Massachusetts voters wanted to send a message to Washington, Weezie2008. At the top of the list was how the Dems handled health care the last year.

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I think that most of the senators, congresscritters, and the president behave like they really don’t believe in the party platform. They timidly trot out watered down versions of Democratic priorities then wait for the Republican Hammer of Disapproval to come – or from some Blue Dog to bully them into watering it down more. I have a hard time believing in our progressive principles if everyone we elect has internalized the notion that “The country is conservative and no one wants liberal ideas anyway! It is impossible! Crazy! Stupid!”

So yeah. Obama is weak. Congress is weak. The Senate is SUPER weak. And we the voters are weak. We talk a good game about principles, but the polls show that we generally don’t support a given idea for longer than a season of American Idol. The people we elect reflect our own weak, intellectually lazy, mercurial, and peasant-minded selves.

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If it was not for DOMA Congress would of passed a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage and getting the 3/4 of the state legislatures to vote for that ban would of been easy. How would you like that.

As for DOMA, Clinton said it was necessary to head off the possibility of Congress passing a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage.
http://blog.gayrightswatch.com/2009/08/bill-clinton-dont-ask-dont-tell-the-gays-fault/

Their was never a DADT bill to sign, Congress added a rider to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 H.R. 2401 passing a law codifying and confirming the pre-Clinton policy. That statute, technically named Section 654, Title 10, P.L. 103-160, “Military Personnel Eligibility Act of 1993.”, The statute, clearly states that homosexuals are not eligible for military service.

Clinton defied congresses and established the DADT policy through Executive Order after negotiation with some in congress. It was congress that set the DADT parameters with the threat if Clinton did anything more aggressive with Executive Order, they would just write a veto proof law forbidding it.

H.R. 2401 passed the senate veto proof 77 to 22 http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=103&session=1&vote=00380

No one held a gun to Clinton’s head and forced him to sign that bill or DOMA or anything else. The fact that he did speaks volumes about his willingness to throw a minority under the bus for a political advantage.

Please go ahead and worship the Clintons I and many, many other folks know they will sell anything and anybody out to get power. They have no honor and no ethics.

Some of what you say I agree with. Other parts, I don’t. But if you are the paradigmatic progressive, and I the paradigmatic moderate, then we agree on enough that a center-left financial overhaul bill should be a piece of cake. So we should get to work.

ogenec, again,
It hasn’t worked yet, and so desperate Dems are now voting for Repubs, but it will work in the future because . . .why?

I’m not avoiding the question; I just don’t know how to answer it without giving an overly long response. Even by my standards. Most people here care passionately about politics. They devour new and old media, and are up on the latest political arcana, which they’d happily debate into the night. But most regular folk aren’t like that. They just want things to work. Good schools, good roads, good jobs. And they will vote for the person who convinces them they will deliver these things. From 2006 through 2008, we Democrats put this proposition to the test. And it worked. As an example of the then-new religion, see this “solutionist” post by Dionne from 2007: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/08/AR2007110801806.html

Now in VA and in MA, it is the Republicans who have learned the lesson. When Deeds tried to make it all about McConnell’s thesis, McConnell was discussing issues, like transportation, that matter intensely to Virginia. Same with MA: while we were trying to make it all about the cultural issues, Brown shed the Republican tag and touted his moderate bona fides. NY-23 is a bit of an outlier, but also provides proof: the rabid Tea Partier turned off Republican-leaning independents, who defected to the Democrat.

Someone, likely a Republican, has convinced us that we need to course correct from what worked in 2006-08. That we need to adopt the old Republican model of pushing hot button cultural issues, while the Republicans (!!) wrap themselves in the solutionist mantle. That strategy will always meet with defeat for Democrats. We are better off working with moderates wherever we find them, be they in the Democratic or the Republican party. The folks want solutions; they give f**k-all about labels.

So the strategy will work because, at least for Democrats, it is the only thing that has. Again, I will invoke the presidency of Clinton. Whether by choice or by political necessity, Obama will have to govern in the way set out in his diary. There is a reason why no modern progressive has been elected to the office of the President, let alone governed in the way you would like. I just heard on C-Span that the WH is now looking for a slimmed-down healthcare bill. Sounds like they got the memo.

Of course 60 votes have not helped us so far. Without competent executive leadership, we could have 65 votes and still not succeed.

Sammy boy led the campaign against Clinton lifting the ban on homosexuals in the military. In 1993 President Bill Clinton attempted to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military. It was one of the most contentious efforts of his administration, sparking months of intense debate. Following twelve legislative hearings and field trips, Congress passed a law codifying and confirming the pre-Clinton policy. That statute, technically named Section 654, Title 10, P.L. 103-160, “Military Personnel Eligibility Act of 1993.”, The statute, which has been upheld by the courts as constitutional several times, clearly states that homosexuals are not eligible for military service.

By the beginning of 1993, it appeared that the military’s ban on gay personnel would soon be overturned. Shortly after his inauguration, President Clinton asked the Secretary of Defense to prepare a draft policy to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and he proposed to use the interim period to resolve “the real, practical problems that would be involved” in implementing a new policy. Clinton’s proposal, however, was greeted with intense opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, members of Congress, the political opposition, and a considerable segment of the U.S. public.

After lengthy public debate and congressional hearings, the President and Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, reached a compromise which they labeled Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue. Under its terms, military personnel would not be asked about their sexual orientation and would not be discharged simply for being gay. Engaging in sexual conduct with a member of the same sex, however, would still constitute grounds for discharge. In the fall of 1993, the congress voted to codify most aspects of the ban. Meanwhile, the civilian courts issued contradictory opinions, with some upholding the policy’s constitutionality and others ordering the reinstatement of openly gay military personnel who were involuntarily discharged. Higher courts, however, consistently upheld the policy, making review of the policy by the U.S. Supreme Court unlikely.
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/HTML/military_history.html

ogenec, again,
It hasn’t worked yet, and so desperate Dems are now voting for Repubs, but it will work in the future because . . .why?

Whow! I didn’t realize that Sam Nunn was president so he not Clinton signed DADT and DOMA into law? Wonder if Monica was giving Sammy boy hum jobs while he did it!

Yes, LL, you’re right. It’s the same issue. If you’re a bank whose butt just got rescued, you are going to be very gun-shy about putting that money into this bad an economy. You’d rather “save” it by investing in ultra-safe things. That’s how they are getting the immense profits: they are borrowing at close to zero, as you said, and lending to the big, highly-rated corporates. They then are taking the proceeds and engaging in proprietary trades. Sometimes the trading department is shorting the securities of companies that the investment bank arm is selling! That’s precisely the kind of conflict I was talking about. The same kind that led us to separate commercial from investment banking.

Hence the liquidity problem for Main Street. Banks and consumers have the money, but they won’t lend to the people who need it.

Well, at least now he’s not going back to 1992 and blaming Clinton. Maybe this is the first sign that he’s going to focus on actual REPUBLICAN policies as the root of the problem. Maybe he’ll look into the great redistribution of wealth – taking from the middle class and transferring it to the bank accounts and trust funds of the top 1-5%. I mean, the big idea President did say it would trickle down.

I can’t speak to the military-industrial complex. I know nothing about it. I’m not sure what you mean exactly by corporate welfare. If you mean that Main Street rescued Wall Street via money transfers intermediated by the government, I agree with you. I probably disagree with you in my assessment that it was necessary. But the root problem is that the financial companies took too much risk, which begat the need to rescue them in the first place. That’s what I mean by laissez faire. Derivatives and securitizations are VERY valuable financial tools, provided they are regulated and used prudently. That didn’t happen, and the system almost collapsed.

As for banks not lending, that’s a natural reaction. Economists even have a term for it: “The Paradox of Thrift.” Rescued banks will be very loath to lend again, but that reluctance is peversely what makes the economy so bad to begin with. It’s a liquidity problem. This is why we needed targeted stimulus spending, to boost consumer confidence and, hence, the willingness to lend. Plus small biz is inherently riskier than big biz, so banks are more leery. Government should provide guarantees and other incentives to encourage lending to small business.

It hasn’t worked yet, and so desperate Dems are now voting for Repubs, but it will work in the future because . . .why?

Actually, it isn’t. What we’ve had is unabashed corporate welfare, with corporations writing laws and huge financial transfers from the working people to the fat cats, including humungous bailouts. Plus the ongoing Pentagon corporate welfare program, seven hundred billion or so per year for useless military expenditures.

And the banks are now lending less money to small business than they were before the bailouts! So don’t call it laissez faire, call it what it is, corporate welfare.

But what you believed would work hasn’t worked.
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Not yet it hasn’t. But it will.