Primary 2012: An austere OP for an austere era

SyphonBlue

I mean staying home in 2010 as a protest vote worked out so well for the Democratic party, didn't it?

sanstodo

I'm not really a huge Douthat fan but this column is fantastic:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/opinion/waiting-for-a-landslide.html?hp

Money quote: "In reality, the next election may be no more transformative than 2008 turned out to be. The next Republican president may find himself as hemmed in and frustrated as President Obama has become. Meanwhile, America will still have a credit rating to fix, and a deficit to close.

None of this means that our parties need to give up their deep convictions, their grand plans, or their hopes of winning an enduring mandate.

But in the wake of the weekend’s downgrade, we need them to govern as though that final victory might never quite arrive."

Stop searching for final victories. Progress is incremental.

Do you think the healthcare bill doesn't go far enough? Then work to get it gradually expanded over the coming decades.

Do you think financial reform needs to go farther? Then work to get it tightened over the coming decades.

The list goes on. No single election or President will give us everything we want. Obama got some good stuff done, even if it's not everything or even most of what we wanted. He certainly did more than McCain would have.

In this election, we don't have a choice between Obama and our dream candidate. We have a choice between Obama and the Republican nominee. I guarantee you that a second Obama term will bring the country closer to your ideal than the alternative.

We're not defeatists or apologists for recognizing this. If we want to see universal healthcare in our lifetimes, then we have to protect the current reforms even if they're not ideal. Having a Democratic President provides veto power, along with possible Supreme Court appointments (because many fights end with SCOTUS). Once things really get rolling in 2014, the public will support universal healthcare more and more.

That's how it works, one inch at a time. There are no magical solutions, only good people doing hard work day after day, year after year. That's why 2012 matters. That's why every election matters. Not because we'll win a final victory, but because we'll win a small one. And then another. And then another. And we'll be that much closer.

Bagginses

moutpeace wrote:

SyphonBlue wrote:

I love the thought that "Obama didn't give me everything I want, therefore I'm going to vote for the party that is certifiably insane. That'll show him good!"

It's just crazy enough to work!

It's more "I'm not going to vote, period."

There's a difference?

"Oh, I'm going to help the chances of the tea party, but my way of doing it has plausible deniability. That's totally different from supporting the tea party."

SyphonBlue

moutpeace wrote:

SyphonBlue wrote:

Then you're voting for the other party.

No, there are many parties, and I'm not voting for any of them. I'm writing myself in.

So you're voting Republican. Gotcha.

Derrick

Zython wrote:

Exactly. Thinking long term is all well and good, but what about the people who stand to lose everything before then. What about people that, should the short run be lost, won't even live to see the long run? Politics isn't a game to be won, people's lives and livelihoods are at stake. I know it's easy to lose sight of that, but we need to look at both the short AND the long term.

I agree with you. We have to balance losing a battle to win the war. Currently, we aren't doing either.

We need real health reform now. We need SS now and in the future. We need to get out from under the yoke of the Corporate Branch of US government 30 years ago.

And in order to do that we need Obama to put his money where his mouth is and start being the man he was during his campaign.

I don't recall him ever standing up at a podium and saying, "You know, I think I'll give the extreme right wing more than they want whenever I first come to the table, and then I'll start offering to strip everything the left wing believes in just to sweeten the pot."

SageinaRage

No political party has ever gotten stronger because its members refused to vote. If you want to change the direction of the party, then pay more attention in primaries, communicate with your representatives more, get more active. If people don't vote for dems in large numbers, then the message people will take away is that people don't like the planks of the democratic party - and that by extension, they DO want the planks of the republican party.

sanstodo

SyphonBlue wrote:

moutpeace wrote:

SyphonBlue wrote:

Then you're voting for the other party.

No, there are many parties, and I'm not voting for any of them. I'm writing myself in.

So you're voting Republican. Gotcha.

Actually, mathematically, it's more like 1/2 Republican, 1/2 useless.

SyphonBlue

Being as there is no viable alternative party, voting for anything that isn't Democratic gets us this

Representative Michele Bachmann said she would cut Social Security and Medicare benefits for all but current recipients as part of a broader effort to reduce the federal deficit.

"We will reform the entitlement programs now, not five years from now, not 26 years from now, now," Bachmann said on Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital With Al Hunt" airing this weekend. "Anyone who is not yet on those programs, we are going to change them."[...]

Bachmann said Social Security and Medicare spending should be reined in with reductions through means testing or eligibility age. "We all know it needs to be done," she said.

KEYES: Governor, are corporations people?

PALIN: The people pay the taxes. It’s not an entity — the corporation itself — that pays the taxes. It’s the people who pay the taxes. So Mitt Romney was right.

ANDREW ROMANO: But the larger question that I’m trying to get it is whether it’s even possible to be your kind of conservative—the kind of conservative you’re advocating for in this book—if you’re working in Washington. Because in theory, Reagan was your kind of conservative, and yet government grew when he was in office. Can conservatives actually reverse the last 75 years of federal policy?

RICK PERRY: Sure. Absolutely they can. We just have to be principled and disciplined and learn how to say no. The idea that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle is not correct. I don’t subscribe to it. It takes people who will say no to special interests and no to new spending, and say yes to allowing the states to be more in control of their futures.

You WILL make it worse than 2010. If more Republicans are elected, and the country goes from bad to worse, and you stayed home or voted for yourself, it will be nobody's fault but yours. So congratulations on willingly fucking over the country.

Derrick

Bagginses wrote:

I have. The constitution doesn't say what you seem to think it does, as has already been pointed out to you endlessly in the debt ceiling thread. Really, the only was the 14th amendment could be read as saying what you think it means is if it were read by someone of highly questionable literacy.

William Jefferson Clinton, 42nd President of the United States, graduate from Yale Law, is someone of highly questionable literacy that is obviously inferior to a "Bagginses" that reads an internet forum.

Wow. Color me fucking impressed.

sanstodo

I'd love to hear a credible, realistic scenario in which an Obama loss in 2012 leads to better outcomes given the current GOP candidates.

Chanus

sanstodo wrote:

I'd love to hear a credible, realistic scenario in which an Obama loss in 2012 leads to better outcomes given the current GOP candidates.

I dunno... I get the argument that the Republicans win and things get so bad it ushers in an era of Democrat rule... It feels good to think that's possible, and makes it seem like a noble idea to make that sacrifice.

It's just a really stupid argument.

Jacobkosh

Someone can start a new primary thread.