Whatever the Republic Party stood for in the past, it no longer does. We might have seen the writing on the wall when Ronald Reagan declared “Government is not the solution; it is the problem.”
While that was more than forty years ago, it was the seed that sprouted, grew and reproduced until coming into full bloom in the Trump Administration. Government, they would now say, is not only the problem, but is the enemy.
Meanwhile, the Democrats continued to advance a vision of Government as a force for the advancement of civilization. Only Government wielded the power and resources sufficient to the noble task of bringing about fairness, equality and dignity to the people through programs ranging from grants to artists to healthcare for (almost) all.
But Democrats have fallen into a trap. Passing legislation and declaring high principles is not enough. High-minded programs have too often not only failed to solve the underlying problems, but in some cases have exacerbated them. Too often Democrats have architected beautiful structures, but have failed to sufficiently engineer them.
In short, if Democrats want the people to see Government as a solution, they have to ensure that Government is actually competent to administer the enacted programs, and to revise and modify them when they fall short. Results matter. And the Republican’s have had a field-day pointing out the Democrats’ great performance gap between rhetoric and results. It’s time for the Democrats to actually be the party of good, fair competent government focussed on solving the many problems we face, and admit that the problems are both complex and not amenable to facile, sound-byte solutions.
“But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
(Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene III, L. 140-141)
cajunjoe, good topic. thank you so much.
please don’t hesitate to come up with more.
but first, a look back on a very long hard year for a lot of folk
Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York performs Prayer for Ukraine. February 27, 2022.
slava ukriani
also click here for brad paisley’s “same here” featuring pres. zelenskyy. AP reports on same in their
Brad Paisley pens country song featuring Ukraine’s Zelenskyy (msn.com)
Shche ne vmerla Ukrainy i slava, i volia – the national anthem of Ukraine sung by Mumbles A Cappella on March 2nd 2022 as an act of solidarity with the people of Ukraine at what is an unimaginably difficult time for them.
Mumbles, Swansea, UK, Wales
“… if Democrats want the people to see Government as a solution, they have to ensure that Government is actually competent to administer the enacted programs, and to revise and modify them when they fall short.”
cjoe, short of issuing a lot of presidential EOs these next 2 years it’ll be a hard row to hoe faced with a House divided.
Buttigieg’s ask of former guy to back the new rail regs and denounce the old is a start.
Buttigieg calls on Trump to back reversing deregulation in wake of train derailment | The Hill
Given the way many of the nuttier @GOP are siding with Russia, I’m convinced they won’t be happy until Putin drops a nuke on New York for being too “woke”.
Walk the walk, Dems.
Слава Украине 🇺🇦 (louder for the Russians in the back)
Amen Joe. The great opportunity for Dems is Repubs are seen as only for the rich but fears about Dem competence depress their support. Get that right, and the GOP is history. And yes, this goes all the way back to Reagan turning people against their own government, which still haunts us today.
the guardian
[…]
As morning broke on a day of commemorations and reflection, Zelenskiy struck a tone of grim defiance as he congratulated Ukrainians on their resilience in the face of Europe’s biggest and deadliest conflict since the second world war. He said they had proven themselves to be invincible over “a year of pain, sorrow, faith and unity”.
Sitting at a desk, dressed in a blue sweatshirt with Ukraine’s trident emblem, Zelenskiy paid homage to cities that have become bywords for alleged Russian war crimes, such as Bucha, Irpin and Mariupol, describing them as “capitals of invincibility”.
“We survived the first day of the full-scale war. We didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, but we clearly understood that for each tomorrow, you need to fight. And we fought,” he said in an early morning video address.
“The longest day of our lives. The hardest day of our modern history. We woke up early and haven’t fallen asleep since,” he said.
As Zelenskiy was speaking, Russian forces said they were continuing their attack along the entire eastern front.
[continues]
from Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter: “In the New York Times yesterday, Luke Broadwater and Jonathan Swan reported that one of the reasons House speaker Kevin McCarthy handed access to more than 40,000 hours of video from the U.S. Capitol from January 6, 2021, to Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson was that McCarthy had promised the far right that he would revisit that event but did not want to have the Republican Congress tied to the effort. His political advisors say swing voters want to move forward.”
(okay, so why only Tucker and not all the news outlets?)
The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in their selfies; that they are in underwear.
With McCarthy and Carlson the only thing which really matters to them both is that the material gets to russia.
The “curtain” has been lifted.
I’m not for sure where we start. That Republicans tend to suck at governing? That Democrats suck at messaging? That with any disaster, reporters love to knock on doors searching for a crazy quote to use as click bait and drive those numbers. As a result we tell ourselves how bad off we are, how terrible the world is.
The fact is JFK was right, a rising tide does lift all boats. We have never lived better, at all levels! The poor are less poor, and yes the rich are very rich. The governmental policies of post WWII were enormously successful. Yet neither of the major parties will admit this to be true.
Being fat and happy doesn’t make for good click bait even though that is where most Americans are these days.
Jack
I’d say the Republicans suck at governing because they don’t believe in governance, while the Democrats suck at governing because they get bored with the details necessary for successful implementation of programs that then fail to achieve results, become wasteful or corrupt.
Joe
On Republicans that is a bit of a cliche. They seem to have no problems wanting to govern but they do seem to have a problem finding experts who can implement their programs. Not political stuff just basic pay the bills stuff.
Mrs Jack’s mentor was program manager for one of the large Iraq rebuild contracts Berger had with the defense department. They were having troubles meeting the schedules so he went over to see what the problem was. It turned out that the Iraqi contractors who were doing the work weren’t getting paid. It was a simple problem they didn’t have anybody who could go out and sign off and verify the work was done. Simple stuff, if you have ever contracted with the government, it is how it works every month, you turn in your invoice the man/woman signs off on it and sends it to the people who cut the check. The 30 days later almost to the hour it shows up in your mailbox.
I sometime suspect that Republicans spend too much time working for Thinktanks. Not enough in the real world.
Of course Democrats are busy playing lobbyist.
Jack
A lot of generalizations in this argument.
One party has a national platform of mendacity and obstruction, the other has progressive policy goals
“My daddy left me NOTHIN…”
Great post. I wish more Democrats would bring this up.The train derailment in Ohio is a great example
of the Republican idea of government. I hope Gov Mike Dewine is right and there are no lasting impacts for the
community from the chemical spills. But maybe I’m suspicious and cynical I don’t think DeWine has any idea for
real. Democrats need a ready response in all 50 states to make something out of gooper buffooneries
…grooving on that Tejano beat, today, digging this gem:
One year ago, today, me and just about everyone else in the world gave Kyiv 3 days- none of us counted on Ukrainian ingenuity and resolve!
Glory to the heroes💪🇺🇦
Here you go, Zelenskyy’s show, free on youtube (subtitles in English), required viewing to my mind. The viewer gets a glimpse of a peaceful Ukraine striving towards a more democratic and less corrupt post-Soviet society, before, you know, Putin decided to try and murder them all for not acceding to Russian authoritarianism
Bink – My family and cousins fought the Soviets in 1939 to 1945. The Winter War was 1939-40. The Russians fought the same way they are in Ukraine. With the same results. The end of the Winter War in 1940 was there was not much left of the Soviet Army in the north. Stalin was then fighting the German Naziis. Oddly Germany was the only country to offer help to the Finns to fight the second coming of the Soviets. There was a history of Germany and Finland so that was not too odd. I have great-grandmother (two greats) with German names. People are set back when I say I hate Russians. The Russians are behind the horrors of Ukraine. They could remove puttie, but are still believing their propaganda of how Ukraine is Nazi when they are. Annonymous hacks the propaganda networks to show what is going on in Ukraine.
A woman I follow on twitter was wounded yesterday. She is a transwoman from Nevada, who had been a war reporter over the years for various organizations. She saw what was happening in Ukraine and first volunteered as a medic. As the horror of russian crimes increased she enlisted and has been in the trenches. Today we learned of her injures. Her left thumb was blown off and she had other shrapnel wounds to her face and right hand. She said that once she gets sewn up she can go back into the trenches because her trigger finger is good. She will be an honoray Finn if I get my way. If you ever hear or see Sisu – that is what she has.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/24/politics/ron-desantis-florida-universities-gender-studies/index.html
“A new bill overhauling Florida universities to match Gov. Ron DeSantis’ vision for higher education would shift power at state schools into the hands of the Republican leader’s political appointees and ban gender studies as a field of study.”
“The legislation, filed this week, would also require that general education courses at state colleges and universities “promote the values necessary to preserve the constitutional republic” and cannot define American history “as contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.” It would prohibit general courses “with a curriculum based on unproven, theoretical or exploratory content.”
“The bill makes good on DeSantis’ pledge to ban colleges and universities from any expenditures on diversity, equity and inclusion…”
“The bill would put all hiring decisions in the hands of each universities’ board of trustees, a body selected entirely by the governor and his appointees, with input from the school’s president. A board of trustee member could also call for the review of any faculty member’s tenure.”
Duh-Santis just made Flori-dumber, the fascist creep.
NEW THREAD