Sirota: "The Democrat's [cowardly] Seinfeld Strategy"

Dave Sirota echoes the lament and painful cry of CowardlyDemocrats.blogspot.com: our professional Democrat "leaders" REFUSE, REFUSE, REFUSE to CONFRONT the radical-right-wing agenda that EMPOWERS the abject in-your-face CORRUPTION, cronyism, lies, and crimes, if not war crimes, of the Bush administration and Republican Congress.

Even with the Washington Post headlining an article "Intense and Widespread OPPOSITION to President Bush"**, the Damn Democrats JUST DON'T GET IT: they would RATHER COWER to Bush, and SUCK UP to the "mainstream media conventional wisdom," THAN DO THEIR JOBS representing those of us who are INTENSE in our opposition to the thoroughly criminal Bush-Republican agenda.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/16/AR2006041600648_pf.html

Need we list the Democratic "leadership" BETRAYALS, AGAIN??

- Katrina victims, SOLD DOWN THE RIVER
- 2000 Florida voters, DISENFRANCHISED by the Republican Party... Sold Down the River....
- Army privates and guards accused of "ABUSE" for FOLLOWING torture ORDERS,
...SOLD DOWN THE RIVER by Democrats and Rusmfeld's kangaroo courts
- the GENEVA CONVENTIONS, Sold Down the River by Democrats and Republicans alike
- the Nuclear Non-Proliferation efforts, SOLD DOWN THE RIVER with NO Dem. confrontations
- America's Blue-collar and White collar taxpayers, SOLD DOWN THE RIVER by Tax Cuts for billionaires...
- a "FAIR" and truly "BALANCED" media, SOLD DOWN THE RIVER to major corporations with NO oversight
- thousands or millions of voters, Sold Down the River to Diebold/ES&S/Sequoia's NO OVERSIGHT computer codes
(which BEG for "back door" or "secret key" hacking.
- VETERANS of the Iraq war... SOLD by Democrats DOWN THE RIVER to Rumsfeld's "back door draft"
- public education Sold Down the River...
- energy consumers (ALL Americans) SOLD DOWN THE RIVER by Cheney's "Secret Energy Task Force"
- women who do not want to carry a pregnancy past the first week, or girls traumatized by rape, incest or unintended sex


Well, that's enough of this growing but by no means complete list. What Sirota points out is, that Democrats PREFER TO COWER from CONFRONTING THE RIGHT WING agenda which EMPOWERS THE ABOVE BETRAYALS, to STANDING UP FOR CONSTITUENTS who WANT A FIGHT.


We Democratic voters- who EVEN BY BUSH-GOP's OWN AKNOWLEDGEMENT gave john kerry FORTY EIGHT PERCENT of the vote in the 2004 election (and clearly a much higher total of opposition to Bush today) ARE NOT BEING REPRESENTED!

THANK YOU, COWERING DEMOCRATS, for STEALING OUR VOICE, and short-sheeting our opposition.


<<
As a short-term electoral tactic, the Seinfeldian "competence" strategy ALLOWS the GOP to right itself with new management. Sadly, it is not a strategy based on ideological differences that puts a boot to conservatives' neck when their hypocrisy trips them up and they fall down. Thus, while Democrats celebrate the resignations of people like Reps. Tom DeLay (Texas) and Duke Cunningham (Calif.), the GOP simultaneously celebrates because they can now counter the Democrats' "competence" argument by pointing out that their party has sloughed off the incompetents. In short, the Republican Party and the right's ideological agenda march forward, largely UNSCATHED [by in-your-face, pervasive and blinding CORRUPTION].

In making such a LIMITED critique, Democrats tacitly VALIDATE conservatives' IDEOLOGICAL GOALS, and further reinforce the public feeling that Democrats have NO CONVICTIONS of their own. For example, despite the GOP scandals and the political opportunities they present, Democrats REFUSE to push serious reforms like public financing of elections and instead push half-measures and focus on Republican missteps. [HELL, THE COWARDLY DEMOCRATS REFUSE TO EVEN MENTION THE NAMES, "Abramoff" and "Cunningham" or "DeLay and Libby INDICTED"!]

In the process, they are implicitly saying they believe the system THE SYSTEM THAT MOST AMERICANS KNOW IS CORRUPT, is actually PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE. The same thing on Iraq: The Democratic Party REFUSES to take a position wholly different from the Republicans, simply saying the management of the war--rather than the war itself--is the problem. >>



** (OK, we confess, we fibbed: in TYPICAL Washington Post fashion, they run the less-intense, less informative headline, "Anger at Bush MAY hurt GOP at polls"; the "Intense and Widespread Opposition to Bush" is actually the first words of the first sentence, not the headline. Huffington Post uses the "Intense and Widespread" headline not only for the article link, but for their main lead on 2-17-06.)


___________________________________________________________

Democrats' Seinfeld Strategy
David Sirota
April 17, 2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/democrats-seinfeld-strat_b_19267.html

I was asked to write the lead editorial for In These Times this month, and decided to focus on what I call Democrats "Seinfeld Strategy" for 2006 - a strategy that tries to make the election "about nothing." Here is the editorial re-printed here in full:

The Seinfeld Strategy

For the first time in more than a decade, Democrats seem to have a shot at taking back Congress. But also for the first time in recent history, Congress is on the cusp of switching hands without a voter mandate. How is that possible? Because Democrats are only in the hunt thanks to gross Republican missteps--and they are going out of their way to make sure their potential election to the majority is about nothing. Call it the Seinfeld strategy.

Los Angeles Times columnist Ron Brownstein reports, "Democratic leaders are drifting toward a midterm message that indicts Bush more on grounds of competence (on issues such as Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and prescription drugs) than ideology."

As a short-term electoral tactic, the Seinfeldian "competence" strategy allows the GOP to right itself with new management. Sadly, it is not a strategy based on ideological differences that puts a boot to conservatives' neck when their hypocrisy trips them up and they fall down. Thus, while Democrats celebrate the resignations of people like Reps. Tom DeLay (Texas) and Duke Cunningham (Calif.), the GOP simultaneously celebrates because they can now counter the Democrats' "competence" argument by pointing out that their party has sloughed off the incompetents. In short, the Republican Party and the right's ideological agenda march forward, largely unscathed.

In making such a limited critique, Democrats tacitly validate conservatives' ideological goals and further reinforce the public feeling that Democrats have no convictions of their own. For example, despite the GOP scandals and the political opportunities they present, Democrats refuse to push serious reforms like public financing of elections and instead push half-measures and focus on Republican missteps.

In the process, they are implicitly saying they believe the system that most Americans know is corrupt is actually perfectly acceptable. The same thing on Iraq: The Democratic Party refuses to take a position wholly different from the Republicans, simply saying the management of the war--rather than the war itself--is the problem.

National Democratic leaders will say they are forced to use the "competence" argument because it is the one big theme that unifies their ideologically diverse congressional membership. But that hides the not-so-secret fact that very powerful, very vocal, and very ideological forces within the Democratic Party support many of the conservative goals that a "competence" strategy inherently validates.

On domestic policy, these forces went public in April at a press conference at the Brookings Institution. Led by Citigroup chairman Robert Rubin--Clinton's former Treasury secretary--the "Hamilton Project" announced plans to "to take on entrenched Democratic interests" such as teachers' unions, according to the Financial Times. Participants at the event used words like "protectionist" to describe courageous congressional Democrats fighting to reform the corporate-written trade pacts Rubin and others helped pass in the '90s. They also advocated school "vouchers" and "entitlement reform"--code words for defunding public education and eviscerating bedrock Democratic programs like Social Security and Medicare. At least they were honest in naming themselves after Alexander Hamilton, the leader of the elitist Federalist Party and rival of Thomas Jefferson, the populist founder of the Democratic Party.

Public opinion data consistently show Americans are desperate for political leaders who will represent ordinary citizens' interests--not just powerful lobbyists and their wealthy corporate clients.

Until Democrats decide to stop taking part in "business as usual" and start fighting back against the right wing's ideology, they will face the same political liabilities they do today.