5 Comments:

minimalist said...

I doubt she's losing much sleep over it. She, Bill and the DLC still hold a lot of the cards.

It's an unavoidable fact that even in primaries, the "smoke-filled room" still holds sway over the wishes of the voters. The GOP in 1999-2000 was a perfect example of this: McCain was popular and well-known, Bush was a relative unknown and frankly underwhelming in all ways. But it was painfully apparent that the backstage manipulators had already agreed that Dubya was the candidate of choice. I'm not just talking about Rove's dirty tricks, but also a massive media blitz where the pundits pretty much came out in agreement: "Bush is our man!", "Oh, you can't trust that McCain, he's unstable (*coughManchurianCandidatecough*)."

I'm not precisely certain who these manipulators are and don't really feel motivated to find out, for the same reason I don't care to study the physicochemical properties of pig vomit. High-up GOP officials and energy industry execs, most likely: there's obviously a hell of a lot of overlap between the two groups anyway, so it's no surprise to see who they'd go for.

Anyway, I'm getting off point again. Point is, I'd like to think the Dems are above that sort of shit, but my sinking feeling is that they're not, unless we hold their goddamn feet to the fire. We elected them, but only on the condition that they'd be better than the Republicans -- if they backslide, they have to know that we can vote them back out.

3:57 PM, January 16, 2007

 

Ted said...

if they backslide, they have to know that we can vote them back out.


Uhh, and elect whom? Libertarians?

I'd vote for a socialist but that would make me plus like 10 other people.

PS: I thought that posting was diabled or the internets broken based on the comment traffic on GiveUpBlog.

Whatup?

12:02 PM, January 17, 2007

 

Rev. Dr. said...

I don't know exactly, I think it's been a big fall-off since the elections since we're mostly a political blog. And, after all, we got what we wanted. No one wants to hang around and watch us gloat because we predicted Republicanism would be its own downfall.

12:36 PM, January 17, 2007

 

minimalist said...

Ted,

I'd be likely to vote for a Republican if I thought he was more principled than the Democratic opponent (and was relatively liberal). Having spent a lot of time growing up in the Northeast I've seen Republicans I can definitely respect (Lowell Weicker, for instance). Lincoln Chafee would be another example -- too bad he got tossed out along with the shitty ones, but it tipped the balance in favor of the Dems, so under the bus he goes!

At any rate, I think it's a good overall strategy to encourage an overall leftward shift, even in the GOP. If, say, Weicker ran against Lieberman, vote Weicker in a heartbeat. Ideally, in time the GOP would favor more centrist/leftist policies.

Pipe dream? Perhaps, but at least the far-right nuts can be drfanged somewhat. Strictly voting along party lines isn't going to be beneficial in all cases; I think looking at the bigger picture is the way to go.

2:21 PM, January 17, 2007

 

Ted said...

I'd be likely to vote for a Republican ...

In a practical sense, I understand that. As I said I vote across the board -- but in our system of allowing the party of evil to control the national agenda and committees seems a bad idea just because a few of them are allegedly human.

You want Inhofe, Stevens, Brownback and Roberts controlling the senate agenda?

That didn't go off very well last time.

6:14 PM, January 17, 2007

 

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