What will the Dems do now that they control Congress?

[Jon Miller]

Sounds better to me than what I had been hearing

JM

[Impaler[WrG]]

Habeus Corpus
Public Campaign Financeing

[Dinner]

I'm sorry that public campaign financing got shot down in the last California election. I guess most people don't care or don't know how corrupted by big money politics has become.

[Drake Tungsten]

It appears that Hoyer beat Murtha...

Nancy Pelosi has managed to severely scar her leadership even before taking up the gavel as the new speaker of the House. First, she played politics with the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee to settle an old score and a new debt. And then she put herself in a lose-lose position by trying to force a badly tarnished ally, Representative John Murtha, on the incoming Democratic Congress as majority leader. The party caucus put a decisive end to that gambit yesterday, giving the No. 2 job to Steny Hoyer, a longtime Pelosi rival.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/opinion/17fri2.html?ex=1321419600&en=822f450cc0697b4f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

I think this is a victory for moderates...

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
This seems to imply that (1) the antiwar movement, the environmentalists, and the labor unions have no control over whether or not they are co-opted, and (2) if the big bad Dems would just leave them alone, the antiwar movement, the environmentalists, and the labor unions could effect real change.

Color me dubious.

1) The average person doesn't know what goes on at the higher levels of the movement. The liberal leadership is always too willing to sell itself for a few crumbs and platitudes. The movement gets sold out and whithers. We haven't really seen much from the anti-war movement since the churches and liberals split from the communists who did the initial organizing and led it to support Kerry's bid for the Presidency, even if he wasn't an antiwar candidate.

2) The Dems haven't contributed to any significant meaningful change since the early 70s. They are thoroughly corrupt and in the back pockets of big business. But people remember when the Dems were a liberal party and so they keep hope alive, because their leaders are too willing to sell them out for a place at the kiddie table.

The progressive caucus in the Dems is half the size of the conservative caucuses: the DNC and the Blue Dog Caucus. Pelosi isn't considered a liberal in San Francisco, and Murtha was an unindicted co-conspirator in Abscam. In the Senate, nothing real can get done without the tacit approval of the GOP, and since they have been voting solidly as a block for years now, the Dems will be able to pass nothing unless 90%+ of the GOP Senators approve, which effectively means you have a coalition of the conservative Dems with the GOP, so what has changed?

The only thing I see is less people protesting because now they think their side is in control.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I think this is a victory for moderates...

Hoyer and Murtha are both conservatives Democrats. Murtha just has a less conservative position on the war.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
Habeus Corpus
Public Campaign Financeing

Not gonna happen. You don't have veto proof majorities in either chamber of the Congress.

[Drake Tungsten]

Hoyer and Murtha are both conservatives Democrats. Murtha just has a less conservative position on the war.

Pelosi being weakened and having less ability to control the more moderate members of her caucus is the victory I'm talking about.

[chequita guevara]

Pelosi's a moderate by any civilized standard.

[Drake Tungsten]

Commies aren't civilized, sir. They were the greatest butchers of the last century.

[chequita guevara]

Uh, no. Capitalism killed multiple times what the Communists killed.

[Drake Tungsten]

Capitalism saved the world from Fascism and Communism. I know you're upset that your side lost, but capitalists are still the heroes of the story...

[chequita guevara]

No, you're just another set of bad guys. You just have prettier cages.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Actualy Drake its was Democracy paired with massive Kenzian state controled Capitalism and FDR's massive expantion in Welfare that ended the GreatDepression and won WW2.

[Drake Tungsten]

I trust your opinion more if you could actually spell "Keynesian"...

Not to mention "actually", "controlled" and "expansion".