Congress

You Don’t Need Their Votes

I wasn’t going to get too crazy aboutthis, because my most charitable interpretation lately has turned out to be correct, and I think this commenter gets it largely right:

I dunno, I’m going to hold off forming an opinion just yet.

The
more I think about it, the more I think he’s going for the Chicago
Mafia tactics. Invite you in, wine and dine you, give ‘healthy’ advice
and show concern for your own good if you don’t take it… until they
realize you simply aren’t going to play along- then shoot you over
dessert and say “Now look what you made me do.”

(Or maybe I’d just like to see that.)

But then I remembered that this isn’t just Obama, it’s fucking Nancy and Harry and Steny and the club of the most of them that have been acting like scared little children since 2006, and I think they needa reminder:

US_House_apportionment_(current)

Okay? You don’t need them to get anything done. You don’t need them to get anything done at all. You can get up in the morning, see the five messages from Boehner wanting to meet and talk and fight and fuss and complain, and you can distribute each one to an intern to use as a coffee coaster. You do not need to care what they think.

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And you certainly don’t need to worry that people will be upset with you, people who vote. People right now demonstrably do not give a damn about cosmetic shit, about the Republican outrage of the day, if they did they never would have voted for Obama in the first place, because he has a funny name and pals around with terrorists and wants to take your guns away to give to gay aborted babies. People right now demonstrably do not want you to be nice to Republicans. They may not want you to be mean, but that’s only because they don’t care how you are to Republicans AT ALL.

I mean, Nancy, Harry, Steny, have you seen this country lately? We’re socompletely fucked:

“We could tell you what we did on a daily basis, but you wouldn’t
believe it. You know, boxes in a big container, and it’ll weigh 800
pounds, you push it out the door through eight inches of snow, and push
it up on a barge, and we were idiots enough that we did it by
ourselves. We worked as a team, and we had a good friend right along
side of us,” Keith Rider tells correspondent Scott Pelley.

“You’re losin’ a lot more than a job,” Pelley remarks.

“Our friends. It’s crazy. You’ll never understand it. But we loved it,” Rider says.

“I remember people with scarves breathin’ through ice in just
unreal…eyelashes frozen and I started in ’81. And when you worked, you
worked. Why weren’t we bailed out?” Morris Deufemia asks.

Do you think in the face of that anybody gives a shit what Republicans think of your manners?

And fine, they want to make it about birth control, let’s make it about birth control. Do you think poor women trying to scrape by with whatever they’ve got left, trying to get basic health care (and yes, forget having babies or not having babies, in some cases birth control pills ARE basic health care that allows you to be well enough to work, you assholes, try living with fibroids and endometriosis and see what that does to your productivity, you nutsacks) really give a shit if you and the Republicans are friends? If you all can have lunch together? If Chris Matthews thinks you’re being mean? If Barack Obama’s really living up to his promise to make us all be excellent to each other? Really, you think that’s what’s critical here?

I mean, okay. But your approval rating’s in the basement and there’s a reason why, demonstrated in every move you make: You’re clearly more interested in bending over backwards to please people your constituents have told you they don’t want pleased than in helping people fuckinglive. You cannot work up the amount of get-it-done-NOW urgency for the American people that you can when Boehner sends up a howl. It’s the comparison, you morons. It’s all of us, out here, watching to see what really rings your bell.

Maybe what we need to do to get your attention is put on suits and spray-on tans and change our party affiliations. Maybe that’s what it takes.

Schmucks.

A.

10 thoughts on “You Don’t Need Their Votes”

  1. Just listened this AM to an interview with McConnell about how the dems aren’t being bipartisan because they aren’t doing the economic fix his way.
    I can understand that compromise is needed. But what I absolutely can’t understand is in the areas that there is a majority in both the dems and the repubs, the dems still acting like scared children.

  2. Maple, I think compromise is only needed if your objective is to achieve a compromise. They don’t need a compromise to pass this bill. They have the votes.
    A.

  3. Do you have a link (yet!) to Congressional Dems caving on this? I’m only finding the stuff about Obama.

  6. Please send this, just as is to all those you address. Sure, it will get thrown in the round file, but it will make me feel better if a staffer has to spend five minutes reading it…

  7. Wouldn’t it be great if Obama had the strength of conviction (though based on his machinations I’m not certain what his convictions are or even if he actually has any) to state publicly that some people interpreted his desire to be bipartisan as meaning he wouldplay ball with Republicans onthe hill but what he meant was that he would pursue actions that would represent the desires/goals of citizens of all political stripes. He should make it clear that if the Congressional Republicans have been paying attention they would know that these desires/goals are not aligned with theirs.

  8. What A said. And then, what Blue said.
    I’m so sick of this. Just so sick of it. It’s getting worse, it’s not getting better, and they’re pandering to the ugly WATB tantrums instead of telling Boner and buds to go sit in the timeout chair while the grown ups work on the problems.
    I can’t believe I’m clinging so desperately to Obama telling them “I won” as the only tiny sliver of hope out there that they might turn this around. We are so fucked.

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