K&R if you agree that taking back the House JUST as important as holding the White House.

[Ken Burch]

The Nineties taught us that a Democratic president facing a Republican Congress is a worthless and useless situation.

Therefore, the only WORTHWHILE election result in 2012 would be the election of a Democratic president AND the defeat of John Boehner and his mob in the U.S. House.

There are too many people here and in other parts of the party who are already spreading the meme that we should settle for JUST holding the White House and shouldn't even TRY to get the House back. People who say that are HURTING this party, and they have to be challenged.

Stand up for the proposition that only a down-the-line victory is worth fighting for. No good comes from sticking us in the post-1994 Gingrich/Clinton nightmare again.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ken Burch]

2. Nobody "slammed dems"

We fought for the party's principles when our leaders were abandoning them.

And it was the surrender on the public option that did the most damage. That was what made the healthcare bill meaningless to the vast majority of the electorate. If the prez had EVEN said "we'll fight for the public option AGAIN if we keep the House and hold our ground in the Senate" it might have made a difference. But he refused to do that. Or to promise to re-introduce EFCA.

The prez and Rahm deliberately JETTISONED the base, under the false assumption that the mythical "independents" WANTED the base to be told to pound sand. And then they LOST the "independents" anyway.

[Name removed]

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[ecstatic]

6. Uh huh. Whatever. nt

[treestar]

18. But I thought it was the Blue Dogs who lost their seats to Rs

If the voters were so mad about the public option, they'd still have returned Democrats rather than Rs. Do they think Rs are for the public option?

[Ken Burch]

21. The Blue Dogs KILLED the public option.

They drove Democratic voters away, and their working-class constituents didn't WANT them to have killed it. Blue Dog constituencies were NOT filled with economic royalists or fans of the insurance industry.

[PBS Poll-435]

24. No, you are wrong. Collins, Snowe, Brown and Lieberman stopped negotiation on the PO

Not some House member from Indiana or wherever.

[Ken Burch]

25. Ben Nelson is a Blue Dog, too.

So is Baucus, and those Dogs were both in on the kill.

[PBS Poll-435]

26. This is what is so frustrating

Do you not remember the deal?


The Ladies from Maine were on board. It was going to happen. And then...


We didn't need Baucus or Nelson until the "deal" fell apart.

It was going to be "bipartisan!"

[Ken Burch]

27. Lieberman was essentially a Blue Dog.

In spirit, even if not in formal membership.

[PBS Poll-435]

28. This is what I am saying

Lieberman is still in the Senate.

The public option was agreed to by him, the Maine Senators, and Brown.

Until it wasn't.




I don't know how or why the negotiations broke down but they did. It has nothing to do with the President or "Blue Dogs" in the House.


Remember...the House passed a bill with a public option. Even with all those Blue-Dog-Dems....



:eyes:

[WillyT]

8. Bwahahahahahaha !!!

Yeah... the disappointed DUers doomed the House Democrats... that's exactly what happened.

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:
:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:
:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:
:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:
:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:
:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:
:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

Thanks for the laff!

:D

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[treestar]

4. Duh

who is saying such an irrational thing?

[BzaDem]

9. No one is saying that.

My point on the other thread was that it is unlikely we will actually win the House in 2012 due to Republican-controlled redistricting, and that it will take multiple years. This is not saying that we shouldn't contest the House in 2012.

[Ken Burch]

10. Uh...read post #7 in this thread, for a start.

n/t.

[BzaDem]

11. Yes. Reading post 7 to understand your strawman is a great place to start. n/t

[Ken Burch]

13. In post #7, you CONCEDED a GOP House in 2012.

That's the same thing as conceding it pretty much for the rest of history. We can't give up in one election and still try to win in any later ones.

[BzaDem]

17. "That's the same thing as conceding it pretty much for the rest of history."

Still waiting for a single additional person to back you up there.

[BzaDem]

7. Getting the House back will be a multi-year process.

I don't know where you get this strawman idea that no one will try to increase our House seats. I think increasing our House seats is likely in 2012 (as long as Obama runs, and not someone else). But to actually get a majority after 2011 redistricting will likely take multiple cycles of getting seats back, not just one.

[Ken Burch]

12. Calling it a "multi-year process" is the same thing as giving up

NO ONE will campaign for Democratic candidates if we let the party frame 2012 as a "let's lose less badly" campaign in the Congressional races. No one is capable of thinking a campaign like that could even matter.

[treestar]

14. Simply predicting it might take more elections to get again

Is not "giving up." Logic fail.

[BzaDem]

16. Thank you. n/t

[BzaDem]

15. No, it isn't. Just because you say something untrue doesn't make it true.

Discussing evidence-based predictions is actually not the same as conceding the election in advance, no matter how many times you say otherwise.

[Ken Burch]

19. To make such predictions is to work against Democratic chances in 2012

The GOP never admits defeat in advance. We shouldn't either.

By using phrases like "multi-year process", you are dampening enthusiasm, and the 2012 campaign is already looking like an enthusiasm-free zone as it is.

Plus, it sounds like you're telling people to settle for crumbs.

[tritsofme]

33. Just don't agree with you here.

You could probably find dozens of quotes over the past year where Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn acknowledged reality and talked of how a Republican takeover of the Senate would be a "multi-year process"

It doesn't do anyone any good to set unrealistic expectations if there is no realistic path to the majority in 2012. More likely than not, Democrats will gain seats in the House but fall short of taking the majority.

The biggest priority for 2012 has to be getting the President reelected and maintaining a Democratic majority in the Senate. If we take the House, it's gravy, but at this point, a Republican House is the safest bet you could make, with more uncertainty over who will control the White House and especially the Senate.

[Ken Burch]

23. This thread is not a personal attack on you.

A lot of people on DU have been spreading the "we might as well get used to being in the minority" meme.

OK?

[BzaDem]

30. I updated my post above.

All I'm saying is that there is a huge difference between evidence-based prognostication and "conceding an election in advance."

Looking at the evidence is not usually a bad thing, even if the evidence might lead to a conclusion that we don't like. No one is talking about having our House campaigners actually campaign on a "we know we are going to lose" platform. As I said, they continued to rally the troops by claiming we would keep the House long after such a statement became ridiculous as an evidence-based prediction.

[caty]

20. I always vote

a straight Democratic ticket. I do that so that the Democratic president I am voting for will have the back-up he needs in the House and Senate. I don't see the point of voting for a president and then voting for others who do not believe in the president's platform and who will hinder him. If I voted in a state that did not have the option of a straight ticket, I would vote Democratic right down the line.

No matter who runs in 2012, I will vote that way. I've never understood people who mix their votes by party. If a candidate does not believe in my party's platform, why would I vote for him? That's why I can't understand why so many voters switched to repubs when it was so obvious that they were the problem when it came to accomplishing anything that would truly help the country.

Let's hope that in 2012, voters will give the president the help he needs by voting for only Democrats.

[Ken Burch]

22. Good for YOU!

We need to be a fighting party in 2012, and we CAN'T be such a party if we leave the "taking the House back is a multi-year process" meme unchallenged. No one will campaign for us simply to REDUCE the GOP majority or just to hold our ground. No one thinks either of THOSE goals matters.

[EFerrari]

29. The House is the only entity that even remotely reflects the constituency

any more.

[Ken Burch]

32. And even THAT is distorted by the artificial 435 seat size limit on the House

That limit was set in, I believe, 1920. At that time, the population of this country was 106,021,537. At the last census, the population of this country was 281,421,906, a nearly 300% increase.


This means that, in 1920, we had one Congressmember for, roughly, every 243,728 people. We NOW have one Congressmember for, roughly, every 646,947 people.


The size limit unfairly over-represents both small states and the "Sun Belt"(the areas that fight, most relentlessly, against any social change or any recognition that this isn't an exclusively White Protestant country anymore).

Democrats SHOULD be making an issue of that, since it hurts us badly.

We SHOULD be pushing for the removal of that limit and its replacement with, say, a 500,000 voter-per-Congressional district requirement(those states with smaller populations than that retaining a single district), a requirement that would give us a 562-seat Congress(still smaller than the British Parliament, btw)and get us much closer to "one person, one vote".

[BzaDem]

34. Just keep in mind that would make it much harder for party leaders to whip votes.

The House would become a lot more decentralized, and that might not be good for progressive policy passing in the future. It would also make it MUCH easier to gerrymander districts.

Raising the size of the house does have some good small-d democratic arguments going for it. Just keep in mind the downsides too.

[Ken Burch]

35. The House of Commons in the UK has 650 members.

They manage the whipping thing ok.

Keeping the size limit as it is will always bias the House against progressive change though. The present limit will always give the Sun Belt(which will always be right-wing)and the Mountain West unfair power to slow things down.

And it causes large states(which are the only ones this party can ever count on doing well in)to lose representation even when they don't LOSE population.

Look at New York, for example.

In 1920, that state's population was 10,385,227, and it elected 43 members of Congress.

In 2000, it's population was 18,976,457 , and it elected 31 members of Congress.

It's an injustice when a state nearly doubles it's population size and it's Congressional delegation is reduced by more than 25%. And that injustice is caused solely by the arbitrary size limit on the House that was imposed by the 1920 Congress, a congress dominated by segregationists and nativists who were obsessed with trying to keep the country as it was in 1875 or so.

[treestar]

36. That doesn't matter, as long as it is roughly equal.

Only a small state would be affected, since they have to have at least one.

My state has one, but is slightly underrepresented, since it has 800K people. We would not get another one unless we had 1.2 million plus, by the stats you give.

[Laelth]

31. I agree. k&r n/t

-Laelth