First off, let me say this. I don't like chained CPI (and yes I know what it is) any more than most Democrats do, but we need to remember it's not like Boehner can agree with Obama anyway. It cannot get passed, at least not by Republicans, because Obama proposed it. That would send Boehner straight to Republican Hades. The White House is not going to be able to deal with Republicans until Obama pushes them out nationally. It's going to be a mammoth lift. The Republicans managed to maintain the house, even without the popular vote, during an election season where turnout was huge, so their ability to maintain local control and keep the hand of governance to twist to their advantage is a testament to their craftiness. There is hope though.
Progressivism can win. Progressives do in fact win. Clinton was back in the 1990s, riding fast after the Reagan wave. The country is not there anymore. The Reagan Democrats no longer have to be kowtowed to: they're Republicans which is where they should be. Far right Tea Partiers like Christine O'Donnel, Ken Buck, and Sharron Angle did not lose just because of their being extreme, but because they were extreme right wingers. This is a distinction most of the talking heads on MSNBC don't get, god forbid any of the other networks, and is important for our strategy come 2014. Lord knows Chris Matthews would never see it. Most of the D.C. inner circle want you to think that Americans are super sensitive centrists that dislike extremes just for the sake of disliking extremes. There are plenty of false equivalency centrists, who equate the most horrendous right wing rhetoric with comments from left wingers that would barely elicit a shrug. Pastors alluding to Obama's death with Bible verses is somehow the same as using the term "fat cat." Go figure. They do not make up the majority of the electorate.
Sharon Angle ran on "Second Amendment Remedies." Other Tea Partiers released racist photos of the White House with a watermelon patch out front. Michigan recently had the anti-gay Tea Bag Mayor of Troy recalled because she was a blithering idiot, an anti-gay bigot, and honestly did not understand the way the world worked. She's gone. Yes, people who get degrees in library science really want to volunteer. Great job.
Now, don't just write this off as "extreme." This is "extreme right wing." It's racist, it believes in a mythical, Candyland version of the free market, it's belligerent, it believes the Constitution is a holy document imbued with divine powers, and it gets as close to fascism as I think anyone should ever get. American's don't like those things in general, not because they're extreme, but because they're stupid and awful and they come from the right. Now, some Americans DO like these things, as we see in states basically run by the GOP like Kansas. Now, let's look at what happened since 2010.
The GOP took state legislatures which was they key for them maintaining the House. They did not take the House with the popular vote, they did it through gerrymandering which is a strategic advantage that local control afforded to them. Sure, they lost some winnable seats in Delaware and Nevada, but to be honest with you, those were small sacrifices given how much they gained. Here's what happened between 2010-2013:
Republicans kept Democrats on their back foot on voting rights which threatened the President's reelection prospects in battleground states.
Republican kept Democrats on their back foot regarding cuts to vital programs in states.
Republicans kept Mitt Romney on his back foot by forcing him to pretend not to be an apostate.
Republicans gained wealthy donors and the key to legislative castles in many northern, blue states while at the same time consolidating their hold over red states and diluting the power of Democrats in blue states. This is strategically unacceptable. Democrats are not on offense.
"But they lost the Presidency because they were too unhinged! They were too extreme and ruffled centrist feathers!"
They lost the Presidency because Romney never made himself stand out. Only people who were programmed to vote Republican voted for him. Everyone else was too shocked by what the far right made him say during the primaries to cast their vote for him. Besides, the vast majority of the electorate liked Obama. There were plenty of "far left" (I hate this term) things said during the Democratic primaries in 2008 that did not make damaging sound bites for anyone outside of Fox News viewers, who are NOT voting for the Democrat ANYWAY. Also, keep in mind, when the President went Centrist in his first debate with Romney, alluding to agreeing about Social Security and not being too far away from Romney himself, he lost. The next two debates, he came out stronger, and was far more progressive, and NONE of that sunk him.
It's time to forget Clinton's Third Way nonsense. It's 2013 not 1992. Reagan is long gone. I am almost 30 and my generation grew up in the Bush years. We're either progressive or libertarian because the two party system and their centrist village allies could do nothing but sit by and watch a country get illegally invaded while jobs were packaged and shipped overseas with no recourse. The electorate agrees with Progressives on many issues. They don't want Social Security cut, they don't want it tampered with or tweaked, they don't want Medicare cut, they don't want Too Big To Fail to become Way Too Big to Fail, and they want a solution to the jobs problem, but not austerity. Progressives are NOT far left. There is NO far left in this country. That is the Orwellian Newspeak of Fox News. If Democrats take it up all is lost. The communist and socialist parties are of no consequence. Raising minimum wage isn't socialist. Changing the tax code so that EFFECTIVE corporate tax rates are fair is not socialist. And for God's sake, expanding Social Security and Medicare is not socialist. Maybe those ones are, but those programs work, and the only reason people think they need to be cut is because no one is out there making the case for why those programs work and what's really causing the debt.
For those of you who say that centrist Democrats in red states like Louisiana, for example Landrieu, would be toast if they had to run as progressives, I agree. But so what? They're hanging on by a thread. The Republicans could run a decent candidate against them and they'd be toast anyway. Gone. Keeping them around makes it difficult to get an agenda done. If the district is center right then they deserve a center right Republican. Heck, I'd like it if they got a Tea Bagger who would really shove them to the right and see if that's what they really wanted. It happened in my district, where voters turned down the chief of medicine of Oakland Hospital for a guy who yelled at school children and is possibly mentally unhinged. Some people just turn that lever for "R." Very un-centristy. Now, as for the red state Dems, they vote Republican regardless on many key issues and it makes it difficult to govern when party infighting and looking out for number one bogs you down. If losing Landrieu means gaining more seats in blue states, taking back local control, and maybe, dare I say it, running actual progressives in blue districts where non-progressives have no business being, then that is a small, small price to pay.
There's a shift happening. Let's ride it.