"Obama owes me personally engraved invitation inscribed with gold letters explaining to me a reason to give a damn and show up and vote in 2014. He owes every single Democratic voter the same. Where's my invitation, Barry?"
--David Atkins, Hullabaloo
Bonus Verbatim Stupid:
But it's also up to elected officials and other party leaders to provide people the incentive to get out and vote. When President Obama took office he acted to curb many of the evils the Bush Administration was actively perpetrating. But outside of providing somewhat less expensive health insurance to around 20 million people, there hasn't been a lot of action that directly impacted people's lives or even provided some sense of accountability and justice to the people who crashed the economy. When the President promised hope and change, people really expected their lives to get measurably and demonstrably better. If people don't think their lives are going to get better, they're not going to be likely to dash to the polling place between jobs, dinner and childcare to vote for down-ballot Democrats most of them are barely aware of.
If Democratic candidates want to win in 2014, they're going to have to give their base a reason to come out to vote beyond the notion that they're better than the GOP.
If after six years of Tea Party idiocy and 34 years of Reagan's morning in America you still need a reason to vote Democrat "beyond the notion that they're better than the GOP", you're the exact damn reason they're in control of the House right now and threatening to take the Senate. You stayed home in 2010, and the GOP took over in a redistricting year. Sure as hell didn't make Obama getting any of the things you wanted out of his easier, did it?
Oh, and Atkins, screw you for "providing somewhat less expensive health insurance to around 20 million people" as if that's a travesty of justice. Ask those 20 million people if it matters to them and their families.
Here's my question. You know now that 2010 happened because liberals stayed home and didn't vote. Why the hell would you encourage that behavior a second time?
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6 comments:
tell it, Zander!!!
"Here's my question. You know now that 2010 happened because liberals stayed home and didn't vote. Why the hell would you encourage that behavior a second time?"
-Because they are stupid.
Because they would rather piss and moan than doing something constructive.
The President has done great things for the American people despite Republican opposition. He (and we) need a Democratic majority.
I plan to vote; what the fuck are you going to do that is constructive in nature?
David Atkins truly is a special kind of stupid.
A few months back some friends and I were discussing the faux radical purity trolls at the Daily Kos and their persistent schemes to throw the midterm elections to the Republicans, so as to punish the feckless Democrats and (something, something) resulting in a Green Party filibuster proof supermajority at the federal level that would fulfill all of our wishes. David Atkins is tied in with a network of spies and narcs who ratted us out and won us a visit from the Great Man himself, who let us know in no uncertain terms that he has a blog (no, really!) and that he is a Big Shit in his county political machine. Appropriately chastened, we continued our discussion as if an incontinent California Gull had swooped in to cackle meaninglessly and to eject a malodorous spray of feces and urine across our desks.
As to your question, "You know now that 2010 happened because liberals stayed home and didn't vote. Why the hell would you encourage that behavior a second time?" the answer lies in the evident fact that the purity trolls think we are stupid. They expect us to ignore all of their chatter, all of their all too public discussions of the need to sabotage elections in the service of dragging the Democrats to the left, so that when elections are sabotaged and we all have to face the horrible damage inflicted by their actions they like to squeal "No way! Wasn't us! We didn't do nothing!" in the expectation that we will back down and allow them to cultivate their smug sense of self-righteousness in peace.
Yeah, well, fuck that. The Democratic Party is a broad coalition that includes a spectrum of interests - one of which is the critically important task of keeping the Republican psychopaths as far away from the levers of powers as can be arranged. If this is not good enough for you, fine: split off and form your little Unicorns and Faerie Dust Party, but don't pretend that you are any part of the Democratic Base and don't whine when the people who manned the barricades and won the battles are in no mood to cut you in on the victory spoils. This idea that the purity caucus can stand above the fray, keeping their precious hands clean, then swoop in to take charge on the strength of their obvious moral superiority is one of the more annoying tropes cultivated by Atkins and his cronies.
Guys, you may not be being entirely fair to Atkins. It's obvious to you and me and to Atkins too that anybody who doesn't run out and vote for Democrats in 2014 is somebody with a problem, but somebody has to try to understand them and figure out how to make them do it, and Atkins works his ass off to GOTV in Ventura county http://www.vcstar.com/news/2012/jul/26/online-activist-atkins-elected-chairman-of/ and apparently with some success http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventura_County,_California#Overview. He's not encouraging anybody to stay home, he's talking to us believers about how hard it is to get them out there, and he's entitled to express some concern. He has written in defense of the Affordable Care Act:
"Republicans are very upset that people who are working just to hold onto health insurance might be willing to quit the labor force because the Affordable Care Act will allow them to. The notion that someone might devote their time to writing poetry instead of droning away at some awful job just to cover an insurance CEO's yacht fee positively incenses them..." and "The ACA is going to get more and more tricky for Republicans as time goes along. The key for Democrats will be to not let the Republicans off the hook for their virulent opposition. As much as the GOP saw gains from exploiting lies about the ACA in 2010, Democrats should be able to punish the GOP for opposing many of the law's commonsense provisions for the next two decades."
I can respect that Yas, but that's *exactly* why the paragraph I quoted makes zero sense to me. There's a huge, huge difference between "Getting out the vote would be a lot easier in blue states where Democrats already hold sway and need motivation to avoid complacency if there were some solid liberal policy victories to point to" and "If Democratic candidates want to win in 2014, they're going to have to give their base a reason to come out to vote beyond the notion that they're better than the GOP."
Yeah. I guess I was reading it more as "David needs a hug."
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