When people start predicting 25-30 seat pickups it makes me want to stop joking around and get really pessimistic. Democrats have shown in the last 3 elections that they do not have the heart to fight Republicans. I haven’t seen anything that shows otherwise in this election.
Democratic gains have come thanks to Republicans screwing up, not any great tidal wave into the Democratic column.
Get giddy at your own peril.
I agree completely.
We are a little more than two months from E-Day and the Democratic “leadership” has not produced anything like a theme or narrative to explain to the great mass of poorly informed American voters why they should vote Democratic this year.
The Democratic Establishment’s failure to slam Holy Joe to the ground after the primary is but one example to illustrate that, inside the Beltway, it’s still about weak responses to the Republican control of the discussion.
The current wave of Katrina coverage, one year later, is another example. Katrina was a vivid illustration of Republican incompetence and callous disregard of the average American. Are the Democrats capitalizing on this? No sir!
On Iraq and terrorism, the Republicans are pounding the same old song: Democrats are weak and unfocused. Democrats have no counter-narrative.
I am not as pessimistic as I was in 2002 and 2004, but I am far from hopeful of the Democrats gaining control of either house.
Pretty quiet out my way this year.
Colorado doesn’t have a Senate race this time around. I couldn’t tell you for sure if the Denver GOP is fielding a candidate to challenge Diana DeGette (and wouldn’t matter if they did.
I think the national GOP is eager to lower expectations for themselves so they can claim victory if they keep control of both houses.
In TX there’s no chance in hell our two senators would ever be replaced. I have no idea why Kay Bailey is so popular. The woman is in a league of robotism all her own.
Beware the October surprise.
Oh, wait, it’s already here…
The judge hearing the Busby/Bilbray case decided that all Republicans have to do is steal an election and swear in their “winner” before the results are certified to effectively give the royal finger to democracy and the public.
this country is so royally screwed.
It’s amazing, OW, I made the same point in the long-and-ramblin’ fistfight I’ve been having with Frameone under the Plan B thread, so I’ll quote it here:
…the Right is trying to subvert the masses, which begs the question: Why aren’t the Democrats effective at getting their message out?
It’s war, dude. Fight them like you fight me. Guess what, you know why Ingram, Limbaugh, Coulter, Savage, Hannity, Elder, Rantel, O’Reilly and Levine succeeded? They learned to get media savvy like the Democrats used to be. The Republibots aren’t going to give up, they’re not going to hand back control of the country. They’re going to fight until the Dems are in the grave, don’t you know that? They want you dead. They want no abortion. They want no stem cell research. They want no sodomy. They want a cross in every living room. They want a lily White homogonized Mayberry. You think they’re just going to lay down? Dems have to get as tough as the Conservative Holes that have taken over talk radio…Instead of wimpering about the subversion of the masses, the Dems need to beat them with a tight strategy, better policies and effective use of the media…there are more registered Democrats in the US, and most of the media is fairly sympathetic to the Left. If it doesn’t resonate with the people the Dems did something wrong! That’s Democracy!
My point is: Democrats need to take off the gloves and take the fight to the streets, but most of all, they need to package their message effectively and get it out there.
Steve Wasser,
You’re absolutely right, of course. But the current crop of “leaders” in the Democratic Party are just not fighters. It’s not their nature, it isn’t in their skill set, they aren’t going to do it.
I agree with both of you. I have some ideas of something I want to do to fix that but nothing concrete yet. Lets just say that the simple act of releasing a press release every day to all the national press costs $150,000 yet somehow the Democratic party does not do this.
You know Steve, you were doing pretty good there until this
” and most of the media is fairly sympathetic to the Left”
But otherwise, good post.
Most likely due to the fact that the two people most responsible for the debacle were … Democrats!
I don’t think there is a “most responsible” with Katrina, but frankly that’s the least of the problems with that little sentence.
Well, the *most* responsibe would be either:
A) God [i.e. Mother Nature] (everyone with a functioning cortex).
or
B) Halliburtion and other polluting Republicans (Al Gore)
What other problems do you see?
Mother Nature is a person now?
OOh there he goes again…
Farris, didn’t you see Bush saying yesterday that he takes full responsibility for the government’s response (or lack thereof)?
So if he takes full responsibility for the poor government response, but there was a good response (according to wingnuts), is that a lie?
Yeah, Fact, you’re probably right on that. I retract that because I do think it’s misleading to say that the media is Leftist like the Con Holes yell about. I tried to mitigate it by saying ‘left leaning’…but I agree that the General Media doesn’t willfully look for ways to present stories in a liberal light.
The cons, however, go out of their way to present a Rightist view because they see themselves in this phony war against what they perceive to be the “Leftist Media”. I stand corrected.
As for Katrina, the primary blame is on the ACOE for building levees and dams with inadequate infrastructures. In terms of response, the blame is evenly spread across local, state and federal lines. To apply percentages of blame is moot at this point, but Bush does look ridiculous trotting around down there. Of course, he’s damned if he goes and damned if he didn’t.
One of the most infuriating aspects of this presidency is the lack of any culpability for six years for any policy that’s gone wrong. Usually some low level staffer or department head falls on their sword, comfortably insulating Bush & Co. from blame. It would have been refreshing to hear him issue a mea culpa while touring down there.
I think that much of the media is lazy/too busy more than partisan, at least as far as reporters go and not “pundits”. Therefore they go for any think tank that thrusts itself in their face, as a result you see a hack like Terry Jeffery on tv where there are few similarly left Leaning talking heads.
The blame is to be spread among all branches of government. The city and state, however, where overwhelmed by an unprecedented disaster. There mistakes in planning may have cost lives, but their mistakes during the disaster are partly because of the enormity and unprecented nature of the event.
On the other hand, the Federal government could have rode in to the rescue and been proactive in getting to Louisiana. Instead they played games for 5 days, playing the blame game and pretending that they didn’t know there was a hurricane in New Orleans.
I heard Brian Williams yesterday tell how he went to Banda Aceh 2 days after the tsunami, and swelled up with pride as an American as the first thing he saw were pallets of American food aid on the streets. But the Bush administration couldn’t get food/water to the Superdome? Pure neglect.
Oh, totally. I said before the Fed shouldn’t have just sat there and wait for a goddamn phone call. They saw what was going on, the mess, the dire predictions, and let it all slide. A brilliant strategist like Rove should have barged into the Oval Office Bathroom, yanked Bush off the crapper and said “Hey, even though they didn’t ask for our help, it will make us look like heroes if we act now. It’ll play good for next year’s elections.”
No matter what the blame breakdown is, general perception is the Fed dropped the ball more than anyone else, and that will affect them negatively this election, I’m almost sure of it.
No matter how the Right tries to spin all these various issues (Iraq, unchecked spending…since Ted Stevens is holding up the bill…, Katrina, stem cell research, immigration, border policy, oil prices), there’s too many things stacked up against them to excuse away so many failed policies.
No votes for Incumbents, I say! From either party.
Y’know Duros, I’ve lived through many elections where the sentiment was ‘throw the bumz out’, and its a great mantra…but when it gets right down to it, people get lazy and pick the devil they know.
How sad is voting based on name recognition? I’ll let you know when Jeb Bush gets elected president!
Exactly. Or when Hilary Clinton gets elected.
I’m taking my chances with the devil I don’t know. or, as my father says, “the evil of two lessers.”
Danger is the nosey next-door neighbor of Security.
You’re totally right Duros, I hate that the public simply votes the name they recognize without any idea of their positions or voting record. The public is lazy, but it’s their right I guess.
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