Thursday, September 30, 2010

More Like Voter Antipathy Than Apathy

Ian Welsh has a good piece (via) with some useful reminders in it:
In a midterm election where they need the base to come out, they have spent the last six months insulting the base and engaging in policy after policy meant to enrage it. ...

It is, for whatever reason, more important to Democrats to “hippie punch” than it is for them to win elections. It is more important for them to serve Wall Street, even if Wall Street gives more money to Republicans, than it is to win elections. Further, they are very happy to do very non-liberal things, like restrict abortion rights, forbid drug reimportation, gut net neutrality or try and cut social security.
Hm, you know, this sounds familiar. Someone else said something similar not so long ago:
It just occurred to me that many (most?) Democrats would rather lose to a Republican than vote against the corporate agenda. Why should I deny them their druthers?
And since it appears that they will get their druthers in November, we should be prepared for the propaganda blast that will follow. One, the corporate media line, will be that the Democrats failed because they didn't move to the center, that is, to the right. The other, the Democratic line, will be because of all the treasonous whiners who sat on their hands in the face of "a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place ... But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place," said the Commander-in-Chief, and I won't bother to quote Biden. Those are pre-emptive strikes to excuse their own incompetence and villainy. And what is Obama saying there, anyway? That because the Republican party moved to the right of George Bush, it's okay for him and the rest of the Democrats to occupy the space where they used to be?

Welsh also addressed this matter.
Look, if the left is so powerful that is is responsible for Democratic fortunes, well, that’s not something we should shrink from. We should say “Yes, we can destroy Democratic prospects. If you don’t do what we want, we WILL do so.”

Powerful groups get what they want, weak groups don’t. If the White House wants to portray us as that powerful, we should embrace that description, because it is a blade which cuts both ways.

And there is an argument for it. While certainly the economy is factor one, the people whom left-wing bloggers reach are the sort of folks who traditionally don’t just vote, they volunteer, they give money and they are themselves influential, who convince others to be enthusiastic, vote, volunteer and give. When, last year, I felt parts of the blogosphere lose their patience with Obama, I knew it would cost him, and it has.

Don’t run from this, embrace it, wrap yourself in it. You are part of the left, and the left is capable of destroying governments which don’t do what it wants. And this is good, because objectively Obama has not fixed the economy, has presided over further destruction of civil rights, has reduced access to abortion, and so on.

Remember too Obama's Catfood Commission, as many libbloggers have called it, which is intended to present a brief for cutting Social Security benefits -- after the 2010 elections, of course. In the first article, Ian Welsh wrote,
Yes, the Republicans will do worse things, but that’s going to happen anyway. And in some cases, as with Social Security, it is better to have Republicans in power, because it is easier to fight Republican efforts to gut SS than it is to fight Democratic efforts to do so.

I know a lot of people don’t like this calculus, but the math is clear. These Democrats cannot or will not deliver. They cannot or will not do what needs to be done. They have to go.

Wasn't there a lot of talk before the 2008 election, about how progressives would be holding Obama's feet to the fire to make sure he didn't sell out to the big money? I believe Obama himself paid lip service to the notion. That's what they've been doing, and now the Democrats are complaining that they're uncomfortable. That's the whole idea, fools.

In conclusion, this nice bit addressed to Joe Biden, also via the Sideshow:
Thank you for your letter asking me to donate to elect Democratic candidates. I've given some money to the Democrats over the last two years. I think you should stop whining and get behind what I've already done.