There's understandable frustration about President Obama's deal with the devil Speaker Boehner and House Republicans to pass the 2011 budget and fund government for the rest of this fiscal year. After all, with a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic majority in the Senate, why couldn't Democrats protect the budget from these job-killing, growth-slowing, economy-damaging budget cuts?
But as President Obama said to the Republicans in 2009: "I won." And now, in 2011, the tables are turned. Republicans eager to show off their newly discovered fiscal sobriety are trying to roll back not only the stimulative impact of the Recovery Act, but also the legislative and political progress of the last two years.
In 2008, we won. In 2010, we lost. (Badly.) This is what happens when you lose elections.
So, while I can agree with the principles of folks like Ezra Klein and Lawrence O'Donnell and TeacherKen, I have to question the feasibility of doing anything other than what the Obama Administration did. After all, leading Republican lawmakers are already telling us that this is just the beginning. And Paul Ryan's austerity budget is a well-known disaster, but he is not just some obscure policy analyst writing blogs. Paul Ryan is the Chairman of the United States House Budget Committee. He is the guy who is setting the direction of the body of government with the power of the purse.
We lost. This is what happens.
So, yes, there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats, and Democrats are not merely "Republican lite". In spite of the fact that, in the past, Mitt Romney signed health insurance mandates into law, the new-and-improved Super-Romney is already telling us that he hates Obamacare, even though it's basically national Romneycare. The new reality is that Republicans are corporate fascists who have completely sold out their constituents in order to win the support of the well-funded and shrinking minority of Americans (and global multinational corporations) who have all the money in this country.
And if you let them win, this is what they will do.
Is a third party the answer? Well, maybe, if the third party is a well-organized and anti-fascist version of the Tea Party with some willingness to directly take on the corporatists and bank-coddlers like Boehner, Cantor, Corker, Burr, Shelby, Snowe, etc. It is entirely possible that a new Republican Party is emerging that will be made up of social conservatives like Tim Pawlenty and Michael Gerson, while the Tea Party gives up on the half-measures of Republicans who promise $100 billion in cuts and deliver only 1/3 that amount.
But if Progressives are really interested in redrawing the map in 2012, the way to do it is outside of electoral politics. Let's face it: redistricting in 2012 will reduce the number of safe progressive districts in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Arizona. And with 23 seats to defend in the US Senate, we'll have to play defense more than offense in 2012. And if elected officials are forced by Citizens United to run to the middle, then the real solution is something that will happen outside of the push-pull of Republican v. Democrat. The real issue comes down to a massive voter education campaign that will take place in coffee shops, libraries, churches, schools, and neighborhoods all over the country.
So, you can blame Obama, blame me, shake your fist, write a blog, or...
What if we started doing what we do best on Daily Kos? What if we got back to the kind of high-quality opposition research, candidate profiles, policy papers, and community-building diaries that make this community the most interesting online political forum out there? What if we let go of the need to change Obama and got refocused on effective netroots organizing strategies? What if we acknowledged the harsh reality that we got our asses handed to us in 2010, and took that lesson as an opportunity to stop doing things that don't work?
Or we could just have more pie fights.
It's up to you.Updated by Benintn at Tue Apr 12, 2011 at 09:28 AM CDT
Tremendous well-written diary that might serve as a counterpoint to this one from thereisnospoon - http://www.dailykos.com/...