what will the angry right do with their mandate?

[j_b]

Some dude on Huffpo pretty well nailed it last night:

 

"Tomorrow in Massachusetts, the Democrats are set to suffer a stunning defeat in the race for the US Senate; a race that, if lost, will largely be because of lack of enthusiasm by the party base for what a liberal agenda actually looks like when it is forced to abandon its fantasies and instead confront the actual problems our country faces and deal with them using the political process as it exists."

 

Liberal agenda? where? Obama isn't a liberal; neither are the pro-corporate pols he chose to staff his administration with or the blue dogs who control the legislative process. You are seriously deluded or disingenuous for pretending Obama has tried to implement a liberal agenda. The base and independents who voted for Obama in 2008 are disenfranchised precisely because Democrats are seen as favoring the status quo which is anything but "liberal".

[ivan]

this whole thing could still turn out right if we coudl just get creedence clearwater revival back together!

[prole]

The base and independents who voted for Obama in 2008 are disenfranchised precisely because Democrats are seen as favoring the status quo which is anything but "liberal".

And the Obama Administration virtually abandoned those energized voters and the grassroots strategies that might have put enough pressure on their representatives (R and D alike)to enact a stronger set of reforms. As it is, they walked away from any meaningful attempt to "change the culture of Washington", turned their backs on the people and ideas that got them elected, and embraced the typical influence peddling, wheeling and dealing, corporate pandering "political system" that Jay_B seems to think characterizes a functioning institution.

 

Also, liberals are stupid. Apparently they were so exhausted by all the Facebooking they were doing to get Obama elected that they were happy to be told that their work was done and they didn't have to do any more nasty-wasty powitical work anymore. If progressives had been as organized, insistent and as vocal as the teabaggers were (and if the corporate media actually covered them), we'd be looking at very different health care "reform" outcome.

[Hugh Conway]

Some dude on Huffpo pretty well nailed it last night:

 

"Tomorrow in Massachusetts, the Democrats are set to suffer a stunning defeat in the race for the US Senate; a race that, if lost, will largely be because of lack of enthusiasm by the party base for what a liberal agenda actually looks like when it is forced to abandon its fantasies and instead confront the actual problems our country faces and deal with them using the political process as it exists."

 

Liberal agenda? where? Obama isn't a liberal; neither are the pro-corporate pols he chose to staff his administration with or the blue dogs who control the legislative process. You are seriously deluded or disingenuous for pretending Obama has tried to implement a liberal agenda. The base and independents who voted for Obama in 2008 are disenfranchised precisely because Democrats are seen as favoring the status quo which is anything but "liberal".

 

 

shhhhhh don't go confusing JayB's dogma with facts - they are like red to a bull

[ivan]

PETS

 

children are innocent

a teenager's fucked up in the head

adults are even more fucked up

and elderlies are like children

will there be another race

to come along and take over for us?

maybe martians could do

better than we've done

we'll make great pets!

my friend says we're like the dinosaurs

only we are doing ourselves in

much faster than they

ever did

we'll make great pets!

 

[Peter_Puget]

I believe that the "right" has been quite clear what they are against. In the words of Sen. Brown:

[Republicans are against] [r]aising taxes, taking over our health care, and giving new rights to terrorists.... the agenda of a new establishment in Washington.

Edited January 20, 2010 by Peter_Puget

[j_b]

yeah, we know. Regressives are for corporate death panels (~40,000 death per year), tax cuts for the wealthy to bankrupt the state, and creating terrorists faster than they can be killed off.

[StevenSeagal]

I believe that the "right" has been quite clear what they are against. In the words of Sen. Brown:

[Republicans are against] [r]aising taxes, taking over our health care, and giving new rights to terrorists.... the agenda of a new establishment in Washington.

 

but not against hyperbole...

[Pete_H]

Unfortunately they are also for promoting the interests of megecorp insurance industry, eroding constitutional civil rights, and spending hundreds of billions on unsuccessfull military forays into the mid-east in order to pad the pockets of their oil industry buddies.

[j_b]

"KEEP YOUR GODDAMN GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY MEDICARE!"

[tvashtarkatena]

Unfortunately they are also for promoting the interests of megecorp insurance industry, eroding constitutional civil rights, and spending hundreds of billions on unsuccessfull military forays into the mid-east in order to pad the pockets of their oil industry buddies.

 

To be fair, we all benefit from gunpoint-discounted gas at the pump.

[G-spotter]

right, because all those fossil fuels burning mean a longer rock climbing season

[Jim]

Always making lemonade from lemons you are.

[prole]

To be fair, we all benefit from gunpoint-discounted gas at the pump.

 

That's one subsidy we won't be hearing the free-market fundamentalists bitch about.

[j_b]

I hope regressives aren't rejoicing too soon because their fake populism isn't fooling too many:

 

"Massachusetts voters who backed Barack Obama in the presidential election a year ago and either switched support to Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown or simply stayed home, said in a poll conducted after the election Tuesday night that if Democrats enact tougher policies on Wall Street, they'll be more likely to come back to the party in the next election.

 

A majority of Obama voters who switched to Brown said that "Democratic policies were doing more to help Wall Street than Main Street." A full 95 percent said the economy was important or very important when it came to deciding their vote.

 

In a somewhat paradoxical finding, a plurality of voters who switched to the Republican -- 37 percent -- said that Democrats were not being "hard enough" in challenging Republican policies.

 

It would be hard to find a clearer indication, it seems, that Tuesday's vote was cast in protest.

 

The poll also upends the conventional understanding of health care's role in the election. A plurality of people who switched -- 48 -- or didn't vote -- 43 -- said that they opposed the Senate health care bill. But the poll dug deeper and asked people why they opposed it. Among those Brown voters, 23 percent thought it went "too far" -- but 36 percent thought it didn't go far enough and 41 percent said they weren't sure why they opposed it.

 

Among voters who stayed home and opposed health care, a full 53 percent said they opposed the Senate bill because it didn't go far enough; 39 percent weren't sure and only eight percent thought it went too far."

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/20/obama-backers-more-commit_n_429673.html

[tvashtarkatena]

A hefty 3$/gallon discount at the pump yields a savings of about 100 billion per year the American consumer when one considers only oil imported from the Middle East (about 20% of our national consumption). Of course, we're spending 500 billion during the same period on our military, with a significant % of that in the Middle East and central Asia, so we're actually paying a hefty premium over, say, the Euros.

Edited January 20, 2010 by tvashtarkatena

[prole]

I hope regressives aren't rejoicing too soon because their fake populism isn't fooling too many:

 

"Massachusetts voters who backed Barack Obama in the presidential election a year ago and either switched support to Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown or simply stayed home, said in a poll conducted after the election Tuesday night that if Democrats enact tougher policies on Wall Street, they'll be more likely to come back to the party in the next election.

 

A majority of Obama voters who switched to Brown said that "Democratic policies were doing more to help Wall Street than Main Street." A full 95 percent said the economy was important or very important when it came to deciding their vote.

 

In a somewhat paradoxical finding, a plurality of voters who switched to the Republican -- 37 percent -- said that Democrats were not being "hard enough" in challenging Republican policies.

 

It would be hard to find a clearer indication, it seems, that Tuesday's vote was cast in protest.

 

The poll also upends the conventional understanding of health care's role in the election. A plurality of people who switched -- 48 -- or didn't vote -- 43 -- said that they opposed the Senate health care bill. But the poll dug deeper and asked people why they opposed it. Among those Brown voters, 23 percent thought it went "too far" -- but 36 percent thought it didn't go far enough and 41 percent said they weren't sure why they opposed it.

 

Among voters who stayed home and opposed health care, a full 53 percent said they opposed the Senate bill because it didn't go far enough; 39 percent weren't sure and only eight percent thought it went too far."

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/20/obama-backers-more-commit_n_429673.html

 

All of which would suggest that heeding advice to move further to the right would certainly doom the Obama Administration. Huh, no wonder conservatives are beating that drum so hard...

[tvashtarkatena]

The 'we're not Right enough' is just another BS campaign from the RNC. Anybody who has worked a campaign on either side knows that Dems outnumber Rfucks and have for a long, long time...the game is getting enough of your side off their asses to vote.

 

In actuality, the Right is becoming more left...and rapidly so. Much of the Rfuck electorate has abandoned its belief in the Lets Roll, Gays back to Africa, Corporate Cock Sucking, Environment Ass Fucking, Waterboard-em; an agenda of excess that could only survive within the exuberant atmosphere of an inflating economic bubble. The Palin Phenomenon represents the charred remains of that movement, not its political future.

 

Obama's rapid fall from grace was completely predictable given voters unrealistic but unshakable expectation that the president can pull a lever and fix the economy. Americans rightfully and more realistically expected a solution to our number one problem: health care, and got basically nothing. Americans are and should be concerned about a bailout that handed out national wealth to the very culprits who caused the mess in the first place. And finally, Obama has been less than timid on fixing our officially sanctioned policy of human rights and civil liberties abuse. Most Americans are nervous about either losing their job or not getting one.

 

Neither these very real concerns nor the dissatisfaction they generate point to a populace aching to go back to the type of idiotic leadership that caused so much of this fuck up in the first place. But the worry and concerns are there, they're real, and they can make voters do some very squirrelly things come election time.

[j_b]

The 'we're not Right enough' is just another BS campaign from the RNC

 

it's the spin of all corporocrats, including those in the Democratic party.

 

Lieberman said the Dems had to move to the center, as if he'd let them move leftward without dragging his feet

[j_b]

more unequivocal poll numbers in Mass:

 

* Generally speaking do you think Barack Obama and Democrats in Washington, DC are delivering enough on the change Obama promised to bring to America during the campaign?

 

Yes 31%

No 57%

Not sure 12%

 

* Do you think Democrats in Washington, D.C. are fighting hard enough to challenge the Republican policies of the Bush years, aren’t fighting hard enough to change those policies, or are fighting about right?

 

Not Enough 37%

About Right 21%

Too Hard 15%

Not Sure 27%

 

* If the Democratic Congress passed a bill that laid down stronger rules of the road for Wall Street and cut bonuses for the executives of companies that received government bailouts, would that make you more likely or less likely to vote Democratic in the 2010 general election?

 

More likely 53%

Less likely 14%

No effect 33%

 

* What would do more to improve our nation’s economic conditions: Decreasing government spending OR tightening government regulation of Wall Street and corporate executives?

 

Cut spending 43%

Tighten regulation 25%

 

* Democrats in Washington are more on my side than on the side of the lobbyists and special interests, OR Democrats in Washington are more on the side of the lobbyists and special interests than on the side of people like me.

 

The lobbyists 47%

People like me 23%

Not sure 30%

 

* (Asked of people who opposed the Senate healthg care reform bill:) Do you think it goes too far or doesn’t go far enough?

 

Too far 23%

Not far enough 36%

 

* Would you favor or oppose the national government offering everyone the choice of a government administered health insurance plan — something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get — that would compete with private health insurance plans?

 

Favor 82%

Oppose 14%

Not Sure 4%

 

It's also noteworthy that in each of those questions, people who self-identified as independents were nearly identical in their views to self-identified Democrats.

 

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010010320/poll-shouts-message-massachusetts-voters-were-sending

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

you guys lose one friggin' race and you're all overwrought one day later.

 

talk about insecurity

[j_b]

I am so insecure that I have been saying for months that a majority of the public is on Obama's left.

[prole]

The 'we're not Right enough' is just another BS campaign from the RNC. Anybody who has worked a campaign on either side knows that Dems outnumber Rfucks and have for a long, long time...the game is getting enough of your side off their asses to vote.

 

The scale of the problems we're facing and the degree to which corporate and military power are entrenched within the State require a whole lot more than "getting out the vote" every two or four years. Obama was able to get elected against enormous odds (even after 8 years of Bush) because of the quality and depth of the organizing. This infrastructure evaporated almost immediately when Obama took office and he appointed fuckhead political operators like Rahm Emanuel who basically told the public, "thanks, the professionals can take it from here". Predictably, without maintaining a mobilized constituency to put pressure (loud, angry, and often) on local pols to put forward and support the broad changes they voted for, Obama's failed to enact even modest reforms on the issues he ran on. The political machinations in Washington, horserace horseshit, and Peter Puget's Poll-Watching Spray MiniBlog are not nearly as relevant as the fact that nothing scares the shit out of politicians more than the kind of mobilization that the Teabaggers pulled off last year. Unfortunately, unlike the Right, progressives are lulled into complacency by a combination of a political leadership that only cares about them at election-time (lest "the mob" upset the fragile equilibrium of pandering, influence peddling, etc. they've grown accustomed to), the lack of corporate sponsorship, and the high entry costs to access a media more than willing to broadcast any flavor of bile as long as the price is right.

 

In actuality, the Right is becoming more left...and rapidly so. Much of the Rfuck electorate has abandoned its belief in the Lets Roll, Gays back to Africa, Corporate Cock Sucking, Environment Ass Fucking, Waterboard-em; an agenda of excess that could only survive within the exuberant atmosphere of an inflating economic bubble. The Palin Phenomenon represents the charred remains of that movement, not its political future.

 

With all due respect for the idea of a "bubble inflated agenda of excess", I don't think a lot of this is true. While many of the forms of bigotry and racism rightly associated with conservatives has morphed, gone underground, or lost much of its appeal, they have not backed an inch from the neoliberal program of deregulation, "corporate cocksucking", privatization, commodification and the rest. Just ask Spray's resident Cato Institute employee. Whether you like Klein or not, her premise that crises (financial and otherwise) are likely to provoke an intensification of attempts to foist "free-market reforms" rather than a rethinking of how we got into the mess has been borne out again and again in the last couple of years. While the GOP has been craftily co-opting the populist rage in recent months in their appeals to fiscal responsibility(?!), their agenda has and will remain firmly in the ass of globalized capital. As for militarism, conservatives' newly rediscovered taste for isolation, like the town-drunk's Sunday morning sobriety is born more from the realization that they ain't got no money than from a moment of clarity.

 

Neither these very real concerns nor the dissatisfaction they generate point to a populace aching to go back to the type of idiotic leadership that caused so much of this fuck up in the first place.

 

Given the pronounced case of historical amnesia on display in America and the fact that much of the Democratic leadership is following the exact same idiotic policies, I'd say you're overly optimistic. I hope not.

Edited January 21, 2010 by prole

[Choada_Boy]

You guys think you're so smart. You're not. You're dumb. All of you.

 

And can you believe that Snooki got punched in the face by a guy on Jersey Shore? I mean, for real, what is this world coming to??

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

what mandate?