Recently in Democrats Category

Charles Pierce is right to be outraged after seeing President Obama appoint former Bush 43 Press Secretary Dana Perino to the Broadcasting Board of Governors. As Pierce writes over on Altercation:

I know it doesn't matter much in the great scheme of things, but it is wholly indicative of the ongoing frustration I have with President Civility and his Folding Commandos. Ms. Perino's checkered history as a hired obsfuscator has been well-documented in and around the web. (She compared the administration's criticism of Mr. Murdoch's Toy News Network to something "dictators" would do and this from a woman who didn't know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was.) The president is doing Mitch McConnell a favor here. (How about doing, say, Bernie Sanders a favor?) What I don't understand is why.

Why indeed. Could the White House really not find a single Republican qualified to serve who hadn't compared the president to a dictator recently?

Pierce is just warming up in the excerpt I quote above. As he notes later, Obama's attempts to reach out will not work. They cannot work. The Republican Party is not out to negotiate with him, its elected leaders and leading interest groups are out to destroy him.

I fail to understand why the Obama administration is so willing to help with that effort.

My friend MS really really really wants me to condemn Howard Dean for going on the Pat Robertson show and misstating the Democratic Party's position on gay marriage.

MS seems to think that if I am going to condemn John McCain for going to Liberty University, then I must stop everything in my life to blog about Dean. MS writes:

Given all the flak certain individuals on the left gave McCain after his Liberty U. visit (ahem, Craig ;) ), please let me know when the left starts to comment on this little tidbit. Until then, I really don’t want to hear it.

Okay, MS. Howard Dean was an idiot. Both for going on the loathsome Pat Robertson's show and for getting this fact wrong. At least for the latter, he's apologized.

Getting to McCain, he hasn't apologized for going to Liberty. He's reveled in it. It took a student at the New School to point out just how stupid and condescending his new speech is.

Straight talk, indeed.

I believe the Democratic Party needs to fight in all 50 states. I believe we should not talk only to the liberal choir. But Howard Dean should not go on the show of a man who claims to be God's voice while calling for the assassination of foreign leaders. (Media Matters has more of Robertson's bad faith statements here.)

But, MS lives for any opportunity for someone to say that Howard Dean was wrong. He appears obsessed by it. So, let me make MS's day: MS, Howard Dean was wrong.

And yet the Earth continues to rotate and revolve around the sun. Wow. Really. Who knew?

Oh, by the way, MS, lefty bloggers have been talking about it. (To start, see here, here, here, here, and here.)

So, does that mean you now want to hear more about McCain's hypocrisy? :)

Over at the Huffington Post, Bob Burnett recaps a speech given recently by Senator Barack Obama:

Barack Obama said that the solution to this problem lies in the American people. It's time for the electorate to reassert their will, to say they've "had enough." "Enough of broken promises and failed leadership. Enough of can't do and won't try." He argued that we all should have had enough of an Administration that can't make our ports safe but will spend billions on crony contracts. That claims to be serious about defending the homeland, but could not respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina. That can't come up with plan for Iraq or to ensure our national competitiveness.

Obama remarked that the roots of this problem are clear. They lie "in the philosophy of this administration, in their believe that government is the problem." He said that taken to the extreme this ideology is "social Darwinism. The belief that we are all on our own. That each of us is responsible for our own education, healthcare, and levees."

The junior Senator from Illinois noted that the GOP approach does not work in a democracy. He argued that the American way of life has two components: "individual initiative and mutual regard, the belief that I am my brother's keeper and my sister's keeper." Democrats must reassert that mutual regard is a vital component of government.

The radical conversatives' war on government must be defeated. The idea that government is always the problem must be exposed as a lie. The conclusion that individuals are best left as free agents must be refuted with a frank conversation about the common good.

Despite what the radical conversatives may say, looking out for the common good is not a step on the road to socialism. It is, in fact, a way to keep our country strong and vibrant well into the future.

It is good someone is saying so.

A Democratic agenda for the House of Representatives, should they retake control in the November elections, is beginning to get some publicity. The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman explains:

To counter that perception, House Democrats have formulated a plan of action for their first week in control. Their leaders said a Democratic House would quickly vote to raise the minimum wage for the first time since 1997. It would roll back a provision in the Republicans' Medicare prescription drug benefit that prohibits the Department of Health and Human Services from negotiating prices for drugs offered under the program.

It would vote to fully implement the recommendations of the bipartisan panel convened to shore up homeland security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Democratic leaders said.

And it would reinstate lapsed rules that say any tax cuts or spending increases have to be offset by spending cuts or tax increases to prevent the federal deficit from growing.

It's not a bad start.

I'm in favor of any effort to combat the wrong-headed assumption that progressives do not have any core values. John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira have done a great service with their 18,000-word presentation for the American Prospect's web site.

We need a new strategy of transformation for today’s progressive movement -- one based on definition, principles, and a sincere effort to secure the common good.

Sign me up. And not just because I am an alumnus of a college that adopted the common good as a value during the inaugural address of its first president.

Check out this important document. I do share Matthew Yglesias' concern, however, that progressives need to figure out how to talk about national security. Given how badly the Bush Administration has screwed up our place in the world, outlining an alternative vision should be a priority.

The radical right will continue to say that liberals and progressives have no ideas. That is, of course, a canard. We need to articulate why. Quickly.

Here's another example showing the urgent need for the Democratic National Committee's leadership to get its head of out of its collective ass. MyDD's Jerome Armstrong writes:

There's something wrong when the chairs and executive directors go on and on with their praise toward the internet that's brought millions into the coffers of the DNC, and then turns around and kicks Joe Trippi and his band of bloggers out of the meeting room when the "closed" Q & A with the DNC Chair candidates occurs. You could have walked right in off the street and into the candidate Hall unencumbered, but if you happened to be a blogger, or the guy who brought the strategy of embracing the small donor activist on the net for the Democratic Party, and he's got a blog, out you go.

There's something wrong when DNC Chair candidate Donnie Fowler, during his 5-minute presentation on his candidacy, singles out Matt Stoller as an example of embracing the technological ideas that are going to bring this party forward, and then some DNC staffer walks up to Stoller and tells him he's got to leave the room, because he's a blogger.

That's just the beginning. Armstrong has more about this idiocy.