Drew Westen explains how the Democrats blew a once in a lifetime opportunity to crush Republicans

[DrToast]

I recommend reading the whole article, but make sure you read the selected passage below:

The President's steadfast refusal to acknowledge that we have a two-party system, his insistence on making destructive concessions to the same party voters he had sent packing twice in a row in the name of "bipartisanship," and his refusal ever to utter the words "I am a Democrat" and to articulate what that means, are not among his virtues. We have competing ideas in a democracy -- and hence competing parties -- for a reason. To paper them over and pretend they do not exist, particularly when the ideology of one of the parties has proven so devastating to the lives of everyday Americans, is not a virtue. It is an abdication of responsibility.

What happens if you refuse to lay the blame for the destruction of our economy on anyone -- particularly the party, leaders, and ideology that were in power for the last 8 years and were responsible for it? What happens if you fail to "brand" what has happened as the Bush Depression or the Republican Depression or the natural result of the ideology of unregulated greed, the way FDR branded the Great Depression as Hoover's Depression and created a Democratic majority for 50 years and a new vision of what effective government can do? What happens when you fail to offer and continually reinforce a narrative about what has happened, who caused it, and how you're going to fix it that Americans understand, that makes them angry, that makes them hopeful, and that makes them committed to you and your policies during the tough times that will inevitably lie ahead?

The answer was obvious a year ago, and it is even more obvious today: Voters will come to blame you for not having solved a problem you didn't create, and you will allow the other side to create an alternative narrative for what's happened (government spending, deficits, big government, socialism) that will stick. And it will particularly stick if you make no efforts to prevent it from starting or sticking.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/obama-finally-gets-his-vi_b_429232.html

[immoderate]

1. Insightful. He's saying you can't be bi-partisan over partisan issues.

It may be instructive to view the "success" of George W. Bush. He was wrong on every issue, but he got his way or the highway.

--imm

[jgraz]

2. In other words: don't negotiate with terrorists.

[yurbud]

4. especially Wall Street terrorists--throw the hood over their heads, hook up the jumper cables to

their nipples and render them to Gitmo... or just open the door over the middle of the ocean.

[DrToast]

3. bumpity

[senseandsensibility]

5. kand r

for the truth.

[amborin]

6. K&R but how can you say all those things when your

campaign financing says otherwise?

Goldman Sachs was the #2 donor to Obama's campaign, and Obama chose the same people responsible for much of the mess as his advisors.....

empty rhetoric only goes so far when not backed up with actions