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It's incredibly disappointing. All we worked for. I think we have to up the pressure. What got noticed? The squeaky wheels - even with all their heads securely up their asses. They had an impact. We have our work cut out for us - from coast to coast.
The problem is - I think our so-called reps take us for granted. There's the mentality to which we are more or less held hostage: "well, where else are they gonna go?" And I think many of us on the progressive/liberal end are going to have to take a long hard look at that.
If we seek to break away from the Democratic Party and form a more perfect Progressive/Liberal party, that move will come with a big price tag. A divided party means the bad guys will come in and steal a LOT of seats from us. It will be a generation or more before WE would ever see the kind of political party or true political representation with any numerical strength for which so many of us here have been yearning. We're stuck with the miserable, capitulating weasels and amoebae that supposedly "represent" us. And it makes me sick.
But I don't know what alternative we have - OTHER THAN to start making our "reps" quake in their boots. You've GOT to know that the teabaggers and town hall hissy-fitters got the attention of SOME of 'em. Enough of 'em to make a difference. Are we ready to start going out there en masse and really making a serious showing? One that can't be avoided by the media? How much of an effort are each of us willing to make?
Hey, I worked like a dog all last year for Obama and other candidates I supported. I gave til it hurt. My husband and I actually had house parties - which we've never done before (although I have attended a few). And Obama won and we were exultant and hopeful as hell. But the momentum waned after that. And it's been a problem on our side - FOR YEARS. Look at the gains we made during the 60's and even into the '70's - and what happened after that, when large enough numbers of us said - "WOW! Mission Accomplished! YESSSS!" And then we let our guard down, figuring that we had most of this in the bag and had fixed many of the problems and the worst of it had been protected and that was that. We thought, for example, that a woman's right to choose was a done deal, no problem, we're safe now, coast is finally clear. And everybody celebrated and packed up their offices and went home and moved on to other things. Let our guard down. Because it's a done deal. We're safe. End of discussion.
The problem was that - to enough of the bad guys out there, this was ANYTHING BUT the end of discussion. They decided to stay in the game and fight and they had fire in their gut and found backers to finance them and their machinery and think tanks and moguls who could start buying up the media and consolidating power and just a whole bunch of shit and they started doing EVERYTHING they could to chip away at what we'd worked so hard to achieve. And it took awhile to build up a head of steam, but build up they did. And look what's happened! Even as recently as yesterday with the Stupid amendment. And We're Still Coddling Them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't think we're going to be able to have the impact we want until and unless some of us somewhere are willing to go for broke. Like, for the life of me, I don't understand why some rich liberals or movie people, fuck - SOMEBODY on our side who's wealthy can't band together and start buying radio stations. And stitch together OUR OWN FRICKIN' EXCELLENCE IN BROADCASTING NETWORK. That has hundreds of stations that have to take OUR programming and yes, OUR propaganda, and where we can start building OUR OWN LIBERAL/PROGRESSIVE ON-AIR FARM TEAM with great talent that, most critically, has VEHICLES for exposing and expressing that talent. But our side doesn't do that!!! WHY, I do not understand. Our side doesn't sink a huge load of money into lots of think tanks and foundations that are the spawning ground of OUR OWN liberal/progressive wonks and power brokers and media influencers and so forth. WHY are we not doing that?
Yes, I know, WE here on DU don't have much clout but how many liberals/progressives out there do? And where are they? And why don't they want to go bigtime? I mean REALLY bigtime? So we have the power and clout to outshout the glenn becks and limbaughs and the rest of 'em that martial thousands of knuckledraggers to go out and make a stink. Some will say we'd lower ourselves to their level by doing so. FUCK THAT!!! They get noticed! We need to get noticed! Or we won't have the impact they do.
And they have somehow touched off the Fear of God in enough reps that we just barely squeaked this stupid wash-out of a "health care reform bill" through the frickin' House. And what I fear is that the bad guys now thus have more momentum maybe to go all the way to killing whatever little shreds are left of health care reform in the Senate. And where the fuck is Obama? Well, okay he made a call that maybe helped a little in this one case. He got his one damn fucking republi-CON. Okay fine!!! Can we declare it official bipartisan support and then call it a day on that shit? No. And who's leaning hard as possible on those who should by all rights be doing that on our behalf? Hard enough, anyway?
From all the years I've been around and been aware of these things, it seems to me that there is not a large enough hardcore core of those who think as we do and want what we want for our country - that keeps on turning up the heat - high enough. We Dems and liberals tend to get discouraged easily and we give up or maybe we're just so used to being intimidated that we go there naturally by now - it's an instinctive default position we have. I don't know.
All I know is that there have to be consequences for going against what we expect from our reps. They genuinely have to have the Fear of God that OUR wrath will be worse than that of the assholes of the wrong wing. And I just don't see enough of a critical mass of us with that kind of fire in our belly. I mean - hell - look at ME! Tired and discouraged and happy to have some other things to think about (my kid's band). And I have to work hard to force myself to take my own advice (yeah, like they'd really care, 'eh?). The Dems have to understand that if they don't do what we want, they may well be out of jobs in January 2011. And - in that event, We Are ALL Screwed. Because you know who gets the majority if we don't. And yeah, like they'll ever give a damn about achieving REAL health care reform.
:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:
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