At least, let’s hope:
Hours after adjourning a week early and punting on tax cuts and appropriations bills, House Democratic leaders offered a broad defense of their agenda, framing their accomplishments as historic while casting Republicans as obstructionists not worthy of the public trust.
Speaking in a studio in the Capitol Visitors Center, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) touted their health-care reform legislation, Wall Street regulatory reform, the deeply unpopular stimulus bill and support for the military.
Pelosi, the object of both Republican and Democratic ire, said her members left Washington last night to face a contentious campaign season with a “spirit of optimism,” vowing that Democrats are “very pleased about taking the message of fighting for the middle class, of moving America forward and not going back, of making it in America” to their voters.
And if those voters don’t agree with that message — or with the policies advanced in their cause? Well, fuck the dumb proles. We’ll just pass that shit anyway.
Historic!
Speaking of which —
Convinced of its mandate, the Democratic Congress undertook a legislative agenda that has left the nation as polarized as ever, burdened with budgetary deficits and a national debt that threatens to transform America into a second-class country. Congressional Democrats profoundly misread the 2008 election results and have been left with a reputation as a party of grandiose ideas — with little financial sense or ability to govern sensibly.
The Democrats went shopping without looking at their checkbook balance or caring how to pay for their purchases. Whether the purchases were necessary may be debated — but everyone can agree that a buyer needs to figure out how to pay the bill.
Closer observers might have been more circumspect about the meaning of the 2008 mandate. While sick of the Bush administration, congressional corruption and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and frightened by the financial meltdown on Wall Street, Americans had not turned to the left in 2008. Exit polls showed that 22 percent of voters called themselves liberals; 34 percent described themselves as conservatives; the remaining 44 percent were moderates. These numbers were not that different from every presidential election in the past 20 years. The United States remained a center-right country.
With the sheer power of majority control, Democrats pushed through historic legislation: a massive economic stimulus program, health care reform, financial regulation, a takeover of General Motors and American International Group, and an array of other measures. Such a legislative record should have left them triumphant.
Instead, as the economy limped along with unemployment at nearly 10 percent, Democrats experienced a grass-roots backlash not seen by their party since 1854, when they passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and reopened the slavery question. So severe was the reaction that President Franklin Pierce is still the only sitting elected president to lose his party’s renomination.
[…]
Incredibly, Obama’s deficits after less than two years have already exceeded President George W. Bush’s deficits after eight years. To make matters worse, the Democratic Congress, for the first time in modern budget history, will not have passed out of committee any part of the proposed budget by October, when the fiscal year begins.
In the end, Americans are still searching for political leaders willing to confront this impending disaster. Polling in advance of the November elections indicates that voters think Democrats, with their visions of transformative change, are committing fiscal malpractice.
A new kind of transformative change appears to be in the air.
Let’s hope this time, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
“…framing their accomplishments as historic…”
So was the sack of Rome historic. But I don’t think anyone today is looking at that as a good thing.
we are all Californians now
“Speaking in a studio in the Capitol Visitors Center, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)…”
Now there’s a real brain trust for you; all we’d need is Biden in there somehow to arrrive at a full house of idiots.
“With the sheer power of majority control, Democrats pushed through historic legislation: a massive economic stimulus program, health care reform, financial regulation, a takeover of General Motors and American International Group, and an array of other measures. ”
WE know what’s good for the flyover country rubes!
Pete Wehner sees a similar thing going on:
My fear is that the newly minted GOP majority in the house will submit fiscally responsible budgets, which will promptly be rejected by the Senate and/or vetoed by Obama.
When the government is shut down, the outcry of “reckless” and “meaness” will cause the House leadership to cave in to the Dems and abandon plans to defund Obamacare.
Am I wrong?
Said this before, but the results after 2 Nov are gonna leave the left jaws agape and the pundits scrambling for explanations.
Comment by Log Cabin on 10/1 @ 11:41 am #
It can happen but there is a difference in that Barack Obama is no Bill Clinton, the information stream isn’t as restricted as it was back then, the budget situation is far, far worse than what was the situation in the early 1990’s, and we seem to have an active group of voters who may be able to keep some heat on the silly ruminants in Congress.
Time will tell, of course, but I prefer optimism because pessimism seems to bleed off the energy needed to act.
Question: how, exactly, do leftists define “middle class”? I ask because they crow about it constantly, but their policies invariably seem to be about robbing the middle (and upper) income workers in order to pay government sinecures to give non-workers bribes.
Well, the “rich” earn $250K a year (combined family income). And the “poor” don’t pay taxes.
So…
Jeff, awesome…. I am caught in No Man’s Land.
Wait a minute….so are you saying Obama’s trillions in spending will one day have to be paid back? Bu bu but Obama promised not to raise taxes!
The melding of vanity, conceit, and incompetence is bound to lead to bad places.
Log Cabin – I hope you are wrong. I fear you will be proven right.
Quote of the day from Andrew Sullivan:
Oh, there was an even better one linked in that piece, Joe:
Are you listening, serious conservatives? You may not abandon him now! It is far too dangerous! Stuff might happen!!!
Hey, what do you know… Team R (Boehnerfag even) has some good ideas on dismantling the federal juggernaut:
Boehner: End ‘Comprehensive’ Spending Bills
Sounds pretty staunch to me.
And:
I have a similar fear and it’s the reason why I’d prefer to see us campaign somewhat more specifically on the fiscal areas. What will we cut? This, this and this. Go to this website to see the actual specifics. Yes, I think it’d bleed some votes but winning elections is only half the game. Enacting policy and not getting rolled when in office is the rest of the formula.
This fight is coming. It’s not a matter of if but when and how.
And, that’s why I don’t think the concern is really a matter of optimism or pessimism. It’s a matter of trying to predict what’s coming down the road and being ready for it. Yes, fear that makes you curl up into a ball is worthless. But fear that forces you to prepare for the future is highly useful.
Thanks for that link, Dave. Perhaps Boehner is coming around. Good.
Principles. Once you abandon them, you’re through.
Thanks for that link, Dave. Perhaps Boehner is coming around. Good.
He’s probably getting sick and tired of being called ‘Boehnerfag’.
But where will she be found?
It’s worth a try.
…breaking up the spending bills I mean
Probably hanging out with zombie Reagan.
– Has the Lefturds figured out a way to call the Pope racist yet, Mother Terresa, Liberace, Rin Tin Tin, The Green Hornet, BullWinkle, Mr. Ed, because you know, you can’t leave them out.
– Every time I think the Progressive cult has reached some sort of feckless pinnacle they raise the pinhead bar another foot.
I see AllahP works to smear Daniels with the David Brooks stick and a gob of socon-hate. fucker
About the only thing I get out of that Hot Air piece is to remind me again that the whole primary system is broken and needs a complete makeover. A 2008 farce replay in 2012 is not the way to go. Well that and that AP seems convinced that Huck is the TEA party Kool-Aid of choice having never seen I suppose the Coulter take on him.
And Ryan is now headed into the Democrats “politics of personal destruction” chopper.
After reading your comment I went over and checked out Hot Air, sdferr.
It’s really a shame that a shallow opportunist like Allah has such a large megaphone to spout his conventional wisdom from. There wasn’t any insight there whatsoever. Just bait and regurgitation. He churns and churns the rubes for hits and they keep falling for it. Over and over again.
And the comments are enough to make me despair.
I really do hate the way some people intentionally create a false impression of someone and then say that that impression is why that person can’t win.
All without any serious discussion of policy. Without serious discussion of someone’s record. Without any damn discussion of the actual merits. This, we’re told, is political discourse. Excuse me if I find it just as worthless as the old bullshit we’re all supposed to pretend the internet liberated us from.