Sunday, December 5, 2010

Maddow, Sanders and Blogpals Speak Out, But Will Dems Stand Strong?

I haven't posted the last week or two, for one simple reason: I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over again: rich getting richer, GOP building their wealth and power, Dems can only maintain a backbone for a week or two before compromising, yadda, yadda, yadda...I'm feeling like a broken record. (Kids, records were what we used to buy before you could fit your entire music collection in the back pocket of your 501s...) It's not that I have writer's block. I know what needs to be written about. But my dear fellow Politicos, to be perfectly honest, I am feeling politically stuck.

What we see happening politically is all so typical for our party - two steps forward, three steps back...but I am not alone in my views. This from @Auriandra on twitter:
If Obama had been willing to stand firm on ending unaffordable tax breaks for billionaires, he could have made case on tv, as Reagan did.
From a fellow Politico, Lawrence Young, on Open Scandal:
Sitting here, I notice that the tourists are the ones in shorts and sandals. Since it’s about 50 degrees here, that seems a bit overly optimistic. Michelle Bachmann, with her too bright eyes, is snarling unproductively at a camera that we have to cut our spending but not now, not to the rich job makers. The only trickle I feel is the trickle of cold air pressing in from an open door.
(Please read the rest of his post, as it's a terrific read.)

My dear blogsistah Lauren, a satiric, snarky and hilarious writer in her own right at Think Spin, puts it this way in a comment to my last post:
The Republican's hypocrisy in wanting to cut government spending, yet making the Bush tax cuts permanent, makes my head spin 360 degrees.
I'm just sick of all the bullshit. Sick of the lobbyists running the government. Sick that the Supreme Court would allow corporations to spend as much money as they want on tv ads during elections.

WTF is going on here? This democracy has fallen and can't get up.

And this from Our Gal Rachel:

And this, from another favorite of Momma Politico, Sen. Bernie Sanders:
"What this debate is about whether or not we continue to take money from the middle class and working families of this country, who are struggling in a way that they have not struggled since the Great Depression, force their kids to borrow huge sums of money in order to provide $700 billion over a 10-year period to the wealthiest people in this country.
Mr. President, I hear my Republican friends, time and time again, coming down the floor of the Senate, and they say we have a huge deficit. We have a huge national debt. And today what they want to do is to drive that national debt up by $700 billion over the next 10 years in order to give huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. So please, my friends, say what you want, but stop talking about the deficit and the national debt when what you're doing today is driving that debt up by $700 billion over the next 10 years.
And second of all, what everybody in America knows is that what's going in our country today is that the middle class is collapsing, poverty is increasing, but the people on top are doing phenomenally well. In the last 25 years, 80 percent of all new income created in this country went to the top 1 percent. You don't have to worry about the top 1 percent. You don't have to worry about the top 1 percent. The millionaires and the billionaires in this country are doing just fine. . . .
And thirdly, Mr. President, what I would say without the slightest doubt is if these guys are successful in giving $700 billion more in tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, the next thing they'll do is run down onto the floor and they'll say, 'Oh, my word, the deficit and the debt are going up. We've got to cut Social Security, because we have such a large debt -- yeah, we've raised the debt by $700 billion, now we've got to cut Social Security. We can't afford to extend unemployment compensation. We just can't do it. ' "
(H/T @stonermc via Maddowblog)

I'm definitely not the only one seeing things this way. If you lean the way I lean (left, that is), you're probably feeling the same way.  I was so proud that the Senate Dems push for the GOP to filibuster, to let the country see them for what they really are, defenders of wealth and corporatism at the expense of the rest of us. Yet the next morning, there is already talk of compromise. Compromise again! My God.

Dems have already compromised and given everyone, yes, everyone, a tax break: they are offering a tax break to the first $250,000 of everyone's income, even the millionaires and billionaires. So already, everyone gets a tax break. Now, in order to get them to sign on to the disarmament treaty, which Reagan began so long ago, and to get a few other paltry victories, they want the rich to get a bonus. Ten times the size you or I or other middle class folks would receive. And here we are again, with the GOP preaching tax cuts for the rich, and we've come full circle to the trickle-down theory that their good St. Reagan espoused. We all saw how well that worked, yet how soon we forget!

I tend to be the eternal optimist, always believing in fighting the good fight. Those of you who follow MP know that. But I have to say, it's getting old. Is this going to be yet another Democratic majority and Administration that plays nice and sells us down the river for fear the GOP might play hardball? 
I'm really starting to wonder...

What do yo think, fellow Politicos? Is this political deja-voodoo economics? Give me some sense of hope that our party can beat history and stand up in the face of Reaganomics all over again. Put in your two cents (might just be one by now...) here on Momma Politico.