rivka | (no subject)

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politics

(no subject)

I don't even want to look at the news today.

I am burned out. I am tired of being a member of a party that is so totally fucking incompetent at standing up for itself. We pissed away the opportunity handed us in the 2008 election. We were unable or unwilling to make use of the mandate we had. We spent two years bending over backward trying not to offend anyone, knuckling under to the fake offense generated by the right-wing media, and utterly failing to make our case, in anything approaching a compelling way, to the American people.

I. Am. Tired.

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Me too. Me too. I just want it all to go away for a while.

And our internal defeatist element will argue that we didn't do an adequate job of pretending to be Republicans!

Yeah, that's what kills me. They won't think "maybe we shouldn't be so passive and submissive, maybe we shouldn't think that stealing a march on the Republicans means we should be sure to insult and dismiss some of our own voters *first* before the Republicans do.

No, they'll believe they should immediately do whatever the Republicans say.

I think what bothers me as much as anything else is this: Jon Stewart once ran a segment showing that multiple Republican leaders said one thing at one time, and said the complete opposite when doing so helped Republicans.

Now... why do we need a *comedian* to point out that these people are two-faced? That's the job of a journalist. At least, it used to be.

I'm not happy either. I have two hopes. The very unpleasant, but more probable one is that the Republicans will fail to make anything better.

The more pleasant, but (in my opinion) less likely hope is that somebody will manage to make things better.

Right there with you. And it doesn't help that objectivity in journalism is a quaint relic of our ancestors. Gah.

I know what you mean... We lost every race here. And I am way bummed. I thought we had a chance in at least 2 of the races. But I can't listen to even NPR talking about election results anymore and I'm kinda feeling like the Dems deserved to lose in many cases, but that it's a shame the country will suffer for them to learn those lessons.

I am tired of being a member of a party that is so totally fucking incompetent at standing up for itself.

Yes. This.

That said, I was actually expecting last night to be much worse. I am bummed by Congress, but cautiously hopeful about the Senate. I wish Rand Paul hadn't won but I am very glad Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell and Joe Miller lost. Here in California it was GREAT to watch Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman going down in flames, and in Jerry Brown we actually picked up a decent Democratic governor.

The Blue Dog Democrats have been cut in half, and no one deserved it more. The lesson from tonight - IF ONLY THE PARTY WILL LEARN IT - is to run on our achievements, our honesty, our reality-based community, and not as gun-totin' crypto-GOPs.

Word. Last night, I was thinking that all I can possibly do right now is take care of things here in California, and things are marginally looking up here.

When I think of what could have been done with that ~140M$ Meg Whitman pissed away, I get really mad. Oh wait, it would be Meg pissing that money away and goddess knows what else she'd be spending her money on. I didn't expect Prop 19 to win, but voted yes anyway.

I know a lot of people who are saying, "I was here when Jerry Brown was last governor, and he was awful! We lost jobs!" Um, I was also here when he was governor, and there was, like now, a national recession, and jobs were lost everywhere. Governors can't fix recessions.

What I did do, this time, and haven't before, was to vote more third-party. I tend not to do so when I'm afraid it'll help someone I don't like, but this time, I definitely said, "Oh, screw it."

Another ditto from me.

I hear ya. Outrage fatigue all the way.

Word.

Is it horribly shallow of me to think "Oh yay! I can watch TV and not get hit with all the assault political ads!"?

What disaffected progressives need is a Tea Party of their own. I'm tired of these candy-ass Dems being the best that I can vote for. I don't want to be shrill or angry, but I do want a party that isn't ashamed of what they believe.

I agree completely.

B

I wish I had a fully constructed moral position on this. I did NO work on the campaigns this year, and contributed only very small amounts of money (I think one donation, and I think it was to the candidate for the House in a neighboring district who called and asked me personally to give).

Instead, I told the endless series of professional fund-raisers and committed volunteers that I wasn't giving the the DCCC or the DSCC or the candidates because they weren't standing up for liberal values, and had wasted their majority opportunities to legislate for clean water, wholesome food, and energy independence.

It's easy to say that it isn't my actual job to do this work, and it is the job of my elected officials. But I have a part in our democracy as much as everyone else, and I did nothing to help. I thought at the time that I was making an important point. Maybe I was. I don't know.

K.

I don't consider myself a democrat or a republican though I do tend to vote for democrats. I am so disheartened that the party that supposedly cares for small business (republicans) are instead standing for mega corporations and shitting on us, and democrats who are actually doing a lot for small business are somehow not getting the credit. And I am disheartened that I feel so out of step with many fellow Americans. I just don't understand people, sometimes.

Some tea partier was raging about the TARP and I kept yelling at the radio "DUDE, that was BUSH who did that, NOT OBAMA. Don't you fucking remember who got us into this mess??????" Or the people yelling "Obamacare is going to destroy medicare and force government healthcare on you!" Um, really? Can people be that stupid?

Like Obama had this magic wand he was given upon entering the oval office that will fix everything and he failed to do so because he, what, wanted to save the sparkles for himself? WTF?

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