Unfortunately these days, in order to succeed in politics you need to take lessons from Republicans. Republicans always have a sound byte in response to every issue. Now the sound byte does not have to be true, nor does it have to be relevant. But it does need to evoke some primal emotion in the listener and be tested by professionals. And every Republican repeats the sound byte ad nauseum (e.g. Death Panels). This kind of politics has worked well for Republicans. Democrats on the other hand appear to have no such organization. They appear to lack organization and the balls do stand up to Republicans (e.g. tax cuts for income under 250k and extension of unemployment benefits). Dems should have brought these votes and issues up before the recent election, not afterward. I think the Dems need new leadership. They need to play hardball. They don't need to deceive as Republicans do...they don't need and should not check their ethics at the doorstep. But they do need to learn how to play the game of politics better than Republicans.
I agree Joe, Republicans do this though because they can't support their own policies logically because they know they have failed. When you at Republicans they offer no solutions but ones that have gone into the trash can called history. They appeal to people emotionally not rationaly....sort of like Communists Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The reason they don't, is because both parties are controlled by the same people from the top down, that is where all strategy and planning are made. Do a little research, and quit rooting for Pepsi over Coke, or Coke over Pepsi, and realize you are a puppet being manipulated, same as republicans are. . . This is the bi-partisan organization where all your republican enemies meet with all of your democratic heroes to discuss how they are going to screw you and everyone else over. Here is the nexus of media, corporate, military, and government manipulation. This building and organization in New York has more power than the elected branches and Judicial branch in Washington. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! click here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_Council_on_Foreign_Relations#Notable_historical_members WAKE UP! . . . I sometimes wonder who will wake up first, you, or buffalo roams. . .
The fundamental differences Joe, one thing to consider is the basic nature of the two parties. Republicans are said to be conservative, and Democrats are generally considered liberal. You and I might chuckle at that latter notion, all things considered, but work with me here. It has not been so long since liberals were mocked and derided for their devotion to multiculturalism, egalitarianism, and even communism. Conservatives, on the other hand, despite their forays into libertarianism, have long stood for traditional power—including authoritarianism—and wealth. In the modern era, that latter has manifested itself as advocacy for capitalism. Think back to the days of Michael Milken. At the time when junk bond traders were dropping like flies, two arguments emerged. One, which we can gloss over for the moment, was that they didn't even know they were doing wrong. The other, which is relevant to your question, was that the idea of right and wrong was restrictive insofar as insider trading, for example, was illegal in the U.S., but actually considered good business in other countries such as Japan. And there is the key. If you combine those aspects—capitalism and authoritarianism—it becomes clear why conservatives can so easily march in lockstep as they did during the Bush presidency, and now, in opposition to President Obama. Anything that gains one profit or an advantage over the competition is fair game to these people. On the other side of the aisle, liberalism is, as I noted, associated with multiculturalism and egalitarianism. Conformity comes much easier to conservatives than liberals°. The factions of the Democratic Party don't necessarily get along. There were labor Democrats, for instance, in the midwest who opposed Hillary Clinton's run for the presidency simply because she was a woman. And there is no guarantee that a green liberal cares about social justice. Nor can we rightly assert that a liberal feminist will necessarily give a damn about the trees, or where her cheeseburger comes from. Aligning all these disparate factions—who are often quite stubborn—is much more difficult than compelling people who tend toward orthodoxy and supremacism to fall in step and march together. Why are Democrats so "wimpy"? It's part of the basic nature of liberalism that they cannot come together and blindly march in lockstep. It's part of the basic nature of liberalism to avoid the vicious pursuit of supremacy. The results of these phenomena are evident not only in the Democrats' failure to rally around President Obama's campaign agenda, but also in campaigns. Why, for instance, is negative advertising so prevalent? Because it works. But for some reason, Democrats are really, really bad at this sort of thing. And part of the reason they're really bad at it is that such vice is very ugly when dressing up an ideology that appeals to justice, truth, and decency. The problem is the difference in the basic natures of liberals and conservatives. ____________________ Notes: ° Conformity comes much easier to conservatives than liberals — Sometimes this seems strange insofar as Christians might side with capitalists. After all, the Apostles behaved in a very communist manner (see Acts 4). However, we must also recall that the actual Christian faith is something entirely separate from the people who claim to abide by it, and history reveals that Christians often bear a serious mean streak in pursuit of supremacy. Orthodoxy—which can be seen as an aspect of conformity—is part of the Christian tradition.
There's the crux of the issue. Democrats had a supermajority and the presidency for much of the past two years yet still couldn't get even the most basic aspects of their jobs done: passing a budget and deciding what the tax structure would be for 2011. Instead they farted around with a bunch of crap so unpopular (ie ObamacareJ_ that they couldn't even get a majority of their own party to vote for it without disgusting bribes and manipulation that so outraged the voters that they threw them out of office in greater numbers than have been seen in generations. Now they're back in a lame duck session and they're still farting around with bullshit like gays in the military despite the fact that they have yet to deal with the most basic issues (taxation, unemployment, etc). Nevertheless, Reed and Pelosi seem secure in their leadership positions in the Democratic party..
well they were trying to fix the republicans 9 long years of mismanagement "obamacare" is actually popular just not when its called "obamacare" and the reason they got thrown out was the amount of mud that all the money of such things like the chamber of congress was throwing at them. They either have dealt with them or were blocked by republicans whining about how they weren't getting there way and preventing anything from being done
The reason that the medical system flaws issue was addressed (originally by Hilary Clinton during her husband's term, and at that time rejected) was of it's major burden to the budget. The Democrats were trying to streamline, without killing off the poor, handicap, and elderly patients, which is the prime goal of the Republicans on the issue. A voting system where candidate's are elected on their resume, past credit history, perceived competency, and public appeal--without thought to the costs of getting them voter recognition, without stepping on the toes of lost media profits--has yet to be devised, or even considered.
I think Republicans have one agenda "to do XYZ" and the Democrats have another "to do A-W". I think Republicans get into office and follow this agenda at the cost of everything else, while Democrats take power and try to smooth everything out. An example of this is Reagan and AIDS. AIDS was not part of the Republican agenda so it was largely ignored and became the big problem it was years later. I think Republicans and Democrats counterweigh each other to which one party fucks things up and leaves the other to clean up.
This is very insightful, and not to far off the mark. This is actually how the ruling elites use the two party system on the mindless masses to forward their own goals and tighten their control on the populace while plundering the the nations across the globe for as much wealth and production as they can. Let's take for example the last administration. The classic strategy of the "farmers" is PROBLEM/REACTION/SOLUTION First they create a problem, then there is a reaction from the populace, and then the offer up a solution. The true "reactionaries" in this scenario are the independants and the non-committed voters. The problems are the parties, and the solution is to boot them out of office and replace them with the other party. The way the ruling elites forward their international goals and corporate goals is with the republican party. The way they forward their social agenda and population control goals is with the democratic party. Each time one party has control of the system, they use that party to make more and more extreme demands on what the populace can tolerate, either through their military and economic exploits abroad, or through their domestic regulation and financial manipulations at home. It shifts back and forth, they play one side off the other to do what they will. If this weren't so, and the two parties actually counter balanced each other, then when one party made policies that Americans opposed, we would be able to do something about it, right? Wrong. We still have the Patriot Act. And it will be there forever more. The Republicans have already admitted, this health-care BS is a done deal, the courts are really our only hope of stopping this offensive insult against liberty. If that doesn't happen, yes, the government will have a precedent to force people to buy crap from private companies. The ultimate law making power for fascists everywhere. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! But, it's true. One party screws us internationally, and we're unhappy about it, we vote them out, but the other party does nothing about reversing those policies. Instead, they screw up our national policies domestically. And, when we vote them out, the party coming back in won't do a thing to significantly turn things around, they like to go back to their international focus for their corporate sponsors, and they go back to promoting their neo-imperialist agenda. They don't care about you. Neither party. They serve interests other than the people. Take an entry level interest group politics class in college, it doesn't take knowledge of secretive think tanks and a decade worth of political science education to understand this much. "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." ~Albert Einstein The Story of Your Enslavement
You so easily discount the things Democrats did while in office forgetting that when they took power the nation was loosing almost a million jobs a month and the economy was contracting at an ever increasing rate, reaching almost 7 percent when Obama took the helm of state. Democrats have reversed the economic decline. The economy is now growing at a modest pace. We are no longer loosing jobs. In fact we have added almost a million jobs this year. Those are very signficant improvements. Additionally, they passed healthcare reform which will according to the non partisan Congressional Budget Office save over 100 billion in the first 10 years and over a trillion in the second ten years. The only reason healthcare/Obamacare is not popular is because of all of the lies Republicans and the healthcare industry have thrown out to the populace (e.g. Death Panels). When people know and understand heatlhcare reform, they like it. And it is certianly better than the Republican solution to the problem...throw more federal dollars at the industry. Democrats did pass tax cuts for every American on income under 250k in the House. But Republicans in the Senate killed it. I fault Democrats for not holding the vote earlier and making the Republicans in the Senate actually fillibuster.
Republican politicians are millionaires who prefer spending time with other millionaires but instead spend their time trying to get campaign contributions from corporate lobbyists and trying to convince the public that the sort of people inclined to say bad things about corporate lobbyists are intellectually and morally inferior to the kinds of people not inclined to say bad things about corporate lobbyists. Democratic politicians are millionaires who prefer spending time with other millionaires, but instead spend their time trying to get campaign contributions from corporate lobbyists, and trying to convince the public that the sort of people inclined to say bad things about the people inclined to say bad things about corporate lobbyists are intellectually and morally inferior to the kinds of people not inclined to say bad things about the people who are inclined to say bad things about corporate lobbyists, but the Democratic politician must make sure not say anything that would make the corporate lobbyists think the Democratic politician is disloyal to the corporate lobbyists while the Democratic politician implies their solidarity with the kind of people who would say bad things about corporate lobbyists. If you could follow my previous sentence, congratulations, you probably don't have attention deficit disorder and your reading comprehension skills are very good. Democrats are whimpy because during their entire rise from local politician to national politician they have had to suck up to both political money and the populist enemies of political money. Trying to be friends with two groups of people who hate each other leads to whimpyness.
The conservative paradox Joe, you need to take into account the degree to which conservatism and liberalism color people's outlooks on their fellow human beings. All those things the Democrats did? Were conservatives not screaming about everything moving too fast? I mean, the only time we should move that fast is when we're going to war. Isn't that one of the lessons of the last ten years? And the results? They're compared against potentials. Conservatives wanted to do nothing about the economic crisis. At least, that's what you'd think since that was their suggestion. Should the nation really let things get as bad as they possibly could just to prove a point? And whose fault would that suffering be? The idiots who came up with the idea, or the morons who let it happen despite knowing full well what the results would be? One of the reasons it's easy to discount the things Democrats did is because they don't march in determined lockstep. The great fear of conservatives, you'll note, is that Democrats will act like them while pursuing a liberal agenda. That the Democrats don't is evident in the constant rightward drift of our political dialogue. Look at Assange and WikiLeaks: We have political figures calling for assassination, and apparently it's time to broaden our definition of what constitutes treason to include non-citizens. No, it's not surprising, given that this is a nation that just tried to rationalize torture, but how did it get so far? Because Democrats aren't so desperately conformist as their conservative neighbors. No, really: How does the Christian come to be an ardent capitalist? The common bond between the social and economic wings of conservatism coming together (and, some would suggest, apart) in the Republican Party is orthodoxy. Everything works just fine if you believe and adhere to a fundamental set of myths. And that is what conservatives fear of liberals. One thing people often forget is that we fear of others what we fear of ourselves. One must have, at the very least, a baseline myth defining and predicting human behavior. Were we all not so vulnerable to greed, we would not be so frightened of it in others. Even liberals. But it is not coincidental that economic and moral outlooks alike on the conservative side presuppose enmity. The economic outlook is ultimately competitive; the moral outlook is rooted in Original Sin. Nor is it coincidental that their great, fearsome myth is that liberals will act like conservatives on behalf of a leftist agenda. We, too, are merely human, and therefore corrupt, and can you imagine what that kind of insensate bullying would do if pushed leftward? Nor, we might add, is it coincidental that the rhetoric justifying this outlook is becoming more and more desperate, more and more ridiculous. That an outcome is nearly self-evident is no reason to draw any conclusions; let's see what else we can come up with. Meanwhile, the Democrats themselves flee from health care reform, from financial reform, from historic progress on veterans' affairs, from a major transformation of student debt ... in short, they flee from themselves. It's easy to discount the things the Democrats did because the Democrats abandon them. Furthermore, without a unison liberal chorus marching blindly and stupidly toward its shining Gomorrah on the hill, conservatives just don't see the evidence of Democratic progress. What they fear looks like them. What they fail to see looks like them. These two outcomes have nothing whatsoever, in their minds, to do with one another.
Both democrats and republicans are Statists, they seek to control. They seek to make others believe that the state is good, and to believe the state is the cure to the ills of society. The republicans say otherwise, but we know all political parties and politicians only seek to grow the government and their own power, so clearly they are all liars. At least the democrats aren't being disingenuous are deceitful. The people on the other hand instinctively know that they are their own best masters, and that freedom is best for them, so the republican lies appeal to them. Woe to them to not realize the inherent contradiction in the message of this political party. "Government is bad, let us be your government." Aren't they the ones that originally unleashed and destroyed fiscal restraint and said to the democrats, "yes, if you let us cut taxes, we'll let you grow the government as large as you like." In the end, they all plan to make the chattel of this land suffer under the boot heal of oppression at the pleasure of the ruling elites. You'll know on the day when interest rates sky rocket, your days are spent waiting in line for gas, and your pot is empty. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
This is a good response BTW. Either RenaissanceMan has you on ignore too, or he isn't reading your stuff. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
