Moving into 2008, Republicans will be fighting to shake off the legacy of the Bush years: the jobless recovery, the foreign misadventures, the nightmarish fiscal mismanagement, the Katrina mess, unimaginable corruption and an imperial presidency with little regard for the Constitution or the rule of law. Every Democratic contender will be offering change, but activists will be demanding the sort of change that can come only from outside the Beltway.
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Unfortunately, however, the New York senator is part of a failed Democratic Party establishment -- led by her husband -- that enabled the George W. Bush presidency and the Republican majorities, and all the havoc they have wreaked at home and abroad.
Dean lost, but the point was made. No longer would D.C. insiders impose their candidates on us without our input; those of us in the netroots could demand a say in our political fortunes. Today, however, Hillary Clinton seems unable to recognize this new reality. She seems ill-equipped to tap into the Net-energized wing of her party (or perhaps is simply uninterested in doing so) and incapable of appealing to this newly mobilized swath of voters. She may be the establishment's choice, but real power in the party has shifted.
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Nothing, that is, except the loss of Congress, the perpetuation of the muddled Democratic "message," a demoralized and moribund party base, and electoral defeats in 2000, 2002 and 2004.
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Those failures led the netroots to support Dean in the last presidential race. We didn't back him because he was the most "liberal" candidate. In fact, we supported him despite his moderate, pro-gun, pro-balanced-budget record, because he offered the two things we craved most: outsider credentials and leadership.
Personally this is exactly why I am supporting Jim Webb for Senate and Mark Warner for President.
Anyway, the House bill would have increased the maximum number of temporary H-1B visas granted yearly to skilled workers from 65,000 to 115,000 over a period of three years. Heavy users of H-1B visas would be required to attest that they have not displaced American workers to hire foreign workers. Both the Clinton White House and some Republicans wanted those additional provisions.The White House had supported raising the cap, they surprised Miller with the veto threat and requested a number of addtional conditions.
One of these conditions was to give the Department of Labor authority to investigate compliance of the visa program. They also wanted to require that hiring companies pay $500 for each immigrant to fund it.
Miller was furious about this, and stated, "If the president continues to stand in the way of this bill, he will face a terrible backlash."
"To come in at the eleventh hour with nickel-and-dime complaints about this bill will leave a bad taste in the mouths of Silicon Valley executives."
Miller believes Ashcroft will be more "sensitive" to the impact of technology issues on business.
Ashcroft fought the FBI and the Clinton administration on encryption export restrictions and opposed any government-required key escrow or key recovery. If confirmed, Ashcroft may review controversial Clinton administration projects, such as the FBI's e-mail monitoring system Carnivore, as well U.S. involvement in the Council of Europe cybercrime treaty, which has raised privacy and business concerns, said Miller. The ITAA sent a letter this week to the Senate Judiciary Committee urging it to approve Ashcroft's nomination.
We all accept that California is not quite like the rest of us, that often they show us what we will become; trends begin on the West Coast and jump to the East Coast, and then only fitfully and slowly percolate back through Middle America, so it is said. Well, maybe.
To my eyes, having recently shed the scales of Republicanism, the unorganized and bumptious Democrats have seemed to arise quadrennially like Lazarus from the tomb and rush valiantly if tardily off to rev up for another national election. When I enquired about the slipshod arrangement, the lack of coherent and ongoing organization not to mention the lack of coherent and ongoing message, I was told the problem was that there was no Democratic President to provide leadership.
Say what? You mean without a sitting Democratic President there can be no real Party organization or philosophy? How do you expect to GET a sitting president, then? This is a kind of circular reasoning that ill becomes a political party which suppoedly should be prepared to be both in power and, sometimes, out of power in loyal opposition.
That sort of mind set I believe has produced this odd ball anomaly of a "national leadership" composed of those Democrats actually in national elective office (Congressmen, Senators, their hangers-on and inside the Beltway remnants of old policymakers who used to be in power) and, across a deep canyon, the outlying Party in cities and states that are on a different electoral schedule and often have, it turns out, completely different views of things political.
And then here are the Democratic roots, utterly frustrated by their supposed Party leaders who seem only to live from election to election and have little concept of any other way, who seem incapable at either national or state level of recognizing that nowadays their old opponents (the Republicans) are not doing business as usual, and cannot be trusted to play their normal part of taking turns: in power now, then out of power and yielding gracefully for another round. The Repubs are going for permanent power.
Just in time the Internet and blogsphere arrived on the scene to link these frustrated, diverse roots with each other, performing a function not unlike that performed by the Revolutionary Committees of Correspondence and Safety at the start of the American Revolution. Nobody thought those silly little inflammatory scribblers would ever accomplish much of anything, either... until 1776. When uneasy old Dem machine leaders, angry at the "radical" independence of their roots, try to cramp our style, they are often finding it impossible, even dangerous. Another power, people power, is arising in America as well as, say, in the "color" revolutions of Europe, or in Nepal. Business as usual is no more, boys. For now we still need the old machine; we need each other. Wake up and accept us; or ignore us at your peril.
That's how it looks to me, Alice. I haven't read Crashhing the Gate yet, by the way. Does it say something to the contrary?
Yes, I read Crashing the Gate, and even saw Kos & Jerome when they were at GW. I have mixed feelings about the book, but think it is doing wonderful things about getting people involved.
If you go back to the Kos archives you will see him dither about the recall. The recall was never anything but a successful radical right attempt to subvert California democracy and Kos was revealed to be the sort of Democrat who lets his political differences with a politician get in the way of understanding the big picture. You compare Digby's writing about the recall with Kos and you understand how completely Kos missed it and continues to miss it.
Maybe you only get so many years to be fresh, and then you become calcified. You start using the past as an indicator of the future. You keep reaching for the same tools. Which is right when you talk about human nature, but not aspirations and innovation. When things finally get bad enough, and you don't understand how bad, you find yourself outside of the solution.
At that point, future leaders are either 1)New, or 2)Adaptive. For the adaptive leader the rear-view mirror gets ripped from the dashboard and tossed. It's only you and your instincts now. You may be alone.
Hillary, remember how Bill was a radical? Remember when you took no pause? No fear? That was cool. When are you going to jump?
As for his charge that Clinton enabled Bush to be president is foolish. It was Gore running as a populist (who remembers the People v. The Powerful?) when most people were optimistic about the economy that doomed Gore's campaign. If Gore had run as a Clinton-style centrist he would have won not only the popular vote, but also the White House.
As for this pathetic charge that Clinton did nothing, what the hell is he talking about? I guess the Family Medical Leave Act, Brady Bill, Assault Weapons Ban, Welfare Reform, Deficit Reduction, Americorps, Kennedy-Kasselbaum Health Care Reform, 100K more cops on the street, and NAFTA are all nothing. Give me a break. Why doesn't this bozo spend his time writing a book no one will buy, he proved he can do that.
The sooner the Democratic Party tells this joker to take a hike, along with his failed populism and class warfare, and gets back to the DLC Centrist vision of Bil Clinton the better they will be.