It is a massive failure, not only of progressive politics, but of American politics. The legislation will hobble the economic recovery while hurting the poor and middle class. Anybody who believes in progress for America should loudly vote against this monstrosity.

Everybody should share the blame here.

The Republican Party, for its dogged dedication to policies that enrich the already rich at the expense of ordinary Americans.

Congressional Democrats, for being listless and directionless and spineless at practically every opportunity. Given the reigns of power by the American people, they dithered and dithered and watered legislation down. While in the majority, they allowed the GOP to wield far too much influence, while also making the party’s own conservative wing overly influential. Those choices helped lead to a loss of power in 2010, and even weaker leadership in 2011.

President Obama, who has now shown himself to be a terrible negotiator of epic proportions. With just the House, he gave the Republicans the least terrible of their demands. The right demanded no revenue and all-cuts, and Obama gave them just what they wanted. Sure, they would have rather had even deeper cuts — but Obama played the entire game on GOP territory.

I wish someone would show the President a thesaurus and explain that “capitulation” is not a synonym of “compromise.”

In 2010, Democrats ran on a platform of “the Republicans are worse” and as a result suffered at the midterm elections. You cannot run a strong campaign on that kind of message. People need a reason to vote for you, not just against the other guy.

Democrats have now compounded their 2010 problem. If the bill passes, a Democratic president, along with a Democratic senate, will be enshrining conservative policy as law. While overall it’s still better to have Democrats in power — the Democrats themselves have undercut progressive policy. That’s a crappy way to motivate your progressive base.

And again, besides the politics and the optics, the deal is just bad for America. It is wrong for our country. It hurts an already bleeding nation. And the Democrats helped.

In the past progressives like myself said we needed “more and better” Democrats, please. Now we truly realize that its far better to get better Democrats because a majority with a Democratic president simply unwilling to push forward and do the right thing clearly isn’t getting the job done.

This is a massive failure.

Over the course of a few days, O’Malley chided Republican governors for staying silent while “the dinosaur wing” of their party dominated debt talks in Washington.

He blasted “a new breed of tea-partying, FDR-hating” governors who have come to power, singling out Chris Christie of New Jersey for additional scorn. That “colorful character,” O’Malley said, lives in a “make-believe world, where down is up, up is down, candy is a vegetable, and vegetables are candy.”

Cough, 2016, cough.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee raised a combined $86 million between April and June, blowing past the $60 million goal set by both groups at the start of the fundraising quarter. Obama campaign manager Jim Messina announced the total in a video released before dawn Wednesday, touting the 552,462 donors who contributed and claiming “more grassroots support at this point in the process than any campaign in political history.” “We did this from the bottom up. We didn’t accept one single dollar from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs,” Messina said.

In a highly anticipated vote, the Senate rejected by 54 to 45 an amendment from Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., on Wednesday that would have delayed a swipe fee regulation from Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

The move decides the fate of a $14 billion a year industry and ends another chapter in the intense lobbying war between retailers and bankers in which millions of dollars have been spent on print, television and radio ads within the Capital Beltway and beyond targeting key member states.

Durbin caught the banking industry by surprise last year when he convinced 64 senators to support adding his measure to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. It requires the Federal Reserve Board by July 21 to ensure fees banks charge merchants for debit card purchases are “reasonable and proportional.”

The Fed has proposed slashing the charge per transaction to 12 cents from an average of 44 cents but has not issued a final rule.

Tester is such a disappointment. He’s marginally better than Conrad Burns, the Republican he replaced, but he’s turned out definitely not to be the populist-leaning senator he originally ran as.

Bob Corker was his co-sponsor, but I can’t blame Corker for doing the dirty work of big banks… that’s what Republicans go to Washington to do.

The Democratic Party will be at its best the sooner these elements are marginalized.

Terry McAuliffe was DNC chairman during a time in which the party cozied up to corporate donors and lost elections. Terry McAuliffe presided over the disastrous 2002 election, where Bush was able to buck the trend of losing seats in his first midterm election. The brilliant Terry McAuliffe-led Democratic strategy then was to cede national security to the Republicans while thinking Democrats would win on “kitchen table” issues.

Terry McAuliffe was also DNC chairman during the 2004 election, when Democrats didn’t take advantage of their growing small-donor base and lost the White House again. It’s not a coincidence that Democratic fortunes began turning around in 2006-8. Terry McAuliffe was no longer DNC chairman.

Terry McAuliffe went on to run for Governor of Virginia, getting swamped by Creigh Deeds, who went on to be crushed by Republican Bob McDonnell.

When I think “winner” I don’t think Terry McAuliffe.

The irrelevance of the conservative corporate shill of the nominally Democratic wing of the party can’t come soon enough. When Harold Ford is this much of a naked shill in the pages of the country’s top right-wing newspaper, it helps.

“Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“So that there can be no possible misunderstanding, both Germany and Japan can be certain, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that America will continue the fight for freedom until no vestige of resistance remains!” – Harry Truman

“When I ordered our armed forces into combat, we had three clear goals: to enable the Kosovar people, the victims of some of the most vicious atrocities in Europe since the Second World War, to return to their homes with safety and self-government; to require Serbian forces responsible for those atrocities to leave Kosovo; and to deploy an international security force, with NATO at its core, to protect all the people of that troubled land, Serbs and Albanians alike.

Those goals will be achieved. Unnecessary conflict has been brought to a just and honorable conclusion.” – Bill Clinton

“Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.” – Barack Obama

When the 2000 election was underway, national security wasn’t much of an issue. National security didn’t come up as a major issue until the 9/11 attacks, after which we were told – by the right and the media – that we should count our lucky stars that it was Bush, not Gore, who would be facing these challenges.

Bush proceeded to miserably fail at this most important of presidential tasks. His leadership allowed Bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora, and the wrongheaded invasion of Iraq was botched from its beginning. Thousands of people died as a result. And still, we were told, Democrats are soft on terrorism. Remember when Karl Rove said Democrats “offer therapy and understanding for our attackers”? That wasn’t a coincidence.

Nor was the 9/11 focused convention by the GOP in 2004. The message was hammered home time and time again: Democrats can’t be trusted to fight terrorism.

But they were wrong. Democrats have a very strong tradition of being the party that gets things done on national security. Including FDR and Truman in World War 2, or Clinton in Kosovo.

When Obama was elected, we were told time and again that he was too weak, that he would be the worst of liberal pacifism, that he was too “other”, too liberal to really take the fight to those who threaten us.

Those of us who prioritize national security on the progressive side knew those arguments were bunk. We knew Democrats have what it takes to be commander-in-chief. We know Democrats can take the 3AM call without a second thought.

We were right. Bin Laden is dead. He is dead as a result of the hard work of our men in the field who took the butcher down. He is dead because the commander-in-chief, Barack Hussein Obama – a member and the current leader of the Democratic party – made the final order.

When your opponent hands you a tool, its best to use it. The Republicans who voted to end Medicare are now being attacked on the radio by the DCCC. Here are some members of the Medicare Death Panel:

AR-01 Rick Crawford
AR-02 Tim Griffin
AZ-01 Paul Gosar
CA-03 Dan Lungren
CO-03 Scott Tipton
FL-08 Daniel Webster
FL-10 Bill Young
FL-13 Vern Buchanan
FL-16 Tom Rooney
FL-22 Allen West
FL-25 David Rivera *
IA-03 Tom Latham (currently represents IA-04)
IA-04 Steve King (currently represents IA-05)
IL-17 Bobby Schilling
IN-08 Larry Buschon
MI-01 Dan Benishek
MI-06 Fred Upton
MN-08 Chip Cravaack
NH-02 Charlie Bass
NY-25 Ann Marie Buerkle
OH-01 Steve Chabot
SD-AL Kristi Noem
TX-23 Francisco Canseco *
WI-01 Paul Ryan
WI-07 Sean Duffy

Link:

Politico is reporting that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida will become the new chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

Wasserman Schultz, 44, would replace Tim Kaine, who announced today he will step down from the party post to run for the U.S. Senate in Virginia. President Obama gets to appoint Kaine’s replacement to lead the Democratic Party.

Messina also reportedly praised the administration’s firing of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod after a tape surfaced of her allegedly discriminating against a white farmer, even though Secretary Tom Vilsack had dismissed her before learning that right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart had doctored the footage. “We could have waited all day—we could have had a media circus—but we took decisive action, and it’s a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere,” Politico reported, quoting a source who paraphrased Messina’s remarks. That “decisive action,” however, unfairly cost Sherrod her job. The administration later apologized and offered her the post back. It was one of a string of embarrassments for Obama’s political team.

Does not instill confidence.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) said Monday she will sell her private plane and pay back $287,273 in four years of back taxes, the latest chapter in a politically embarrassing saga for the moderate Democrat facing a tough reelection battle in 2012.

McCaskill has been answering questions about the plane since POLITICO recently reported that she billed taxpayers for a political trip around Missouri. POLITICO also reported that McCaskill spent $76,000 from her Senate budget on trips on the aircraft over the past four years, prompting the senator to refund the Treasury Department more than $88,000 for the cost of the trips plus pilot fees.

Sadly, right wing voodoo economics still exists in the Democratic party with the work of Third Way, whose goal is basically the same as the DLC: Turn the Democratic party into Republican-lite.

We’ve got too parties in America: The wimpy party and the evil party. Keep being wimps Democrats. Jesus.