From a longtime political operative …
I can expand on this thought if you want, but something roiling underneath in Democratic politics right now. In nearly two decades in politics, I don’t think I’ve ever seen people who have spend their professionals lives electing Democrats to office as angry at the people they elect as they are right now.
We took him up on his offer and he expands on his comment after the jump …
Ok….Since 1992, I’ve been a Dem political operative specializing in opposition research, so I’m pretty familiar with the back and forth negative attacks. The sense of anger has been building for a while….but here’s what I sense is going on from friends and colleagues who I have talked to.First, the politics:
Whether we pass HCR or not, and whether a D voted for It or not, they are going to be attacked on the negatives of HCR. So if they pass something at all, at least they have an accomplishment they can argue about. If not, what are they gonna say? Sorry, we’ve wasted a year of your time and abandoned our top domestic priority.
2. Our problem is not that we are liberal - it’s that we are weak. And abandoning HCR feeds that perception
3. What other big thing will be able to do I we can’t do this - we will have smaller majorities, and less flexbility.
So the point is that all the politics say pass something so we can have a public fight about it. The anger is stoked by the fact that the people we elect seem not to get the obvious (to us) point that not doing anything gives us no argument for the election.
And what is even more annoying is that its nadler, frank, weiner, maloney, grijalva hammering this right now. They are all gonna get reelected - but they are gonna serve in the minority if we can’t get stuff accomplished.
The bottom line.. The people I’m talking too are wondering why in the hell we’ve spent the last two decades trying to elect Democrats to office, when they abandon their public policy priorities because Martha Coakley runs the most incompetent campaign in history of the world….
