Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Perspective

In regards to the Democrat change on the Iraq supplemental bill, I am disappointed that we couldn't attach any timelines/benchmarks, but I think at some point we have to acknowledge the political reality. The Democrats simply don't have the votes to override a presidential veto and instead of pissing into the wind they correctly acknowledged that the situation was difficult. Unfortunately this hasn't stopped the purity trolls from exclaiming that the Democratic party is dead.

I really like kos's stance on this, so I am posting it in its entirety:
...there's nothing worse than the people who want to quit the game and take their ball home every time we face a setback. It's as if every word I've ever written about this being a long-term battle means zero. As if it's instant gratification or nothing.

We face a multiple-front war -- against conservatives, against an out-of-touch and corrupt beltway consultant class, against corporatist Democrats, or Democrats that long ago lost the fire in their belly, and against a compromised punditry elite. Those are tough opponents, and it'll be a decades-long fight.

Did any of you really think we won that war in 2006? I sure as heck didn't. 2006 was incremental improvement, just as 2008 will be. And hopefully 2010. Along the way, we'll likely lose some ground, but we must always remain focused on the long term.

The conservative movement spent three decades building up their machine and completing the takeover of their party. And some of you want to quit after one setback?

That's embarrassing.

Buck up. We still haven't completely lost this Iraq supplemental battle. And if we do, instead of crying and taking your ball home, resolve to fight even harder. We owe it to our troops in Iraq, to our families, to our neighbors, to ourselves.

We have a lot of deadwood to get rid of in DC -- both Democratic and Republican. We have to combat the lies of the right wing noise machine and its allies in the traditional media. We have to build an electoral machine that can go toe-to-toe against the GOP's machine and win -- even when Republicans aren't shooting themselves in the foot.

This movement is about fighting for what we believe in, doing the hard work to transform both our party and our nation. It won't happen at once. We'll have to do this incrementally one issue fight and one election cycle at a time.

If we want to build a movement here, this is the approach we need to take. Those folks that want to stammer and stutter every time we don't get our way are acting just like the President.

No comments: