"This is shaping up to be quite a victory for the GOP. Unless something changes, they’re about to see a core Democratic program cut – and the Democrats will take the heat for it! The only thing that can stop that outcome is concerted public pressure from the Democratic base."
Such a push is not going to be easy, considering that there is still far too much Hopium abuse among the faithful. But some are trying to get Democratic brains working. Eskow himself points out that
"The president’s “sequester” offer slashes non-defense spending by $830 billion over the next ten years. That happens to be the precise amount we’re implicitly giving Wall Street’s biggest banks over the same time period."
Hmmmmm . . .
So what is to be done about this cabal of Republicans of today and Republicans from 1985? Rob Hager asks:
"What if progressives and others forming the incipient movement [which] Chris Hedges describes as those "who have as deep a revulsion for Democrats as they do for Republicans," had in 2012 organized themselves into a small but decisive swing voting bloc to remove the impediment to majority rule: money in politics?"
This is basically the strategy behind what the Tea Baggers did, even if the specific issues differ, so it isn't far-fetched. And it works. No one can say that Tea Baggers don't have the rest of the GOP looking over their shoulders.
Some of us tried to get this alternate progressive movement going, advocating voting for third party candidates as the means to gain the attention of the Democrats that they are losing us. We are tired of DLC DINOs taking us for a ride every four years only to see the Republicans get at least 98 percent of their demands met, while we of the Left get more appeals for increasingly scarce money as if politics were a Nigerian email scam. Can it be any wonder the GOP doesn't give up on their plans, when they know all they need to do is wait long enough and Obama will deliver?
There has been a lot of bragging by Democrats and their media allies about how the Republicans are close to finished, that several currently red states will turn purple if not blue. It isn't going to matter what gets said. Some out there see this, as evidenced by Ed Kilgore of the Washington Monthly in a discussion with Alternet Radio Hour host Joshua Holland on February 23, 2013. Beginning about 24:15, Kilgore talks about how conservatives are patient, that they can wait 50 years to gain total political power, as [paraphrasing] "it only takes a short while to completely eliminate the social safety net." Or anything else that progressives value.
Article comments
1 - troll
...both trains have the same destination - neither of their tracks leads to a just agenda - US party politics its punditry (Maddow and Klein not excepted) and its resulting government are of by and for the 1% who make the decisions about investment of surpluses
its a safe bet that the 99% will get as little of these as necessary to quell unrest...which apparently leaves lots of room for continued deconstruction of new deal safeguards
this should come as no surprise and there's no reason for optimism - its past time to shift the focus of progressive political action to the development of alternative forms of governance and mutual aid
(one thing to take away from the experiences of the occupy groups is that there is material support to be had from communities for social experiments)
support your local food-not-bombs group (for lack of better current options)
welcome back Realist
2 - roger nowosielski
Looks like you've just described a train wreck, troll . . .