Democrats Wake Up To Different Landscape: Potentially Brutal 2010

And yet, the DCCC/DSCC have rung my phone off the hook for money all through the month of December. Did I give them any? Hell no. Why should I, if they're just going to elect more do-nothings to sit in Congress and act busy while nothing gets done? Why should I, when they can't manage with a majority twice the size the Republicans had in the dark days of 2005 when, as Jon Stewart put it, they did whatever the fuck they wanted?

Prove to me you have a plan, that you can deliver the goods, and then you might get some money. Until then, you can experience for yourselves what it means to be the pre-2004 Boston Red Sox, whose most famous player is a certain first baseman who won the '86 World Series for the Mets.

"Vulnerable Democrats who continue to back their party's reckless health care push ..."

amen to THAT. it's totally RECKLESS to craft legislation that will save lives and shrink the deficit. anybody caught doing so can just kiss their job goodbye.

and potentially concede key elements of their agenda.

LMFAO. That would be ingenious. Let's see. You suffer a major setback for not already delivering on major promises made two years ago, and what do you come up with? Let's just not do the rest of them. Hilarious.

On a side note, there's some truth to the old saying "all politics are local." There are MANY reasons why voters abandoned the Democrats in this election. Local corruption not being the least of them.

From a poster at dailykos

My Mom is a Democratic machine operative in Boston - here's her explanation

Tue Jan 19, 2010 at 07:50:30 PM PST

My mom has been a Democratic machine operative in Boston since the 70's. She knows about Massachusetts politics, and she knows about this election. Here's what she says happened:

First of all, this is not a referendum on Obama or Washington.

This is about local infighting in the Massachusetts Democratic Party, plain and simple.

In this particular race, there has been a great deal of conflict between the Democratic insiders in Western Mass and the Democratic insiders in Boston.

During the primary, Western Mass backed Martha Coakley (who is from Western Mass) because her primary opponent, Mike Capuano, a current U.S. House Rep from Somerville, was from Somerville not Western Mass.

According to my mom, the Western Mass Democrats got a lot more momentum in the primary because no one in Boston believed that Capuano could lose. Western Mass turned out, Boston and vicinity did not.

Mom says Capuano would probably have won easily had he not lost the primary (he never has a serious challenge when he runs for his House seat).

Coakley, on the other hand, not only dropped the ball as everyone knows, but no politicians in Boston wanted their names associated with her after she won the primary. My mom isn't high enough up the chain to know why this is (or maybe she is holding out on me because she doesn't want anyone to read this and recognize her dishing the inside scoop - she is old school and thinks she shouldn't be talking publicly about this).

As the race went on, she (mom) asked around as to why she hadn't been called out to phone bank, check lists of registered voters, etc, for the campaign as usual. She was told "we're not backing anyone" by "someone on the committee" (she is not telling me what committee because this blogging thing is making her uneasy).

Menino never backed her publicly ("Don't name names!" says mom. "Everyone knows he's the mayor!" I say). He never backed her secretly either, the machine was not turned out for Coakley.

"Nobody likes her" says mom. What she means is, Coakley had no friends in politics. The Democrats in Massachusetts let this happen because - "I don't know" says mom.

Maybe they weren't about to let Western Mass manipulate them. Maybe it all comes down to nothing more than who is friends with whom.

All Scott Brown did was see an opportunity and turn it to his advantage.

There is no deeper national implication. This is not a death knell for the Democratic party or Obama. This is a story of a domestic spat between "parochial divisions" in Massachsetts.

The proverbial house divided among itself, fell.

UPDATE: Rec List! Thank you everyone, for listening to my mom's perspective.

A House divided indeed. Sounds like the problem we've had from the start. While Republicans in Congress march along in lockstep against every possiblility of progress, the Democrats are busy in-fighting from the halls of Congress right down to mainstreet. Who, before this year, ever heard of the Blue Dog Coalition? Until now, I certainly hadn't realized that such an animal existed. Until we can clean up our own house, progress will remain on the back burner. Until we can learn to stick together, we'll lose every round.

On the other hand, I don't understand how voters can hand the reins back to Republicans, the very people who were responsible for decimating the country in the first place. Insane.

I say the threat of a "potentially brutal 2010" is a good thing. Maybe Democrats will wake up and realize that they need to get something done.

A watered-down centrist bill didn't work, so why isn't this the time for single-payer? Americans want action, not GOP-lite.

http://www.sunstateactivist.org/ssablog

"... potentially concede key elements of their agenda."

WTF!? That's why Cloakley lost! Obama has been conceding since he took office. If Dems want to concede any more they ought to all switch parties. They would be a party of all Liebermans.

They never had 60 votes for anything worth doing. Health care was proof of that.

Good we deserve it......Those who have it, don't want it or know what the uck to do with it.

When you loose it, don't complain.

To those 12 blue dogg arse holes.....uck off and I hope you take a beating like MA just took.

The dems ucked around, and ucked around, including you Mr. President Obama, we elected you to fight for shit we have not have a chance to fight for and what happens...you water the darn thing down waiting for one of the klansmen men or the two klanswoman 9Ugly arse Snow or Collins) to do some sort of majical vote.

Guess what....you waited and this is what the elected dems got....more water on a bill that has taken of 1/4th of the 4 yrs Obama was elected.

Let the clowns figure this out but Make it fucking quick.

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS

Jobs works for me

I have voted every election for 40 years and voted Democratic every time. Perhaps, I am naive, but I was optimistic in '08. Bush and the GOP had trashed the country and nearly the entire globe as well. Everyone across the country was reved up, young and old, for new leadership and a populist aggenda. Obama had the people and the wind at his back. He had the majority in both Houses. All he had to do was articulate (something he has the ability to be good at) and fight (something he apparently is not at all good at) for what he campaigned on. We were with him. Instead, he loaded his cabinet with corporate whores and tried to appeal to the thugs in the beltway abandoning every principal and everyone in the country that worked tirelessly to put him in office. Now, we are all beyond fatigue and exhaustion from the repeated betrayal and disappointment in him and the Congressional leadership. He kicked us all to the curb. This morning, the Administration's spinners are all pointing fingers and rationalizing the MA defeat. It is really all so simple. After the Presidential election, we were told to sit down, shut up, and go along. Pointing out campaign promises made us extremist radicals not worthy of inclusion. We got the message and so did the voters in MA. They sat down, shut up and stayed home. They were just too tired, too disappointed and too betrayed to do any lifting for the Party that has shown so little regard for them. Americans turned on the Bush Administration as the lies became more obvious and the pile of lies stacked up higher and higher. Thanks to Bush, Americans have gotten better at recognizing lies and corruption. It has taken up less than year to catch on this time.

I am a little lost on this great bill, insurance run by the gov and it will be run by the GOV.

This will be brought to you by the same people that run social security, HUD, medicare/medicaid, education and the list goes on. All of which are billions in the hole. The gov can not run itself and people want to give over their healthcare so it can be run by, well idiots.

This plan will save billions. Ok lets put the breaks on and think about this for just a minute. Show me where it will save billions, heck just show me where it will save hundreds. Someone will have to pay for this, taxing industry probably will not work. From just a business stand point, no business pays taxes, the consumer does. Raise taxes on business and you only raise taxes on yourself. I understand the health insurance industry is out of control, but letting the gov run a health care insurance program is like trapping a fox then saying "just to punish you I am going to put you in my hen house, because I know you will not kill my chickens". Then you are surprised when you open the hen house, all your chickens are dead and the fox is gone.
This is not rocket science, fix the health insurance problem, do not add a gov program that once it fails, it can not be reversed and that is what this is. Once in place this bill will never go away no matter how bad it is.
I hope I am wrong, but history says otherwise.....

"Working families want action"? How about action against Republicans that have been obstructing every attempt to improve things? Their stated strategy has been to block everything to destroy the Obama presidency. Class act. Instead of working together to solve the country's problems, they want to destroy this administration and regain power so they can resume the very policies that put us in this hole in the first place.