Passive Aggressive Polling Responses

by: Matt Stoller

Sun Jul 15, 2007 at 00:25


According to the AP, the public doesn't like Congress.

Public satisfaction with the job lawmakers are doing has fallen 11 points since May, to 24 percent, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll. That's lower than for President Bush, who hasn't fared well lately, either...

Poll respondents from both political parties say they're tired of the fighting between Congress and the White House, and want the two branches of government to work together on such issues as education, health care and the Iraq war.

But does this make any sense?

Tammy Lambirth, 42, a data researcher from San Antonio, disapproves of "all the fighting that they do all the time."

...

"The Republicans are just stonewalling everything, and the Democrats are just not stepping up and making them do what they need to do, especially about Iraq," said Lambirth, a Democrat. "They need to make our troops get out of Iraq."

Here's the same person, literally the same person, saying that Democrats need to stop fighting with Republicans while at the same time forcing them to do things the Republicans don't want to do.

I don't have a lot of insight here.  It seems like these two instincts are contradictory.

Thoughts?  Is there some large group of passive aggressive Americans in every polling sample I don't know about?  I'm sure this is something you pollsters and politicians out there know a lot about.

Matt Stoller :: Passive Aggressive Polling Responses

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Passive Aggressive Polling Responses | 32 comments
You're surprised? (0.00 / 0)
Come on Matt. You know how contradictory and irrational most people's political views are. This isn't surprising...only disappointing.
Republicans drag down congressional approval ratings (4.00 / 3)
I've always thought "overall" Congressional approval ratings were rather pointless. The only thing they serve is Drudge, so he can print headlines like "SHOCK: Democrat Congress lower than Bush!"

What's more instructive is to look at polls that break down overall Congressional approval, alongside generic approval for Congressional Democrats and generic approval for Congressional Republicans.

For instance, take a look at the Harris/WSJ poll that was released on July 12th (full results PDF). This was the one that pegged Bush at 26%, echoing Nixon's low point.

When respondents were asked how they felt about Congressional Democrats, 31% said they felt favorably towards them. Meanwhile, only 21% approved of the job Congressional Republicans were doing. As a result, the people's overall approval rating was 24%, regardless of the fact that the party that a plurality agree with is in the majority.

Check out my blog at TheDailyBackground.com

Exactly my thoughts (4.00 / 1)
Exactly.

Plus this war is dragging everything down.

[ Parent ]
most people (0.00 / 0)
most people don't seem to make the distrinction... when will
Demorats take that into account.

most people don't trust most politicians. if the Democrats FORCED somthing to get done, they would think THAT was "working together".

it's so fucking confusing if you take politics seriously, but so clear if you are just trying to live and have some decent fun in life.

similar to how for policial hobbyists to think making Republicans into Democrats seems much more lucrative than just votivating all the liberal non-voters to support Democrats.

I no longer try that because it feels dishonest and I'm tired of apoligizing when I have and it does no good.

[ Parent ]
As near as I can figure... (4.00 / 3)
Yep, it's contradictory Matt, but it still makes sense on a personal level.

Fighting with deadlock is unwanted fighting.  It's perceived as pointless because it hasn't generated results.  People say they want the parties to work together.  But what would satisfy them is results of some kind.  Right now Democrats are doing a good job of looking like they're in a hell of a fight while not going out there, no-holds-barred, to bring home a win.  That's frustrating.  I think DemFromCT's got the right idea over at Next Hurrah.  I think "they should work together" is a natural reaction to "nothing's getting done, despite the butting of heads."

If the Democrats go ahead and declare that the funds are being cut, enough is enough, and issue an ultimatum to the President, I'd stake money that Tammy Lambirth will be happier than she is now.  Even though it's not compromise.  Because it isn't this icky, ambiguous deadlock of political jockeying without results or an end in sight.

Make no small plans.

Basically (4.00 / 1)
I think you've pretty much hit it here. The distinction to make here isn't between fighting and cooperation; it's between progress and deadlock. They like cooperation and progress, they dislike fighting and deadlock, and sometimes they haven't thought things out clearly enough to clearly distinguish which one they mean when. So when a fight occurs, and one side wins, that doesn't look like fighting/deadlock; it looks like progress/cooperation.

This is what we saw most of the time in the Bush Republican majority: Fighting that looks like cooperation, since the side that lost the fight was eventually made to cooperate with what the winning side wanted. Of course this clearly isn't cooperation in any meaningful sense since one side was only cooperating against their will, but the arcaneness of political procedure distracts from or at least makes it hard for people to talk about it clearly. What is clear though, and what people can talk about, is that when this happens stuff gets done. This is what people appear to like and want, and as far as I can tell this is the key to their apparently contradictory demands.

Or, to put it a perhaps slightly different way: They dislike the Republicans for fighting, and they dislike the Democrats for losing the fights.

[ Parent ]
solution: make progress (0.00 / 0)
Huh, wait?  You mean the AP's pollster asked -- gasp -- the wrong question?  Banner headlines =D

Clearly, the solution here is to provide progress through confrontation.  A confrontation leading to no new funds (a) doesn't require a bill to pass, really, (b) delivers progress, and (c) shows that progress doesn't need to come from Broder-style "responsibility", which is essentially phony.

Make no small plans.

[ Parent ]
It is a central contradiction (0.00 / 0)
That stems from 2/3 of the country both liking people who stand up for what they believe in no matter what, and 2/3 of the country thinking people should put their differences aside to get things done. People like both concepts, but at least 1/3 of the country doesn't seem to notice that those beliefs can conflict with one another.

At least part of the fault starts with politicians who regularly push both buttons, and never point out the contradiction. People want to get things done, but they want to get things done according to their beliefs. Politicians are the same way, but people don't give them slack for acting like, well, most people.
How Congress works (0.00 / 0)
Many people, even politically active people, are not well versed in how Congress works. The thresholds for ending debate in the Senate, the reconciliation of bills between the House and Senate - these things are likely a haze to most Americans and a total mystery to a large plurality.

At Daily Kos the monthly leadership ratings for Reid and Pelosi flipped almost immediately after Democrats took Congress in January '07. Reid was popular before and dropped. Pelosi unpopular and skyrocketed. Why? My guess is Reid had the power to block while in the minority and Pelosi had no institutional powers as minority leader. As Speaker Pelosi can pass any damn thing she wants as long as she keeps the caucus in line - Reid can't do jack without 60 votes. If Daily Kos leaders don't understand the contraints that face a minority in the House or a majority in the Senate I don't imagine random poll responses would know any better.

That said Majority Leader Reid better start making the GOP ACTUALLY filibuster legislation instead of just folding the tent and going home when he can't muster 60 votes. I DO understand how Congress works and it's hard to maintain solid support for the Democratic leadership as a partisan when they won't even use the tools at their disposal under the RULES. Bush isn't playing by any rules or law and Reid is still talking with inside voices about comity or some such horseshit.

John McCain

Senate procedures are more complex than that. (0.00 / 0)
When Reid cannot get 60 votes (or three-fifths of the Senators voting) for cloture, the bill or amendment goes to the floor for open debate.

Under open rules, the rethuglicans can present a sequence of motions on parliamentary procedure, rules, amendments, etc., & never even get to the point of needing to filibuster for several days.  This has been the stand-off for the last few weeks.

The Democratic leadership can't do anything.

Reid has a coalition, not a majority.

On not forcing the filibuster (0.00 / 0)
Whi,
I've been posting quite a bit recently about my extreme frustration with the Democrats for not forcing an actual filibuster. I spoke to a press secretary in Harry Reid's office Friday, and the best reason he could give me for not doing so is that the Dems want to accomplish a lot this session, and letting a filibuster eat up an entire week isn't a wise move. That struck me as an extremely weak answer, for a number of obvious reasons.

But I'm not a parliamentarian, by any means. Do you know a good resource that describes the precise procedures that lead to a filibuster? I'd like to do some research and serious thinking about this question.

This is an extremely important debate, I think. If Dems don't do something to put the Republicans on their heels -- and keep them from filibustering everything in sight -- it's going to be a frustratingly long 18 months until January 2009.

[ Parent ]
Another problem with pushing the Republicans to a filibuster (0.00 / 0)
is that you hand them a victory. They have the votes to do it - and eventually the way a filibuster ends is that the majority gets sick the filibuster and gives up on getting cloture - so essentially the majority is forced to back down. The result on the floor is a perceived blow to the majority and a win for the minority.

While it might seem like this would put the Republican caucus in the position of "blocking" and not "cooperating to get things done", it also puts them in a position of making a stand for what they believe, and being the few that brought the many to their knees.

That's not to say that majorities shouldn't, from time to time, test the minority's ability to keep a filibuster together, just that a successful filibuster takes a lot of time and can have the effect of rallying your opponents to stick together - and right now we seem to be peeling Republicans off one by one, so I'm inclined to think that giving them a rallying point might be the wrong move.

[ Parent ]
What they believe... (0.00 / 0)
While it might seem like this would put the Republican caucus in the position of "blocking" and not "cooperating to get things done", it also puts them in a position of making a stand for what they believe, and being the few that brought the many to their knees.

What they believe is in many cases extremely unpopular. The Webb Amendment on troop rotation would have made a good test case, in which forcing an actual filibuster might have flipped the outcome.

Imagine 40 Repuglicans, plus Lieberman, reading from the phonebook on the nightly news, night after night, to block a bill requiring troops to get a reasonable amount of time with their families between tours in the war zone. Sure, their explanation (something about tying the President's hands, IINM) would get aired at great length. But first of all the case for Webb's amendment only needs about 6 words to explain, and second of all it would be very difficult for the media not to show video of Senator Graham or Senator McConnell reading from the phonebook. And I bet the Senators would have to hire extra staffers just to handle the angry phone calls the next day.

Even the conflicted voters who want both comity and results would see where the problem lies. And I bet a lot of them would decide that the solution in 2008 is to throw the Rupublicans out, as opposed to the more unfocused "Throw 'em all out" that low-information voters tend to land on when the government isn't getting anything done.

[ Parent ]
No parliamentarian here, either. (0.00 / 0)
The Standing Rules of the Senate as per Wikipedia.

To make sense of the rules would require watching a few of hours of C-Span for 3 or 4 days.  This would give you an overview of my description of the delaying tactics used in the recent weeks by the rethuglicans.  Their procedural efforts preclude the need for reading the phone book, as it were.

Briefly: the GOoPerz make a quorum call.  When completed, the presiding officer (often Sen. Byrd) recognizes Sen. Reid who may have business "stuff."  Sen. McConnell is then recognized & he may offer some biz.  As he holds the floor, then another republicant asks for the minority leader to yield, and he does.  The senator with the floor then requests that some piece of crap be entered into the Congressional Record.  Blah-blah, so ordered & then another Bu$hKorp kommando requests that so-&-so yield, etc.  You now have the picture of a calendar day shot in the face by 3 p.m.  At this point, Sen. Reid may have some actual stuff to get in place, so he talks to Sen. McConnell who "clears the deck" for the presiding officer to recognize the majority leader, etc.

A well-orchestrated play can keep this up for about 3, perhaps 4 days, without ever generating anything that the lame stream media would even consider covering as a genuine "filibuster."  There's no press at all, much less negative press coverage.

[The Democratic minority prior to Jan 2007 couldn't do this because the Bu$hKabal had the votes for cloture in the first place.]

Far too many Democrats seem not to comprehend that Sen. Reid does NOT have a majority; he has a somewhat raggedy coalition.  There are times when he does not even have a majority on the floor because of the various committee & sub-committee assignments--which minority members can readily ignore (to be on the floor) because they can't win a party-line vote in the committee proceedings, anyway.

The demise of actual civics classes in USA schools has made it extremely difficult for citizens to understand how congress functions.  It is important to recognize that neither the House nor the Senate actually, literally follow Roberts Rules of Order.  Generally, the House rules make more sense to a person who has used Roberts on a citizen committee, city council, club or social organization.  However, the Senate rules & procedures & etiquette are truly byzantine.

[ Parent ]
well... (0.00 / 0)
People genuinely are frustrated by the inability of the parties to come together and get things done (immigration, health care, the war are all issues that obviously need to be addressed but haven't been). They read stories about corruption and scandal almost every month... it's not hard to see why they think

Also, everyone is just extremely pissed about the war. I don't think the two are necessarily contradictory. Obviously I'm not saying that it necessarily makes sense on the Iraq issue, since (essentially) all the votes for the withdrawal legislation came from Democrats. But can't you sense a general frustration about the level of politics and discourse in the country? People can be pissed about putting partisanship ahead of progress, and also be pissed about the inability to withdraw troops from Iraq. And they are.

I think it will be interesting to see how people respond to Obama's message in the Democratic primary. He's trying to tap into these frustrations as well as push a partisan agenda. It's kind of risky, given that the tried and true practice of throwing red meat at the base is being practiced by his opponents, but it makes sense given that he's "new to Washington" .

It will also be interesting to see what Bloomberg has to say about this. I know the polling shows him eating away at the GOP candidates more than the Democrats right now, but I'm kind of worried he could grab a lot of independents that would have been voting for our guy (or girl). There will be two "change" candidates for these people to choose from, and only one great Churchillian figure who's calling for doubling the size of Guantanamo so we can exercise new methods of torture on the "Is-lam-o-fascists" that Jack Bauer is rounding up in the Greater War on Terror.

people have been trained to have absurd standards for democrats n/t (0.00 / 1)

ineffectiveness (0.00 / 0)
If the Dems were fighting and WINNING I bet the numbers would be far different.  Anecdotally, I would attribute the low numbers to three things:  People unhappy with the congressional republicans, people unhappy that there is fighting, and people unhappy at the perception that the Republicans (as well as bush) always get the upper hand. 

I wish Dems could afford prime time news conferences or were better at PR. 

The upside of recent admin actions (like executive privilege over the Tillman investigations), is that the Dems can get a boost playing victim.  But the American people would rather they win.

I think if Harriet Miers is hauled off to jail by the Sargeant at Arms, they'll be a boost in the Dem numbers.

I'm tired of the fighting between the WH and Congress too (0.00 / 0)
My proposed solution is that the WH gives up and lets us have our way.  I'm sure the other side thinks the inverse would be an appropriate step.  Then there's the apathetic middle who imagines there to be some ideal technocratic solution that could be implemented tomorow if everyone would just stop this silly game of representative democratic politics.  We're all tired of 'the fighting', but imagine somewhat different solutions

It does kind of bug me, though, when people act as though if only we could act in a bipartisan manner, we'd be able to solve, for example, healthcare.  Anything changing the status quo in healthcare is going to be with Democrats and the left leading the way, dragging the Republicans kicking and screaming.  It's not going to be some equal partnership.  The same with Iraq, obviously, and most other issues you might imagine which requires some sort of progressive change.  They're called 'conservatives' for a reason

humans are afraid of debate (0.00 / 0)
The whole "bipartisianship" thing, Lieberman-style, is aimed at the segment of the population that is very afraid of dissent or any appearance of disagreement. It's almost an allergic state. It's a form of apathy, which allows people to feel superior to the politicians without actually requiring them to do any work. 
[ Parent ]
This Is A Real Contradiction--Which Reps/Cons Constantly Exploit (4.00 / 1)
It's a contradiction in terms of narrative frames, but there is an underlying logic, which the standard polling methodology and political discourse obscures.

demahir hit the nose on the head, saying:

Fighting with deadlock is unwanted fighting.  It's perceived as pointless because it hasn't generated results....

If the Democrats go ahead and declare that the funds are being cut, enough is enough, and issue an ultimatum to the President, I'd stake money that Tammy Lambirth will be happier than she is now.  Even though it's not compromise.  Because it isn't this icky, ambiguous deadlock of political jockeying without results or an end in sight.


For a very long time now--particularly since the "Gingrich revolution"--conservatives have amped up the level of confrontation and complained about the Democrats being so confrontational.  Another seeming contradiction, at least if you're looking for consistency.

But there's a logic to this, too, of course. Conservativism is not about consistency.  It's about hierarchy, with one rule for those on top, and another for those on bottom. (Scooter Libby, anyone?) Conservatism is all about conservative elites being in charge, so it's perfectly consistent for them to want to boss everyone else around, pick fights to show who's boss, etc., and to expect the Dems to take it lying down.  It's their idea of how the world should work.

And they use the frame of Democrats fighting, or being obstructionist, or not having any ideas (when, of course, they wouldn't let Democratic ideas come up for a vote) but just being against everything to pressure Dems to just go along with them.

Thus, the contradiction originates with the conservative mindset, which is fundamentally anti-democratic (and anti-republican) and simply wants to have everything its way, with no compromise and no consideration of messy facts and stuff.  Put in a position of power, this creates the objective conditions in which fighting--as opposed to rational, if impassioned, debate--is unavoidable without complete surrender.

But on most things, what movement conservatives want are far outside the mainstream.  So Dems simply standing up for majoritarian positions are forced to fight for what people want--yet, at the same time, people don't want fighting.  They want democracy to work the way it's supposed to work, with advocacy and comrpomise, not with endless fighting.

In short, conservatives have been able to externalize their own contradictions, and force congressional Dems and the people at large to live with them.  And that's precisely what Tammy Lambirth is doing--living with that contradiction.

This gets to precisely what's wrong with Barack Obama in my estimation.  He does not try to resolve this contradiction. He accepts it as conservatives have defined it, and forced it onto the rest of us.  He wants to work inside the rightwing framework to produce progressive results.  And that's simply something that cannot be done in any truly fundamental sense.

Oh, we can get some pretty good band-aids that way.  But life-saving surgery, not so much.

"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

And the MSM (0.00 / 0)
And the mainstream media echoes all this conservative framing and never points out the quandary that it puts progressive Democrats in. If we controlled some of the mainstream media or if the MSM would do their jobs, it would be a lot clearer that conservatives are constantly saying "our way or the highway" and this talk of the need for bi-partisanship, which is used to bash progressives, would disappear.
[ Parent ]
Well, Yes... (0.00 / 0)
I guess I sort of thought that went without saying.

But thanks for saying it anyway! Because it really can't be said often enough, even if it does get in the way of a trying-to-be-well-crafted comment.

"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

[ Parent ]
Learn Kabuki (0.00 / 0)
This week's example: Forcing a filibuster on a popular bill would pretty much compel MSM coverage. Do this a couple of times, on well-chosen bills, and you might start to see a greater willingness to compromise from the opposition.
[ Parent ]
They are just parroting (0.00 / 0)
They are just repeating back the conventional wisdom.  Most people have no idea who congress is or what it does, so when asked questions like this they just say something that they heard some newscaster say once. 
I Agree With The Thrust, But It Needs Refining (0.00 / 0)
There's a gut-level sense in which I agree with this comment completely.  But there's a refined sense in which I find it problematic.

I think it's oversimplifying in a couple of ways.  First off, people don't have no idea who Congress is or what it does, but they do lack significant understanding. (There is a wide gradient of knowledge here, but it's sufficient that most folks know they are far from being experts.)

Nor is it the case that they just say something they heard.  That something has to reflect something of the way that they feel.  But they do tend to rely on repeating things they've heard, rather than articulating their own views.  This often does reflect a lack of independent thinking and/or the power of CW narratives.

But it also reflects the fact that people recognize the power of such narratives, and that adopting them, if they reflect their views, gives them the benefit of authority that comes with those narratives.

There is a real danger in treating the American public just as cynically as the Beltway elite does, and we need to guard against falling into this sort of thinking.  Just because people don't spend much time thinking about politics doesn't mean they are dumb, unsophisticated or morally inferior.

It's up to us to meet them where they are, not where we'd like them to be.  Chances are, it's not where they want to be themselves, but they've found that trying to be more involved, more attentive, more informed only makes them feel more helpless and frustrated, so they turn their attention elsewhere to things they can have more influence over.  This is both a rational/pragmatic and moral decision on their part, and it's job, in part, to change the moral and pragmatic calculus, rather than changing them.  For the most part, they don't need changing any more than we do.  It's the context they operate within that needs changing.

"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

[ Parent ]
Most Americans... (0.00 / 0)
  ...are angry with the entire government.

  The public is sick of this Iraq war, sick of falling living standards, sick of inadequate health care... and Washington carries on like the public's opinion is irrelevant.

  That's going to generate resentment.

  The Democrats got some initial goodwill out of their 2006 victory, then promptly squandered it by caving to Bush on the war, and by failing to pass any real ethics reform. The latter  failure is perhaps even more critical than the Iraq capitulation; a successful anti-corruption bill would have sent a powerful message that things really had changed in Washington. Instead, the bill was watered down and emasculated -- by the very same Democrats who had spoken of "draining the swamp".

  And it would be nice to hear that the Democrats have learned that maybe it might have been a good idea to filibuster some of the Republicans' excesses over the previous six years. The Republicans aren't the least bit concerned about dry powder, are they?

 

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

We're not asking the right question. (4.00 / 2)
I apologize for the length.  I'm new here, I like the place, but I want to get Open Left started off right.

We're not asking the right questions here.  Other progressive sites have the same problem.  They're coming around, finally.  But here, we have the opportunity to ask the right questions and build the foundation correctly from the start.

Right now the Republicans are simply outplaying the Dems.  They are filibustering every issue, every time.  Once again Karl Rove has our number, and that number is 60.  To get anything done in the Senate requires 60 votes...and frankly to get anything done in the Senate requires 67 votes with Bush around.

So nothing gets passed.  The GOP points and screams "Do-Nothing Congress!  Weak!  Soft!  Un-American!"  The Dems suck it up.  The media makes reports like these and the GOP uses them to say that A) Congress is more hated than Bush, B) Congress is controlled by the Dems,  ergo C) Bush has more support than the Dems.

The Beltway cognoscenti cluck their tongues and go right along with it, "The Dems are at fault because if they sponsored truly bi-partisan bills, they would get passed by Bush.  Clearly with the GOP using procedural votes all the time, the legislation must be bad for America, look at the immigration bill."

When your side plays by the rules and the other side makes their own, you lose.  Every time.  The GOP's goal here is to  use the power of the minority party in Congress to hamstring the Democrats, and then help the President make Congress irrelevant.  Why?  The GOP wants to make the Democrats irrelevant.

The problem is we're still having nice little discussions on this site and others about why the mean old GOP doesn't play fair within the system, instead of accepting the fact that the GOP is making their own rules here with the goal of making this country a one-party system ruled by fiat.

When the bad guys are shooting up your house, you don't sit around and discuss whether or not you should go to Home Depot or go to Lowe's to get the best price on building materials to patch over those unsightly bullet holes.  But that's what the Democrats are doing.

It's not the people that are passive aggressive.  It's the Democrats.  They need to fight this with every scrap of their being, and yet they are rolling over with these half-assed measures and bills and amendments that the Republicans are beating them senseless with.  The Dems are standing there and eating it, like some sort of abused spouse.

There's only one minor problem with that.  It's morally repugnant, and nothing will change the status quo of eternal GOP control unless our side is willing to fight.  So far, the Dems are not willing to fight.

And that brings us to the right question.  The question that painfully few people are asking.

Why aren't the Dems fighting back?  They have the tools.  They have the means.  They don't use them.  The options are "off the table."  They "aren't in the spirit of bi-partisanship." 

Specifically, why are the Dems lying down and taking this in the bicameral poop chute?  I'll tell you my answer to this: I believe the Dems are fully aware of what's going on.  I believe they know damn well exactly what's at stake here, exactly what the GOP is up to and exactly what the GOP's goal is:  the end of two-party rule in this country.

The *real* issue here is that the Dems see what the GOP is up to, and they like it.  The Dems' response to this seems to be "Let the GOP do the dirty work, then we'll get elected because they are bad people and use the power and the precedents they have established."

They think they can outsmart the GOP and take the power from them.  Only the Dems are too clever by half, the GOP has rigged the game so that the Dems will never be able to do so, and it comes right back down to "When your side plays by the rules and the other side makes their own, you lose." 

The GOP is making their own rules at this point, with the goal of permanent one-party control, led by the White House.  This is the only explanation that makes sense for the GOP's actions and reaction to the Dems.

The Dems think they can wrest control of this one-party rule away from the GOP if they wait for the GOP to overplay their hand.  This is the only explanation that makes sense for the Dems' actions and reactions to the GOP.

One side of course has to be incorrect, strategically speaking.  Both outcomes cannot co-exist, either the GOP controls the country for the foreseeable future, or the Dems do.

Now, for heaven's sakes, before you jump on me here, I have to say that the Dems fighting back is the morally correct thing to do in order to preserve our democracy and chaecks and balances.  I know this, you all know this.  But it's time we accepted that the rules have changed on both sides, and the playing field is rigged.

It's time to stop asking "How are the Dems blowing this?" and start asking "How do we motivate the Dems to save this country's system of government through enlightened self-interest?"

Because fighting back is not only the right thing to do, it's the only way the Dems will *ever* get the GOP's vampire fangs off the neck of America.

No more Clintonian triangulating.  No more manuevering.  No more political games.  It's times to take the gloves off.  Hell, it's time to take the gloves off, grab roll of nickels, and then swing for the groin.

The GOP is going for all or nothing here.  It's scorched, salted, blasted, radioactive, blackened glass time.  Hell, with Iran, that image may be literal.  So we've got to hit back.  We've got to call the GOP out on every goddamn thing they do, and then use what we have to make sure everyone sees the goal.

Their goal is permanent one-party rule.  Our goal must be to make the world see what their goal is, and then stop them.  Everything must be done with that in mind.  The Dems in Congress and running for President must be convinced that this must be their goal as well.

No quarter.  No mercy.  We can't afford it any longer.  And the first step is admit that right now, we can give no quarter, no mercy, and that we can't afford to do so any longer.

The second step is to ask the right questions.

Excellent! (0.00 / 0)
It's not the people that are passive aggressive.  It's the Democrats.
Perfectly put!

I don't agree with all your analysis, however.  But you are definitely pointing in the right direction in terms of what our analysis should be.

In particularly, I think you've gotten it slightly wrong when you say:

The *real* issue here is that the Dems see what the GOP is up to, and they like it.  The Dems' response to this seems to be "Let the GOP do the dirty work, then we'll get elected because they are bad people and use the power and the precedents they have established."
I don't think there is a single mindset that the Dems have, and I certainly don't think they like it.  But they have different ways of rationalizing it that substitute for aggressively fighting back.  And I do agree that you've touched on some of the elements of rationalization that go around.

More to the point, however, is the simple fact of how they are acting, and here I have no disagreement with you.  I do, however, have a suggestion about where we need to expand our gaze, and that's to the role of the media in framing everything.  The Democrats need to be thinking strategically in terms of fighting the GOP in the media as a primary battlefield.  And so do we.

"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

[ Parent ]
good comments (0.00 / 0)
Read my post on Spitzer.  What's interesting about that example is that Spitzer is fighting, but he's not making progress.  And the public doesn't like that, and I can see why.  I don't like it.

I think a big part of the problem is that Democrats in Congress consider their base a junior partner instead of an early warning system of larger problems.  When we're frustrated they don't react or see it as an opportunity to begin a real dialogue.

Based on my interactions with 'netroots coordinators', they tend to think that their job is to protect their boss from criticism instead of bring that criticism internally to create change from within.

It's a huge problem.  In fact I'm going to post on it.

[ Parent ]
Yes, I Read It (0.00 / 0)
It was a very good post.  It's not like there's an either/or choice between "Rocky" and Tamanny Hall.

"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
[ Parent ]
I hope I'm wrong on that issue. (0.00 / 0)
I really do.  I hope I'm too cynical about that part, about the Dems letting the GOP doing the heavy lifting and then trying to out-Rove Rove.

"But they have different ways of rationalizing it that substitute for aggressively fighting back."

That's just it, Paul.  The Dems rationalize while the other guys are beating the crap of them with those spiked nail bats you see in cartoons.

Action.  Action is what is needed.  Jim Webb hitting Lindsey Graham right between the eyes this morning on MTP.  We need more of that.  We need street-fighters, not rationalizers.  The Dems are letting the GOP define every aspect of the political reality because they refuse to challenge the control of the perception of that reality.

The Dems react, rather than act.  They are always issuing "responses" and "corrections" and "fact-checking analysis papers" and "press releases in reaction".

The Dems need to come out and open up with chopping the GOP off at the knees.  When the other guy is cheating and pulling aces out of his sleeve, you don't try to win with a pair of threes.  You call the guy out, you flip the table over, and you go after the guy until he's down.

We have to challenge everything, because the GOP control everything.  They are relentless.  It doesn't matter if some of them "break rank", it makes them look human.  What matters is they always have 40 votes in the Senate when they need it and then they invariably have Joe Lieberman for 41.

Action means kicking Lieberman to the curb.  Action means going out there every week on the Democratic Address and the Sunday talk shows and the morning show interviews and the evening news and calling out what the GOP is doing, and putting in the context of the whole, every day, every time, every way, always.

The perception is that the Democrats are weak.  It's time to change the perception through action, and change the actions through changing the perceptions.

[ Parent ]
Or As I Like To Put It... (0.00 / 0)
The Dems need to come out and open up with chopping the GOP off at the knees.  When the other guy is cheating and pulling aces out of his sleeve, you don't try to win with a pair of threes.  You call the guy out, you flip the table over, and you go after the guy until he's down.

"They didn't bring a knife to a gunfight.  They brought a plactic spoon to a nuclear war."

"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

[ Parent ]
Passive Aggressive Polling Responses | 32 comments
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