There is an increasing partisan discontent in America. A party from a nationwide perspective is getting desperate and continues to strain at gnats to make its points. Even some of its greatest, youngest and "new best hope" pundits are summarizing their party's demise.
Joshua Micah Marshall this week criticized his own, saying, "At a certain point you wonder whether the GOP will have to start executing family pets before the Dems find something they can mobilize on."
In the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois – where the Democrats are in control of everything – the most recent political headlines still include the standard patronage and corruption that the last administration included. A huge telecommunications issue facing the general assembly there turns up massive campaign donations to Gov. Blagojevich.
The desire to expand gambling to Chicago looks as if it is on a fast-track approval process thanks to the new dance moves that Blagojevich and Daley are starting to hypnotize voters with. There is even word out this week that the mayor may try to do a five-mile-radius land grab around the entire circumference of O'Hare International Airport so that he can finally ramrod his O'Hare expansion package into being.
Of course, on the federal level, Democrats are acting in ways that continue to damage them politically. In the U.S. Senate, they are now filibustering the judicial nominations of four federal-level nominees who have been approved in committee to be given to the floor for a vote. In the process they are holding up the nominations of a truly heroic Hispanic and a woman – two voting constituencies that Democrats regularly take for granted.
Then there are the nine declared Democratic presidential candidates and their crazy hare-brained ideas, like the Hillary Clinton Soviet-style health plan of Richard Gephardt (or the health plan of Vermont Gov. Howard Dean), who wishes to stop letting me keep my own money to make decisions with.
Instead, he sees himself as "The Great Oz," who would like to take my dollars and put my health care in the same hands of those who run the Department of Motor Vehicles. All those forms, all those hours spent in line. Ahhhhhhhh! (Whew! Bad, bad daydream!)
Then you have the curious story of those funny-talking Texas Democrats who picked up and left the state to try to hold their state legislature hostage. These men, who pronounce funny little words like ‘fixin’, set up camp outside the borders of the state they claim residence in to purposefully thwart the laws of the land and prevent the business of the state of Texas from moving forward.
They were angry – angry that they may lose up to seven congressional House seats if the new redistricting plans of Tom DeLay are approved.
This last November, the Republicans won the state house and intend to do everything they can – within the rules of the game – to improve their lot in life. The state Democrats couldn't handle it and looked like pouting mopes stuck away up in their hotel rooms in the luxurious land of Ardmore, Okla.
Illinois went through this exact same type of partisan redistricting a couple of years back – only difference was you didn't see Republicans rushing to get into Gary, Ind., to stop it.
Of course, complicit in this is the governor of Oklahoma – himself a Democrat – who could have given special sanction to the Texas Rangers to come in and encourage the Texans to "head 'em up and move 'em out." But he, the Democratic governor, conveniently invoked state sovereignty and is giving them cover for the time being.
It is an amazing pronouncement to me of the complete lack of vision from anyone in the Democratic Party that things could be self-destructing this easily.
According to the latest CBS News poll out last week, the president still enjoys a 70 percent job-approval rating. And even though the poll seems to indicate that most voters don't believe they will see much of the money from the newest round of tax cuts, the fact that the majority in the poll believe the tax cuts will assist the recovery of the economy points out another dilemma for those on the left: Bush may actually fix the economy!
The news gets worse for the Democrats. Republicans have enlisted 650,000 new donors to the RNC. President Bush continues to speak about his tax cut plan and the way it will put 1 million people back to work.
When he talks about these things, average Joe & Susie America get it – and not only that, they like it. And not only do they like it, they also have the gall to applaud wildly, so that even CNN can't edit out the enthusiasm of the crowd reactions to the Bush plans (fie on enthusiastic citizens).
(Though if you have read any of the coverage of Bush's speeches in the New York Times, it has been able to edit much of what happened – heck, they hardly appear to be the same event ... but I digress.)
I seldom do, but I am beginning to agree with Joshua Micah Marshall. The Democrats have no issue, no personality, no usefulness, no plans to end unemployment (as opposed to putting a million people to work). They have no rally cry, and thus far the most creative solution they can come up with to losing is ... move out of state.
Psst, Demmies ... there is a lot of open "Oklahoma-like" space in Canada ... just FYI.
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