Posted on 11/17/2006 12:06:34 PM PST by oblomov
The Democratic Party was not really ready for this. Democrats have been in the wilderness so long--since Ronald Reagan launched the conservative era twenty-five years ago--that older liberals began to think it was a life sentence. Bill Clinton was the party's rock star; he made people feel good (and occasionally cringe), but he governed in idiosyncratic ways that accommodated the right and favored small gestures over big ideas. The party adopted his risk-averse style. Its substantive meaning and political strength deteriorated further.
Then George W. Bush came along as the ultimate nightmare--even more destructive of government and utterly oblivious to the consequences.
The 2006 election closed out the conservative era with the voters' blast of rejection. Democrats are liberated again to become--what? Something new and presumably better, maybe even a coherent party.
This is the political watershed everyone senses. The conservative order has ended, basically because it didn't work--did not produce general well-being. People saw that conservatives had no serious intention of creating smaller government. They were too busy delivering boodle and redistributing income and wealth from the many to the few. Plus, Republicans got the country into a bad war, as liberals had decades before.
On the morning after, my 6-year-old grandson was watching TV as he got ready for school. He saw one of those national electoral maps in which blue states wiped away red states. "Water takes fire," he said. Water nourishes, fire destroys. How astute is that? It could be the theme for our new politics.
With Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate, we can now return to a reality-based politics that nourishes rather than destroys. The party's preoccupation with "message" should take a back seat to "substance"--addressing the huge backlog of disorders and injuries produced by conservative governance.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...
The author is admitting that he has the brain of a 6-yr old.
No, wait, he's admitting that he WISHES he had the brain of a 6-yt old. Typical of The Nation.
I doubt that I've ever agreed before with anything The Nation had to offer. I find myself agreeing with only a single statement in the cited piece. Namely,--that GWB is the ultimate nightmare --- a pleasant fellow with whom to share ownership of a baseball team or to share a pitcher of beer, but as president---a terrible mistake; a mistake that I voted for twice. But the Rove cabal made an accurate assessment in closed, secret session by asking the rhetorical question: '' Where are the usual Republican voters going to go? We're their only choice.'' And, he was right.
Anyone who uses the word "government" and "nourish" in the same sentence is a fool.
The government "nourishes" nothing but its own power as it feasts on then sovereignty of its own people.
Still not ready for prime time....
Huh? Bit overblown,I'd say... so many words with so little to say. Bush and his family are always welcome in my home and they could leave their money at home and I wouldn't have to count the silverware...
The number of lies and falsehoods in this piece defy even The Nation's record of dishonest journalism. Almost every paragraph is an achievement worthy of Goebbels. Or too infantile even for Dr. Seuss fans.
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