Democrats Winning Strategy

History isn't on the GOP's side, either. If keeping the top marginal tax rate at 35 percent—the rate under Bush, and the rate that Republicans are fighting to preserve—spurs so much hiring, why didn't America experience any job growth at all during Bush's time in office? And if a top marginal tax rate of 39.6 percent—the rate under Bill Clinton, and the rate that Democrats are fighting to restore—is such a job killer, why did payrolls grow by 20 percent during the 1990s? – Newsweek Blog

I have become so tired of the gloom and doom of the Democrats in the upcoming mid-term elections. It seems everywhere you turn the news keeps getting worse. Based on these reports there won’t be any Democrats left in the Congress following November. I believe that the Democrats can not only survive November but can also prosper. In order for this to happen they will have to do a number of things that Democrats historically don’t do very well.
The first thing they will have to do is to craft a coherent message that they all unite behind. Because of their lack of a national message the Democratic caucus is plagued by rogue members who feel little if any national allegiance to the party. Because so many of their members are products of local issues and electorates too often Democrats are left with the type of majorities we’ve had the last two years. The Dems have been a majority in name only and incapable of crafting a cohesive governing philosophy. What we don’t need and I am certainly not suggesting are litmus tests like teabaggers or wing-nuts, but instead we need to have certain principles that make us Democrats. I know that we have the general terms of working for the middle-class and for the downtrodden, but that is so open to interpretation that it provides little structure in times of great calamity like the ones we are in. As a party the Dems should craft a set of principles that all members of their caucus agree to work and fight for. And once accepted it should be provided to the American people as a contrast to the Republicans. This message should be honed and offered by all candidates as the governing philosophy of this party. Those who are unable to uphold these principles are free to run as independents or Republicans.

The second thing they should do is at every interview, town hall, and campaign stop carry a chart of the federal deficits under all presidents dating back to Eisenhower. This chart should appear in all of the ads and should become the mantra of the party. They should all provide the American public with an image of the failed policies of these fiscal conservatives who have always preached one thing and done another. This would be a symbol to all but the truly partisan of the duplicity of this party and their unrelenting assault on the middle-class. This is the type of symbol that resonates with the independent voters. This President and these Dems were elected by drawing just such a sharp contrast between their policies and the policies of the wing-nuts. Unfortunately, in America it is not enough to just talk about the lack of consistency and the hypocrisy of the Republicans many of our citizenry need an illustration to drive home points. The success of the bumper sticker rhetoric of the wing-nuts will bear this fact out. This point of preaching austerity and yet every chance they get to govern they raise the deficit to record highs must be repeated over and over. The Dems should take a page from the wing-nuts and that is if you repeat something long enough and loud enough people begin to accept it as fact.

Finally the Dems should propose sweeping public improvement and infrastructure projects to attack the intransigent unemployment that is gripping this nation. It is time to force the Republicans to either support the American people or be seen for the hypocrites they are. Regardless of anyone’s political persuasion few can argue against the historical truth of the “New Deal”. It is time for the American people to get another new deal. Just as FDR recognized the economy had been shanghaied by the wealthy of his time so it is again today. Instead of hoping to negotiate with those seeking short-term greed, it is time for this President to call them to task for the sake of the country. No group, no single person’s agenda can be allowed to supersede the greater good of the majority of Americans. It is time for the Dems to go on the offensive. If they truly believe that they have the best minds with the best plan for America then now is the time to show it. The time has come to craft a set of programs that will actually stimulate the economy and reduce unemployment and at the same time they must demonstrate how implementing these initiatives will in the long run reduce the long-term deficit by fueling the expansion of the economy. Just as the New Deal laid the foundation for the greatest expansion of the American economy in our history so it must be done again.

If the Dems are going to survive and keep the momentum now is not the time for timidity, instead it is the time for bold visions and actions. The Republicans have shown that they are devoid of any new ideas to address the major challenges we face as a nation. So rather than cowering in the corner waiting for the day of reckoning the Dems must provide the American people with a stark contrast of the future of America. If the Dems cannot defeat the rehashed ideas of the past then they are not worthy to lead into the future.

“When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened.” - John M. Richardson, Jr.

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I Told You So – Sort Of

After watching the Republican responses to the passing and signing of the Presidents stimulus package it is becoming abundantly clear what their strategy will be for the next few years. They will stage these phony displays of public outrage and then at the same time take credit for any benefits from the stimulus package. First let’s be clear about whether this bill was bi-partisan. In order to do this you have to separate the Republican Party from the Washington Republicans many of whom represent solid Republican base districts that were gerrymandered by Tom Delay and his cohorts from the Republicans who represent statewide constituencies like governors. Most Republican governors who are not seeking future national office are in strong favor of the stimulus bill. So far the ones who have spoken out against it are Texas Governor Rick Perry, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. It will be interesting to see how many of these governors will be lining up for a 2012 presidential bid.

Many Republicans are strategically placing themselves to have the best of both worlds. If the Obama economic plans do not work they will say we told you so, if they do work they will say it was our opposition and not the economic plans of the President that turned the economy around. The Republicans are gambling that they will be able to steal the credit for the economic turnaround hoping that by the time the economy does turn around the voters will have forgotten their opposition to all of the President’s economic policies. This strategy really exposes the Republicans deep seated hostility towards the American electorate. They are willing to be seen as rooting for the economy to crash and taking concrete steps to bring it about while at the same time believing that the American public won’t remember their opposition to the economic policies that succeeded. Basically they are saying the American public is so stupid that they can be easily duped by sound bites and imagery. Granted there was a day in American politics when these strategies were successful, however what the Republicans and many Washington pundits have failed to realize is that a new bell has rung and once rung it cannot be un-rung.

American voters are becoming even more engaged not less engaged in the political process. There are more outlets for information than there ever has been so the nightly sound bite and sweeping political imagery has lost its effectiveness. The Republicans may think this is 1984, but they are going to be in for a rude awakening. The American public is not looking for a return to past failed policies and phony cultural wars. The Republicans are pinning their hopes in 2010 on the fact that the economic crisis they helped to engineer is so deep that there will be little change by election time and they can tout the President’s economic policies as failures. They are already laying the groundwork for this strategy by claiming that the economic policies of FDR were ineffectual during the Great Depression because there wasn’t instant success. What they fail to mention and what many Americans who survived during that period often state is that while those FDR policies did not completely turn the economy around they did help to stem the hardships of the depression and gave the public hope and confidence that their government was trying to help them. Imagine how much worst the situation would have been if the Republicans had been successful in curtailing the programs of the New Deal.

In similar fashion the Republicans of today are trying to reduce the size and scope of the President’s economic policies so they can claim that they were right. These so called “principled” men who took a budget surplus and created the largest deficits in history are now claiming to be budget and deficit hawks. During the debate concerning the President’s stimulus package many Republicans stated that their opposition to the bill was that it did not address the underlying problem of our economic problems which according to them was the housing market. So one would think that when the President announced his plan to help shore up the housing market and try to keep families in their homes that the Republicans would be ready to support it; right? Wrong. Almost to a man as with the Stimulus Bill the Republicans are lining up to denounce the plan. The Republicans are not only the “Party of no” they are also the Party of no ideas.

The economy at some point will rebound we all know this. Our economy is now and always has been cyclical. The question then becomes is the government responsible for setting in place safety nets to help reduce the suffering of its citizenry while at the same time instituting policies that will reduce the likelihood of similar catastrophes or is it the governments job to sit and watch as its citizenry suffers the hardships and horrors of a system many have no direct control over and receive only minimal benefit from? The Republicans are betting that by the time the economy turns around that they can tell Americans that the Republican’s magic economic fairy was responsible and not the policies of this administration, that it was their opposition that made the recovery possible. So either way they were right. When all you have to do is sit and watch you are afforded the luxury of saying I told you so, but when you are responsible for the welfare of a nation that luxury is no longer available. Only a child sits and waits to say I told you so while adults work to solve problems. Our country does not have the time for children’s games, we need adults.

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The Sleeping Giant Has Awakened

As I have watched the early hours of the new Obama administration taking charge of the levers of power one thing is apparent. From the massive turnout at the inauguration to the overwhelming receptions being received by his cabinet it is clear that the most damage done by the Bush administration was not to the general public, although we were damaged severely but to the apparatus of government. For eight years the Bush administration worked to try and dismantle the government from the inside.

It has been the goal of every Republican administration since the “New Deal” to try and undo its social framework and safety nets created by the Roosevelt administrations. From its over-reaching policies of Food Stamps for the poor, Social Security for the old, and that communist inspired doctrine of equal pay for equal work they have tried to sabotage them. Each and every Republican administration has had the goal to a varying degree and a platform to undermine the “New Deal” which the Republicans have always viewed as unconstitutional and unnecessary. From Reagan’s “New Federalism” to George W’s. attempts to privatize Social Security the pattern is clear. What most Americans don’t realize is that George W. almost succeeded in the long sought after Republican goal of dismantling the “New Deal” not through legislation, but instead by bankrupting the federal government. Why else would anyone in their right mind in the middle of two wars give out tax-cuts to the wealthy if their goal was not to bankrupt the government. There was a day when the Republicans supposedly stood for fiscal conservatism, not any longer. Think about it; if you can’t shutdown a department through legislation the next best thing to do is to bankrupt the government. If there isn’t any money for those departments then they can only perform their missions on a limited basis or not at all. There would be no money for regulatory agencies, education, or for Medicaid/Medicare. Instead of using a scalpel the Bush administration was using a chainsaw to gut the federal government. He was going to starve the programs designed to help the poor and the middle-class while at the same time feeding the greed of the wealthy through deregulation.

If we look at the record it is abundantly clear what the plan was. He would provide tax-cuts for the wealthy, fight two wars, and allow the greed of Wall Street to go unchecked. All of this of course would strain the federal government to the breaking point. Because of our “war posture” we couldn’t cut defense spending leaving our domestic programs as the only way to cut spending. The result is we starve these programs to death. George W. leaves behind the biggest foreign and economic fiascos in the history of this country. Do not be fooled. I originally thought it was due to sheer incompetence, but as all this plays out it is something more ominous. We have all assumed that Bush was just a likeable bumbling fool with good if not misguided intentions. I now disagree with that assessment because underneath that persona of ineptitude hid a conniving and sinister man with a definite agenda.

Not only was his goal to bankrupt the government, he also sowed the seeds of distrust and bad morale in the institutions of our government. Shortly after the Iraq War began he allowed the Defense Department in the person of Donald Rumsfeld to take over the State Department ending a long tradition of diplomacy as an even partner with defense. He politicized and morally bankrupted the Justice Department through the use of torture and domestic surveillance programs. Instead of appointing competent bureaucrats he appointed political hacks evidenced by the FEMA response to Hurricane Katrina. These are just too many coincidences. No one is this incompetent and rises to the most powerful position in the free world.

But there is a new day in America. Those of us who have been sleepwalking and living a nightmare for the last eight years have finally stopped hitting the snooze button. All over America millions are getting up and starting the task of remaking America. We are restoring more than just our physical infrastructure we are also restoring our moral infrastructure as well. And judging by the reception Secretary Clinton received upon her arrival at State it is long overdue. I would venture to guess that the reception to Secretary Holder will be just as dramatic at the Justice Department. This nation, this government with all its citizens and employees are awakening to the call for change. I don’t think we realized the strain that so many of our federal employees were toiling under with the Bush administration. I think now that the national nightmare is over there will be a litany of revelations from current and former employees of the many illegal and immoral deeds done by the Bush administration in the name of security.

The alarm has sounded. The call to action has been made. I believe that there will be an outpouring of spirit and volunteerism the likes of which this nation has never seen. I caution the Republicans still standing you do not want to be on the wrong side of this tidal wave. Once the sleeping giant awakens there is often backlash, anger, and frustration. We are heading in a new direction and foolish is the man who thinks that he can stop it or reverse it.

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