What you say is true, but I maintain that voters did not vote for Reagan as against Carter. The landslide was not so much a victory for Reagan as a massive defeat for Carter.

I base my conclusions on many conversations overheard in "The Workingman's Palace", a blue collar bar on Grand Avenue in the Chicago Suburb of Elmwood Park. The most vocal were men of my father's age, i.e. the WWII generation. They saw or were part of the defeat of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. They were bewildered by the outcome of Vietnam and absolutely incensed by the hostage situation. They felt that Carter was "chicken" and should invade Iran. Inflation was eating their standard of living and Iran was hitting them right in their macho self-image. They blamed it all on the President. The term "Reagan Democrats" is apt. They were Democrats not Republicans. They weren't impressed by supply-side economics or ideologically opposed to big government.  Indeed, they believed in big government and its power. Therefore, if things weren't right, it was the government (leaders) fault, not a systemic failure. They weren't anti-union. Probably 30-40% of them were union members. I have to admit that over 50% of them were racist and that's being generous, but that was sadly typical of blue collar ethnics.

Yeah, that's the problem. I wanted Reid to put it to a cloture vote early on and see if the whiners really had the guts to nuke healthcare when it came right down to it. If they did, that would have been the time to announce the new rules and make them stick, then have another cloture vote. It's understandable that the Dems buy into the "politics is addition" meme, but that doesn't apply to cloture votes -- those who join the GOP barrier should henceforth be treated as Republicans in every way because they've proved themselves worthless as Democrats.

Given the difficulties of getting rid of the god-damned filibuster, or at least modifying it to let a little democracy in, it seems to me getting reliably hardass about cloture votes is the only hope the Dems have for passing major Democratic legislation for the rest of the Congress. It will be the final exam on whether they're more interested in their pompous "collegiality" or in getting stuff done. If they flunk it they'll pay a terrible price this November.

FDR's response to progressive demands: "I agree. Now go out and make me do it."

Feingold

Done for me, I see. The Official List, however, consists of Kucinich, Kucinich, and Kucinich.

The level egotism required to believe that somehow one lives in uniquely crappy times, or that one has been singled out for the punishment of being born after the Golden Age, is something I can't muster.


Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. J.K. Galbraith

And it's difficult to see how there can be real party discipline in a system handcuffed by a creaky Constitution and decades of rules designed to obstruct change. The universal equanimity about our dysfunctional system is the most obvious proof that we have no real Left in this country.

FDR's response to progressive demands: "I agree. Now go out and make me do it."

"Well if Democrats generally support policies of apartheid against Palestinians, then Lieberman is the least of your problems."

No offense, but you don't live here, do you? Lieberman is one of our many, many problems. It is absolutely impossible for me to imagine a political scenario wherein Lieberman was "whipped" into line by blackmailing him on the Israel issue.

I generally agree with your comments about results, but our legislative body is too different from the European models to compare "apples to apples." If we had more powerful third, fourth, fifth, etc parties, I believe you would see greater party discipline.

It's not irresponsible to oppose Israeli policies; it's irresponsible to set state-to-state policies based on what one senator does or doesn't do on health care cloture votes.