Can we all agree, for the love of Goddess,

[Ken Burch]

that this HAS to be the last hollowed-out, partial victory that we settle for in this administration?

That nothing else that has this much carved out of it on any future bill is even worth bothering with?

That from now on, we expect our leaders to fight for ACTUAL victories?

We did not vote for nothing but tiny increments.

[Ozymanithrax]

1. I voted for progess, even in baby steps.

So far, Obama and Democrats have my vote.

And who is the GODDESS of whom you speak?

[Ken Burch]

6. Goddess is simply a non-sexist reference to whatever Omniscent One someone might believe in

or not.

[Ozymanithrax]

16. Ahh, I'm an agnostic writer...I believe on in the limited omniscient point of view.

Thanks.

[Ken Burch]

19. "the limited omniscent point of view"...I like that...

It suggests a moment on Family Guy when the Earth would get destroyed and Yahweh would turn to an angel and say "I did NOT see that coming".

[Orrex]

77. How the heck is it non-sexist?

How does a female imaginary being differ from a male imaginary being in this regard? :shrug:



Incidentally, I don't agree with your basic premise. Like it or not this President has passed a greater number of monumentally historic bills than any other President in the past century, and he's done it in spite of a lock-step obstructionist opposition party and hostile 24/7 news media.


I'm not thrilled with everything he's done, and I'm aware of a lot that he has yet to do, but I don't know that anyone would be doing much better.

[Ken Burch]

80. OK, it's gender-reversal. Point taken.

n/t.

[LiberalEsto]

43. For some of us, the Goddess

is the Supreme Being, Creator, etc.

[Ken Burch]

45. And that's fine.

n/t.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

55. Baby-step Dems.

The thousand year view.

:applause:

[Ken Burch]

57. Er...in a thousand years, it won't matter, because we'll be dead?

n/t.

[Ozymanithrax]

70. As opposed to the "Queen" Dems.

Queen - I want it all
:bounce:

[sharp_stick]

2. No I don't think we can all agree

I will take progress anytime even if it is slow and messy over ditching it all.

[Lisa D]

7. +1

Slow and messy is usually how progress is made.

[Ken Burch]

10. No ditching it all...fighting for ACTUAL victory and real change.

Both of which require strong measures FROM THE START.

The weaker the bill, the easier you make it for the enemies of the people(which is what we have to call the financial sector now) to ignore it.

[Arkana]

3. I disagree with the premise of your question, so no.

[ZombieHorde]

4. I am pretty sure "Tiny increments you can believe in" was Obama's campaign slogan.

Then there was all of those campaign posters which read, "ACTUAL victories are for suckers!"

We were all chanting these slogans, don't you remember that?

[Arkana]

9. Perhaps you weren't listening when Obama said that change wouldn't come easy

or all at once because the status quo would fight it with everything it's got.

Or maybe you were too busy fuming cause your guy/girl didn't win.

[Ken Burch]

13. Of course the status quo would fight.

Which is why the status quo can always claim the win when the bill is pissed down.

No final bill that has less than half the provisions of the original bill is worth anything.

[ZombieHorde]

26. Baby Jesus always wins, so I have no need to fume. nt

[Ken Burch]

22. And the posters that said

"don't get your HOPEs up".

[phleshdef]

5. You only think its a partial victory because some progressive blog warrior told you it was.

[Ken Burch]

8. No, I think that because everything important was taken out.

It's less than half the original bill, which is the same as defeat.

[phleshdef]

11. "Everything important" was taken out... because Cenk and FDL bloggers said so.

[CakeGrrl]

12. Sure, just make the Republicans PROMISE they won't filibuster

Since they seem to be using the concept of "lockstep" pretty effectively in staunch opposition to the President.

When an agenda doesn't need a 60-vote supermajority to counteract the Republican filibuster, then you might see things change. But since Republicans have learned how to stick together when it counts, something that Dems can't seem to conceive of doing, here we are.

[Ken Burch]

18. Then we should MAKE them filibuster and use that against them.

That's what a president with courage would do.

Why do our leaders assume they can't beat the Right in a fight?

[zipplewrath]

14. Um, what makes you think this isn't exactly what Obama wanted?

You are speaking as if this is some how not what Obama wanted. I'm curious what leads you to that conclusion? My presumption is this is all he wanted and he basically got everything he set out to accomplish.

[Ken Burch]

15. I'm speaking of what we were promised versus what remained.

I'll agree that Obama didnt' want much. And let's face it, he's not on our side. A Democratic president can only be progressive in the first two years. Obama deliberately pissed the time away, now we're stuck with LBJ after 1967 the rest of the way in.

[Radical Activist]

24. What made LBJ changedafter '67?

Maybe all the seats Democrats lost in Congress? Isn't that a clue to you about what the problem is right now?

[Ken Burch]

28. Those seats were lost largely because LBJ demoralized the base

And I will be helping some U.S. Senate candidates(though it's a dead loss in Alaska, my home state, because the fix is in for Lisa Murkowski).

[Radical Activist]

31. You dodged the question.

I didn't ask why Democrats lost seats. Wasn't the difference that LBJ was able to get more passed with a heavily Democratic Congress? There's every indication that Obama would do far more if he had the Congress of 1965.

[Ken Burch]

60. The other difference was that the 1964-65 Congress was reacting to the assassination of JFK

An event which totally reshaped the dynamic in U.S. politics for a year or so. This would have given any liberal president a pretty good legislative track record. Even then, Johnson made two major blunders: He didn't push Taft-Hartley repeal through(the votes were there at the time)and he didn't get a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College passed and sent to the states(it would have succeeded and would have prevented the conditions that led to the Republican realignment of 1968, since white Southern voters would not have had an effective veto over who took the presidency.

LBJ also, in my view, helped cause the losses in '66(or at least make them larger)by showing no personal confidence in the War on Poverty(he started asking for LESS funding for the programs in 1965, when they'd just barely started)and by diverting funds from those programs to what he already knew was an unwinnable war in Vietnam(we know he knew it was unwinnable because he can be heard saying that on White House tapes from 1964, as released by the LBJ library).

The other factor in Johnson's reduced success after 1967 was that he tended to cave in to the white backlash on a number or areas.

[WI_DEM]

34. Actually with the '64 landslide where dems won many traditionally GOP seats there was bound

to be a heavy pick-up in '66. Also, traditionally this is the case--for instance FDR won many seats in '36 in his huge landslide re-election, in '38 the GOP gained more seats than happened in '66 with Johnson.

[zipplewrath]

27. The conservadems rule

With Obama in office, the blue dog/conservadems/DLC'ers are going to rule the day. I don't know who is making you these "promises", but they aren't in a position to keep them.

[NJmaverick]

17. There is absolutely NOTHING that you said that can be agreed upon

[Ken Burch]

20. You're already established that you don't want any real change

n/t.

[NJmaverick]

23. yet, another incorrect statement

in fact your comments knocking yet another historic victory would tend to indicate it's you that does not desire change

[Ken Burch]

25. tiny increments are NOT "historic".

And nothing in this bill will even be noticed by Wall Street and the banksters. Face it, the rich won on this.

We should just have nationalized the bastards and put their investments under democratic control.

[NJmaverick]

30. You are incorrect sir

You need to appreciate that there is more than one path to victory and yours is not the only path

[Arkana]

35. Yes, nationalize the banks! Put thousands MORE people out of work!

Seriously, what fucking planet do you live on where nationalizing everything is the goddamn answer? This is not Venezuela and Barack Obama is not your hero Hugo Chavez.

[phleshdef]

38. Exactly. Lets go ahead and legitimize the meme that progressivism is nothing more than...

...a socialist agenda in disguise, hellbent on killing capitalism and rationing everyone's toilet paper usage.

[Ken Burch]

42. To you, progressivism, by contrast, should be

"we'll change things SLIGHTLY...if our betters don't say no...".

And no, I don't want Stalinism. I want an economic model where we all have a say. That doesn't have to lead to toilet paper shortages.

There's no reason why we can't run this country for the greater good, rather than just indulging the shakedown artists who have turned the word "incentivize" into a verb(assuming that the word "incentivize" was actually a word to start with).

We need to take the economy back. What we've learned since 1980 is that the wealthy won't tolerate social justice or humane values.

[phleshdef]

50. Progressivism means making all the progress thats politically possible.

Give me a senate with 60 Bernie Sanders clones and then we can talk. Until then, we have an opposition party almost 100% bent on obstruction and our own party thats about half progressive, about half centrist and a handful that are just as conservative as the opposition, in power, right now.

On top of that, the American people don't seem to WANT the government taking over the financial system, for whatever reasons, right or wrong. The climate is not right for the extremes that you want to see.

Being progressive does not mean that you serve as nothing more than a results-free echo chamber for the left. It means you get shit done, dealing with the hand that you are dealt.

[Ken Burch]

51. The best way to beat the GOP and mobilize our base

would be to MAKE them filibuster everything and then hang it on THEM when nothing gets done. That's the ONLY way to fight obstructionists. The GOP would be 20 points down if we'd chosen that strategy rather than continually letting them water the bills down to nothing.

Caving in to get a few of them to stop obstructing isn't winning.

And it's hardly ever worked.

None of them backed healthcare. None backed the financial bill until it was worthless.

[Radical Activist]

54. It's not really the GOP we're compromising with.

It's conservative Democratic Senators who are watering things down before they pass.

[phleshdef]

61. "The GOP would be 20 points down if we'd chosen that strategy " Bullshit

We would be doing way worse than we are doing right now with that type of childishness. People don't want to see the Democrats waste all their tax payer funded paychecks doing nothing more than arguing and thats exactly what you are suggesting.

The financial reform bill is far from worthless. But I doubt you can even explain to me what it actually does or doesn't do anyway beyond vague, sloganesque, ad hominem attacks on the bill.

[dionysus]

76. bankster! catfood commisioner! CRUISE MISSLES!!11!

;)

[Ken Burch]

79. Any reason we SHOULDN'T call them "banksters"?

It's not as if anybody in the financial industry DESERVES our respect.

[donco6]

81. Heh. pwnd.

:thumbsup:

[dionysus]

82. i'd use it here, but not in serious conversation. cutesy slogan cheapen your argument. it'd be like

talking to undecided voters and referring to the gop as repukes.

[Ken Burch]

39. Not nationalizing everything.

But what this last two years has taught us is that, on finance and healthcare, "the market" can't be trusted to be decent or human. Space needs to be created so that decisions can actually be made for the common good again, rather than solely on the basis of "what's in it for me".

That can't happen without some massive intervention in the economic system.

The days of wealthy humanitarians are over.

[Arkana]

40. No, you're right--the free market has proven it can't be trusted.

However, what it needs is strict regulation, not a needle of potassium chloride in the arm.

[SeattleGirl]

48. "...this last two years..." Are you suggesting that the problems

this country faces only came about in the past two years? If so, you are seriously wrong. Many of the problems we face now can be traced back to Reagan and his anti-regulation ferver, and it's been building since then. Obama is trying to reverse some of that, but you don't seem to want to acknowledge that. You also don't seem to want to acknowledge that not only does Obama have to deal with a shitload of problems, he has to do it with most Republicans in Congress being totally and completely against him.

[Ken Burch]

53. Yes, the problems started well before that.

I was using "the last two years" because that was the first time in decades that our party had had a real chance to change any of it.

[Radical Activist]

36. So any reform short of nationalization is an incremental failure to you.

That's fine, but let's be honest that your viewpoint means you would have called this bill a failure no matter what was in it. Right? In fact, I'll bet you don't even feel the need to know what's in the bill as long as someone out there is calling it a terrible compromise.

Personally, I'm not an authoritarian state socialist so nationalization has no appeal to me. Giving stock holders more power over how a company operates is a step in the right direction so I'm glad Obama has been fighting for that. It brings an element of democracy to the marketplace which should be expanded upon.

[Ken Burch]

44. No, not every reform short of nationalization.

I'd be fine with legislation turning the banks into co-operatives in which everyone with an account had an equal vote in the managerial process and on the economic decisions.

And the point I was making about nationalization is that the rich don't seem to be fazed by anything short of at least the threat of it.
They need to be humbled. And we need to remember that we can run the country without them.

This could be done on a decentralized level, without state bureaucratic methods.

[Radical Activist]

52. That would be awesome.

It's one of the reasons I belong to a credit union instead of a bank.

And yet...with only one quasi-socialist member of the US Senate we know that there's no possibility of this passing into law right now. I can't bring myself to get angry that Obama isn't living in a fantasy world where Socialists control parliament. I'm not going to degrade useful reforms because it isn't ideal.

Obama has been pushing for more shareholder control over companies and my understanding is that it's in the final bill. That's a foothold that establishes the idea of a more democratically run corporation. It's movement in the right direction toward what you're talking about. A step forward isn't a failure just because it didn't take us to the end of our journey.

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

46. ...

:applause:

[SoxFan]

68. ...

:yourock:

[HughMoran]

69. .

:toast:

[DevonRex]

72. ...

:thumbsup:

[CBR]

73. ....

B-) :toast:

[Bobbie Jo]

78. ........

:headbang:

[Radical Activist]

21. Which US Senate races are you involved in?

I mean by supporting a progressive candidate with at least some chance at winning the election and not just raising issues to make a statement.

It feels good to draw self-righteous lines in the sand but it's also pointless to ignore the realities of what will pass the US Senate. Personally, I don't like to spit on progress, even when there's more work to do.

[WI_DEM]

29. You see it as "hallowed out" I see it as the most significant reform of banking since the New Deal

and extremely far-reaching.

[Spazito]

33. Yeah!

Perfection or status quo! Nothing else is acceptable!

:eyes:

[Ken Burch]

37. Not perfection. But at least more than half the loaf.

At least not all the important things being removed, as in this case and healthcare and only the things the rich can tolerate being left.

And the bills would have been stronger, in BOTH cases, if Rahm hadn't ordered the activists to stay out of it and insisted on "leaving it to the pros". This is what "the pros" always give us. Having hundreds of thousands or millions in the streets of D.C. would have made a huge difference.

If the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts had been left to "the pros", we'd still HAVE Jim Crow. Real change only comes when the grass roots is included.

[Radical Activist]

41. Activists were not told to stay out of it.

Do you have any idea how many emails blasts went out or how many meetings were organized by OFA to get activists involved in this? Of course not. You're just repeating cookie cutter talking points because you think you know how everything works, but things have changed.

[Spazito]

65. You seem to forget the Civil Rights and Voting Acts of today are not the same acts ....

that were passed originally. For example, this was added to the Civil Rights Act:

Subsequent legislation expanded the role of the EEOC. Today, according to the U. S. Government Manual of 1998-99, the EEOC enforces laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age in hiring, promoting, firing, setting wages, testing, training, apprenticeship, and all other terms and conditions of employment. Race, color, sex, creed, and age are now protected classes. The proposal to add each group to protected-class status unleashed furious debate. But no words stimulate the passion of the debate more than "affirmative action."

And also this:

Presidents also weighed in, employing a series of executive orders. President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered all executive agencies to require federal contractors to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." This marked the first use of the phrase "affirmative action." In 1969 an executive order required that every level of federal service offer equal opportunities for women and established a program to implement that action. President Richard Nixon's Department of Labor adopted a plan requiring federal contractors to assess their employees to identify gender and race and to set goals to end any under-representation of women and minorities. By the 1990s Democratic and Republican administrations had taken a variety of actions that resulted in 160 different affirmative action federal programs. State and local governments were following suit.

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/civil-rights-act/

Do you believe the passage of the Civil Rights Act should not have happened until everything now covered was in place or was it better to pass a less than perfect bill as was done in 1964?

[Oregone]

47. No. I want to settle for another hollowed-out victory in the war department

Its going to be a hoot when they declare a war-winning withdrawal, leaving behind combat forces to engage in non-combat missions. A hoot I tell you.

[Jennicut]

49. Are you expecting better after the midterms? We will have less Dems by 2011.

[Ken Burch]

56. That's why a lot of us have been so impatient.

If we don't hold either house after 2010, I hope Obama will do the decent thing and not seek a second term, because even if he does win a GOP takeover in 2010 would hold for the rest of his time in office just as it did with Clinton.

The only chance to avoid that would be a different nominee in 2012.

Obviously, I hope it doesn't get THAT bad this year, but it could.

And the DLC types want it to.

[Jennicut]

71. I don't think that has ever been tried before, because it comes off as pure desperation to voters.

There is no guarantee that switching to a new candidate in 2012 would help get Dems more seats in 2012. If anything, that can come of as Dems having a chaotic party.

[dionysus]

84. so, DLC types want to lose both houses? is that what you're saying?

[Ken Burch]

88. They were happy it happened in '94. So was the Big Dog.

You could tell.

[geek tragedy]

85. So, you want a Republican in 2012 or do you think there's

someone with a superior ability to get progressive legislation passed?

[Ken Burch]

89. I obviously don't want a Republican.

What I'm saying is that losing both houses this year would show that we need a different nominee to have any chance of saving anything in 2012(and no, just holding the White House wouldn't be worth anything. It wasn't in '96.)

[DevonRex]

58. Um, not unless there's some sort of coup in the works that you're in on

that the rest of us are clueless about - one in which a Ghandi-like figure will rule the USA and make all the right decisions and there will be perfection from here on out. :shrug:

[dionysus]

75. if the Larouchian Goosesteppers come, I'll have to pack all the gold bullion i can into my fastest

yacht, and head for San Tropez toot sweet! Do you know of any good rental estates in that area?
:hi:

[DevonRex]

86. You can just borrow one of mine. No need to expend any capital

in the event the toot sweet evacuation is necessary. As long as you let me borrow your Bermuda property from time to time... :hi:

[dionysus]

87. sounds like a fair deal!

:hi:

[BootinUp]

59. Its not going to get better until

We bring the repukes to their knees. At least another 2-3 years before I think we are there.

[Ken Burch]

63. We can't bring them to their knees with centrism.

n/t.

[BootinUp]

64. When are one of you guys going to win

some elections and show us fools how its done, lol.

[Spazito]

66. LOL and +1!

[DevonRex]

67. OMG.

:rofl:

[Phx_Dem]

62. Nope. This was one more HUGE victory.

And I could not be more pleased.

[HughMoran]

74. unrec

I'm tired of the most productive Congress in generations being described as basically good for nothing.

[geek tragedy]

83. This is as good as it's going to get--the last victory.

There will be no climate change legislation.

There will be no immigration reform legislation.

There will be no EFCA.

DADT will be ended some time next year. But that's it. DADT is the only thing left on the table.

[depakid]

92. And the Democrats will now own the next financial meltdown and be rightly blamed

for scandals that could and should have been prevented.

[LWolf]

90. Apparently, after browsing down the thread, not. nt

[Ken Burch]

91. The Right Wing of DU seems to have come out in force on this thread.

n/t.