Special Two-Part: Today...Big Worries For Dems!
We progressives, liberals and leftists are facing some very daunting issues this election cycle. The certifiably insane tea-baggers, along with fundamentalist, hard-shell religionists, and the ever present reactionary right-wing, have captured the Republican party and are on their "Great March"; burning, pillaging, and trashing everything and everyone not associated with their race and class based hate-war on Democracy and working families. This is compounded by a president who seems determined to ride an already spavined centrist philosophy which rewards Chamber-of Commerce Republicans and Wall Street mendicants while those of us who worked so hard to elect him to bring about change are left shaking our heads in disbelief--Obama is making Clinton look good, and that ain't all that easy!
Republicans hate him, and many, many Democrats are growing less fond of him. The glibness of the cliche' recently launched by the White House that, "we're must be doing something right, if everyone is unhappy with us", is mere whistling through the graveyard, and hardly suffices in the real world of politics. Believe me, that left many pols snickering!
Politics is about money, and at the moment, at the most critical time in this election cycle, traditional liberal contributors and donors are leaving their checkbooks in the desk. According to a very reliable and well-placed activist based in Washington, there are several reasons for this.
First, he says, is Obama. The president is not providing the leadership or doing the things which progressives expected of him. While not yet toxic, too many Democrats are avoiding any linkage to him or his administration this election cycle--some, such as Bill White here in Texas, have built firewalls between themselves and the president and, not all that secretly, dread any successful Republican attempt to link them to Obama.
Secondly, the current framework of debate seems to favor the hard right, and traditional donors to leftist, liberal, and progressive causes are taking a wait and see approach, preferring to let whatever happens in November happen, and use their money to build for 2012. In effect, the money is setting out this round.
What makes this particularly bad and worrisome is that the Republican message targeting "big" government, deficits, spending taxes, and the recession it helped spawn has seeped into the minds of independents causing too many to see Democrats as the source of "out of control spending".
So, here we are between the proverbial "rock and a hard place" while someone is pounding us with sledgehammers of debt, spending, failed recovery, and government take over of our lives.
That is the message that is gaining resonance as the rabble from the tea-baggers, abetted by the corporate media, continue to prance around their bonfires of anti-this and anti-that without ever proposing a sound solution for any of the problems facing this nation...other than do nothing, and let the wealthy get richer.
They are framing the debate, and Democrats, with or without their traditional financial backers, and with or without Obama, must refocus and frame the debate in a new and positive way that shows, to their advantage, that they can handle the economy and bring about the changes which will restore the middle class and create jobs for working families.
Democrats will have to accomplish this without enough money and burdened with the baggage of a president seemingly intent on the pacification of Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce.
Tomorrow: We will examine how this might be done.
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