Two unpopular wars are raging, with more threatened. There is unprecedented spying on the public by the government. The CIA sends prisoners to Third World countries to be tortured. Civil rights are constantly being eroded. Millions march for immigrant rights. The middle class is getting squeezed, finding it harder to make ends meet, as more and more drop into poverty.
The public is not happy, they want change. Polls consistently show this. One would think this would be a near-perfect opportunity for Democrats to leap into the fray, propose bold new plans, rally the public, then sweep to glorious electoral victory in November.
But you know what’s coming, don’t you? No bold plans, none of that “vision thing.” Rather, beaming in from the Planet Clueless, comes this bedraggled, pathetic attempt at relevance by ranking Democrats.
Democratic House and Senate leaders are planning to reduce the cost of student loans and prescription drugs, raise the minimum wage and launch an effort to develop alternative fuels if they win back control of Congress.
In an interview Tuesday with USA TODAY, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi previewed the “New Direction for America” platform hammered out by Democratic members of Congress, mayors and governors. She and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid plan to formally unveil the plan today.
This is a “New Direction?” More like a head-on crash into a phone pole, you ask me. Why would anyone vote for a party this empty-headed? Note the Dems have, cunningly by their own reckoning no doubt, deliberately ignored virtually all major issues of the day, choosing instead to be bland, tepid and, worst sin of all in politics, boring.
If they continue down this path, they deserve the defeat that awaits them, as they’ve given no reason for voters to get enthusiastic, or even care, about them.
Don’t waste time and energy on the upcoming elections, thinking somehow Democrats will be different. Clearly, they won’t be. People in the streets. Mass action. That’s what’s needed. That’s what gets results.
Everything you say about the Dems–and more–could have been said about the Repubs in 1966. Yet that midterm election led to the conservative resurgence we’re still trying to shake.
It helps, sometimes, if you have a position. More times than not, it’s a matter of being at the right place at the right time and NOT in office when things go south.
Imagine Richard Nixon having been elected in 1960, and maybe won reeleciton in 1964. Can you imagine that Ronald Reagan ever would have become president if Nixon, and not Johnson, had been bogged down in Vietnam?
Alternatively, suppose the 1976 campaign lasted a few more days and Jerry Ford was elected president. The Shah still falls, inflation soars, and oil prices go way, way up for the time. Would Reagan have been elected after 12 years of Republican misrule? Would the Bushes ever have been heard from again?
Events and history carry their own momentum. Organizers don’t like to hear that, because it downplays their role in the events. But whether a million or 100 million march, the tide is running and will have its effect.
Lenin would agree with you completely on events and history. The primary goal of the organizer is to make sure the cadre is disciplined and ready when and if the change comes.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks sure were ready…
I’ve heard neocons describe themselves as Leninists because they understood what the Bolsheviks did and how successfully they did it, even while they loathe what the Bolsheviks stood for.