Thery've Certainly EARNED A Primary Challenge (0.00 / 0)

several times over.

And--especially since the GOP has abandoned the elephant for the ostrich--I think it's high time that we grassroots Dems be the ones to "never forget."

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Tue Mar 25, 2008 at 21:54:55 PM UTC

When will it end? (0.00 / 0)

Ok, I accept that sugar interests are not going to go away until our candidates are liberated from the financial shackles that still chain so many of them to unprogressive policies (hurrah Blue to Bluer, Blue Majority etc!)

But the Cuba thing worries me.  I've never been to Florida or Cuba, but I knew some Cuban-American kids in college.  I also know plenty of Taiwanese people whose grandparents fled with the Guomindang to Taiwan.  My relatively uninformed assumption was thus that as time went by, future generations would care less and less about fanning the flames of resentment and harping on what had been taken away from them.  Instead they would become either indifferent as they identified more with the host than the home country, or actively interested in finding out about their past, making contact with long lost relatives, visiting the homeland etc.  

You'd think that any politician who's hoping to stick around for longer than the next few years in FL would start thinking about appealing to the youngest generation of Cuban-Americans - the kind that want to go to Cuba on spring break.

Please correct me if you disagree, as I hope I've made it quite clear I don't know what the hell I'm talking about when it comes to FL.  

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by: tyelperion @ Tue Mar 25, 2008 at 21:57:51 PM UTC

Making BIg Sugar in Florida happy... (0.00 / 0)

...has been a theme of both the Clinton and Bush administrations.  (And probably before...)

The first time I heard about their influence was back in the early-to-mid 1990s because Big Sugar wanted to expropriate land that was considered part of the Everglades National Preserve.  Given how development in Florida tends to go, I suspect they got what they wanted.

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by: palamedes @ Tue Mar 25, 2008 at 22:42:47 PM UTC

Weren't Diaz-Balart & Ros-Lehtinen among the more strident (0.00 / 0)

and histrionic opponents of the house's recent vote to hold Bolton and Miers in contemp of congress, and led the photo-op staged "walkout"? And weren't they among the biggest cheeleaders for the Iraq war and the fantastically successful "surge"? Hmm.

Nice "working political and personal relationships" ya got there, Debbie and Kendrick.

You judge people by the company that they keep and the friends that they have.

Lie down with dogs...

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 04:26:25 AM UTC

Isn't this what Schultz is supposed to do? (0.00 / 0)

She's apparently representing the preferences of the voters in her district.  You may not be aware of this, but South Florida is full of Cuban Americans who don't agree with bloggers in the rest of the country about Cuba policy.  Other than Cuba, there is nothing controversial about Schultz.  She's no Lieberman:

http://www.votesmart.org/issue...

The nub of the issue is that certain bloggers can't stand the idea that someone doesn't support 100% of their agenda.

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by: kanzeon @ Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 14:44:39 PM UTC

you're missing the issue (0.00 / 0)

The problem is not that DWS agrees with Republicans on a couple issues.  The problem is that she shirks her responsibility to help other Democrats get elected.  Presumably the Democrat voters who elected DWS would prefer that she help bring more Democrats to Congress.  But even if that were not true, if she refuses to perform her duties in the DCCC, she should step down from her post there.

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by: cityyear95 @ Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 15:40:00 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Says who? (0.00 / 0)

She says she is performing her duties for the DCCC, and is actively campaigning for a large number of candidates.  No one seems to be challenging her overall performance.

Is it other members of the DCCC that are complaining about her failure to perform, or is it a bunch of bloggers?  My sense is it is the latter.

In fact, in the positions were reversed, and Garcia were the Cuba hard-liner, I doubt we'd hear a peep from Kos about Schultz.  We'd probably instead hear how she was taking a noble position against Bush Dogs.  She supports the candidacy of all the Florida Democrats.  She just isn't making campaign appearances with a couple of them.  That's what's causing the uproar - the demand that she make public appearances that are against her interests as a legislator and against her constitutents' desire.  It is another witch-hunt, retribution for breaking against monolithic orthodoxy.  The "progressive" web acts more like Rush Limbaugh every day.

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by: kanzeon @ Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 16:15:21 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The nub of my disagreement with the liberal web (0.00 / 0)

This party (and this website) does not represent me, is on a suicide mission, and is increasingly intolerant.

There is a basic lack of respect for differences, and no support for a big tent.  We live in a country of over 300 million people.  We elect legislators by district and state.  Some states and districts are more liberal than I am, some more conservative.  I certainly wish that Florida voters weren't backward on the question of Cuba policy.    However, people being what they are, there is no way that we will have a party where people agree on everything, or even the most important issues.  

I find it remarkable that the left web supports, repeatedly, attacks on democrats who aren't falling in line with every item of the "progressive" orthodoxy, either with the Bush Dog campaign or otherwise - and they have the gall to cry about how other people are being divisive.  

Since the larger blogs because partisan hit squads against Clinton, the entire left blogosphere has become a wasteland.  Clinton supporters have a few sites - but they tend to be like riverdaughter and Taylor Marsh, about as rational as Kos, sometimes even less so.  As a great orator once said, it's completely vulcanized.

I once thought that the left blogs would be a haven for rational discourse.  No longer.  The left web is just a way to deepen the problems that Democrats always have - they squabble, and don't unite.  The party, at the time it should be in ascendency, is going to self-destruct.

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by: kanzeon @ Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 18:27:45 PM UTC