Update: Paul Krugman has a post on Wisconsin up at Conscience of a Liberal. He says not to give up but sometimes I feel like Frodo trying to carry that ring up the mountain and Samwise Gamgee is taking a nap when he should be helping out.
**************
Are you up yet? Do you know what just happened?
Ok, let me fill you in:
The left is broken. It is unable to formulate a message that the voters understand. It can not explain cause and effect in a simple way that will get past the media filter that the big money guys have bought.
This is like the lead up to the Iraq War all over again. No matter how you try to explain it to the public, they still want to go to kick Saddam Hussein’s ass. The public threw away trillions of dollars in Iraq and there wasn’t a damn thing the opposition could do to stop it. In this case, the public is being lead to believe that taking away people’s pensions (and they’ll go after everyone’s pensions shortly, you know they will) is going to save them money. They don’t get the paradox of thrift. They don’t see that it will harm their economy down the road. They aren’t getting it because their brains are soaked in deficit reduction propaganda.
What could have possibly pushed back on that message? Well, it would help if there was a president in the White House who was trying to combat it. And it would help if Occupy was still getting people’s attention. But between the right wing smear campaign that Occupy consisted of a bunch of dirty, lice infested, public sex addicts and the actions of the DHS to squash the movement with militarized riot police, the push back of the 99% is having a hard time getting out. If I were the Democrats, I don’t think I would have been too hasty about jumping on the “let’s gag the protestors!” bandwagon. Because now, there is NOTHING that distinguishes the president and Mitt Romney. They both seem to be heading for a grand bargain and austerity for years to come.
And the people the left dumped in 2008? That is quite possibly the most tragic loss of all. They were angry at being written off and they were susceptible to right wing talking points. I have to say I am extremely disappointed at some of them for letting their emotions cloud their ability to think clearly. On the other hand, the left needs to stop blaming them. It needs to take a long hard look at itself for being cocky assholes in 2008 and thinking they were better than these people. It is the working class who is genuinely angry at how the left has abandoned them who are going to control this election.
The president has done nothing for them in the past four years. All he has done is allowed the rape by the bankers and the rich to continue. The working class may not yet understand how they are causing the economic misery to continue because they are being mislead. But the blame for that lies squarely at the feet of the left who think they’re hot spit and smarter than everyone else and left a big hole for the right to march through with their austerity messaging system.
If I were a Democratic activist, I’d do some soul searching and ask myself whose side the party and the president is on because I can’t tell anymore. And if I can’t tell, you can be sure that the people out there who think that slashing public sector employee’s pensions is a good idea can’t tell either. Social Security is next. I know there are people who will disagree with me on this but I am getting the feeling that the senior class is taking what they think we owe them and pulling up the ladder, leaving the rest of us who have paid into the system for decades vulnerable. Don’t think they won’t do it. If seniors think their own benefits are at risk and that there isn’t enough to go around, they’ll be more than willing to sacrifice the young to take the money and run.
You can blame the right for this because it has more money than God to pump out its poison propaganda. But I blame the left for doing nothing. For doing worse than nothing. I blame it for dismantling its own message machine and the movements that could have helped it. And I blame it for not having a leader who can or is willing to fight back.
I’ve got things to do today that will keep me busy, which is a good thing because I suspect that my side of the blogosphere is going to try to make excuses for what happened and just the thought of that is nauseating. Go on and talk to the air. No one of any importance is listening to a single thing you say.
************
Allow me to clarify my statement about social security and upcoming generational warfare because early in the comments thread, we already have one person who has instantly misread that and taken offense. Well, deal with it. Here’s how it will work: The right wing has already vomited enough propaganda to the seniors who are already comfortably retired to make them think there is a deficit problem and entitlements need to be cut. But the right has also lied to them and told them that it won’t be *their* entitlements that will be cut. Noooo, they’re already retired. It will be those lazy kids they raised who are at the tail end of the babyboom generation. Forget the fact that retired widows in their 70s have probably never held down a ful time job, understand what it is like to have to work for 10 years before they get more than 2 weeks of vacation or prepay their social security benefits in advance for 3 decades. No, to these particular Fox news loving, right wing leaning seniors, *their* generation worked hard for those benefits and deserved every penny. Your generation did not.
So, when it comes time to cut benefits, do not be surprised to find that these particular seniors have abandoned the social compact that makes social security workable. They will be perfectly happy to cut YOUR benefits and let you figure out a way of living on less. If you had led cleaner, more moral, upstanding lives, this wouldn’t have happened to you. You would have been more prosperous.
Do you see how this works? It is already at work in this country. The conditions are ripe for the Fox News loving, right wing leaning, social conservative seniors (it’s absurd that I have to spell this out to this degree) to cut us off. Don’t think they will not do it. We’ve just seen what voters will do when they think their precious shrinking income is going into the pockets of those lazy teachers and their pension funds.
I have already personally encountered several of these seniors, the last time was about a week ago who when two of them heard I was laid off told me in no uncertain terms that my future would be bleak and I would have to learn to live on a lot less even if I found a job. And not to expect to ever be able to retire. Nice guys. They had Republican campaign signs all over their lawns.
Yes, it sounds insane because if that’s the attitude they want to take, why would I want to contribute even one more penny of my potential income to support their comfortable lifestyle while they’re sucking off my prepaid social security account? How is this different from the taxpayers of Wisconsin’s resentment of the pensions that their public service worker unions are getting? That’s right. It’s no different.
It’s coming. I will eat my blog if we don’t start hearing about it more before the general election and the grand bargain. It’s deliberate generational warfare intended to provoke the same kind of resentment and stinginess that we saw playing out against unions.
Now, you can get all huffy and say I’m calling you a greedy geezer. I would never do such a thing and I am being very specific here. The people who will fall for the generational warfare message of “I’ve got mine, you go get your own” are the same people who don’t tend to think through right wing messages to begin with. But they are going to provoke a backlash against themselves, and you as collateral damage, if you’re recently retired, because once the pensions are gone for the late babyboomers and younger workers and once we’ve lost everything and the politicians start making it impossible for us to retire, we’re going to start wondering why the f&(* we have to pay for these morons who believe every stupid thing that the Fox News anchors say. You can’t expect the younger generations to be endlessly reverential towards their seniors and altruistic while the rich continue to sit on the cash and force their wages down. Eventually, the younger generations are going to start to fight back. This is just what the Republicans want. Don’t get mad at me for saying out loud what you secretly fear. Unless something drastically changes and Americans grow their IQs by twenty points, it’s going to happen.
You heard it here first.
Filed under: General | Tagged: absence of leadership, Democrats, Occupy, public sector unions, Republicans |
The Confluence 
I don’t think voters were so much anti-union as they were not willing to remove a governor from office for anything less than legal wrong doing. He made unpopular choices regarding labor, but he didn’t break the law or use the office for graft etc…A recall is an overturn of a legitimate election. I hated the recall in CA. To me it was just another sign of CA. being a state full of flakes that they would replace their governor with the gropenator.
Gray Davis didn’t break the law either. Walker’s recall was much different.
And no, Theresa, I don’t agree that most voters didn’t vote against the unions. When the analysis come out, you are going to find that many voters, particularly older voters, were pretty convinced that the unions were raping them blind for free healthcare and pensions.
That is the power that money has on elections. We are in deep, deep trouble now. If you believe ANYTHING the pundits spin today, you will be a fool. The Democrats are going to try to say this election doesn’t matter. Well it mattered to the union workers in Wisconsin. Don’t they count? It matters to the union workers in New Jersey and Ohio and all of the other states in the union where their voices can be drowned out.
They’re going to say that Barrett was a bad choice. I think that’s an excuse. He followed the Democrats script and did not present a worldview that the voters could latch onto. But that’s what Democratic consultants tell ALL Democratic candidates to do. Hide your party affiliation, don’t talk about controversial issues, don’t be too strident. If you don’t have a reason to vote for a candidate, then why bother? This is the same crap that took out Martha Coakley in Massachusetts. She was doing fine until the party started to make her into their generic party candidate. As soon as she stopped differentiating herself, she lost.
They’re going to say that this will have no effect on Obama in the fall. But he did NOTHING to help labor. Nothing. What the labor movement needs to do is back its own candidate. And it needs to tell the public what will happen to workers who lose the labor protections that unions fought for. If I were union, I would tell Obama to take a fucking hike in November.
The Democrats deserve to lose the White House in November. Yes, I don’t like the prospect either. But I’d rather get Congress back and let the Obama fanbase hang in the wind. They’re the worst thing that has happened to the White House in my lifetime. Even Bush wasn’t this bad.
Great post and great comment. Regardless of what anybody wants to think about Obama personally, Obama really is objectively worse for the country than Bush because there is something Obama has done that Bush never could: Obama is preventing us from having a Democrat on the ballot in November.
Obama and his enablers are preventing us from having an advocate for working people on the ballot. Obama and his enablers are preventing us from having someone who will fight for women’s reproductive rights on the ballot. Obama and his enablers are preventing us from having a person who believes extrajudicial killings are illegal and wrong on the ballot.
George Bush couldn’t do that to us, Scott Walker couldn’t do that, the Koch brothers couldn’t do that. Only Obama and the current Democratic party leadership can do that.
This greedy geezer is baffled. How is it the fault of seniors that the 1% and their political tools create the appearance of a Social Security crisis? It seems Obama’s commission propaganda did a number on you. Alan Simpson must be rubbing his hands reading this: “Excellent!”!
Did I say that *all* seniors are creating the crisis? No. I am saying that I have been getting messages from the seniors I have met lately that people my age are going to have to settle for less and live on less and, you know, they’re perfectly ok with that. It’s like, “Gee, I pity you late babyboomers. Sucks to be you. Well, at least I’m covered.”
If you don’t see the resentment that is building up between the generations, and you are not contributing to it, maybe it’s because of where you live and who you hang out with. The last time I had this kind of conversation it came completely out of the blue from some seniors in their 70s who run a rent a tool place and who had Republican campaign signs littering their lawns. They were pretty fricking obnoxious about it.
Just wait and see. The Fox loving seniors think that they are entitled to social security because they worked for it but those of us who paid in advance for 30 years, well, sorry, there’s just not enough for you so you’ll have to take a cut. If you are already retired, consider yourself lucky. If you don’t know any Republicans, consider yourself doubly lucky.
It’s coming. I will eat my blog if the right doesn’t start dividing the generations before the general election.
BTW, what is it about the early babyboomers that make them so damn defensive? You people need to take a chill pill.
I agree. I’m a late boomer. I think we’re kinda sandwiched in between the ladder pulling boomers as you describe and the gen xyzs who have been told their whole lives “SS won’t be around for you, so why should you pay into it?”
I’m a pre-boomer and I don’t want to see SS dismantled for anyone. But when I hear younger people complaining that they WANT out of SS, they want to invest their money elsewhere … I don’t have a lot of energy to try to save them from themselves.
I’ll spend my energy helping grandchildren by supporting research, environment, etc.
Sorry, that sounds wierd. Just that I’ll try to help ALL future generations including the late boomers etc who want out of SS, by supporting other things to make the world better. Instead of fighting with them over their own future SS.
As far as I know, no late boomer I’ve met lately wants out of social security. There might have been a phase a few years ago before the collapse. I never did but I know some friends of mine did not value social security and thought it was quaint. That all changed when they started getting laid off in droves, their companies eliminated their pensions and their 401Ks took a steep dive.
If you are still hearing from these people, they must have been asleep in the past 4 years.
Could be. I got chewed out at length at my LJ blog by someone still of working age, who said the boomer generation had already spent on immediate government programs all the money we paid into SS and SS is now depending on her generation to keep it going by Ponzi. I’m too old to remember when she posted that.
Well, don’t count on them to be particularly well informed. In fact, I think the Republicans count on them not to understand that SS is not a Ponzi scheme. That’s part of the danger.
However, I can’t help but notice the twitchy sensitivity some older readers have about this subject and generational warfare. Is it defensive? Guilt? A little bit of both? I’m going to guess that a lot of current or soon to be SS recipients consider themselves very lucky and are very happy to not be us.
There’s a lot of danger in that attitude. Now is not the time for the retired to get complacent.
This “Well, it won’t affect anybody over 55”? That’s what is always said, whether about a new tax or a new dog-leash law. They announce they will make exception of some powerful sub-group, then after the thing passes, they amend it and go after the exceptions too.
I am a very strong proponent of social security and maintaining it just the way it is. And you should know by now that I detest the proliferation of 401K programs.
If people want to invest their money on a risky stock market where the game is rigged against them, let them do it with their own cash, not our social insurance policy.
I am actually a baby boomer on disability. I am also old enough to remember Jeb Bush’s “devious plan” which was revealed with no political damage: pit seniors against parents/teachers and shaft them all. Seems everyone is playing into this – the obnoxious seniors and you – to my surprise.
On the contrary, I am NOT playing into it. I am pointing it out. What is surprising is how uncomfortable it is to say it out loud. It’s like if we don’t acknowledge that this is the plan, no one will know. You can’t run from this and getting defensive only makes it worse for your age/disability group. The only way you can fight it is by making absolutely sure that the younger generation is not left out. If you start buying into the notion that the younger ones will just have to take a hit, it’s all over for you.
I’m not joining in, I’m *warning* you.
Really, NYS, the defensive posture is not going to work for you. It didn’t work for the public sector unions in Wisconsin and it won’t work for you. You raise the drawbridge and think that you’re safe. You need to give younger people a good reason to not cut you off.
I’m still mulling over the assertion, apparently expected to be accepted without question, that 70-something females have never worked.
We not only earned our Social Security; we paid it for our parents’ generation. You know. The “greatest generation” that bloggers find it convenient to elevate to mass sainthood because most of that generation is conveniently gone.
Was the “greatest generation” really as great as everyone says they were?
Serious question.
>>”retired widows in their 70s have probably never held down a full time job”
Marcia, don’t tell me that the vast majority of women in their 70s worked outside the home for a paycheck. I was a child in the 60s and 70s and very very few women worked for a living. Most of them didn’t even have part time jobs. Don’t even try to compare the work habits of late babyboomer women to them. We have the work habits of those widows’ husbands and we deserve to get our full compensation like they did. And I know where you’re going next so I just want to tell you right now that I don’t for a moment believe that being a stay at home wife/mother is as hard as being a working woman who also has a family. Been there, done that. Women my age should get all of the social security benefits that we paid into the system. ALL OF THEM. I will not settle for less. I worked hard for that safety net, much, much harder than you are likely to give us credit for. We enjoyed our jobs but we also footed the bill for your retirement and ours, plus the babyboomer generation.
You can get all resentful and huffy and insulted and run to the fainting couch if you want. I would never deprive your generation of benefits and I expect you to do the same to ours. This is not an option. If you don’t rigorously defend our right to our full social security benefits, you risk breaking the social contract and while I might be more than willing to pay your benefits until you die, I can’t guarantee that every member of the younger generations who are being squeezed will.
Something to consider the next time you go to vote.
I know of almost no women in their 70’s who did not hold down full-time jobs at some time in their lives. Not many worked at careers but almost all of them worked before they had children, when their kids reached school age or when the kids left home. In my family, every single woman worked continuously throughout their adult lives and two, who are in their mid 70’s, are still working. Now, if you want to make that comment about women in their 90’s, I’ll give you that point.
Definitely everyone who has paid in, should get full benefits, regardless of their age. And so should SAHs collecting benefits off their husband’s account.
I suggest we stop buying into the idea of scarcity, of not enough to go around. That’s what the rivalry depends on. Stop wasting money on bombs, go ahead and tax the corporations, and there would be enough money for all the ‘entitlements’, no need to fight over them.
Another factor is, some old women like me — I founded a business and ran it with my husband’s help — have little or no Social Security credits in our own name. My husband and I filed joint IRS returns and somehow almost all the income was reported in his name. This was in the 1970s-80s.
I helped found the local NOW and fought for a credit rating in my own name, but didn’t think to look into the SS filings. I expect many ‘Mom and Pop’ businesses got reported as Pop’s income and Mom got reported as a ‘dependent.’
My mother, born in 1907, worked as a schoolteacher all her life with a few years off after my birth. As a woman, she got less pay, and iirc less SS credit too.
Speaking of rude awakenings, anyone know how the Anybody But Obama write-in campaigns went in the NJ and CA primaries?
I haven’t checked it. Wisconsin took most of my attention yesterday.
When I began paying into SS fifty some years ago, everyone told me “it won’t be there for you” and I saved accordingly. Today I lose over 50% of my SS income to taxes but I certainly don’t begrudge younger workers anything. My generation is chock-full of greedy idiots, just as my parents’ were, and my children’s generation is. As the recall has demonstrated, the power of a corrupt media coupled with a crippled education system equals voters voting against themselves.
You actually did it the way you were supposed to, churl. Your retirement income is supposed to come from three sources, SS, your personal savings, and pensions. You were supposed to save money (meaning save, not speculate) for retirement, and you did.
And so was my retirement income. But I am just as worried about my pension and 401Ks being there as social security. I’m in Obama’s age cohort and many, many years from retiring. I did everything right. I was frugal, I was responsible and I am getting screwed. Sometimes, careful planning, maturity and responsibility have nothing to do with the outcome. Sometimes, it just takes a bunch of people who can’t be reasoned with to vote in the wrong politicians who will not keep the financiers in line.
Absolutely. That’s why SS is the most important leg of the triad. It’s there to prevent falling into utter destitution in old age.
Take a more disciplined view of what you are seeing. Wisconsin taught us that a power struggle is an unconscionable waste of resources in which everybody loses ground. The PUBLIC SECTOR unions are the issue; People who took lower pay for job security then got in unions to bargain for better benefits. Now they have the HIGHEST pays, the best benefits for which they contribute nothing AND job security. Do you not recognize that this is a toxic combination supported by union PACs to which responsible citizens who are also Union Members no longer wish to contribute? Remember when teachers were poorly paid? Remember when nurses and postal workers went on strike for DECENT wages? Those days when the taxpayers recognized that their public servants made HUGE financial sacrifices to work in government became the glory days for double-dippers, overpaid hacks who dropped the ball for us and pension schemes that rival any Maddof gig. If not for Fox News, we’d get nothing but Obama sucklings preserving THEIR jobs by misleading us. SOME of us can read with our ears and hear with our eyes when stories don’t add up. Nobody who tells you tough times stretch endlessly ahead for you has a bit of sense. Americans are tougher than times, possess the DNA of economic genius and know enougn to keep what they know to themselves lest the rabid left mug them for it. Calm down and get some sense.
Wisconsin taught us that a power struggle is an unconscionable waste of resources in which everybody loses ground.
Not if you win the power struggle.
Nobody who tells you tough times stretch endlessly ahead for you has a bit of sense.
I see you need to be brought up to speed on where the U.S. is actually headed in the next few years:
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2012/06/fragility-and-collapse-slowly-at-first.html#more
I hope you get to live out the full meaning of your beliefs. I hope you reap for yourself what you wish to sow for others.
Let me explain to you how a logical thinking person that is pro-union would vote for Walker. I’m pro-union and I’m a liberal from California who witnessed how the GOP ended Governor Davis term. I agree with those voters in WI who voted for Walker because disagreement on policy is not a good reason to remove a governor. The unions made a big mistake.
I’m sure that message was repeated over and over and over again before the vote. It might have even sounded reasonable. But there’s no getting around the fact that a union member who used that excuse to keep walker has just jeopardized his own power to negotiate. This election is a huge loss for every working person in the country. You just don’t know it yet because you’re not out here with the rest of us who are being forced into going independent contracting to make a living where we have zero labor protections by law and where some people can’t even get paid. But your day will come. This blow to labor is up there with the disastrous firing of the PATCO union.
I hope their committment to a well crafted right wing “principle”, which the Republicans would never impose on themselves is worth all of the havoc that is to come.
Enjoy your union bennies while you can. I’d start putting extra money aside for retirement if I were you. And 6 months salary for your impending layoff wouldn’t hurt. Then we’ll have leveled the playing field among workers. How’s that sound?
I agree that the unions are now worse off because of the WI vote. That’s why I consider that recall election a big mistake. The attack on the working man needs to be addressed, but not by removing elected officials due to policy disagreements. That the unions continue to support Obama is a disgrace, but that’s what has been happening for a long time. The money that has gone to elect politicians might have been spent to throw out anti-worker legislation, like the “right to work” laws.
The money that has gone to elect politicians might have been spent to throw out anti-worker legislation, like the “right to work” laws.
Or to organize a general strike…
Yes. The U.S. politicians have not seen workers show their muscle, not since the 30s. And those who support the working man should ask the question why that is. People died to have unions and work laws that protect the workers, yet we don’t hear politicians defending those laws. Every law that protects workers has been earned, not bought with money. Until unions figure out that cash is not enough to buy politicians, then maybe the unions will use the power of the working class. But Americans have learned to side with corporations because the programming to work against their own interest has been going since Truman was president.
firing of the PATCO union was – again – corrupt union leaders incapable of knowing when to say when. A qualified negotiator doesn’t practice brinkmanship, and Reagan refused to be pushed to that brink. PAT workers cited stress as the reason for their demands instead of convincing the flying public of their uniqueness. When they went ‘uh oh, spaghettios’ a whole bunch of new air traffic controllers who would STILL be standing in unemployment lines got their jobs. No point being stupid unless you can prove it by being stubborn and unyielding, too,
I think you are not seeing the big picture. This is problematic and it’s difficult to spell it out precisely if you don’t get it. But I’ll try.
Every worker in America owes whatever labor protections they have left to the unions.
Once you are not employed by a big company and are forced to become an independent contractor to earn money, you lose all of those protections. I know this because I have seen the contracts. Even had a lawyer go over them. Essentially, you can be discriminated against for any reason, fired for any reason and payment doesn’t have to be on your schedule or even at all. If you don’t have the money to get your money, you’re just SOL. You are forced to carry your own insurance. i’m not talking health insurance or life insurance. I’m talking business insurance because technically, you’re there doing the work as an outsider and if you break something, including yourself, the employer doesn’t want to be responsible. You’re also required to pay all of the taxes, all of the payroll taxes and everything else that makes going to work a complete pain in the ass. You become your own CEO, COO, CFO and clueless MBA. You get no benefits of any kind that you can not pay for yourself and since contracts come and go on an irregular basis, there’s no way to estimate how long you will be able to afford your health insurance, rent, car, phone, food, etc.
This is the world of work that many well paid former middle class workers have now entered into and the worst part of this rapid devolution to “entrepreneurship” happened after the PATCO strike. BTW, do you have ANY idea what it’s like to be an air traffic controller in the NY metropolitan area? You couldn’t pay me enough money to do that job. But someone has to do it and they need to be compensated extraordinarily well for it because your life is in their trembling hands.
To find out more of what the Republicans have in store for the new small business owners, that would be *us*, oh best beloved, check out the Freelancersunion .
Without strong unions, ALL American workers are screwed. I would gladly put up with some unions getting more than they should if that meant that the rest of us get as much as we deserve.
I’m curious about something, DM.
Do you consider Walker, even though you may have strong policy differences with him, to nevertheless basically be an honorable man?
Serious question.
The WI election was not about whether Walker is an honorable man. From what I read, the vote was not about honor or malfeasance.
Then let me put it another way.
Do you consider Walker, even though you may have strong policy differences with him, to nevertheless basically be a decent human being?
No.
GOP ethics: When the Governor is a Democrat, thump his policies. When the Governor is a Republican, thump principle.
Yes, I agree with your post. First there was Reagan and PATCO and union busting, and now there is this. I think this spells doom for all unions.
Instead of demanding that the banksters be punished (Corzine should be in jail) and no more public funds are used to prop them up, the people are fighting amongst themselves. Sad.
The Right Wing has been working to eliminate SS for decades. Obama – a supposed dem – fired the first shot by the SS cut in funding. There was no uproar from the public and now repubs are going to try to defund the program altogether. Sad.
so why aren’t demonstrators in the street demanding Corzine’s conviction?
Interesting question.
One last thought. The message that I get from the exit polls is: The 2010 election must be validated again to protect future elections. An official I vote for in the future should not removed before his/her term is up because of policy disagreement. The recall election has the potential of destroying the process.
Walker has invited the Democratic Party legislators and the rest of the DP leadership in Wisconsin to meet with him at a brat-n-burgers get-together to “share a few laughs” about all the recent goings-on in the state. Should they go?
Absolutely! It’s time the civil middle gets together as Americans and Cheese Heads to exchange some common sense. They will learn about each other and compare notes about how many things are actually mutual beliefs.
Oh, I do agree many of the Democratic legislators and leaders in Wisconsin will go, in part because they’re too stupid to know when they’ve been insulted. Walker’s going to, ahem, geld them in no time. 🙂
Hopefully without anasthetic, so they can wake up and learn something.
Um, have you read Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein’s book, “It’s even worse than you think”? Because we have very little in common with the radical ideological politicians in the Republican party and they finally came right out and said it. There is no lovey dovey, can’t we all just get along, Look! you have a dog, I have a dog rendezvous possible with Walker and his droogs. The only way that conflict will cease is if Democrats no longer challenge the Republicans on anything. Is that what you want? That’s what Republicans want. They don’t want to converse with Democrats. They want Democrats to submit. Republicans play by Conan the Barbarian’s rules:
A get together that the Republicans would consider successful involves dragging the Democrats to the bonfire in chains. Anything else is a fantasy.
Say there, SWPAnnA,
Now that I think about it, you seem like a right smart young feller to me. So tell me, what do you think about Global Warming?
“An official I vote for in the future should not removed before his/her term is up because of policy disagreement. The recall election has the potential of destroying the process.”
So where was that thought when it was Gray Davis in California?
“…it is a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
(you’ll vote for Obama anyway)
Ummm, I didn’t vote for him in 2008 and I have no intention of voting for him now. If Democrats had any sense, they’d turn their backs on their current ineffective leadership and tell them to take a hike. If I were Labor, I’d get a candidate toot sweet and run him/her in November. Democrats and especially Obama, need to work for this election. They can’t just phone it in. And right now, I am determined to vote third party.
Next day: re-reading and re-reflection.
In all honesty there is one big thing that Obama helped do for a large chunk of working people and that was his Administration’s role in the forced-cramdown GM-Chrysler re-organization-rescue. It prevented the extermination of about 3 million jobs in the face of a Right-To-Work state conspiracy to exterminate those jobs. ( Be it noted that Republican Senator Voinovich of Ohio voted for the Obama Car Plan. He put the survival of Great Lakestan ahead of the hate-based agenda of his fellow Republicans). So based on that, I think Obama will get a substantial gratitude-vote here in Carbuildistan. He would have my gratitude-vote if it weren’t for all the other stuff. But the other stuff DOES exist, including the ongoing Simpson Obama Catfood Conspiracy against Social Security and Medicare. So I have to vote against Obama simply to try and preserve my own future bare-minimum survival.
I have lately read about some polling indicating that a lot of the Walker voters plan to vote for Obama in 2012 in Wisconsin. Some of the “Walker” vote was based on Wisconsiners believing that Walker’s
austerian Kochsucking agenda didn’t “rise to the level” of needing recall. Those Wisconsiners . . . so polite . . . even if it kills them in the end.
The problem in WI was, imo, that the Dems had no message …well no diffrent message . They were and are not opposed to Walker’s cuts , anti-worker laws or the austerity drive. They were opposed to the unions and the Dem party not being used to implement those cuts and austerity drive….
Barrett, himself used Walker’s anti-worker law to make $19 million in wage and benefit cuts on city employees in Milwaukee
It’s hard to make a case, when one believes in the same thing
As Harry S. Truman once said When given the choice of a Republican and a Republican , the public will choose a Republican
duh
Actually most Dems I know are aware of this situation …thier argument is we should support the Dems because then the rape of the working /middle class will perhaps be slower under the Dems….some how that reasoning was not enough to throw out Walker.
From what I have read about Wisconsin, I think you’re right. It’s very hard to win against so much money if you don’t have a clean, concise argument why voters shou,d choose you.
I hate to sound like a broken record but as scary as it is, voters must reject Democrats until they decide they want to stand for something or until voters can form a viable third party. In fact, voters must reject Democrats because until we can finally move on, we won’t be ble to get our act together and do what we must with a sense of urgency.
My recommendation is to pick someone else to support for president (not romney of course) and only back Democrats for Congress. Let’s hope that limits the damage until we form a new entity.
“…we’re going to start wondering why the f&(* we have to pay for these morons who believe every stupid thing that the Fox News anchors say.”
I have two dear elderly relatives who – except for the term “morons” – fit your description perfectly. Both are in their Seventies, neither has worked since before they married, and both are on Social Security.
No education since high school, and their worldview is colored by Republican dogma. Don’t get me wrong – these ladies are nice people who’d cry if their car killed a bird or small animal. But either would sell the lazy/worthless younger generation down the river in an instant. And they’re not “actual” morons – both are bright and quite shrewd because of the years of life they’ve attained. No, it’s that Rethug dogma which has turned them into “functional” morons. It’s all they read in their local right-wing newspapers, and all they see & hear on their right-wing TV shows.
I’ve worried for years about the prospect of artificially induced generational warfare. That it is beginning to arrive definitely frightens me. The young are just as susceptible to the slick propaganda as my two elderly relatives, and ‘whacking’ some nasty old geezers will be made to seem like a patriotic activity which will save the nation.