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40 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Whether what I wrote was above or below your reading comprehension level there is no reason to post that insult. Have a good day.
so calling it a crazy word salad is the best that you can come up with. I can live with that--it means that what I wrote made sense.
That's priceless!
I have a brain also and I stopped watching Fox over 15 years ago. The only time I ever see any Fox content is if someone posts an excerpt on a Website or if I'm waiting for a doctor's appointment. I don't see the point in watching something that would just make me angry because it is so stupid.
I get my information reading the news online from about 200 newspapers across the country and from other social media outlets, MSNBC is a supplement to those other sources watching Mathews, Hayes, Maddow and O'Donnell. I might also check in if there is a breaking news item reported elsewhere on the Internet and I want to watch video coverage. I used to get a lot of news from DU, but this site has run off so many people because of the overt partisanship that its value as a source of information has dwindled.
Oh that is rich. That's like posting crap from American Crossroads, or polls from Judicial Watch. Gives them away every time. 
You make a lot of accusations for a 500 post newbie that has been here for a total of two months. I have some thoughts about you also, but I'll be polite and keep my opinion to myself. Have a good day.
That's because they won in mostly red districts in 2006. Low hanging fruit for Dems then when conservatives and independents were disillusioned with GW Bush. Low hanging fruit for Repubs four years later.
Your post makes great use of the Post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy.
Every few months, the tired subject of 1994 gets brought up again. I can just imagine the person who does it smiling, patting themselves on the back, and saying, Gotcha! Problem is, we've heard it all before and have debunked it before.
You proudly link to a Wikipedia article to prove that the Congressional losses did, indeed, happen in 1994 (as thought we'd forgotten.) If you're into using Wiki. Check out the entry for "Rubber Gate"
The House banking scandal broke in early 1992 when it was revealed that the United States House of Representatives allowed members to overdraft their House checking accounts, but were not being penalized by the House Bank.
This is also sometimes known as Rubbergate (from "rubber" bounced checks and Watergate)... 77 Representatives resigned or did not run for reelection as a result of the scandal... In the early days of the scandal, when the media began reporting on the loose practices, Republican Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, along with 7 freshman Republicans referred to as the Gang of Seven or "The Young Turks," made the strategic decision to publicize the scandal in an attempt to sweep lawbreaking congressmen, most of them Democrats, out of power...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubbergate
This is also sometimes known as Rubbergate (from "rubber" bounced checks and Watergate)... 77 Representatives resigned or did not run for reelection as a result of the scandal... In the early days of the scandal, when the media began reporting on the loose practices, Republican Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, along with 7 freshman Republicans referred to as the Gang of Seven or "The Young Turks," made the strategic decision to publicize the scandal in an attempt to sweep lawbreaking congressmen, most of them Democrats, out of power...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubbergate
Many of those 77 Representatives who resigned or did not run for reelection were in conservative districts.
Three things were at play in 1994 that caused the losses:
1. The Democratic party of the 70s and 80s and grown corrupt.
2. Americans were increasingly distrustful of the Government.
3. The Democratic party had moved left out of the mainstream and became the party of special interests.
The House Banking Scandal is a prime example of the corruption that was running rampant in Washington in the 70s and 80s, culminating with the Democrat's losses in 1994.
An article in the Boston Globe took up the issue of Democratic losses a week before the last presidential election. When a party holds power for too long, Adrian Wooldridge, reporter for The Economist, said in the article, "it grows fat and happy, it also grows corrupt." The classic example, he pointed out, is the Democratic Party of the 1970s and `80s, which, spoiled by generations of congressional power, "became a party of insiders and deal makers without any sense of the principles they stood for and eventually collapsed" when they were turned out in 1994.
Philip A. Klinkner, author of "Court and Country in American Politics: The Democratic Party and the 1994 Election," presents a very interesting and expansive theory concerning the major Democratic losses in 1994 that Wooldridge only touched on. Klinkner explains the circumstances surrounding the 1992 election provided ample evidence of a radically changed political environment. Several observers have commented on the growing volatility of the electorate since the late 1980s (Greider 1992; Phillips 1990, 1993, and 1994; Germond and Witcover 1993; Greenberg 1995). By most accounts, this phenomenon reached a new high in 1992, as voters expressed growing disgust with the federal government, elected officials, special interests, and politics in general, and a greater willingness to support outsider candidacies, even those of such diverse figures as Jerry Brown, Pat Buchanan, and Ross Perot.
By the early 1990s, distrust of the government, especially the entrenched power (that would be the Democrats) was evident among much of the public. In 1964, over 70 percent of the public said that they could trust Washington to do what was right most or all of the time; by early 1994, only 19 percent expressed similar confidence (Phillips 1994: 7). In 1964, when asked, "Would you say the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves or that it is run for the benefit of all people," nearly 40 percent more people agreed with the latter than with the former. In 1992 that sentiment had reversed itself, with 60 percent more people believing that the government was run for the benefit of special interests than those who believed it was run for the benefit of all. (Stanley and Niemi: 169).
As the party of governmental activism, the Democrats were bound to suffer from the rise of popular cynicism toward government. At the same time that Bill Clinton was winning the White House, voters preferred having "government cost less in taxes but provide fewer services" to having "government provide more services but cost more in taxes" by 54 to 38 percent (Milkis and Nelson 1994: 395). http://academics.hamilton.edu/government/p...
The more common explanation for the 1994 Republican Revolution, though, is that liberal Democratic ideals -- or at least the way they were presented -- no longer resonated with the majority of Americans. According to Ruy Teixeira, a fellow at the Center for American Progress and at the Century Foundation, the danger for the dominant party isn't ideological bankruptcy but ideological drift. "Certainly you can make the argument that, if a party's far enough away from the mainstream, if they don't lose they don't get enough impetus to correct their behavior."
This was no better exemplified than by Bill Clinton's healthcare plan, which support for collapsed, which set back his presidency and figured in the Democrats' loss of control of the House of Representatives in 1994. They've never recovered from the loss.
Soon after Clinton took office in 1993, he promised health insurance for millions of Americans who had no coverage. But before long, the plan was a shambles, derailed by concerns that it would cost too much and create a huge new bureaucracy. "People have not gotten over 1994 yet," Karen Pollitz, the project director for the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute, said of the Clinton plan. "President Clinton tried to fix everything at once. It was not well received. And not only that -- the Democrats got turned out at the next election."
So, technically speaking, Clinton's attempt to enact a left-liberal policy, along with the already existing dustrust and corruption, partially contributed to the Democrat's downfall in 1994. A two decade long move to the left by the Democratic party - capped off by the failed healthcare plan - brought us down, not your assumption that "Democrats were so disallusioned by Clintons sell-out agenda that they didn't bother to campaign or get out and vote." What you call Clinton's "sell out agenda" did not occur until AFTER 1994.
But I'll show you how easy it is to use simpeton reasoning to arrive at a the conclusion you want.
In 1938, Republicans gained 81 House seats running against Franklin Roosevelt. Again In the mid-term election of 1942, the Democrats lost 44 seats in the House of Representatives.
George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis suffered huge defeats in their 1972, 1980, 1984, and 1988 presidential runs.
The Republicans won control of the Senate in 1981 and retained it for six years.
Reminder: these losses were years - in some cases decades - before the DLC.
Finally, Al Gore (DLC) won the most votes of any Democrat in a general election up to that time. John Kerry (DLC) won the nomination in 2004 (defeating 'progressive' candidates) and President Obama, who later admitted he was a new Democrat (here, here and here), won a major general election victory in 2008 and again in 2012.
For those of us paying attention, we knew exactly what Obama's policy positions were. He wrote about them extensively in Audacity of Hope.
Pg.8-9
Examples of "New Democrat speak."
pg. 10
Obama expresses centrist/DLC beliefs on free market competition. He states his feeling that many government programs (social programs) have not worked as advertised.
pg. 11
Obama rejects special interests, or single issue, politics based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or victimhood - one of the purpose of the DLC. "Common good." Bill Clinton.
pg. 20
Despite Barbara Boxer signing on to Rep. Stepanie Tubbs Jones' challenge of the 2004 presidential election, Obama votes to certify it, believing Bush won the election despite evidence of voter fraud in Ohio.
Pg. 23
Obama recognizes the global war on terrorism is real, and not a "bumpersticker slogan." But he calls it a "the battle against international terrorism," one he believes should be addressed both by dealing with global poverty and a "judicious projection of military power."
Pg.24
Though he admits he believes Democratic ideology is more grounded in fact than that of the GOP, Obama expresses disdain for the conspiracy theories of the fringes, "of America being hijacked by an evil cabal." He says the left and right have become "mirror images of each other," whose purpose is "not to pursuade the other side but to keep their bases agitated and assured of the rightness of their respective causes."
pg. 31
Obama says liberals of the 60s/70s valued entitlements over duties and responsibilities.
... Disregard two other sources that say the same thing.
