Open Left

It's "The 80 Votes Mystique" all over again.

Remember when The Stimulus was being debated in February? Remember when we found out that The Obama White House's goal wasn't so much to get a truly effective bill, but rather "to get 80 votes in the Senate for it"? This is the problem plaguing them. They're willing to compromise their principles if it means a "grand bargain" compromise bill that magically gets 80 votes in the Senate and makes David Broder wet his pants in ecstasy. What they still don't seem to understand is that:

1) No matter how watered down it is, most Republicans will NEVER vote for a Democratic bill.

2) The American people won't feel all warm and fuzzy about an "80 votes in the Senate bipartisan centrist compromise!" if it means they still have no health care or no job or no civil rights or no future thanks to the climate crisis.

I don't know what it will take to get President Obama to realize the flaws in his "80 votes" thinking, but we need to keep calling it out for what it is. It just shows who the real "pragmatists" are.

Want to save marriage equality in Maine? Ask me how! ;-)

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by: Andrew Davey @ Mon Jun 29, 2009 at 10:59:07 AM CDT