I disagree.

And all your talk of "whine whine" doesn't change that. We're a center-right nation.

[PVnRT]

40. You're right. Let's just give up.

The capitualists are out in force tonight, I see.

[Codeine]

41. capitulate?

No. I'm for mandatory single-payer with total destruction of the insurance system. But it's increasinghly clear our democracy doesn't want what I want, so I'm happy to compromise now and work for more later.

[Armstead]

43. If you don;t believe people can agree with you, then you've already lost

in the 80's, GOP conservatives were able to totally turn the country from what it had been towards ideas that were contrary from manyu common assumptions.

How? because they believed they could sell their ideas to the ;public, and they worked to do it.

If you start from the assumption that most of the country will never agree with you, then you will never change anything and never convince anyone.

[Codeine]

48. I believe we can sell it,

but we never took the time to lay the foundation. I think a lot of people aren't aware that the Right spent most of the 70s laying the cultural groundwork for what became the Reagan era. We haven't done that.

[pnwmom]

17. How can you prove that? A majority SHOULD be progressive,

but too many are duped by the likes of the teabaggers and the Sarah Palin's.

[Armstead]

31. And why is that? Because we are defeatists

The difference between us and them?

They actually believe in what they believe enough to be confident that peopel will agree with them.

We go "unnnnn, we're just a minority, no one really believes in the same things.....whine, whine,whine."

And that sniveling has given a huge opening both to the GOP and to the regressives corporate facets of the Democratic Party.

If you believe in what you believe, then dammit believe that other people will agree with you if you make the case.

If liberal/progressive Democrats would get a Confidence Transplant, we could get back to being an effective majority party again.

[PolNewf]

38. The difference between you and them

Is delusional people like you who undercut your own side.

If Obama is smart he will shift to the right and write off the "true progressives" that would work to elect a republican when they don't get their pony. You are unreliable at best and a cancer to the party at worst.

How many polls that show 20% of the population is liberal before you get it through your skulls that you are 20% of the population? Obama was elected by more moderates than liberals.

From a 20% position you have two choices:
1) Ally with moderates and work for incremental change while persuading more people to take liberal positions. You need to get 75% of the moderates to win elections.
2) Work against the evil moderates and hand government over to conservatives who have twice your numbers at 40%. Conservatives only need 25% of moderates to win elctions.

Face reality already before you fsck up the world with another Bush.

[treestar]

25. Then MA won't send a teabagger to the Senate

If the majority is progressive, that means that there will be at least 59 Dems and one Independent sort of Repuke at the very least, right?

[Armstead]

32. Massachusetts is a very complex picture

If Brown wins it will not be because the state wanted to send a tea bagger to Congress.

Brown sold himself as a reasonable moderate alternative to a bad candidate.

It is not a large-scale repudiation of progressive/liberal values. It is ignorance and good campaigning by the Brown machine.

[treestar]

34. What?

that makes no sense. If they send him, it proves they are conservatives.

[Armstead]

44. Some yes, others didn;t know about him and others are just pissed

[brentspeak]

11. Speaking of "delusions" -- who are the progressives who want Brown to defeat Coakley?

You have as many years to research the answer before making a response.

[Codeine]

20. I never made that claim.

Talk to somebody who has? :shrug:

[pnwmom]

21. Where does it say that progressives "want Brown to defeat Coakley."

Some of them did think that a win for Brown would send a message that she wasn't progressive enough. But they were wrong. It sends the opposite message.

[treestar]

27. Maybe none, but there seem to be some who think it will convince the WH

to move further left?

How is that going to convince Lieberman, Nelson and Snowe to move further left?

[Armstead]

33. Self delete -- duplicate

[Tesha]

16. Yeah, go ahead. Keep blaming us for your inadequacies.

I'm sure that will make us that much more likely to
turn out next time.

Tesha

A DAMNED PROUD PROGRESSIVE

[Vicar In A Tutu]

18. Sadly true.

As I've said before, after decades of Republican indoctrination the 'liberalisation' process will take time and must be done subtly. See: the masses of media goons who happily nod mindlessly while the Republican talking heads foam at the mouth about Obama's 'radical marxist' ideology. See: the masses of people who refused to let their children see Obama give his speech to the school children.

If Obama genuinely went all-out left wing, I doubt he'd even make it to a second election. He'd be rooted out quickly, because if elected politicians can be given free TV time to call his decidedly centrist agenda thus far (rolled back from W's far-right one) the work of a far-left loon, they'd absolutely crush him if he went straight to the left. No, that will take time. It'll take at least as much time as it did for the Republicans to create a country in which a man as insanely right-wing as Bush could be elected. Or at least come close enough to be handed the win. It's not fair, but it's not for nothing that a majority of Americans identify as 'conservative'. I don't think it's fair, and I certainly empathise with the myriad progressives on the vast majority of issues. It's a sad, sad situation.

[Mojambo]

3. Rahm Emanuel is calling the shots over there

It's the direction he wants to go anyway.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

26. but who hired him? who takes his advice? and who supports him?

[Mojambo]

29. Oh, we all know where the buck stops. n/t

[senseandsensibility]

5. I don't know if it's cluelessness or something else

but they want to begin courting Snowe again.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. I always thought is was the repukes that were the keystone cops...

but the repukes are making the admin look stupid and in addition, they are smiling and asking for more.

[Joanne98]

8. That's the fear.

[Ozymanithrax]

10. 60 DEMS - 1 = 41 point shift to the right..

It isn't clueless, it's tea leaves.

The liberal state of Massachusets craps on Teddy's grave and sends a Conservatvie to Congress making certain pieces of legislation impossible.

No banking regulation is possible.
No legislation adressing global warming is possible.
Health Care may not go down to defeat. (Yes, I know that some people here will dance for joy at that.)

Clearly, the American people in Mass, which is heavly liberal and progressive want it that way. They want the shift to the right. They want Conservative policies.

Yes, he might read it that people sent a message to be more liberal, but 41 does not allow that type of legislation.

The message to the left should be, be careful about the message you send because they can be misread.

[Tesha]

13. Yes, the DLC (Rahm, etc.) IS THAT CLUELESS.

Hasn't this been proven to you by now?

As a result, 2010 will blow the Democratic majorities out of
both houses of Congress and 2012 will see the end of the
Obama presidency.

Tesha

[saigon68]

22. Its coming--

[dionysus]

15. is brent so bitter that he posts nothing but flamebait in the guise of being "liberal"?

[WI_DEM]

19. You sure don't waste any time do you?

[Clio the Leo]

23. What in the speech he gave Sunday makes you think that?

Seriously? .... Remind me to quote from it to you tomorrow. :)

[ChairmanAgnostic]

28. name one thing he said in a speech, that he followed up on as president.

I've been searching long and hard, and frankly, I am finding nothing.

He appears more and more to be a talker, not a doer. and that pisses me off to no end. And I'm from Illinois.

[treestar]

24. It will have to

To get anything through, they will need Snowe

[JVS]

30. Consider for a moment who the advisors in the white house are.

We're screwn!

[JI7]

36. didn't Bill Clinton get re-elected after the 1994 disaster ?

[LooseWilly]

39. I'm guessing that the Coakley people who point to the Senate passage of their side of HCR...

as coinciding with a drop in their poll numbers will be downplayed: (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34923900/ns/politics-capitol_hill)

Even before the first results were announced, administration officials were privately accusing Coakley of a poorly run campaign and playing down the notion that Obama or a toxic political landscape had much to do with the outcome.

Coakley's supporters, in turn, blamed that very environment, saying her lead dropped significantly after the Senate passed health care reform shortly before Christmas and after the Christmas Day attempted airliner bombing that Obama himself said showed a failure of his administration.

Obviously the Coakley people couldn't know what their talking about... especially with regard to a HCR bill that's essentially a watered down version of Massachusetts law...

[Odin2005]

42. Obama = Hoover.

[Cali_Democrat]

49. Obama = Obama.

[inna]

45. I'm afraid the (unexpected) result will be an even sharper turn to the right.

x(

[Smashcut]

47. Short answer: yes.