Okay, Don’t Take My Word For It….
If my screeching hasn’t convinced you the Democrat Party is being run by dopes, take it from Ralph Nader.
Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez grilled him on Democracy Now! after the shellacking the Dems suffered earlier this week. Nader said the Dems are set to embark on a plea-copping orgy, blaming everybody and everything but themselves for Tuesday’s massacre.
And, no, this type of thing does not “always happen” as some wags are opining. The GOP slaughter has brought us the most nearly-homogenous, ultra-conservative Congress in more than a hundred years. The Republican victory in the 2014 Mid-Term Elections was indeed historic.
Nader
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Nader — whom many Dems still love to blame for Al Gore’s snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory in 2000 — told Goodman/Gonzalez “the Democrats have got to recognize they have to have a change of leadership.”
Here, here.
When Gonzalez mentioned the barrels of cash dumped into this election by various PACs and political sugar-daddies, Nader reminded him that both the Republicans and the Democrats benefited from such largesse. “The Democrats raised huge amounts of money this time around and in 2012 in their own right, plenty of money to win,” he said.
As I railed on Wed., scads of humans might detest the GOP and what it stands for but the Dems offer voters nothing as an alternative. “[P]eople back home are not given enough reason to vote for the Democrats,” Nader said. “But they’re given plenty of emotional reason to vote for the Republicans because of all the social issues — the school prayer, the reproductive rights, the gun control. The Democrats have dropped the economic issue that won election after election for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman. They can no longer defend our country against the most militaristic, corporatist, cruel, anti-worker, anti-consumer, anti-environment, anti-women, even anti-children programs, the Republican Party. A lot of soul searching is needed….”
Do yourself a favor and listen to the entire interview.
Were I the King of the Democratic Party, I’d boot Harry Reid’s, Nancy Pelosi’s, and party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s asses right out the door. And I wouldn’t care if it was open or not.
Leaders?
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I am not sure why Pelosi is included as one to be kicked out the door. What needs kicking out is the Washington cadre of Democratic strategists and consultants. They don’t understand the cognitive psychology of voters, electoral history, effective messaging. What the do know is what to say to collect large fees from big contributors.
Michael:
There are about 207 million eligible voters in the U.S. Some 83 million cast their votes in the 2014 election. If one generously assumes that the dominant party received 60% of the total votes, they would have accumulated something shy of 50 million votes-or less than 25% of eligible voters. Is this a sweeping mandate demanding change? Or is the larger story that a significant majority of eligible voters in the U.S. could not be bothered to offer their opinion in this election? It is interesting to wonder what the U.S. might look like if it had followed Australia’s lead in 1925 and instituted compulsory voting, with the resulting 90+% voting participation.