Tired of hearing we "don't have the votes." Yes, we do have the votes to pass the Democratic agenda.

madfloridian

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Sun Jun-21-09 10:42 PM
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Tired of hearing we "don't have the votes." Yes, we do have the votes to pass the Democratic agenda.

I was contacted this week by one of the Democratic committees. We stopped our donations for a while except to the ACLU and occasionally to the efforts by Howard Dean about health care.

I told the lady we were concerned about some things and would resume donations when we felt more comfortable. She was nice and took the time to ask me about our concerns. I mentioned the way Dean was shuffled out of the national leadership without a mention or thank you. I mentioned the choice of someone for WH Chief of Staff who had a lot of contempt for the grassroots and netroots. I mentioned the fact that two groups were being marginalized, women and the gay community. I said we were letting the religious right set the tone on those issues completely.

I mentioned the awful language toward gays used by Obama DOJ in the DOMA brief. I said our party should never use those words toward a group of people. I told her I had worries about the faith-based council having 19 anti-choice members, and as best we can determine only 6 who say they are pro women's choice. I mentioned that the DCCC had picked 12 anti-choice Democrats to run in 2008. She seemed surprised at that. Not sure she believed me but it is true.

...."The anti-abortion pitch is standard fare in Alabama�s Second Congressional District, a deeply conservative area that President Bush carried twice and that has been represented in Washington by a Republican for four decades. What makes the spot unusual is that Mr. Bright is a Democrat. And that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has been pushing hard for Mr. Bright�s election, paid for it. In fact, Mr. Bright is one of a dozen anti-abortion Democratic challengers the party has recruited to run for the House this year and has aggressively supported with millions of dollars and other resources in culturally conservative districts long unfriendly to the party. That is the highest number of anti-abortion candidates the party has fielded in recent memory to run either for open seats or against Republican challengers, according to party strategists and a leading anti-abortion organization.

I told her many were concerned that the new party chairman did not support a woman's right to choose an abortion, did not support civil unions for gays, and was not really union-friendly. She seemed surprised.

I told her that there was no excuse for dilly-dallying and pretending we did not have the votes to get a decent health care program passed.

She listened, and she was nice. Then when her responses began, I realized that I hearing the kind of language we had heard when we were in a hopeless minority. She said we needed to be careful not to push for so much stuff at once, I believed she used the word "antagonize." She said we needed to pick our battles.

I said you mean we need to keep our powder dry? She must have been reading some forums because she chuckled a little. But the words I heard were the same kind of words we have heard from Conservadems since we won the election. I think I heard the word "bipartisan" several times. God, I hate that word now.

I asked her when she thought we might have such a good majority again, and she said it would be hard to do that again. I asked her why we should not use it to get the Democratic ideals voted in, like rights for women, rights for gays, and good health care for our country.

We have an 83 vote margin in the House. We have a 9 vote margin in the Senate. Yet we can not seem to control a single agenda.

There is something wrong with that picture.

When Howard Dean became chairman in 2005 he made a powerful statement. He said the reason we lost control to the Republicans was because we forgot why we were there in power.

CNN covers Dean's speech as new DNC chairman

Dean, 56, won the chairmanship on a voice vote of the 447-member committee after six other candidates dropped out in recent weeks. He immediately laid out his vision for rebuilding a party clobbered in recent elections, leaving it out of power in the White House, both chambers of Congress, and a majority of governorships.

"Republicans wandered around in the political wilderness for 40 years before they took back Congress.

"But the reason that we lost control is because we forgot why we were entrusted with that control in the first place," Dean said in his acceptance speech.

The American people cannot afford to wait for 40 more years for us to put Washington back to work for them. It won't take us that long -- not if we stand up for what we believe in, organize at the local level, and recognize that strength does not come from the consultants down. It comes from the grass roots up."

Republicans, Dean said, "know the America they want, and...are not afraid to use any means to get there.

"But there is something that this administration and the Republican Party are very afraid of -- it is that we may actually begin fighting for what we believe: fiscally responsible, socially progressive values for which Democrats have always stood and fought."

That is an echo of some words from his book in 2004, You Have the Power.

"Democrats, in our pursuit of big dollars, have neglected the people we're there to serve."

In recent years the Democrats, in our pursuit of big dollars, have neglected the people we're there to serve. We let our connection to our base atrophy and have forgotten, as they say in politics, who brought us to the dance. In service to a falsely named "centrism," we've sidestepped every major request from labor unions, especially on including worker protections in our free-trade agreements.

The Democrats, by using appeasement as a political strategy, have solidified the Republican hold on power. Harry Truman once said: "When the voters are given the choice between voting for a Republican or a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they'll vote for the Republican every time."

The lady on the phone listened and had a conversation with me. But I don't think she understood what I was saying.

I love the fact that we have an 83 vote margin in the House and a 9 vote margin in the Senate. We worked hard to get it. We made many donations.

I love President Barack Obama, I know he has a huge job to do. I love his family, and I love the pictures of them. I think the world in general appreciates him as well.

However, we can not start out this Democratic majority by giving up on rights for women, rights for gays, and real health care reform for this country.

I heard Diane Feinstein today said we did not have the votes for real health care reform. That is the kind of statement that angers me. Of course we have the votes. The trouble is the ones in charge of getting these issues through are more amenable to the corporations and the religious right than they are to those of us who make up the people in the Democratic party.