I just came across the best description of Obama and the Democrats in Congress in a comment on a recent Krugman piece. I just had to share it!
The Left, and this administration, reminds me of a guy who's not good at meeting girls, so he just doesn't try, and instead spends his friends' time moaning about how hard it is to find girls and how he's never going to find someone. He always sells himself short by pointing out his bad qualities rather than playing up his good ones, but won't stop doing this because he feels compelled to be overly honest. You're not gonna get it if you don't work for it, dude! You gotta work for it.
The rest of the quote by Scalawag of Oakland, CA reads:
This phenomenon of the Left's learned helplessness has frustrated me again and again over the years. When the Dems don't have the votes, or they don't have popular support, they pretend not to believe what they actually believe, and they just go silent instead. Those of us to their left protest loudly that the status quo sucks, and are swatted down by Serious Centrists: "The administration is doing all it can! You got the health care bill, so shut up."
And meanwhile the Republicans are on CNN and Fox every day ripping into the administration, pretending that it is imposing a Stalinist dictatorship with gulags and purges and all the rest, pretending that taxes are at an all-time high, pretending that cutting the budget would quickly save the economy, pretending that rent-seeking industries are paragons of free-market virtues, and on and on. The Left and the administration do all they can to make sure that on most subjects, this is the only narrative that the public hears.
It's enough to make a man drink.
I am with Scalawag the entire way.
How can a third of Americans think that their taxes have gone up when they have gone down under this Administration?
How can the majority of Americans think that Obama's spending is ruining the country when I just documented that Bush's spending was higher (setting aside his destructive tax policies and wars)?
This is a problem of communication and conviction, and the debilitating lack of both.
The Democrats have allowed two or three members of the Senate to mandate that all Americans buy private insurance without providing a government-run option, to water down key provisions of financial reform bill, to table the card-check bill, and to make the Stimulus Bill contain one-third tax cuts when it needed twice as much spending and zero tax cuts.
Now, it appears that millions of Americans are being victimized by a false fight over the ravaging costs of unemployment insurance that cost less than six months of war mongering in Iraq, and the Cat Food Commission will institute cuts in our greatest social safety net.
What the hell are these people doing?!? I want them to take away chairs of committees and lay waste to Democrats who stand in the way of key parts of the Democratic Party Platform. Instead, they pour money into races of people who crap all over the Party Platform and sniffle like dorks in high school while brain-dead bullies toss slushies in their faces, a la Glee (the best show on TV, btw).
And by frustrating people such as myself, they risk losing control of Congress in the fall elections. My willingness to knock on doors and sit on the phone chatting up Dems goes down the toilet when the Party craps on me and others like me. :sigh: