Ineffective Democratic Congress

Weak leadership, Blue Dogs, DLC hacks, and a Republican minority in the Senate that filibusters most of the really good bills.

They have been doing their jobs investigating things, passing a few good bills, but on the Iraq War, they've admittedly been disappointing.

What Democratic Party? They were hijacked by the Peace and Freedom Party back in the 70s -- no room for the Scoop Jackson types anymore.

www.donaldmichaelplatt.com

William Haskins said:

interesting that you selected "keeping their powder dry for 08" when the very elements of the dems' 'big tent' you disparage above are the very ones who will propel the next prez into the white house.

i suppose once that's secured, they'll look leftward?

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Some of the Blue Dogs are going to be facing serious primary challenges from left field. You'd better believe that they'd better start worrying about their job security and start acting like real Democrats. I can't fault the Senate Dems too much because of the numbers, but the House has no such excuses.

bonus points if you could name a few of these "really good bills" they've gotten passed.

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College Cost Reduction Act (now signed into law), the minimum wage (which they snuck into the May Iraq supplemental, still "eh", but something), and SCHIP (which they will work to override the presidential veto at the end of the month).

What would you have expected, with such small majorities and a Republican in the White House? I'm content with them putting the brakes on the Bush Administration agenda. Anything more than that was unrealistic. They do need to find a replacement for Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader.

There certainly was never any possibility that they could force a withdraw from Iraq even if they wanted to (the Republicans in the Senate would never have allowed that to come to a vote), nor was impeachment a possibility (though if the Democrats win the presidency in 2008, I bet there will be a lot of document shredding going on between November 2008 and January 2009).

SCHIP--bleck! Another sin-tax funded piece of garbage, imo. And it includes cigars. Why don't they fund it by over-taxing video games instead?

robeiae said:

SCHIP--bleck! Another sin-tax funded piece of garbage, imo. And it includes cigars. Why don't they fund it by over-taxing video games instead?

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I blame Ted's shar-peis.

ColoradoGuy said:

1. Lack of a cohesive description of just what a Democrat is, other than simply not a Republican.
2. Weak leadership, which worsens #1

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This explains it better than I ever could:

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=138042

"It's back to the traditional Democratic Party, which was founded on the health of the working person," Webb told me earlier this fall. In her victory speech this morning, McCaskill highlighted the same theme: "Once again," she said, "the Democratic Party has claimed Harry Truman's Senate seat for the working people of Missouri."


For the working people. It's a sequence of words Democrats have continued to mouth, but it's been a long time since anybody living in anything smaller than a McMansion had much call to believe it.

Truly championing the working class--and winning these folks' votes --means plunging in among them. That is what national Democrats are afraid to do. It's what John Kerry had in mind early in 2004, when he sniffed about how "everybody always makes the mistake of looking South" for Democratic votes. Despite forty years of steady economic growth in the region, the South still has more poor, struggling and badly educated Americans--black and white--than anywhere else in the country.

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The Blue Dogs are not real Democrats in that they don't stand for the working people. Neither do the DLC. Those are the corporate-friendly Dems.

You're not a real democrat, Haskins.

William Haskins said:

maybe they think you're not a real democrat.

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I'm not a Democrat, teehee. I'm a swing voter.

William Haskins said:

nobody's buying the 'cheney death threats' angle?

that's a shame.

i laughed so hard i cried when reading that.

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I suppose it's just coincidence that this idea was first offered by 'Streisandsuperfan'...

I'm with Haggis on this one. *shudders*

They're too worried about the pending theocracy to get anything done.

ha

Largely Choice #5. The Democrats have really narrow majorities in Congress, and new leadership (not all of which is functioning well, apologies to Tip O'Neill, rest his soul). Republicans can use, and have used, the threat of filibuster, that thing they so reviled a year or two ago, to block legislation. And, of course, the POTUS is one of them. So Dems have, with a few exceptions, been placed in the situation where they need to use political theater to make their points. They have had mixed success, the SCHIP business being a fairly good piece of work, the Iraq War legislation possibly, too (jury remains out on that), some other things not so good. But it remains likely that they will increase their strength in both houses in the coming election, and a probability that they will win the White House. Given that, and the relatively short time GWB has left in office, why should they be in any big hurry?

Plus, they can watch Republicans continue to self-destruct in stupid ways (Alberto Gonzales, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Tom Delay, Ted Stevens . . .).

caw