Quote:
Originally Posted by bhutocracy
It's not like the democrats actually do what they say either. If they hadn't sold out to the health industry Obama could have got the public option in at will with an up and down vote after stripping Leiberman of any responsibilities and threatening the Blue Dogs. He'd just have to let the half dozen democrats with the most conservative electorates vote against it to remain politically viable and crush any other opposition and he could have done it. The public option (in and of itself) is such a mild and sound policy it truly wouldn't have been hard to sell it or at least craft a version that was simple and effective enough to sell. It's still so manifestly right wing compared to every other first world country. They're basically displaying calculated incompetence. If they don't at least have medicare buy-in in the final bill they deserve to be permanently out of power.
The idea of having a two party system should at the very least ensure that the base of either party can at least fool themselves into thinking there is progress being made in their general direction. The illusion stops working when they are functionally identical. At least Bush actually gave tax cuts..
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For sure I don't give the democrats a pass in any way. To me the difference is this: The republicans decide how they are going to fuck the people over then they carry it out as one well oiled machine. The democrats are spineless and so afraid of getting any kind of negative vibe they do nothing.
John Stewart put it perfectly when he bashed the democrats who basically shit their pants when one republican won a seat in the senate and took away the 20 seat majority. He said(and I'm probably not exact with this), "Okay, so now you only have a 19 seat majority. That beats the hell out of the 4 to 6 person majorities that Bush had in his frist 6 years in office when he did pretty much whatever the fuck he wanted."