Would you forgive a Dem that supported the wholeBush agenda except for SS?

[fujiyama]

I'm sorry but I can't. I see a lot of posts saying that we have to "wait for the real fight". Well the real fights are going on. Now, judiciary appointees are the major thing. I understand that, but there is more than SS for most of us. Now, I don't like Bush's idea either, but prioritizing for myself personally, SS is lower in my concerns.

In fact, I don't care if Landreu does her damndest in fighting the Bush SS plan. The environment to me is more important, as was the bankruptcy bill, the vote for torture boy, and a host of other things.

I know many will disagree, but the idea that we it's OK if our senators cave on everything else but those two items is really irritating the hell out of me. I've heard this "save the ammo for the real battles" mantra too many damn times.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

1. Thank you

I'm totally in agreement with you. This "save it for the real battles" bullshit smacks of cowardice and rationalization. I'm so sick of our Democratic representatives. I hope the hell Howard Dean kicks some ass in the most serious way and busts the whole bunch of them wide open.

Now is now.

[glitch]

2. I agree - I don't see why we have to pick our fights. It seems like it

would be much easier from a logistics standpoint to just say no to everything.
It's not like the fascists are going to come up with a good idea that needs careful evaluation. If they are proposing it, assume it sucks and just say no.

[applegrove]

3. Some of us think the fight going on in Washington is really, really

important. So important that we have to plan and organize and defend our way of life like in an all out war. That means you plan. You don't just react. You learn to think before you react to something and you discern the battles you cannot win from the ones you can. And you put your resources towards the fights you can win.

[yurbud]

4. you don't have to FIGHT everything--just vote NO

so you don't demoralize the people who voted for you.

this is what the far right did when they were in the minority in the 80s.

[fujiyama]

6. Thank you

That's all I'm asking for. A "Nay" vote. I'm not asking them even to speak much publicly. No need to shout. Nothing.

Just a no vote.

I'm sick and tired of these senators just going down the path of least resistance. Well, today was actually a pleasent surprise. All but three did voted for the Cantwell bill..but in the case of the bankr. bill it was not.

[catgirl]

5. Fight all the battles

I agree organizing is important. Saving your guns for
the big battles is ridiculous as suggeted in earlier posts.
There are enough of us to fight all of them. Who says to
pick and choose? We all have pens, telephones and
computers. Use them now, for all issues that you care
about. Bitching has NEVER solved anything (this is
not directed towards anyone in particular, it's a call for
action).

[applegrove]

10. Oh for sure phone and write letters. But please do not start a movement

to impeach Lieberman. We just cannot do that.

[yurbud]

8. Do you avoid battles to avoid pissing off potential donors?

This would be a mistake. Corporations may give money to Dems too, but the more silence they buy, the more powerful the GOP becomes, and the less they need to buy off Dems. It would be better to become the party for the people and just say what needs to be done, instead of these sickly, smarmy, skirting around the issue things that the DLC types say.

Our health care system sucks because insurance companies are willing to let people die to jack up their profits.

Our soldiers are dying to prop up a dying industry, oil. Better to replace oil now than to piss off a billion Muslims and spend a trillion dollars stealing it, only to have to replace it eventually anyway.

There are some things that the market does well, and some things that government does better. We need to figure out which is which, and not apologize for kicking corporations out of those areas where they have harmed far more Americans than they have helped.

Health care is one of those areas. Foreign policy is another.

You can agree or disagree with what I just said, but you probably at least respect it as opposed to the spineless mealy-mouthed mush that comes out of the mouths of parasites like Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman.

[applegrove]

12. I totally agree that health care is more efficiently and equitably

delivered by universal health care programs. It is a well known bug-a-boo in markets... that they are crap at the delivery of something where 'preventive medicine' saves millions. Every Western country in the world save USA has a form of socialized medical care.

Yup - that is an issue to get behind. And a great example of how wrong the neocons and capitalist Utopians are. Markets are not just for corporations to live in... they are also for the delivery of public goods. And corporations needs a dressing down and some reform before they take off and hit the "Hal" stage (Movie 2001) where the machine tries to take over the mankind.

I agree with all these things. And I also know that our plurality comes with a variety of characters. Personally I am a fiscal conservative but in terms of civil rights or programs... as much as we can afford and what works best ... like nuclear non-proliferation deals with HUGE ******* TEETH (let the multinationals have the right to police space and satellites... you build a bomb... you better plan on dropping the thing by hand because you will not own a working satellite). National Health care, child care, no corporate welfare, environment and make it a dam crime to encourage 'tribalism' within your own country (like Bush has done).

All sorts of policy things I agree with - like 95% I would put myself to the left. But if you refuse to accept any economic ideas you will loose me (and since the neocons are Utopians.. I will be bookended by Utopians and have to start a third party myself in the middle). So I worry when I see people angry at Lieberman.. because there is a civil rights guy who is doing his own thing these days.. as a Jewish man at a time for peace in Israel - I do not doubt all his best friends are neocons(whoever was in power).

Don't pull apart the Big Tent. That is what democracy is.

[fujiyama]

14. I want the party

to remain a big tent, but there comes a point where we have to figure out what the hell we stand for.

For example, what the hell does Mary Landriu stand for? She represents one of the poorest states in the country. It's a conservative state socially, so I'll grumble but give her a pass if she votes to the right of Ted Kennedy. I'm not expecting purity or anything close to it.

But how the hell is voting for the bankrp. bill "representing her constituents"? It isn't. Her constituents are among those that will be hurt the most by this bill. How is voting for the rest of the Bush admin's agenda, "representing her constituents"? The same goes with my own senator Stabenow who voted for the bankr. bill. She's representing a few thousand dollars worth of campaign contributions and that's it.

Now, I've seen this argument used all too often on DU (not necessarily by you but others) that when senators vote, it's about their state's interests.

Well often it's not. It's just about their corporate contributors.

We can't allow our party to be beholden the same way to corporate interests as the other party is. Their party is a fascist party, with no respect for the rule of law or democratic principles.

[applegrove]

15. You are talking reform of the electoral process and funding issue.

I am with you 100% on that. Unfortunately..we have to get into power before we can get a watered - down bill to make it harder for corporations to take over the country (turning patriots into powerless colonials in the process).

[yurbud]

17. Business can't ALWAYS trump the public good as it does with DLC

what made me think of the health care issue was reading the DLC web page. They had lots of nice ideas about health care but didn't even touch the central ones--insurance and drug companies gouging the public, and in the case of insurance, not even delivering what we were gouged for.

Free markets make better electronics, tennis shoes, movies, and french fries.

The harder it is for the average shmuck to evaluate the product though, the more likely business is to charge a lot and give little or nothing in return.

If the GOP is successful in privatizing K-12 education, most kids won't be going to Andover and Choate. They'll being going to Tony Robbins Middle School, and Body by Jake High or worse, Enron High, where the school disappears and the tuition is spirited into an account in the Cayman Islands.

It would be nice if a Democrat said businesses need rules to make them behave at least as much as the rest of us do.

[Tigress DEM]

13. Biden did confirm Rice, but his statement really hits the nail on the head

http://biden.senate.gov/newsroom/details.cfm?id=230982&&

He talks about Rice dodging the real question and putting it back on Barbara, then he gets to WMD and the statements made/denied/made/denied.....


<snip>
It would be funny if it wasn’t so deadly serious.

Here’s my point: especially in matters of war and peace, we’ve got to level with the American people if we want not only to secure their support, but to sustain it. As my colleagues have heard me say too many times, no foreign policy, no matter how well conceived, can be sustained without the informed consent of the American people.

And we’ve got to be honest with the world, otherwise, we will do terrible damage to America’s most invaluable asset: our credibility.

After Iraq, it is going to be much harder to rally the world to our side if we have to face a truly imminent threat to our security from say Iran or North Korea.


There's more. I would have to say, Biden is no Ted Kennedy as far as inspiration goes, but he's got some solid sense here at least.

[Carolab]

7. Torture boy will go eventually, we can STOP the BBill and ANWR

IF we can get full approval of the budget stopped.

But Social Security stands to hurt far, far too many people in ways from which they can never recover. So while it might not be important to you, try to look at the bigger picture, okay?

[fujiyama]

9. Don't get me wrong

I'm not saying I agree with Bush's plan or saying it's not important. It is very important and understandably so for many, but so are other issues as well.

[Tigress DEM]

11. One thing - some of this stuff is pushed through so fast....

Repubs have had meetings in the middle of the night and done all kinds of unethical things to push stuff through without giving DEMS any chance to really review.

One of the worst bills out there is probably only sort of bad until you get to section 102 where it gives the Sec of Homeland Security permission to suspend ANY law. (HR 418)

I consider myself quite a voracious reader, but I replaced provisions in the high school district rule books one summer and even though I was young, had my own air conditioned office and such, I would have rather been in Hanoi with Bamboo under my fingernails by the time I'd completed 3 months with that dry as the Saharah reading.

Sorry that was a definate aside.... anyway, not all, but some of this stuff can be going on when a DEM is otherwise engaged in fighting another fire, especially on "no shows".

Like the press who show up with "real" questions, certain DEMS may find themselves "not invited" to many high level meetings where things are being pushed past the point of review.

[applegrove]

16. That would make a good topic of discussion every so often. Just

to keep us all real in terms of the bullshit that the Repukes have made of the 'how a bill becomes a law with 15 provisos that have nothing to do with each other but piss off democratic supporters and demoralize them.

I know very little about that. Or about the changes the Repukes have made in the way things are done & voted on in the last 15 years.

[Technowitch]

18. Answer: No

Picking and choosing in this way is like saying, "I'll only kill babies, but I won't smother their delicious corpses in barbecue sauce and eat them."

[sandnsea]

19. on filibustering, pick the battle

I haven't heard anybody excuse a vote based on picking your battles. Only the filibuster because we need that when Supreme Court Judges come up.

I'd like to see the Dems vote no on everything. But I'm not going to get apoplectic as long as they stay unified on the most important issue, which to me is judges. Judges can overturn illegal Administration crap, even on the environment.