Unemployment is stucknear ten percent,
and that will sink the Democrats in Congress if it does not come down.
The only possible exception would be if they put forth another big
stimulus bill and forced Republicans to spend a long, hot summer
blocking it in the most high profile way possible – with an actual
filibuster. The various procedural maneuvers Republicans have used to
bring the Senate to a crawl donot really register outside the Beltway. In a way that makes sense; Democrats have the
majority, and if they cannot implement their policies with it they
deserve to be judged on that. Voters do not, and should not, care about
why things are not getting done, they just care that they are not.
Agreed, but my concern is that the perception is largely that Democrats haven’t gotten things done because they’re too busy giving all your money to illegals and gays and welfare cheats and people who smoke crack in the hallways of the high schools and ruined all the good neighborhoods back in the day.
I’m not talking specifics, of course, because you don’t lose a message war talking specifics, but generally every idiot on TV on Sunday is blathering about the deficit somehow causing the recession, because these people are idiots. And from these idiots come editorials and from those editorials comes this self-reinforcing talking-point horseshit until it filters down to Sarah Palin’s tweets and then it starts back up the ladder again, every iteration dumber than the last.
So Democrats do put forth the massive stimulus bill up there, and Republicans do filibuster it, and inevitably it will be the Republicans’ Brave Last Stand for Freedom and there will be a chyron and a song on Fox and usually I’m not this gloomy, but it’s been a long week and I don’t see how we win that argument any more than we win the last year and a half back. I’m the first to say make them eat it and choke, but that only works when you have a way to get the message out about who is doing the eating and the choking.
To hear the party bigwigs speak, you’d think there had never been a
netroots movement that put Howard Dean in charge of the DNC, and thus
created the 50-state strategy that put the Democrats in the position
where they evenhave control of the House and Senate to worry about losing!
The perception that all your hard-earned money is going to people who will buy booze with their food stamps or whatever the fuck when the Democrats take office, like it’s a faucet that gets turned on the morning after inauguration day, is largely a creation of the Wingnut Welfare Machine and the Sunday Show morons and their willing accomplices. The only way Democrats ever got around that, or ever will again, is bynot giving a fuck about Republican media approval.
Howard Dean demonstrably did not give a damn if Republicans and Cokie Roberts thought he was an asshole. The netroots movement that supported himhoped Republicans and Cokie Roberts thought they were assholes. Howard’s other ride was YOUR MOM and he didn’t care who knew it, and if there’s one thing the American people like, it’s somebody with balls. I really thought at some point we’d all twig to this and not have to remind grown-ass congressmen it was okay to come out from under the bed, but it seems every fuckin’ election we have to have this re-education course on this bullshit.
A.