Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Coal Mine Canaries

What Kos says... Always.

Daily Kos: Canaries in the coal mine

As you can see, our base is demoralized and tuned out, and plan on sitting out the 2010 elections at rates that will absolutely fuck us if they don't improve by November.

But again, African Americans, Latinos, and young voters aren't tuning out because we failed to build bipartisan concensus with Olympia Snowe. Making such claims is patently absurd. They're tuning out because we wasted 2009 "negotiating" with bad faith actors like Snowe and Mike Enzi. The tools were available to quickly pass a health care bill, yet Democrats were too incompetent to do so. And on issue after issue, they've proven completely ineffective.

THAT's why the base is sitting things out. They don't need blogs or MSNBC to tell them that Democrats can't govern. They already knew that Republicans don't want to govern, but the Democrats were supposed to be different. And they are, they want to govern, but they can't. And the voters that worked their asses off to give Democrats the White House and super majorities in Congress are now realizing that it was all for nothing. That all that talk about hope and change was cynical bullshit designed to motivate them. It worked once, but that crowd is learning the art of political cynicism, and it ain't pretty.

Cole may want to lash out at prominent progressives who have tried to prod our Democratic majorities in the right direction, and they certainly offer a tempting and easy target. But the reality is that voters demanded accomplishments, and on the big items, the Democrats have mostly failed. They weren't hired to tinker around the edges. They were hired to enact transformative "change". And while Cole and others like him might wish that progressives banded together to cheer along bullshit negotiations with Snowe and Enzi and repeated capitulations to an irrelevant minority and its corporatist allies in the Democratic Party, fact is, voters aren't that stupid. All the neocon cheerleading in the world didn't prevent Americans from realizing that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had been completely botched. Canned cheering for this health care bill wouldn't have saved it from similar sentiment.

Those prominent progressives have, in effect, been canaries in the coal mine -- warning of the disengagement and alienation among base voters we now see so clearly in the polling.

It would be absurd to blame those canaries for any deadly gas leaking into mine shafts.

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Why would any progressive with half a twig rattling around upstairs believe this for a second.

It would be the first 'Fight Back' we've seen.

Think Progress � White House Signals That It Will Fight Back Against GOP Abuse Of Filibuster

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Brutal. From the man who should, but won't replace Bernanke.

He Wasn’t The One We’ve Been Waiting For - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com:

"But I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in."
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We're in this shithole because of the likes of Ben Nelson. Just go switch parties already. Asshole.

Nobody should listen to him. Everybody will. It will be all the rage on the horseshit Sunday beltway villager circle jerk. Want to be misinformed? Watch Sunday 'news' programs.

Another Dem backs down: ‘Scale back’ our agenda | Raw Story:
"WASHINGTON -- Succumbing to the insecurities weighing on Democrats after losing Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts, another key Democratic senator says it's time to take a step back and embark on a less ambitious agenda.

'I think the President Is going to have to scale back his agenda after we pass health care reform,' said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) in an interview with ABC News."
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Later, loser. One way to get rid of an ineffective majority leader. I won't shed a tear over this lost seat.

Daily Kos: NV-Sen: Reid is toast, Goodman would be competitive:
"Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 9/18-20. Likely voters. MoE 4% (8/31-9/2 results)

Harry Reid (D) 41 (40)
Danny Tarkanian (R) 52 (45)

Reid (D) 42 (41)
Sue Lowden (R) 51 (44)"

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We hate this guy more than the last guy and we recalled the last guy.

Field Poll: Governor's approval rating 27%:

"A majority of voters - 59 percent - also said that Schwarzenegger, who will be termed out at the end of this year, will leave the state in worse shape than when he won office in 2003, after Gov. Gray Davis was recalled."
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But they are fighting tooth and nail against the health reform. Bullshit.

No one could've ever predicted. Except we did.

Largest US health insurer’s profits rise 30 percent | Raw Story

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Some feel good. Camp Amped Band doing a Centro-Matic cover at the DBT/Nuci's benefit:



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