The excited base

[yesthattom]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/10/03355/4942
The big talk today on DailyKos is that the Democrats are fighting back:

Democrats in Washington and around the country are organizing for a year of confrontation and resistance, saying they are determined to block Bush’s major initiatives and thereby deny him the mandate he has claimed from his reelection victory last November.

Four years ago the Dems took the bait and switch of Bush’s call for bipartisanship but they won’t be fooled again:

Bush has opened the year with calls for bipartisanship, telling newly elected members of Congress last week that he hoped to work across party lines to solve the country’s problems. Democrats, however, appear to have little interest in building bridges to the White House, saying they do not believe Bush is genuinely interested in cooperation or compromise with the opposition. “The president’s idea of bipartisanship is, ‘Here’s what I want to do, join me,’ “ said Rep. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “It isn’t about negotiating. It isn’t about compromise. It’s almost this belief that they have the monopoly on what’s best for the country.”

(Go New Jersey!)

Where did the Dems find their new backbone? Well, the blogs are taking credit for giving them the media cover required to do this, but I think it’s a couple factors:

• The Dean movement proving that fighting works better than, uh, not fighting. Duh. Though it was insulting that at the time the DNC didn’t “get it”, its good to see that now that they’ve lost what should have been an easy win, they’re starting to understand.
• An excited base. The base got excited in the last election and now is organized and working hard. With the elecetion over, there’s a lot of idle hands looking for good things to do. We’re calling our reps, demanding that they fight. this is the point that the media isn’t covering
• The blogs giving them media cover (gotta give them some credit)

Last week was a turning point for the Democrats. The strong show of force from the excited base telling the Dem leadership, “Damn it, if you aren’t going to fight, we’re going to fight for you.” Not just the letters and phone calls, but the appearance of hundreds of people, many from Ohio, demanding that the Dems start fighting. Make them fight for every inch. As they say, “if the people lead, the leaders will follow.”

The tea is in the harbor.

To make sure that they continue, we need to keep up the support: Encouraging Dems to keep fighting and pressure to the Republicans to keep them on the run (letters, phone calls, lobbying).

Comments

[rmd.livejournal.com]

you used the blink tag. i hate you, milkman yesthattom. i'd convinced myself that the tag had gone away.

lo, i claim my revenge.

curse you and your blink tags, yesthattom!

(er, not to detract from the actual content of your post, which i find (as usual) generally interesting)

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

bwaaa hahahahaha! I used that tag sort of as a joke, and then was disappointed when the joke failed since I use Safari which doesn't implement the tag.

I'm glad to see that someone noticed it!

(oddly enough, Safari recognizes the evil tag that you used)

Tom

[arfur]

um, full-on annoying on this end.

-bb, going to find that option (js pref?) to disable the tag in Firefox...

[arfur]

ah. there we go.

[jss]

> The tea is in the harbor.

Yeah, but it was accidentally dumped there by a guy named Charlie on the stevedore crew. He and his foreman put about the lie that it was "a bunch of patriot guys dressed up in, um, Indian costumes who threw the tea in the harbor 'cause they were sore about the tea-tax" so they could get a decent hourly wage with fringe benefits.

Just ask Stan Freeberg.