The Emerging Democratic Majority

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 11:07am

Plummy--you say I always post gloom-and-doom. Here's a feel good column for liberals from Arianna's new blog.

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Jim Lampley

The Emerging Democratic Majority

I find myself reciting three words in response to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's "Nuclear Option": bring it on!!

It's excruciating on a day-to-day basis to have to endure the social divisiveness, elitist arrogance and blatant media control of creeping fascism in America. But each step in the neoconservative push to remake the country in their prescribed image plays a little further into the hands of reasonable progressive political thought. Five years ago I began telling my friends that George W. Bush and company would provide the greatest stimulus to liberal momentum since 1968. Now they are following the script perfectly, substantiating and confirming all my eager expectations about backlash.

The Republicans seem to believe they are on the verge of solidifying an empire here, an empire built on subsidy and protection for the rich balanced by casual contempt for middle-class working Americans. They've spent five years rigging the machinery of politics and distracting attention from their raid on the Treasury by focusing public attention on issues of personal morality. And on the surface, it has worked. But beneath the surface, they have no real foundation, as a variety of statistical indicators show.

Start with Bush's approval rating, below fifty percent in the days before the election, persistently below fifty percent ever since. The public demonstrated in opinion polling that it was overwhelmingly opposed [pdf] to Congressional and judicial intervention in the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case, but the Tom Delays and Bill Frists of the world ignored that feedback. The Iraq War continues to show its true colors, to the increasing discontent and impatience of the voters, but the Bush Administration has no exit plan and will clearly still be mired in this futile effort to establish "democracy" when the next election rolls around. The historic budget deficit grows each day, but the Administration doggedly insists tax revenues will grow to shorten it up-- yeah, sure they will. The Administration and Capitol Hill "leadership" continue to obsess about privatizing Social Security and packing the courts with oligarchist jurists, while the public asks in overwhelming majority for attention to be paid to jobs, economic breadth, reduction of healthcare costs, a legitimate energy policy and an end to the no-win war.

Sure there are still disquieting signs in a country where real democracy lies momentarily dormant. Dormant due to right-wing ownership of the national political machinery and the widespread election fraud that has engendered. Dormant due to the capitulation of mainstream media in the face of neoconservative intimidation tactics (see Bill Moyer's post today about the corruption of editorial independence at PBS). Dormant due to the inherently greater diversity, fragmentation and iconoclasm of liberal as opposed to reactionary thought. Yes, it's harder for us to get our act together because we're way less willing to pervert the system for our own ends. But once we're back on top, we'll stay there longer, because our still-innocent willingness to really trust democracy will show.

So I hope Sen. Frist and his jackals carry the day. Let them remove those safeguards which have assured the minority party a continuing voice in the Senate, and then let them fret about it for thirty years after the pendulum swings back our way in 2008. This is surely one of the reasons Sens. McCain, Chafee and Snowe are breaking ranks on this one -- they're smart enough to see the downside. As long as the Bushies arrogantly ignore the expressed will of the people who voted for them, as long as they treat a President with a below-fifty percent approval rating as though he's some kind of an emperor, as long as they assume the massive diversity of the society is just an administrative problem they can somehow erase, they play into our hands.

Bring it on, Bill Frist. And then get ready to celebrate the new Democratic majority, which will last for decades to come.

The Emerging Democratic Majority

[Unknown User]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 11:19am

Your mouth to God's ears Joey!

Personally I thought Bush's escapades in his FIRST TERM would be enough to energize liberal outrade, but that was not to be. I worry that that liberal outrage might not coalesce in time to deny Jenna Bush a second term.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 11:23am

Jenna is pretty hot!

Lampley has some valid points. I am an optamist.

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 11:33am

guys, liberal outrage has coalesced. unfortunately for those to whom that's the greatest thing since vanilla soy latte, it still does not represent a majority of the american people regardless how many polls the faithful cite.

a reminder will be delivered in november of '06 for those who still cling to the delusion that they are "in" the mainstream.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 11:49am

papa - that almost sounds as if the thing to do is just sit back and say, "Well, that's the way they want it, so so be it." And that is unacceptable when so much is at stake - like some of our ability to live free lives, unfettered by the constraints of moralistic judgement and certitude.

They may be the majority, but that doesn't make them right - no matter how much they want to tell themselves they are.

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 1:35pm

oh no, d, i don't think they should sit back. i think they should unleash themselves from any pretense at having any common ground with the gop and enbrace their obstructioniist tendencies and have howard dean on tv at least twice a day for, at the minimum, 40 minutes.

i have no problem with opposition, i just get a kick out of people who continue to believe that their views represent the majority in america when that's clearly not the case.

for the record that's equally true of the wingnuts on my side, but on the whole we're closer than the moonbats...not that that's necessarily a good thing.

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 1:44pm

no, papa, you guys are merely aligned with the wacko religious right. The dominionists. Your party is ****ing up big time. And the majority of this nation is NOT of those ideals. The majority of this nation would rather a Congress and a President that takes on real problems--not homosexuality, ONE woman dealing with the right to die issue, and stubborn court/UN nominations.

I have a feeling 2006 and 2008 will be another WWF showdown.

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 1:50pm

heh, i'll take our side since i've already corresponded with 'berto gonzalez about judicial nominations and tag team wrestling and am confident that he will help the gop open up a can of whup a**.

jrb, the majority of america is not nyc, or massachussetts for that matter. the majority of the nation, as poll after poll and recent elections prove, is morally conservative whether you like it or not. for better or worse (and i'll grant you it's often worse) the average american voter will choose someone who shares their morality more often than not regardless of their stance on issues.

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 1:53pm

papa: The majority of VOTERS are morally conservative, because they know they can impose thier will on the masses that way. I grant you that is what matters, but the majority of Americans are far from morality fighters.

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 2:17pm

Well, I'll take my group of wing bats over corrupt, evil people like Gonzales, Frist, DeLay, Rice, Rove, Cheney, Bush, etc.

And, guess what, a-hole, I know full well that the majority of this country isn't NYC and Mass. I also know full well that your redneck Prez has the crappiest of ratings. I know that the majority of this country was against the actions during Schiavo and are against this nuclear option BS.

Maybe YOU will be happy living in a theocratic dictatorship, but the majority of the nation will not.

The ONLY issue that the majority agrees on is hating fags. Well, we both know that civil rights is not an issue where the majority's opinion matters.

Updated On: 5/18/05 at 02:17 PM

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 2:22pm

jrb: Remember even that last part is a very slim majority, and for the 30 and under set is overwhelmingly reversed. The old hangers on are losing the public opinion battles, that is why they want to do crazy things like but discrimination into the constitution again.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 2:29pm

I really would rather that neither party had more control than the other, but I guess it can't always be that way. The pull between the two is what used to keep balance, but if the right continues to plow towards it's pseudo lofty goals as they have been, the left will have to do their best to pull back the other way (if they care). I remember a time when both parties seemed to actually discuss issues with each other and consider the fallout of possible governmental actions. That time seems to be gone.

Updated On: 5/18/05 at 02:29 PM

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 2:34pm

well, the bottom line is that both parties are guilty of sh!t. But, Lord knows, no one wants to compromise. And right now, the GOPs are trying to remove compromise.

We need a (real) third party. Badly.

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 5/18/05 at 9:59pm

a-hole? my, my, did i hit a nerve? oh wait, my mere existence does that.

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 5/19/05 at 4:02am

only because I ridiculously respect you. Trust me that it is hard to do with some of the crap you post!