Democrats Pledge Not To Fuck Up Like The Republicans Did

Fingers crossed, people, fingers crossed...

Washington Post: Democrats Find Lessons In GOP Reign

...Led by a feisty Nevada senator and the first woman in history to claim the House speaker's post, the long-banished Democrats hope to prove their bona fides as lawmakers and challenge a president from the other party to accept their agenda, a game plan taken straight from the Gingrich era's "Contract With America." They also intend to challenge President Bush to change course in Iraq and consider their demands for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops.

But Democrats say they will avoid the overreaching, arrogance and rancorous partisanship that left them virtually powerless on Capitol Hill and spawned an era of political corruption and influence-peddling. Democratic leaders vowed last week to pass major ethics reforms early in the new 110th Congress, and to offer Republicans seats at the negotiating table and ample opportunities to amend bills on the floor -- opportunities that were denied their party...

...House Democratic leaders have put forward an ambitious opening salvo for January, a 100-hour legislative blitz that includes raising the minimum wage, boosting alternative-energy research and repealing tax breaks for oil companies. They also want to beef up seaport screening, expand college tuition assistance, boost stem cell research and allow the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices under Medicare...

...But once the 100 hours or so pass, pressure will mount on Democrats to confront what many liberals see as the misdeeds of Bush and the Republican Party. The party's base is clamoring for Democrats to repeal tax cuts skewed to the affluent, to revisit the new law authorizing military tribunals for terrorism suspects and to investigate the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

To some Democrats, such calls raise memories of the aggressive -- and ultimately self-destructive -- stance that House Republicans took when they stormed to power in the 1994 election and later voted to impeach President Bill Clinton, only to see Clinton acquitted in the Senate...

.Once Democrats have exhausted their consensus agenda, a legislative priority list they call "6 for '06," they will have to decide whether they need to become more ambitious -- balancing the budget, overhauling immigration policy, or tackling problems of poverty and the uninsured, for instance -- or focus on the nuts and bolts of governance to prove competence ahead of the 2008 campaign...

Despite attempts to paint it as controversial somehow, the majority of the Democrats' planned agenda is 100% mainstream and very popular. Change the course in the war, a lot of economic populism, some oversight, and a return to scientific progress... it's hard to see what any reasonable person finds objectionable there. Again, if you listened to the concerned rhetoric about 'extreme' Democrats, you'd think that this was their agenda.

Besides the standard disdain for liberals and the 'no mandate!' mantra I hope I have complained about enough, one thing in this article does really annoy me... the talking point I keep hearing that starting investigations and hearings will make Democrats look 'partisan' and 'extreme' and will turn off voters. I have to believe this is untrue. It's not like the Democrats are going overboard like talking about investigating... semen stains on dresses. Heck, they even ruled impeachment out (a decision I am willing to live with), even though most Americans probably wouldn't be opposed to it. Investigating how we got into Iraq, where our tax money went to in said war, what the President has done with the extra powers Congress gave him, what to do on global warming-- stuff like that-- is not extreme. It is only because the outgoing Republican Congress so shirked their oversight duties (to the point where people seem to have forgotten they were supposed to hold oversight hearings) is why it seems extreme now. The Democrats are simply going to do the stuff the Republicans were supposed to do, but didn't. It's literally their job.

All this proves to me is that no matter how out of the way the Democrats go to be bipartisan and to prove their moderation, everything they do will be spun by the Republicans and the lazy media as extreme or out of the mainstream. They can't win. Our only hope is that the Democrats are finally smart enough to not listen to these professional morons and just do the job we elected them to do.

I'm sure I'll be repeating this alot as the conventional wisdom machine continues along...