With the mid term election in the rear view mirror, it’s full speed ahead to election 2016. ?Now while only a little more than one third of eligible voters voted in the recent mid term, with a majority of them being over 60 years of age, the media in general has been happy to frame the results as a ‘drubbing’ of the democrats. ?The Republicans, who never could pass up an opportunity to claim a mandate, claimed a mandate.
The reaction of the democrats, in general, seemed to agree with the media and the republicans and once again, as in the mid terms, allowed the republicans to frame the debate. ?It should be no surprise that the party presented candidates who couldn’t distance themselves far enough from President Obama and his low approval rating. ?Candidates like Kentucky’s Allison Lundegran Grimes who refused to say whether or not she even voted for president Obama (which would be amazing if she didn’t considering she was a delegate for him at the convention when he ran the first time).
In a recent interview with The Hill, soon to be Senate minority leader Harry Reid went as far as to say that this was not a time for Democrats to ‘Get even’. ?He said:
“We want to legislate. We’re not for stalling.”
Democrats don’t seem to mind that polls show Republicans, heady from their ‘mandate’, are far less interested in compromise than the Democrats.
And if it’s not obvious enough that Democrats are walking down the same old delusional path thinking that maybe this time the Republicans will be ‘different’, maybe this time they won’t be so mean and they’ll work with us, it all came to a clear point yesterday on MSNBC’s HARDBALL with the appearance of the new chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Montana Senator Jon Tester.
Ironic in that MSNBC is often criticized as a cheerleader for the Obama administration, the lead into the interview by host Chris Matthews characterized the mid term results as a ‘drubbing’ for the democrats showing the acceptance by MSNBC of this false narrative the Democrats allowed the Republicans to set.
After advocating for the Keystone Pipeline and believing that the President wouldn’t veto it because it ‘creates jobs’. ?When host Chris Matthews pressed Senator Tester about why the Dems failed to get the proper backing of the White House, Senator Tester choose not to bring up the candidates who ran from the President and his accomplishments, instead he choose to blame the White House for being too busy in ‘crisis mode’ to be able to effectively help Democratic candidates.
Senator Tester said:
“…there was disaster after disaster that came down the pipe from the roll out of the healthcare to the last one of Ebola and all sorts of things in between…always dealing with a crisis, always in crisis management form . We should have still talked about how the country’s moving forward, coming out of the worst recession since the 1930’s.”
?If Senators Tester or Reid had spoken with the junior Senator Elect from Michigan, Gary Peters, they may have gotten a different point of view since Peters is one of the few candidates that welcomed an appearance from a popular with his own base President with a long list of progressive achievements. ?The best part about Obama appearing with Peters? ?Peters won.
Republicans never have and never will join hands with Democrats and sing ‘Kumbiya’. ?Paul Ryan has already announced his next Medicare privitizing budget and Mitch McConnell’s idea of compromise is gutting Obamacare so it’s rendered effectively ineffective.
Apparently, that’s not enough to keep the Democrats from continuing on with their mid term strategy of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. ?Well, to be more accurate, at this point their pioneering snatching defeat from the jaws of defeat.
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