Democrats Should Never Resign From Congress
No matter how safe the district is. No matter how lurid the indiscretion was. Democrats should never resign. Republicans are just too good at tricking people into voting against their interests.
In the end, no matter how terrible it was for a Democratic congressman to text a picture to a woman – the act shrinks to irrelevancy compared to the organized crimes perpetrated by the GOP.
On the bright side, one more bagger won’t make the House any worse for Democrats this term. Coming close to a majority is not good enough. We need a majority in the House to get anything done. And then we also need like 80 Senators to have a majority in the Senate. We can spend our time finding somebody to beat this guy in 2012.
Ha, Ha. I told you that he shouldn’t have resigned, but it was your President who pulled the rug out from under him just when the scandal died down and polls showed he was out of the woods. Wiener stayed in a week and a half which gave the Democrats a black eye then resigned just when he turned it around and may give the seat to a Republican.
I am loving it.
It makes up for the seat we lost with a similar situation in NY. It hasn’t happened yet, but even if we lose we just made the Dems spend a million dollars that could have gone to 4 or 5 marginal races in the midwest next year for a safe seat in New York which they will likely lose anyway. They just dropped another half million on this race yesterday.
Closet, You didn’t tell me that. I told you that.
Hey Delusional One, by last count the Dems were out pacing the Confederate-Teabag party in fundraising. We’ll make up the money we spent on this race easy, and then when we run against a do-nothing House of Representatives, we’ll finally get this country back on track. Say, you remember those budget surpluses your president shitted away on a wasteful war?
Speaking of delusional, you think that Dems are going to get the House back?
“The second data point comes from a closer look at the polling numbers coming out of the district. Respondents there overwhelmingly think the country is on the wrong track, and Obama’s approval ratings are in the tank. “It’s hard for Democrats to win open seat races in places where Obama’s that unpopular,” PPP polling director Tom Jensen tells TPM.”
Good luck with Obama’s coattails helping the entire ticket in 2012.
What clearly needs to happen is the appointment of a self-perpetuating panel of liberal academics (call them Philosopher Kings) who will independently and objectively determine what the interests of the residents of a given district actually are, and then appoint a proper member for life. That way the folks in the district will get their interests represented, and there won’t be any chance of the people screwing things up by voting for what THEY think their best interests are — after all, it is clear you believe that the average American is too stupid to be permitted to engage in the democratic process.
Ha! Ha! Get a good belly laugh going, Dave. It’s your kind that is ruining this republic but you’ll never notice with your head so buried
@JQA–
No one is advocating for a “panel of liberal academics.”
BTW, the average American is pretty fucking stupid. It’s really sad.
But that’s my point, anon40. We just need to take the political power from the hands of all the “pretty fucking stupid” people and put it in the hands of the intelligentsia. That way American democracy will work to everyone’s benefit, and the
peasants“pretty fucking stupid” people won’t be able to make “pretty fucking stupid” decisions by “voting against their interests” — instead those Philosopher Kings (and Queens — Let’s call them “Philosopher Monarchs”) will act as a corrective to the debased, “pretty fucking stupid” actions of “pretty fucking stupid” people who the Republicans are “tricking” into “voting against their interests” and in favor of the “organized crimes perpetrated by the GOP”.In other words, the clear solution to the ills you folks are identifying here is to kill representative democracy in order to save it.
And as an aside, I find it interesting that MJ waxes so eloquent about the ability of the Democrats to raise money and outspend their opponents when MJ has in the past argued that such unfettered fundraising and spending without government control corrupts the system and is destructive of our representative democracy.
A republican saying that someone wants to kill democracy to save it is the definition of irony.
Our honored host wrote:
Now, just how can that be, unless Republicans are somehow smarter than Democrats, to the point that they can out argue and out-persuade the public?
After all, if people’s interests are so obvious as to be plainly seen, there should be some sort of natural bias for people to vote in accordance with those interests. If the Democrats are the ones who represent those interests, they should be arguing and fighting from a position of strength. Yet somehow, some way, you seem to believe that we wicked ol’ Republicans are able to trick many voters, often even a majority of them, into voting against their own interests.
Now, either we are so much smarter and better than the Democrats that we can overcome such disadvantages, or perhaps, just perhaps, the voters’ interests are not what you think them to be.
anon40 wrote:
And the teachers’ unions are heavily Democratic. One wonders if there is a correlation. 🙂
Forcing Weiner to resign was a really dumb move, I think we all thought so at the time. That being said, I can’t really make myself care about a race in a district that’s disappearing. So what if they send someone to beclown themselves in Congress? He’ll fit right in with the rest of the clowns there.
Yes, I do think there’s a chance of a Democratic House. Congress is at its lowest approval ever recorded and I saw yesterday that only 41% of Americans think their member of Congress deserves to be re-elected. It’s the first time that number has ever been below 50%. I think it’s one reason why Cantor and Boehner didn’t immediately dismiss Obama’s AJA. They are worried about their own re-election prospects and that of their allies. It’s about damn time.
I don’t think Republicans are worried one bit about their own re-elections. Eliminating taxes for the rich and killing the New Deal is their Prime Directive. They are on a mission and they smell a win. They will complete the mission even if it is a suicide mission for them.
But I don’t think Republicans have any reason to fear for their seats with the current Administration. Remember when the GOP passed the Ryan budget, and for a few golden weeks Republicans were the only ones who wanted to cut Social Security and Medicare? We were sure we had them then. We even won a special election in NY on that. Good times, good times.
Remember when the GOP had no way out of the tax cut expiration trap? And when they would be forced to vote for tax increases to prevent default? Was that a great strategy, or what?
Now they are in another “trap” – If they don’t vote for the jobs bill, then supposedly they are in deep doo doo in their elections. Not so. The White House will strip it, gut it, paint it Republican, and sign it into law. Just like the debt debate.
Because Obama needs a jobs bill – any jobs bill – more than the Republicans do. He will sign anything that has “Jobs” on it.
Sure, now he says he wants to pass the bill unchanged. But that’s what he said in the debt debate when he wanted to hold out for more revenue. How’d that work out?
Every time we have them over a barrel, somehow we end up being the ones bending over instead.
I am depressed even to be writing the jobs bill, because unlike the past legislative battles we lost, this time there is no way to win. Even passing the bill as written will be a loss for the country; raiding Social Security, depleting the Treasury with more tax cuts, and trying to use tax cuts as stimulus. All to defend the tax cuts for the rich.
First, I assume we’re talking about economic interest, not all interests. The reason many people vote against their economic interests is that they decide some other interest is more important.
“Now, either we are so much smarter and better than the Democrats that we can overcome such disadvantages, or perhaps, just perhaps, the voters’ interests are not what you think them to be.”
Of course, those aren’t the only two options. A third is that many low-information voters don’t know what their economic interests are, and that the Republicans are successful at convincing them to vote on issues that ignore those economic interests. I believe that’s what our host was trying to say.
“the teachers’ unions are heavily Democratic. One wonders if there is a correlation.”
The unions are Democratic, but I was taught by plenty of conservative Republicans as well as liberal Democrats.
“And the teachers’ unions are heavily Democratic. One wonders if there is a correlation.”
Yes, as you suspect there is a correlation, though probably not the one you were expecting.
“Biden said at the time that the proposed settlement was developed without input of many local investors, and that he wanted to assure that the deal complied with Delaware law.”
I bet this traces back to specific investors; high-net-worth individuals in Delaware. I don’t know the specifics of the deal, but my bet is some banks’ oxen are getting gored more than others, which has probably been pointed out to Beau by those individuals.
The Geezer wrote:
Even if it was what our host was attempting to say, it would still fall under the first of the two options I gave.
Thing is, Puck, you picked pre-election Gallup pools; the actual results were somewhat different. Mr Obama enjoyed his largest margin (63% to 35%) among those who were not graduated from high school. There was a slight improvement for Mr McCain if a voter attended college (46%-52% versus 44%-54%), but that’s within the margin of error.
No, it wouldn’t. Taking advantage of low-information voters doesn’t make Republicans “smarter” than anybody.
As I said, I assume we’re talking about economic interest — as in a case in which someone chooses to vote for a pro-life politician despite that politician working against the voter’s economic interest. In such a case, the voter has perhaps chosen to put some other interest above his economic one. A person’s economic interests are easy to see; other interests aren’t. If you aren’t talking about economic interest, then I agree with you.
If you still don’t get it, I”ll chalk it up to you being a Republican who works against his own economic interest.
Geezer wrote:
Really? If Republicans could do that, to a greater extent than the Democrats, it must mean one of two things: either the Republicans are smarter than the Democrats, in that they can find and politic these supposedly low-information voters, when the Democrats can’t, or the Republicans can make better arguments to persuade the voters than can the Democrats.
Well, you are at least part way on the road to getting it, recognizing that a voter may have interests other than his economic ones. However, your statement still fails, because it assumes that everybody, possessed of the same information, will identify their economic interests identically.
Actually, I’d suggest that the term “low information voters” is simply just a stereotype being used, primarily by my friends on the left, for people who do not take decisions the same way you would. The real “low information” is the information possessed by those who would engage in pundritry, taking assumptions on how people will or should vote, when you — and I — have no idea about all of the individual things which people factor in (whether logically or emotionally) to their voting decisions.
Really? And what do you know about my economic interests, how I evaluate them, and on what basis I would decide my votes? Just to give you a hand, we make over $100,000 a year, but far less than the $250,000 threshold where President Obama says he wishes to raise taxes.
I don’t know anything about them, nor do I actually care. My point was that you put forward a thesis in which only two possibilities were given as explanations for a situation that has many other possible answers.
The data you have given puts you comfortably in the top quintile of US household income, so you have more incentive to vote Republican than many of your fellow travelers. Only you can decide whether the lower taxes you seek are of more value to you than the benefits you will give up to get them.
However, I’ve seen your blog. Your actual obsession seems to be weapons. If your household earned $50,000 a year but you voted Republican because you were afraid the government wants to take away your guns, that would be a vote against your economic self-interest.
If you’d stop acting the smug jerk, you’d perhaps understand that I was trying to draw this distinction between a voter’s economic self-interest and other interests. In short, I actually agree with you UNLESS WE’RE TALKING ABOUT ECONOMICS ONLY. But that still doesn’t make your formulation correct when we’re talking about economic self-interest.
Perhaps, too, being politically interested yourself, you don’t realize that a large number of voters, particularly in presidential election years, know virtually nothing about the issues. Those are the “low-information voters” to whom I refer. If your only source of information is Rush/Hannity or Fox News, you’re going to be a biased-information voter, which isn’t the same thing.
“If Republicans could do that, to a greater extent than the Democrats, it must mean one of two things:”
You do have a thing about dualities, don’t you? It could mean other things as well. You simply have a reluctance to count beyond two.
“either the Republicans are smarter than the Democrats, in that they can find and politic these supposedly low-information voters, when the Democrats can’t, or the Republicans can make better arguments to persuade the voters than can the Democrats.”
I would say not that they’re smarter, but that they have worked harder to identify such voters, whatever we call them. Indeed, that’s exactly what Republicans have done for 30 years now — identified the fundamentalist Christians, the gun lovers, the abortion opponents, etc., and reached them through direct mail.
“Better arguments” is again a misnomer for “more effective” arguments. Virtually all of these more effective arguments are based on emotion rather than reason. To claim that emotionally arrived-at conclusions are “better” than rationally arrived-at conclusions would require comparing them over time. Remember, I’m talking about economics-based interests; I doubt that people whom, regardless of income, base their votes on a politician’s position on abortion will serve their economic self-interest on anything but a random basis.
Shouldn’t the NYDems have at least run someone who lives in the district?
Geezer guessed wrong:
No, my actual obsession happens to be liberty. I believe that the Second Amendment means exactly what it says, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and I believe that the First Amendment means what it says, that Congress shall make no law on the subjects mentioned.
As for the government taking away my guns, that would be pretty difficult, in that I don’t own any! It is part of my absolute right to keep and bear arms to choose not to do so.
I actually quantified them for a couple of years, running my 2006 and 2007 taxes through a year 2000 Form 1040, and found that I had saved slightly over $12,000 in taxes those two years.
But the real reason is, once again, liberty: I don’t want to see the government interfering in the economy any more than absolutely necessary, and I don’t want to see the government taxing money away from people who work to give to people who will not. I have sympathy for those who did work, and lost their jobs, and don’t have any problem with the concept of unemployment compensation — in part because they were all taxed to pay for unemployment compensation insurance — but I have absolutely no sympathy at all for the malingerers who will not work.
I believe exactly as you do about the First and Second Amendments. Question: Why do you blog about weapons if you don’t own any? Seems an odd thing to do.
“I don’t want to see the government interfering in the economy any more than absolutely necessary”
Necessary for what?
“I don’t want to see the government taxing money away from people who work to give to people who will not.”
There we are: The typical conservative obsession with people who don’t want to work. Why do you resent them so? The people taking advantage of the system are not those living on the fringes on welfare handouts. When you work and don’t reap the rewards, they are not the ones taking those rewards from you.
The Geezer asked:
I almost never do, other than when it comes to Second Amendment legal issues. However, I’m guessing that you are referring to this post, which was written by one of my co-bloggers.
Sorry, didn’t realize it wasn’t your post. Carry on.
From msnbc.com:
You had the big-name Democrats — Bill Clinton, Chuck Schumer — campaigning for David Weprin, you had a Democratic money blitz come in for get-out-the-vote efforts, you had the unions contributing people and money, you had an observant Jew running in a significantly Jewish area against a Roman Catholic, you had the Democrats trying to tie Bob Turner to the TEA Party and cutting Social Security and Medicare, all in a district with a 3 to 1 Democratic advantage in registration, and one which hadn’t elected a Republican since the 1920s, and you still couldn’t persuade the majority to cast their votes for the Democrat; Bob Turner won 53% to 47%.
It certainly didn’t help that Mr Weprin didn’t actually live in the district, and he made a couple of bad campaign gaffes, but seriously, y’all need to be asking yourselves some tough questions about why the Democrats couldn’t pull out this district, of all districts.