I’ve also seen a lot of opposition here and elsewhere to Elena Kagan. I agree that she has taken some troubling positions, and I would have probably preferred that she didn’t get the nomination. However, she got the nomination, so we have to accept it now. The only way to not have Elena Kagan become our next Supreme Court Justice is to have her not be confirmed by the Senate. This is what the Republicans want, and we should not ally ourselves with them over a competent nominee who merely takes some troubling positions
Politics is about compromise. If we could always push through everything we wanted, there would be no need for elections. Unfortunately, it is impossible to get everything we want. We saw this with healthcare. The bill that passed was about the best thing that could have passed. However, it got much opposition from the left. We need to realize that we need to encourage compromise, and try to get the most out of compromises. This is where Teddy Kennedy made a great senator; he was a master at compromise in spite of being a strong and vocal liberal. We need to learn from him, and fight hard for what we want, but also accept a compromise when necessary.
I am not asking you to sell out on your positions. Keep them. However, I am asking you to support things that might not fully line up with your positions. Support compromises, rather than advocating that they be killed, thus ending our chances at doing anything about that issue. In the current system, issues only usually have one chance to be solved. If a compromise bill fails, we will probably never see any more action on the issue it dealt with for years. For that reason, we must accept them. I encourage all of you to be as far left as you want in your beliefs, but not to turn down compromises that aren’t exactly what you want.
Finally, we must rally behind practical candidates. We can’t always push for ideological purity. We need to elect people who won’t necessarily agree with us on everything. The last thing we need to start doing is driving Democrats out with our equivalent of tea party primaries. While I will say that Stephen Lynch is an exception to this rule, I will warn against future challenges of this type. The fringe must not start to take over the party. If it does, we are doomed to lose many seats on Capitol Hill and on Beacon Hill.
So, I ask all of you to think before going on the attack against the more conservative elements of the Democratic Party. I know you disagree with them. I do, too. However, conservative Democrats are better than Republicans, and conservative compromise bills are better than inaction.
“As we have seen with healthcare, as well as much of Obama’s agenda, there is a sizeable left fringe who doesn’t think it goes far enough.” Perhaps it escaped your notice, but a majority of Americans agree with that “left fringe” – they wanted a public option.
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p>”On this site, there is a fairly large amount of support for Grace Ross. This is misguided.” That’s your opinion, and you’re entitled to it, but stating it that way is not going to sway anyone, and probably encourages hard feelings.
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p>”I am not asking you to sell out on your positions. Keep them. However, I am asking you to support things that might not fully line up with your positions. Support compromises, rather than advocating that they be killed, thus ending our chances at doing anything about that issue. In the current system, issues only usually have one chance to be solved.” I think you’re wrong. Healthcare reform was only going to happen if everyone accepted this, that, or the other awful “compromise.” Some of those were taken out, and it still happened. Imagine if they had started by not “compromising” single payer off the table, how much better the final bill might have been. I think you are asking us to sell out on our positions. Forgive us if we don’t.
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p>Those of us who watched as Bill Clinton implemented a fine set of compromised Republican programs are not inclined to quietly approve of more. Expect more agitation for progressive positions, and against Realpolitik retreats from them. This is not about ideological purity; it’s about not further damaging our society, and instead returning to a program of making life better for our citizens.
I’m advocating for moderation in policy, and to a lesser extent moderation in our candidates (i.e. supporting Deval, and not Grace Ross), not moderation in what we campaign on. I was all for running on Iraq.
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p>The fact is that we’re taking a major hit in November, and the only way we can make it better is to be moderate. Let the right wing nutjobs implode on themselves, while we go through with level heads. It’s a winning formula for 2010, and even more so for 2012, when the implosion of the tea party will be more complete
…the GOP never has this problem?
Hey! That’s exactly what lost the election in 2000 and 2004.
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p>It is a fantasy, unbacked by any data whatever, that “the only way we can make it better is to be moderate.” If you really think that’s true, please, prove it. Assertion is not proof.
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p>The only way we can make it better is be clear. Sometimes, yes, that means moderate. Sometimes, it doesn’t. But mushy campaigns full of extra nuance (“I was for it before I was against it.”) lose, lose, lose.
Can you please explain to me where policy at the national or state level hasn’t been watered down or compromised? Seriously, name me one thing of national significance or statewide significance that’s failed because of refusal by the base to compromise, and not for some other reasons (ie corporations don’t want any part of it, even a watered-down, compromised version, and get their allies to torpedo things from within a la Ben Nelson).
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p>The reality of the situation is this: the left wing of the Democratic Party, as well as the progressive and netroot movements, have pushed policy forward by forcing at least some level of accountability. All the time we’ve compromised to get things done, usually over the corporatist and Blue Dog wing that would rather see nothing done. What little progress has been gained has been almost uniformly thanks to the progressive movement keeping at least a tiny shred of accountability within the Democratic Party.
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p>It does not help us when we have astro-turfing kooks like you coming to places saying we’re not doing exactly the things we’re doing. We’re the ones who’ve pushed the winning candidates, we’re the ones who’ve provided the muscle to push policy through — and pretty much our only requirement for our support has thus far been “will you proudly call yourself a Democrat?”
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p>There have been relatively few ideological ‘purity tests’ (see Senators Tester and Webb) and the few that have been leveled have been in liberal and left-wing districts. And if you have a problem with that, too damn bad, because guess what? People deserve representation that actually represents them.
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p>Now, please stop talking about “winning formulas” before you go hurt yourself… or our party… by pushing forward ideas that are not only stupid, but factually incorrect.
However, I’ve started to feel in the past year like he have to practice “defensive purity” in order to so much as make sure our side is heard. Pure Republicans plus moderate Democrats leads policy to the right. If there is any hope of moving anything to the left we have to stop beginning in the middle.
Making our side heard is good. Keeping our side in power is better. If we lose Congress, Obama won’t be able to do anything. That’s why we have to have moderation. We have to seem like the mature ones who are willing to sit down with the other side, hear their case, and make concessions. It looks a lot better with independent and moderate voters, who ultimately will decide what happens in 2010. We’ve already seen a Republican win in Massachusetts. That should be a big wake up call that we need to change something
I wish what you’re saying were true, but we’ve made so many concessions we lost enthusiasm. Take the public option, for example. A lot more people liked reform with it than without it according to polls, but we let it go. We can’t do anything with our large majorities and that seems more our fault than the GOP’s.
Jeez. If you’re going to go by a “wonk” handle, at least look at some polling data for god’s sakes.
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p>Midterms, unlike Presidential elections, are won by getting the base to turn out enthusiastically.
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p>Here’s another leap in logic:
Prove it! Prove it! Why does moderation accomplish anything? Prove it! You can’t.
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p>Why did Martha Coakley lose? Because she was too liberal? Hello?
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p>This bill would have far more support from regular folks if the mandate allowed them to purchase an affordable “Public Option”. It’s being mandated to buy corporate, inflated, high profit insurance products that has the electorate outraged.
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p>Uhmmmm, you haven’t been paying attention. That is not the case from what I see. While many support putting Grace on the ballot, I would say most are supporting Deval Patrick, at least the most outspoken ones.
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p>You know, generally speaking, I agree with this:
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p>But I have drawn my line in the sand. I will work my hardest to throw out any Democrat or Republican who stands for taxing the middle/working class in order to give handout to billion dollar corporations or to the wealthy. I am totally done with it.
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p>I disagree. The health care reform bill could have been far better. It doesn’t address costs, and it mandates that we pay ridiculous prices to corporate insurers for inadequate insurance coverage. This was not compromise. This was giving the middle/working class taxpayer to the wolves.
We have far, far too much “moderation” in the Democratic Party. The left is repeatedly told, again and again, to shut up, just let it go or to get back in our corner. In the entire national party, there’s only a handful or two of decent, democratic senators — not a whole lot more good congresspeople. The vast majority of both chambers are apologists and/or corporatists… and it’s not that different here at home, in Massachusetts. At the very, very least, on the right, they’re afraid of their base… which is why the right is so effective, even when they’re in a historic minority. The left needs a little of that too.
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p>You worry that the left could become like the tea partiers. We’re far from that, right now. A little “moderation” would have us have a base that’s much stronger and sparks a whole lot more fear in the people in charge, unlike today, when they just ignore us — or mock us, even. However, we could never, possibly become like the Tea Partiers if the left was able to take hold of the Democratic Party and control our majorities. Why? There’s a fundamental divorce in reality amongst people on the fringe right; the bulk of them allow themselves to be controlled by the very corporate interests they so despise, and bigotry is a staple within their ranks. The left, on the other hand, is right on the bulk of fundamentally important issues of the day — whether that’s civil rights, growing jobs, health care or the environment — and, unlike the Tea Party movement, we’re capable of thinking for ourselves.
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p>So, you can take your “moderation” and corporatist “compromise” that’s been the guiding principal of the Democratic Party for the past 20 years and shove it. That kind of moderation and compromise is literally destroying this world. We see it in the Gulf Coast right now, we see it in the people that want to kill us around the Globe for our warmongering, and we see it in the decisions to bail out and give tax breaks to the rich, while we can’t even keep our streets safe in the inner city or provide adequate education. If “compromise” and “moderation” means we keep on trucking, get the frak out of the way because that road is being put out of order.
In particular regarding health care, I disagree in the strongest posible terms. This quote here:
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is particularly wrong. It is pretty clear from the polling data I’ve seen (and I had the opportunity to parse through some of it directly) that a majority of the voting public was in favor of some form of public option. Those people, however, got shouted down by the insurance companies who had something to lose, and the extreme right whose demands for ideological purity from their representatives led to the result we got: a health care bill devoid of any cost cutting, devoid of any mandate that insurance companies line up on the side of real reforms in the way physicians are paid, devoid, in short, of any actual reform. And I am convinced, convinced that had Obama and his cabinet pushed harder (especially early in the game when they actually had the 60 votes, and certainly later in the game when they finally, finally decided to go the route of reconciliation, which Bush beat a path down which was so clear that most Americans didn’t even need to have the term explained), they could have gotten the reforms the people wanted.
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p>And in the face of that result, I. AM. ANGRY.
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p>And while I will not cut off my nose to spite my face (I will, for instance, do my best to help Deval get elected; I like Grace Ross personally, but I don’t think she has what it takes to be governor, and the idea of Charlie Baker as governor fills me with dread), I will also do my best to see that people like Mac D’Allesandro get elected to Congress. I will call on Senator Kerry and tell his staff that they should keep pushing, because the job is not yet done.
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p>Kennedy did know the art of compromise. And he knew that part of the art was to push as hard as you could, until the last minute, to get the best deal you could. And then, the following year, to get right back behind that wagon and start pushing again. And the year after, and the year after that, until the job was done.
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p>And I don’t see that push coming from anyone currently working on my behalf in DC, with the possible exception of Mike Capuano (and possibly Barney Frank, who doesn’t represent me personally, but does represent the state). So I say damn the torpedoes. I don’t believe I, or anyone like me, is demanding ideological purity; we are demanding to be represented by the people we have elected to do so.
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p>One of the most frustrating things in watching Deval-Obama is there habit of starting with a “reasonable” position from Minute One. Kennedy would be drawn into a halfway-point…Devalbama start there, and ends up moving the conservatives an inch before proclaiming groundbreaking progress.
I think that we need to find a way to take these liberal positions and compromise down to a more moderate position. It’s hard, though, since you have the teabaggers ready to cry “socialism” at any turn.