You think I am unaware that Republicans control
by Meteor Blades, Daily Kos
Fri Apr 12, 2013 at 12:15:21 AM PDT
the House of Representatives? Some of us warned in the early summer of 2010 that we were hearing ominous grumbling in our early precinct work (I was doing mine in northeast Los Angeles). We were hearing a distinct lack of enthusiasm from independents and many Democrats. And our effort to move this lack in a more positive direction was being resisted. When this message was conveyed here, the assertion of a lack of enthusiasm was pooh-poohed or even considered sabotage. Only in late September and early October did it become clear to everyone that we were headed for a “shellacking,” a term I used well before the election to describer where we were headed (a term President Obama used afterward). What did we get for our warnings? The accusaton that it was the messengers who had caused the bad outcome.
My point in the previous comment is that somebody who presents a budget that includes a cut in the most successful social program in the nation with the idea that this will somehow energize the base in the next election should get new advisers.
To be charitable, this is a gigantic mistake. It has no value as some twisty-turny strategy to “punk” Republicans. It punks us and our party. Going door-to-door in the next campaign season and telling people that the Republicans weren’t even willing to accept proposed Democratic cuts in Social Security so it proves they are unreasonable and should be voted out is not a winning strategy, it’s a foolish one. Indeed, it’s recipe for a lot of slammed doors and phone hang-ups on the campaign trail and lowered turnout for our side when the votes are counted. The “strategy” of showing Republicans to be unreasonable by making offers that shouldn’t be made is not explainable on the phone or doorstep or Facebook because it makes no f’n sense. It doesn’t just piss off us usual suspects in the left-most wing of the party but pretty everyone across the Democratic spectrum who is, knows, or will become, a senior.
The derangement is on the part of those who think this budget move constitutes smart politics. It doesn’t matter what else is in the budget-and there is quite a lot of good stuff, to be sure-when the optics and the reality of the social cuts are what will be focused on by every senior and everybody not in the top economic tier who has a senior in the family or will someday be a senior themselves, which is quite a lot of people.
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