Sunday, September 26, 2010

Slouching Toward Washington - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com

Slouching Toward Washington - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com



While I find some solace in knowing that Sharron Angle will not procreate, and am a bit tickled by Christine O'Donnell's stupidity, their views are alarming. They wouldn't be so alarming were they not in striking distance from being sworn into the U.S. Senate, but alas they are.

Which calls attention to the bigger takeaway from Bill Maher's show on Friday night: his dead-on analysis of the current situation by noting that Democrats "couldn't sell a rum and Coke to Lindsey Lohan."

How do you manage to let Republicans run on a platform of holding middle class tax cuts hostage to tax cuts for the rich who snagged the lion's share of the income gains over the past decade at the expense of everyone else?

How do you let Republicans convince the public that the healthcare reform bill was a bad idea ("Obamacare!") and needs to be repealed? Is there no one in the Democratic brain trust that realizes that all it takes is to round up a few kids with spina bifida who'd reached the lifetime cap on their insurance policies and don't want to return to "Boehnercare"? You know, where they're expected to just fend for themselves while their families go to the poorhouse trying to save them and then go die quietly in the corner?

And like Bill Maher pointed out, what's keeping Democrats from putting an injured gay vet on the floor of the Senate and daring Republicans to vote against his/her right to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces?

The highly fractious, overly cautious, intensely nuanced, clutch-the-pearls-and-head-for-the-fainting-couch Democrats need to get a grip and find a message fast. Like the one that they keep swatting away from their eyes like a gnat. The one where they highlight and embrace what they've done so far and contrast it with what the Republicans did in their eight years in power: enrich the rich and bankrupt this country while telling us peons to wave the flag and pray.

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