'THREAT' MADE IN LOUISIANA SENATE RACE: LANDRIEU WARNS OPPONENT 'THIS IS YOUR LAST CAMPAIGN'
Posted on 11/24/2002 10:42:20 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Outside View: Minority Vision An UPI Outside View commentary WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 (UPI) -- The Democrats lost their majority in the U.S. Senate because they haven't learned how to be a minority. If that seems senseless, consider: out-of-power political parties rise or fall on the quality of the substitute agenda they offer. If a minority party offers a strong, popular and clear alternative vision, voters will be intrigued -- perhaps enough to make a dramatic switch. If not, they won't. Why change horses mid-ride if the second horse is no different? It's not that the Democrats don't have differences with Republicans. They do. Nonetheless, the Democrats failed to show the voters a serious alternative agenda, even on issues they hoped would be key. Take prescription drug benefits. The Republican House approved a bill; the Democratic Senate did not. Democrat Majority Leader Tom Daschle wouldn't let the Senate vote on one. The Senate did pass the Schumer-McCain legislation to restrict the ability of drug companies to stop generic drug manufacturers from copying their patents. The bill ostensibly would lower drug prices somewhat, but it runs the risk of reducing the development of new drugs to combat dreaded afflictions. The Democrats had no answer for the latter problem and were vulnerable to charges that they'd be bought because most political donations made by generic drug companies went to Democrats. Therefore, Democrats never stressed the issue. Campaign contributions also made it impossible for Democrats to do anything but ignore the increasing number of specious lawsuits by trial lawyers against drug manufacturers, and the damage they do. These lawsuits tend to raise drug costs and depress the development of new drugs with little benefit to anyone but the trial lawyers and the Democrats who receive 90 percent of the trial lawyers association's campaign contributions. By their failure to set forth an aggressive agenda on any aspect of prescription drugs, Democrats rendered unnecessary any debate on the relative strengths of contrasting drug plans. This allowed Republican candidates to deflect Democratic criticism by casting the issue as "Republicans working; Democrats talking." Little wonder, then, that for all the Democrats' talk that prescription drugs would be a pivotal issue, it brought them little traction on Election Day. The Democrats also hoped to demonize Republicans on Social Security. They attacked any Republican who proposed Social Security reform by running ads portraying Republicans as dangerous to the elderly. Social Security's unsound finances are no secret. What is secret is what the Democrats plan to do about them -- if anything. Even some voters who dislike the GOP plan must have noticed that the GOP was the only party that cared enough to propose one. This might in part be why three Republican Senate candidates closely associated with a frank discussion of Social Security -- John Sununu in New Hampshire, Saxby Chambliss in Georgia and Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina -- won close races. Yet again, the Democrats had unnecessarily let the Republicans cast an issue as "Republicans working; Democrats talking." The Democrats similarly were unable to exploit the weak economy. They have not been shy about criticizing Bush's supposed inattention to domestic matters, but where is the Democratic game plan? There isn't one. The Democrat-run Senate never even bothered to approve a budget for the U.S. government for the 2003 fiscal year -- which began last Oct. 1. Whatever the merits of a case against Bush on the economy, he did at least propose a budget. Minority parties must do two things to succeed: have an attractive agenda and communicate it well to the voters. The Republicans used this model in the years leading up to the pivotal 1994 elections to decisively end decades as a minority party. Nonetheless, the Republicans, in many respects, still think like the minority they once were. The Democrats, on the other hand, still have many of the bad habits they acquired during many years in the majority. They avoid policy debates with the Republicans, often treating their rivals not as equals but acting as if the GOP is unworthy of notice. Republican proposals often are labeled "extreme" or "right-wing," but leading Democrats rarely bother to explain to the public just what makes them so. A minority party that doesn't present an attractive alternative to the status quo won't capture voter interest. If the Democratic Party wants to do better at the ballot box next time, it must develop a specific, appealing agenda -- and show the public that it is fighting vigorously for it.
(Amy Ridenour is president of The National Center for Public Policy Research, a non-partisan Capitol Hill think-tank. She can be contacted at aridenour@nationalcenter.org.)
("Outside View" commentaries are written for UPI by outside writers who specialize in a variety of important global issues.)
From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk
Published 11/23/2002 11:52 PM
'THREAT' MADE IN LOUISIANA SENATE RACE: LANDRIEU WARNS OPPONENT 'THIS IS YOUR LAST CAMPAIGN'
Out side of treason, murdering third trimester babies, and more money/power for vermin lawyers, the democats stand for nothing.
By law the Social Security "Trust Fund" consists of government bonds. In other words, an IOU written by the (Treasury of the) government, to the (Social Security office of) the government.If you write an IOU to yourself for a billion dollars, are you rich? If not, the SSTF is a sham.
For the Republicans the political problem is quite reminiscent of the trouble they had with the impeachment of Slick Willy--in upholding moral standards they were trampling on the toes of legions of people who were indisposed to see judgement cast, indirectly, on their own attitudes and mores. Because in its origins Social Security depended for its legitimacy on FDR's "Social Security Trust Fund."
The trouble has always been that calling the SSTF out for what it is raises the spectre that if Social Security payments are in fact a pyramid swindle not prefunded by the the recients' payroll tax, then Social Security payments are not a legitimately a government obligation.
Yet Social Security payments long since became an American tradition just like respect for the dollar is an American tradition. Something on which society now depends. As such it deserves and will have conservative support, its original provenance notwithstanding.
"Social Security Privatization" is nothing but a "risky scheme" to begin to make the SSTF economically real rather than the pure accounting fiction so beloved of socialist demagogues.
"...President Clinton's personal secretary, Betty Currie, clamped on one of the pins the day she testified to grand jury investigators... Loyalty to the entire Clinton administration is the reason Ann Lewis, director of White House communications, retrieved her eagle pin from its resting place a few weeks ago and took to wearing it again."
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