Smart People Open Thread

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Have at it. Here’s a jump start from some clever voices across the internet:

Steve Benen:

Look, Martha Coakley was an awful candidate who ran an awful campaign. This, coupled with public frustration over the economy and the pace of change in Washington became a toxic combination.

But to hear Bayh tell it, the electorate will reward Democrats if the party gives up on the agenda that got them elected — and gave them the largest majorities in a generation — and simply becomes Republican-lite. That seems like very bad advice.

Jerome Armstrong:

I guess Democrats really didn’t realize that they would be held accountable if they got the reigns of complete power and were not transparent. Crap like buying off Ben Nelson’s vote by bribing him with our money is insulting. The internet is just a tool of transparency, and no one, least of all the online progressives, has been fooled by the last year. The Republicans have come into our hometown and kicked our butt tonight. The Democrats have less than 10 months to start governing as a people-powered party, or they will lose both the House and the Senate.

Peter Daou:

Progressive bloggers have been jumping up and down, yelling at their Democratic leaders that the path of compromise and pragmatism only goes so far. The limit is when you start compromising away your core values.

I sincerely hope that’s the lesson learned today.

Greenwald:

Last night, Evan Bayh blamed the Democrats’ problems on “the furthest left elements,” which he claims dominates the Democratic Party — seriously.  And in one of the dumbest and most dishonest Op-Eds ever written, Lanny Davis echoes that claim in The Wall St. Journal:  “Blame the Left for Massachusetts” (Davis attributes the unpopularity of health care reform to the “liberal” public option and mandate; he apparently doesn’t know that the health care bill has no public option [someone should tell him], that the public option was one of the most popular provisions in the various proposals, and the “mandate” is there to please the insurance industry, not “the Left,” which, in the absence of a public option, hates the mandate; Davis’ claim that “candidate Obama’s health-care proposal did not include a public option” is nothing short of an outright lie).

In what universe must someone be living to believe that the Democratic Party is controlled by “the Left,” let alone “the furthest left elements” of the Party?  As Ezra Klein says, the Left “ha[s] gotten exactly nothing they wanted in recent months.”

5 thoughts on “Smart People Open Thread”

  1. http://wellstone.org/blog/thre…

    The conservative spin machine is working overtime to paint Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts’ special Senate election yesterday as a national trend.  Here’s what progressives can really take away from the race, and what we have to do now (hint: the answer is not to turn tail and run).

    Three Lessons for Progressives from Tuesday’s Senate Election in Massachusetts

    Quality candidates running quality campaigns still matters the most.  It’s easy to overanalyze this election in a national context, but one must first look at the disparity in the quality of the campaigns that were run.  We must never, ever take anything for granted in this volatile political environment we find ourselves in.  We must always run strategically sound, well-planned, active campaigns that keep the debate on our terms and inspire, organize and mobilize supporters to help you win.

    Our leaders have to find their populist voice and compete for the populist voter.  Point to the bank bailout or the government-speak we used to debate for health care reform or other examples, and it’s clear that the conservative movement has captured the populist torch.  How ludicrous this is- in the MA Senate race you had populist anger rallying around Scott Brown, who opposes a tax on banks to reclaim the bailout money.  We have to get back to challenging “big” — big corporate power, big centralized government — and back on the side of neighborhoods, small businesses, and people who feel insurance giants, credit card companies, the pharmaceutical industry and banks encroach on their lives and make it difficult to make ends meet.

    Politics is not about pundits and predictions; it’s about what we do.   Continuing to move and shape our country, states and communities in a progressive direction is in our hands.  Yes it will take time, and yes there are setbacks, but in the end the outcome of elections and legislative campaigns depends on our skills, capacity and willingness to compete for and take hold of power, and then use that power to do dramatic things.  

    So, we can’t let up: on the work to build political and community organizations; on the work to train and put forward courageous candidates for office and surround them with people who run winning campaigns; and on the work to advance our legislative agenda and mobilize our grassroots power to hold elected officials accountable.  Let’s go!

  2. and give it weight that it doesn’t deserve on a national level.

    Despite being frequently tarred with the brush of left-wing bias by the same folks who would have us believe the Democratic party is to the extreme left of voter; the mainstream media is owned, lock-stock and barrel, by big corporations that would very much like to convince us that in order to get any meager crumbs for the middle class and disadvantaged majority, progressives have to be driven away from the bargaining table.  They celebrate every opportunity to claim that “liberals” have lost ground. The Democratic party is tacking just about as far to the right now as it has since Reagan came to power.  That doesn’t, by any means, condemn all or even the majority of Democrats, but it does say a lot about who has been ceded the real power in recent days.

    And this is not the spirit in which Obama was carried with an overwhelming majority into office.  

  3. The democrats will fail in November and the GOP, which brought the country in the greatest recession in 80 years while sending millions of our jobs to China, will re-gain the upper hand and the blovian Rush Limbaugh will be their spokesman.  The Democrats have snatched certain defeat from certain victory.

    We need a third party.  

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