Senator Charles Schumer just posted a little note explaining why winning electoral contests isn’t enough. You have to have the right sort in office:
The excitement I see in the netroots, and across the country, surrounding this year’s presidential campaign is incredible. As many of you already know, record turn-out numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. The grassroots aren’t just showing up to vote: life-long Democrats and first-time voters alike are working side-by-side as volunteers, going online to spread the word, and dialing up supporters at phone banks. I’ve even seen the excitement in the faces of my two daughters who, for the first time, are actively interested in an election that didn’t involve their father. This energy is an amazing asset to our party.
Winning the presidency isn’t enough. Whether it’s President Obama or President Clinton, they are going to need a Democratic Senate that can pass, instead of obstruct, a progressive agenda.
Oh, I couldn’t agree more. We desperately “need a Democratic Senate that can pass, instead of obstruct, a progressive agenda.”
We need a Democratic Senate that does not confirm an Attorney General like Michael Mukasey, who won’t say whether waterboarding is torture, who refuses to open an investigation into acts of torture even when conspirators come out and say in public that it happened.
We need a Democratic Senate that does not confirm the likes of General Michael Hayden, handing the civilian Central Intelligence Agency over to the military control of the very general who masterminded a vast system for the secret surveillance of Americans without a warrant.
We need a Democratic Senate that is willing to revoke the Military Commissions Act which repealed the right of Habeas Corpus to have criminal charges brought before a court of law.
We need a Democratic Senate that won’t vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act like the Senate did in 2006.
We need a Democratic Senate that is at least as willing to censure George W. Bush for his actions against the Constitution as it was willing to censure Bill Clinton for getting an extramarital blowjob.
Senator Charles Schumer has dropped the ball on all of these matters. Clearly, then, by posting about how we all “need a Democratic Senate that can pass, instead of obstruct, a progressive agenda,” Schumer means to apologize for his obstruction of the progressive agenda. I look forward to Senator Schumer’s follow-up message in which he explains exactly how he means to remedy all these obstructions of the progressive agenda. Or does Senator Schumer merely mean to announce his retirement? Yes, that must be it. I’ll circle the date, Chuck.
Indeed. Resign, Schumer, and let us New Yorkers finally elect at least one progressive senator.
We need social programs that work not the same old same old from the democratic party. New Orleans is a great example of a liberal government gone wrong.
We need an education system that works, NYS spends more per student then any other state in the country yet is ranked among the lowest performers
We need to know that our hard work, creativity and entrapanurial sprit can lead to financial prosperity and the opportunity to distribute that wealth to the social programs that we feel passionately about.
We should not have our individuality stifled by the weight of big government taking more and more.
We need more privatization of government programs
We need more teachers and professors who don’t push liberal or conservative propaganda.
I love this one: “We should not have our individuality stifled by the weight of big government taking more and more.”
But the thing is that big government isn’t taking more and more. Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Glory me, but after all those tax cuts, is the average American doing any better economically? No, we’re doing worse.
Do you know who’s taking more? Employers. Insurance companies. Big oil. Flimflam “faith-based” initiatives. Wall St.
Don’t forget food prices (though the small farmer is almost totally gone), the military industrial complex, and the top 5% of the people of the world who control about 50% of all the wealth and or resources when you list those taking more and more.
Listen at you vomiting the Liberal talking points? How are tax cuts bad and giving hand outs of government money that we don’t have, that only takes more away from the working man, good? You want to take from Big oil? Okay commrade communist! Do you realize that is a socialist/communist agenda? You cannot stick the governments paws in somebodies business, how is that freedom?If some business makes billions and trillions that is nobodies concern if it was my business I would not want the government taking my money, you talk about freedom but you want the Government to step in and take from a free market where working men and women work? How is that freedom, and if that can of worms is opened where does it stop? You Liberals don’t think you just want tom fall hook line and sinker in Communism.
Then you want to allow those that conspire against the Government with foreign communications with our enemies to be able to sue when this survelience law ends, that is what this is about but your throwing up a smoke screen, do you realize that? you are a tool, a pawn of all of Americas enemies all the while by screaming we are loosing our freedoms we will really loose our freedoms when we are dead .
We “just want tom fall hook line and sinker in Communism”?
If you’re going to screech right wing totalitarian ideology, you might at least try making sense as you do it.
Just how is this Tom person you speak of supposed to fall hook?