I hate to say it, but, here goes. Having had a majority in the House has helped Americans how? So, I’m not really sure how to take this news.

What are the tipping point seats? I have no interest in wasting resources on helping Blue dogs who are going to lose anyway, so why not make sure the best vulnerable ones avoid defeat so we have a precarious but more progressive majority

CO-04 is Marylin Musgrave’s district; remember her? She was a teabagger before there was a term for it.

Are these Blue Dog Dems, Progressives? Who is backing them Steny Hoyer, Rahm, uh just who gives cash to Progressives?

I think the silence here says a lot about what people think.

How many of these Dems are facing Tea Baggers? If a big bunch of Tea Baggers get elected I bet the government will get shutdown again.

Yawn…….

These sellouts have their cash and their cushy jobs lined up once they are rightfully removed.

Rahm can call us retards but that won’t help him on election day. Obama and Biden can tell us to buck up or whatever but they still have to answer Why?
Why should we vote for Blue Dogs?

Never heard of her before. Couldn’t make it through the whole clip. Too creepy. Is she why I should care about who is in the House?

I’m voting for the Greens this round. I can’t stomach pulling a lever for either Corporatist party.

I guess the only answer you’re likely to get is that even if they haven’t helped Americans, it’ll be worse under Republicans. That seems to be the standard answer these days for lots of questions.

*sigh*

Yes, that’s probably the only answer I’ll hear, but I’m not convinced that it could be worse.

She was an infamous creep here in CO, and made her creepiness on to national news every once in a while.

My point is that Markey is a Blue Dog, and that district, CO-04, made it’s most liberal attempt in decades putting Markey IN. It’s probably likely we’ll get the teatard result in that district this cycle.

When Democrat friends of mine were saying that the Republicam Party was dead in 2008, I told them that the Rethug Party is not dead. I knew that it could be revived by bad actions from the Democrats.

Continued War and MIC support was one reason. Letting Bush criminals off the hook was another. Spying on Americans and Retroactive Immunity for Telco was another ominous clue that things could turn bad for the D’s.

But the piece de resistance is this so-called HCR. And now the Social Security Grab on behalf of FIRE and Wall Street is yet another slap in the face.

They just refused to do right by the people and they revived the zombie Rethuglican Party.

Heck of a job.

I had missed that point. Thanks. I do love my tea, but it’s starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I might have to give up on following politics.

When you compare the major party candidates in Maryland’s 1st District — Blue Dog Democrat Frank Kratovil vs Raving Lunatic Republican Andy Harris — it’s hard to understand this “fuck both of the big parties” attitude.

Brand new independent polling shows that the race is too close to call.

That’s actually pretty good news for Democrats. If they’re really within striking distance in all these swing seats, there may not be nearly as many surprise losses in the “safe” districts.

I still think they’re in for a rout though. The common theme in all these polls is that even where the incumbent trails by a few, they’re well, well under 50%. That’s usually not good this close to an election.

Its better the Blue Dogs lose rather than have Obama brag he didn’t need us this election. He who can destroy a thing can control a thing.

I have a sense that very few here have ‘Russia Today’ in their top three ‘Go To’ destinations for US and International news, if at all.

For those who as yet have not swapped MSNBC for RT, I urge you to spend an hour or so discovering News and Opinions you have been craving for.

As usual, exercise your own commonsense judgement:

http://rt.com/USA.html

http://rt.com/About_Us/Programmes/CrossTalk.html

http://rt.com/On_Air.html

and more…

This poll was partially commissioned by an alliance of global warming gas polluters? Without seeing their likely voter models I’ll go ahead and take this polling with a grain of salt. Their margin of error is pretty high (4.9%) and I’ve not heard of the polling firm.

In my opinion polls of likely voters are underestimating Democratic turnout in this election. Especially in polls where the polsters have a vested interest in pleasing an anti-Democratic client…I doubt their model is keeping up with improving likely voter numbers for Democrats.

Not that Republicans aren’t going to win more than they lose this time out…but I’d add three or four points to the Dem side (more in California due to Prop 19) unless the model is explicitly showing a smaller “enthusiasm gap” than it did in August.

Why should we care if Blue Dogs lose its not like a purple district will likely elect a Tea Bagger so whats the difference?
The number of Tea Baggers in Red Districts who are not electable in a general election they very well might give us states we did not think we could get. Delaware is ours thanks to Chastity Satan Spice.
Harry Reid lucked out and got a Crazy Tea Bagger. Alaska well after the way the GOP treated Lisa Murkowski I don’t expect her to vote in anyway to please the GOP leadership or the Tea Party.
Can McCain expect AZ immigration foes to back him after he supported immigration for years? We do have opportunity the GOP is making mistakes.

Diary its cool what you are doing but your going off topic this is the second thread you did this on the Late Late nite threads this is ok.

That is because I am chaperoned and my comments occasionally suffer from over 2 hr delays, and you can figure out what that means to getting across ones message. So, bear with me or, better yet check it out and help me.

Don’t count yer chickens before they hatch.

There is much disdain for our ‘low information’ citizenry. I’m attempting to broaden the field, so we don’t miss the forrest for the shrubs.

Please don’t do that…unless polling shows the Green with a chance to win. Voting isn’t about feeling good about your choice, it’s about determining who will actually wield power. It’s a pragmatic, not an idealistic activity.

I really thought George Bush put to bed the notion that the parties are “all the same.” You have one party that’s 99.9% corporatist (and 50% batshit insane), and one that’s 20% corporatist, 20% awesome progressive, the rest wishy-washy careerists. One of these can be improved, and there are times when making them lose is the perfect way to do that. Now is not that time. We have but a few years to make an impact on global warming…as just one example of an issue that can’t wait…and not a single good bill will ever get past a Republican House. That’s at least two more years wasted. And if the House can weaken Obama with a million investigations…it could mean a Republican President in 2013.

We can’t risk it. Please vote your conscience in any primary election you want (hell, primary Obama if you want!) but voting is not a game and not a venue for anyone’s vanity or catharsis. The choice is between frustratingly slow progress, or no progress (or worse). I wish it weren’t so but that’s where we stand today.

Dude, nobody here is “low information.”

You wanna cure that, wear a cardboard sign on the street with “Russia Today!” on it and see where that gets you. heh.

The Dems are also 99% corporatist.

We need a real progressive party in this nation, and the Dems are not remotely it.

Have you looked at it, or is this a knee jerk reaction?

Pre-zactly (just made that up). When I saw the Dimocratic Representatives lining up like lemmings over the cliff to vote “yeah” in the House for HIR, and there was my nearly-spanking-brand-new Congresscritter Laura “Seven Foreclosures (or is it Eight?” Richardson of CA-37 going along to get along ~ I was gabberflasted.

Though she has a strong following within the district, I’m either writing in “Public Option” or voting for the Green candidate. (:>

This is complete bullshit.

Voting is the way we voice our opinions. Always has been and always will be. We are NOT forced to choose between the two political parties, no matter how often you and they claim we do. There are currently at least two (that I can think of) in the US Senate that were elected as an independant or third party running against a Democrat and a Republican.

It’s not only one’s right to voice their opinions in whatever way they choose, I would argue it’s their duty. It’s the way democracies are supposed to work. It’s just a bullshit self-fulfilling prophecy to say we must vote for one of the two major parties. We should vote for the major parties because the minor ones can’t win. Well the minor ones can’t win when we vote for the major parties. Nice self-fulling logic there. Still bullshit.

OFG,

We need a participatory democracy, something on the model of Brazil, and then some..

WTF, has FDL been annexed by DailyKos or Huffington Post? Because you are in the wrong place with that lesser evilism shit. “Voting isn’t to feel good, it is pragmatic”- where is the pragmatism in voting for one of two clones who will enact exactly the same policies? I have watched the assholes in power of both houses of Congress and the White House enact one corporatist policy after another that enriched the already wealthy while it fucked workers in the ass and I am through with them. FUCK OBAMA AND ALL DEMOCRAVENS.

Right now we have only been counting GOP chickens we need to show some pride a defeated attitude gets us nowhere.

Unclear whether there are 39 seats in play or not but this is less than 10% of the seats in HR and consistent with an average incumbency rate of well over 90%, meaning that very few seats could change who controls a majority of votes in the HR but nothing will change if we can continue to re-elect the likes of Barney Frank, et al. Bottom line the powers that be in the HR in both “parties” will not get the boot. Of course the base of the democratic party, unions, are against term limits for the HR or have been.

Fine do a Diary is all I’m saying or go to Late Late Nite and rant like I do:)

Late Nite is where I am hung up on for up to two hours. Again, are you familiar with RT, or does the word ‘Russia’ scare you off?

..

Actually I’ve been assured my opinions ARE welcome here. Or at least tolerated. I am coming over from DKos, but I’m usually one of the ones on the “WTF is wrong with the Democrats!?” side on that site. So I come here for Jane’s honest commentary on how the Democrats aren’t living up to their promise.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let my discontent affect my voting in the general. There is a difference between the parties and working within the Democratic party will have a bigger impact on what actually happens in national politics than going third party.

I support any changes to elections or the structure of government designed to let more parties have an impact. IRV, proportional representation, you name it. But in our system voting for a candidate that’s not one of the top two in a two-way race means your vote means nothing. You have the right to do that, or go howl in the corner, which will amount to the same thing the day after the election.

Minor parties can’t win because their candidates can’t attract enough votes. Greens are too liberal to win in any but a few locations in the country. The country likes a lot of progressive ideas individually, but when you roll them all up into one party or candidate, you’re looking at something like 25%-30% of the populace who will vote that way. Some pro-labor people don’t like a green agenda, or a marijuana legalization, or pro-choice, or gay marriage.

The biggest change we need on the left is an effort to begin winning the war of ideas, especially with young people. Millions of people in my generation of the 70′s and 80′s has bought into the Randian, Libertarian, noliberal economic bullshit. Essentially they’ve been trained to hold the opinions of rich people even though they aren’t. You can see these self-hating working-class Americans in every teabagger rally.

We need to recapture the intellectual high ground with college-age people in this country to build a true progressive majority. Then you won’t need a third party because Democrats will be able to run as progressives all over the country.

Hard as it may be to believe, voting for War is not an option. Voting for Parties who refuse to represent the voters is an exercise in futility, it is a task worthy of Sisyphus.

But in our system voting for a candidate that’s not one of the top two in a two-way race means your vote means nothing. You have the right to do that, or go howl in the corner, which will amount to the same thing the day after the election.

I can play too.

A vote for the Congressional Democrats in November means you support the assassination of American citizens without due process. Yes this was Obama’s decision, but the US Constitution provides checks and balances for our government. The US Congress, led by HUGE majorities of Democrats, CHOSE not to use any of those checks and balances, thus leaving in place a policy of assassinating American citizens without any due process. Therefore, since they chose to allow it stay, if a voter CHOOSES to vote for them, they are in fact supporting their policies, one of which is assassination American citizens. You can argue the point or go howl in the corner about how much worse the Republicans are, but the day after the election voters that voted for Congressional Democrats voted for assassination American citizens without due process.

Own it proudly.

Or, you know, we could both just stop with the bullshit. Because in our system, voting for a candidate that’s not one of the top two in a two-way race MOST CERTAINLY DOES NOT mean your vote means nothing. If a third party candidate gets 20% this year instead of the usual 2%, then that information makes a more serious 3rd party run the next time more possible. Votes for 3rd parties can lead to momentum even if they don’t win. Please just stop with the bullshit, and I will too.

LOL!

My Russian gets better every month. I’m дяде to quite a special little girl.

In any negotiation the person who wins is the person who is willing to walk away from the deal. If the left continues to support any party, no matter how repugnant their policies once elected, we will continue to receive the rectal reaming the democravens have given us for the past year and a half three decades. If you have been paying attention I don’t even need to list how, in every area (health care is just the most obvious example, but also the wars, due process, bank bailouts, etc) Obamarahma has, unforced, enacted one right-wing corporatist policy after another.

Being irresponsive is the best you can do, uncle KC?

I thought you would enjoy getting some real news. Human rights, women’s rights, gay rights, are discussed often enough and quite in depth, your derision is a sign of something….

Will you ever just take YES for an answer? I’m hooked into actual Russians and thereby Russia Today in English AND Russki, ok?

I have felt strongly about sitting this one out. But my anger is primarily at Obama, as he is the LEADER of the Democratic Party, and has been directing this mess. Some congresspersons have stood up, most have followed.
BUT, I am not willing YET, to give the repubs a chance to repeat the past 8 years, and I think they will try to do just that. Sooo – I am going to vote Democratic this time, give Obama another chance and if no change, I’ll pull the plug. Maybe we should, give US another 2 years to change the direction. The worse than can happen is status-quo or worse (which is almost assured if we don’t vote). I do understand the angry that says fuck the whole mess, but is it truly worth it. I am not so sure, and I am willing to make one more potential mistake if there is a chance that a mistake just might make it to a success.

Kelly,

Somewhere, somehow we got off on a wrong foot. I often make terse statements which tend to get misconstrued. Perhaps this is what happened here. I know that you are a multiculturalist, polyglot, I believe an accomplished musician, and gay. I just don’t know where we got all turned around.

I’m glad to hear that RT is a source of news for you, I am just somewhat bewildered that so few here appear to be plugged into a broader perspective, while justly decrying our MM.

Having been born on the other side of the pond, I find RT to be an absolute treat, – cannot say that about the old, stale BBC.

peace!

I feel the same way. After the election we need to think about the presidential election and what to do then. That is when O’s fate will be determined. Can you really doubt that the republicans are batshit crazy, which is the phrase used around these parts?

Obama has been anointed by the neoliberal PTB to pound the last nail into the coffin of FDR’s legacy. This is it, it probably doesn’t matter how any one votes. Austerity will give birth to growing unrest, at which point the monster of a totalitarian police State will come into stark relief.

You will not get a sense of it through our State co-opted MM. Outside of it there is plenty of stuff like this:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-no-way-out

Unfortunately, Markey is essentially Musgrave without the latter’s honesty (such as it was) and the latter’s, er, distinctive style of dress. Markey’s politics are almost identical to her predecessor’s when it comes to anything substantive, like war, economics, or healthcare.

A Democrat could have won. Instead, the party foisted Markey on us.

Markey is a Red Dog if anything. She was one of Ken “Night Crawler” Salazar’s staffers.

Occasional rhetoric aside, I can see no difference whatsoever between Democrats like Markey and Tea Buggers, except that the latter are as often as not anti-establishment–though rightwing–protest candidates. By electing Pseudocrats, we get gridlock, take the blame for it, and end up with no possibility of reversing it.

The geniuses who thought that Republicans in all but brand name would be the ideal candidates to face the real thing are now discovering how well the idea works out: neither party’s faithful wants them. We mustn’t bail them out now. Let it happen. Then clean house.

Because it’s clear to me the U.S. is heading in the direction of Russia before 1990, or Haiti today. Not in absolute terms, of course. But everything the U.S. government is doing – raising taxes, increasing regulations, and inflating the currency – is not only the wrong thing to do, but exactly the opposite of the right thing

Oh pahlease fn. You’re going to link to right wing talking points?? WTF?

This guy is a right winger trying to disguise himself as some sort of libertarian, it reads to me like.

Come on. What’s up with links like that? You think FDLers need to read more right wing propaganda to “broaden our horizons”???

I’ve got an answer for that.

Fuck no.

OFG,

I do not read zerohedge for their political ideology. I disagree with many of their prescriptions. I do, however, pay attention to their feel for the Markets, and there, imo, they have got it about right.

But, let’s also keep in mind that this administration even more than the previous ones in the past 30years hasbeen socializing risk, and privatizing profit. From their vantage point (investors) the Banks should have been allowed to go tits up, – on that I agree. On the raising of taxes, I also agree when taking into account the Pentagon, and subsidies to Big Ag, Big Finance,Big Pharma and Big insurance. On pumping liquidity into a broken market, with none of the liquidity being available to the public, – I was for nationalizing BofA and using it’s branches for low interest loans. So you see, when the T’baggers protest against Big Government (transferring wealth from us to them), who am I to disagree.

Of course I part ways with them on what should be done (Ha-Joon Chang is my preferred economist), but on the most basic structural levels, they are quite spot on, more so than the Dems.

Think about it. There is much to agree with the opposition as to what’s fucked in our economy, and there is all the room to disagree vehemently about remedies.( Boyes and Olson, Jane and Nordquist).

Anyway, read zerohedge as a contrarian view of Market sanity, ignore their pining for american perversion of Libertarianism.

How about Max Keiser, do you ever watch him?

Max Keiser/William K Black:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bf5Frx1lZk&feature=related

When listening to anyone, I use my instinct and whatever residual intellect I possess, I don’t buy any of it wholesale, ever.

The most recent Keiser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00uCbUWG9aE&feature=player_embedded

And how did each vote for the PUBLIC OPTION?

Agreed.

I’m finding it too much of a coincidence that most of the Dems are simply not fighting back.
Were they told to play nicey-nicey or have they been led to believe by the likes of our moderate leaders Obama, Reid, Hoyer and Emanuel, that bending over some more might save their own asses even though that same behavior turned the party into one despised by everyone including it’s own members??

And while Jane kindly gives kudos to the DCCC, Rachel Maddow kicked Van Hollen’s ass for it’s waste of money on ineffective and confusing ads. And after seeing their ads I totally agree.

The universal scream to get Dems to fight back with solid and sound facts is a waste of time for two reasons:
-The same moderates who direct the ads are the same moderates who squelched the Dems Congressional behavior.
-Ironically it was the moderates in Congress who forced the rest to capitulate and take the same corporate goodies stuffing the Republicans pockets.

We, now, are too much like them to complain – in the public’s eye. And that seems to suit the moderates just fine. Hence their weak fight to hold the majority
Either way, when real Dems lose moderates still get their goodies. Don’t you, Steny?