The disappointing Democrats

(Via AlterNet)

One year ago, the Democrats ended Republican control of Congress,
stirring millions of Americans to hope that George W. Bush's Iraq War and his assault on the U.S. Constitution finally would be stopped.

Twelve months later, many of those once-hopeful voters feel bitter
disillusionment toward the national Democratic Party, which has
surrendered in showdown after showdown with the weakened President, from continuing to write blank checks for the Iraq War to ceding more power to him for his surveillance operations.

The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee couldn't even put together enough of a united front to block Bush's appointment of a new Attorney General who believes the President should possess nearly unlimited powers in
wartime and who won't say that the simulated drowning of waterboarding constitutes torture.

This is another thing that seems to defy logic. The Democrats are the majority party due to sounding like they are going to get tough on Bush and his cronies, and then they consistently cave in to the Commander-in-Idiot's policies and desires. Who elected these morons? Who SHOULD they be listening to?

By their actions in the early days of the Clinton administration, the national Democrats revealed that they viewed the American people more as consumers eager for services than citizens needing honest information to fulfill their duties in a democratic Republic.

Clinton also apparently thought that his magnanimous gesture, especially in letting former President George H.W. Bush off the hook, would win reciprocity from the Republicans. Instead, they took the Democratic scrapping of the Reagan-Bush investigations as a sign of weakness and unleashed the emerging right-wing media against Clinton.

Despite catastrophic political results - losing control of Congress in 1994 and the White House in 2000 - the national Democrats learned few lessons from the Clinton debacles. In 2002 and 2004, they reacted to Bush and his "war on terror" gingerly and suffered more defeats.

Finally, in 2006, heeding an increasingly angry "base," the Democrats adopted a tougher stance toward Bush and were surprised by their own success. Yet, even as congressional Democrats were picking confetti out of their hair, they were reverting to their can't-we-all-get-along approach.

Yeah, trying to get along with the Repugs has always worked out well for the Democrats, hasn't it? They're like the kid on the playground who gets beaten up by the bully, and then follows him around like a love-sick puppy wanting to be his friend.