I agree. Six things is simply too many for most people to wrap their minds around, and screams of ‘grasping at straws.’ An idiotic ploy in my opinion. Oh well, thems the democrats fer ya.
I don’t have the confidence of some posters here that the democrats will take back much of anything during the MTEs.
First, elections, even local races, are impacted much more now by the national machines of both parties than in the past. I believe as the MTEs approach, the republicans will have analyses compiled of all the truly questionable races and provide those candidates with enhanced material support, funding, and a media barrage. The democrats are simply not as organized.
Second, it goes without saying that the republicans have been incredibly successful using fear as a tactic to get voters to the polls. I predict the party, under the command of Herr Rove, will step this up shortly prior to the MTEs. The democrats have nothing comparable.
Third, in general, it’s still the motivated vs the apathetic voter. Advantage: republicans.
In my view it’s far from a foregone conclusion that Bush’s low approval ratings will have much of an impact on the MTEs…though I do agree that Bush eating Cheney’s still-beating heart while running around naked on the White House lawn may help.
Here’s what I don’t understand: why don’t the Democrats attack the religious right head on? The Democrats have been scared to touch the subject up until now, and as a result, the Republicans, and the religious right itself, have become so complacent that they’ve stopped censoring themselves. So what you have are figures of the religious right (RR henceforward) saying the most outrageous things, revealing a puritanism and intolerance as great as that of the Taliban. So, for example, in this week’s New Yorker, there’s a quote from an Ohio pastor saying, in essence, that this country shouldn’t rest until that diabolical religion Islam is destroyed. Now, this pastor is entwined enough with Republican politics that he was invited to the signing of one of Bush’s bills – partial birth abortion ban, maybe? And there’s an approving blurb on the book containing that quote from the man who may well be the next governor of Ohio.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The RR is opposed not just to abortion, but to most forms of contraception. They’re opposed to the teaching of evolution. They’re opposed to much of what you might choose to read or look at or see on the Internet. In short, they’re rabidly against pluralism, religious freedom, and the First Amendment. Their own words damn them completely. So why shouldn’t the Democrats make an issue of this? Yes, the RR is large and influential, but a significant majority of Americans still prefer their current freedoms and Constitution to living under the Taliban.
So what do I conclude? That the Democrats, in their reluctance to touch this, have tucked their tails and ceded the field. The six themes are just more of the same old tired Kerry-esque BS. Until the Democrats learn to stick their necks out again, they’re just going to keep getting hammered. Disenchantment with the Republicans may be the keynote to the next congressional elections, but the Democrats are not going to do nearly as well as they think. And unless they can find a backbone before '08, I can’t see them winning then, either.
The six items are nice warm fuzzies that nobody is going to pay any attention to. The election is going to be a referendum on Bush and Iraq. If you’re wearing the scarlet “R” on your ticket, you’re going to swim uphill. The best issue for the Democrats to run on is to take it right from the Gipper: Are you better off now than you were two years ago? Run on that, run against Iraq, and you run to victory.
I was just reading on Daily Kos about how many Republicans, in their ads and on web pages, are not mentioning their party affiliation, including the head of the RNCC.
The linked CNN story gives us only six subject headings without describing their content. I presume there is content, but a quick google on “six for '06” turns up nothing. Does anybody have a link to the actual text of the document? Without that, we really can’t judge.
Here’s my opinion. It’s one guy’s opinion and may not be in total agreement with every other intelligent life form in the universe.
The polls show that voters have shifted towards trusting the Dems more on national security. They need to play towards that trend. More effort towards catching Osama can’t hurt; neither can more support for local police and firefighters. Nevertheless, they won’t move many ovters on national security until they have an Iraq policy that actually means something.
Better still would be attaching minimum wage to inflation. Reducing corporate welfare should be a more prominent Dem issue. They should bring it to the forefront of their advertising campaigns, with emphasis on ridiculous aspects of federal spending such as the bridge to nowhere.
I’m not really on board with the idea that students are being victimized by interest rates on their loans. Frankly this proposal sounds too expensive at a time when the deficit is already so high.
Again, they need to emphasize that they’re cutting unfair giveaways to the big corporations.
Certainly we can pick up votes by hammering on the prescription drug issue, since by all accounts it’s been a massive failure. Stem cells are another issue that polls well for the Dems. Fundamentally, though, we need to figure out where we’re going with healthcare in general. Plainly the population at large realizes that they’re paying too much and getting too little from the current health care system. The Dems need to propose sweeping reforms, not dinky little measures.
All good things, but there’s no mention of the fact that Medicare is going bankrupt in twelve years and Social Security in about forty years.
I tend to agree that this 6for06 thing amounts to a pat retort to the “Dems have no plan” accusation, and little more. The goal of college access for all is especially meaningless as stated. What does that really mean? If I’m poor I can go wherever I want? Or at least I can afford community college?
Whatever. A list of goals is one thing. Implementation of a plan to achieve those goals, and anything accomplished by so doing, is quite entirely another. I’d vote for a rotten tree stump at this point over a Republican, as a thoroughly-cowed Republican-dominated Congress has yielded disastrous results, IMO. If Congress can do nothing good, then I’d rather they do nothing. Bring on the obstructionists.
Kind of milk-and-water . . . What about universal health care? What about a definite timetable for withdrawal from Iraq? What about some real alternatives, not only to gasoline, but to automotive transportation as such? What about abolishing Bush’s tax cuts and restoring social-programs funding to their pre-2001 levels? Etc. But it least it has substance, and what there is of it is better than anything the Pubs have got to offer. It can only help.
We do seem to have many in the US who have no real faith in our regular system. Checks and balances? They are OK in easy times but when things get tough you need a single, powerful leader who can get things done. Civil rights? A luxury, and besides, terrorists won’t give you any rights at all if they win.
Or at least that’s what I make of a lot of the arguments I read here and elsewhere.
The party is all important. This republican party has browbeat, cajoled ,threatened and bribed their party members to vote along party lines. They have been extremely successful and have held it together. I do not accept that every Repub has wanted the last 7 years to go like they have. But the party with numbers and control of the financal purse strings wins.
I get the impression that there is a growing backlash against politicization of religion. The Southern Baptists recently elected a president, Frank Page, who promised to put more emphasis on missions and less on politics, which suggests that the rank-and-file Baptists are growing weary of conservative stridency. Here’s the new president’s take:
Cite. Page ran a grass-roots campaign and defeated two candidates tied to the conservative power structure.
I think this bodes well for a candidate who advocates separation of church and state - for the benefit of both institutions.
Again, I’m not conviced that congressional races are referenda on the president, especially in a non-presidential election year.
What more likely to hurt repub chances in congress more then Bush’s low approval rating is congresses low approval rating (lower then in '94?). Granted this disapproval is directed at congress in general rather then specifically at the GOP, but one would think it would hurt the party in power, and incumbents in general (who are naturally more likely to be Republican) more then others.
That said, the Dems would be foolish to try and coast to victory on the misfortunes of their opponents. They’re doing the right thing by trying to get an active message out there.
He already does. So my expectations now are lowered to reducing Congress’ legislative impact on the rest of us, if they can’t do anything constructive. A sufficient number of Democrats should at least accomplish that. I’m not confident they’ll win a majority in either house, though it’s conceivable they might narrowly get one.
History seems to disagree with you. There is apparently a fairly linear relationship between presidential approval rating and number of seats lost during midterm elections.
With presidential approval ratings below 50%, the losses appear pretty staggering:
And this information was written way back when Bush’s approval ratings were about 40%.
Ugh. I think a lot of these things are crap – completely irrelevant to most voters, at least insofar as the kind of issues that actually make people run to the polls in droves to make sure their pet issue passes.
Not only that, the powerful Republican Machine is already chipping away at these issues one by one, rendering them utterly useless as tools to fight against them with. For instance, the Democrats have been fighting to get the minimum wage up to $7.25/hour for years. Only now that it’s election season and they know the Dems plan to make it a campaign issue, now the Republicans are ready to pass legislation, not only to raise the minimum wage, but to include other tax breaks, such as deductions for college tuition – 2 of the “Six for '06” key points.
The fact that they’re weaselly enough to tie it to reductions in the inheritance tax for the wealthy won’t matter a hill of beans to the low-income wage earners (why would they care, so long as they get theirs?). And it will matter to the contingent who matters the most – the wealthiest Americans who will not only benefit enormously themselves from seeing it passed, but who will reward their Republican saviors with beaucoup bucks in campaign funds.
And in the meantime, the Democrats, who are ultimately getting the minimum wage hike they want, get the ass end of being portrayed as sore winners by complaining that the greedy ol’ Republicans “can’t simply help poor people without doing something for their wealthy contributors.”
It’s Win-Win-Win for the Republicans! They get to win the favor of the poor by redefining themselves as the party who “weren’t going to be denied” a fair hearing on the matter, because afterall, “How can you defend $5.15 an hour in today’s economy?” (Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio). They get to win possibly even bigger campaign contributions from their wealthiest constituents, and they get to steal this issue from the Dems, making it utterly moot and irrelevant. Woo-Eee!
I wish I could be as optimistic as Diogenes, but history has shown me that my dread is well-warranted.
Actually, this is nothing new. I work in the political consulting arena, so I often have to research various candidates, etc., and I’ve found myself frequently frustrated at not being able to glean the party affiliation of many of the candidates I come across. I’ve noticed the same thing wrt television ads – even the Dems here in California do it. Very annoying.
