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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (498707)	11/25/2003 8:45:29 PM
From: Bob Mohebbi	Respond to of 769667

We need A REVOLUTION, that is the answer! == End of the corruption!

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (498707)	11/26/2003 7:57:33 AM
From: JakeStraw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Democrats get a wake-up call Loss on Medicare symptomatic of problems ANALYSIS By David Von Drehle THE WASHINGTON POST Nov. 26 — In politics, there’s nothing like having the other side steamroll your party — using your own steamroller — to jangle the emotions. DEMOCRATS HAVE owned the Medicare issue for nearly 40 years. But this week, the Republicans climbed into the driver’s seat and mashed the gas pedal. In closed-door sessions that excluded nearly all Democrats, through rule-bending roll calls, dishing out goodies to friends and twisting arms of the recalcitrant, the Republicans passed $400 billion worth of changes. Democrats spent the day picking carpet fibers out of their hairdos and sorting out their reactions. Should they be outraged or envious in the face of Republican audacity and discipline? Disheartened or energized by President Bush’s latest victory? This inability to choose a voice, to stick to one path, was a worrisome sign for many Democrats — especially after such a disorienting year for the party. They have been ousted from power at every level from statehouses to governor’s mansions to Congress to the White House; divided over Bush’s decision to invade Iraq; unable to coalesce early behind a presidential challenger. Democrats do not have a unified position on Bush’s tax cuts, or on his education policy, or — when crunch time came — his Medicare initiative. This at a time when the Republicans are demonstrating almost unprecedented discipline. “When you lose the political initiative, things like this happen,” said Will Marshall, director of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute. “The other party steals your ideas and advances them in somewhat bastardized form. It’s a result of Democrats not getting their act together and getting behind an agenda that can help rebuild their majority in Congress.” ‘COMPLETELY HORRIFIED’ Democrats fretted about the possibility that they will be stranded in the congressional minority for years to come. They also talked bravely of the public streaming to their side. They were not sure whom to blame more: GOP leaders or Democratic defectors. “I think it’s one part completely horrified, and another part completely energized,” said Laura Nichols, a vice president of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank, summing up the mixed feelings. Start with horrified: Longtime party strategist Harold Ickes was at a loss to see any upside to a Republican victory in an area Democrats have always owned. He said he was flabbergasted that key Democratic senators, led by John Breaux (La.) and Max Baucus (Mont.), went along with it. “It’s totally beyond me,” Ickes said. “I think it has seriously undermined our ability to change occupants of the White House next year. Republicans will make it sound like they invented Medicare. That’s a big piece of political real estate to give up.” He paused. “I don’t know,” he said. “We just don’t have the discipline on our side that’s needed.” ‘In the Senate we saw the difference between the other side’s discipline and our lack of it, and I think Democrats are disappointed in the extreme.’ — ROBERT BOROSAGE Campaign for America's Future Robert Borosage of the Campaign for America’s Future blamed Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) for the collapse. In the House, he said, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) managed to hold the line so effectively that Republicans had to hold open their middle-of-the-night vote for nearly three hours on Saturday — the longest flouting of the 15-minute rule in House history — just to eke out a win. After which the Democratic filibuster in the Senate swiftly collapsed. “There’s clearly an absence of forceful leadership at the top of the Senate,” Borosage said. “In the Senate we saw the difference between the other side’s discipline and our lack of it, and I think Democrats are disappointed in the extreme.” ‘ODD DYNAMIC’ For some, the experience was another milepost in the process of coming to terms with life outside of power. That old friend of many decades, the muscular AARP, entered the Medicare battle — on the other side. The wily and experienced Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) had his pocket picked. It was humiliating. “It’s an odd dynamic,” said Eric Hauser, a strategist on the party’s liberal wing. “When I came to Washington in the mid-’80s, the idea that Democrats ran things was just like the sun coming up in the east. Now, with each passing year, Democrats are less relevant.” Kennedy’s experience with the Medicare bill was repeatedly cited as both pivotal and highly instructive. Earlier this year, he joined with Republican sponsors to get a prescription drug benefit moving, hopeful that the details would become more to his liking during the conference to iron out differences between the House and Senate versions. “What Kennedy didn’t realize is that the tide has changed,” said James A. Thurber, an expert on congressional politics at American University. Instead, GOP leaders shut Kennedy out of the conference, stiffened the spines of their own party and enticed Breaux, Baucus and a few others with a few targeted tweaks to the bill. Is this a sign of resignation to a long stretch in the minority? “Maybe,” Thurber said. “These interest groups and some lawmakers may already be thinking there will be more Republicans in the Senate and the House next Congress and Bush will be reelected. And they think this is the best they’re going to get.” But some saw a silver lining. These were the darkest-before-the-dawn Democrats, who perceive a rising level of concern and even anger among the public as the GOP enacts more and more of its agenda. Some see this energy in the outsider presidential campaign of former Vermont governor Howard Dean. Others see it in redoubled fundraising and organizational efforts by Democratic interest groups. Others see it in recent polls that suggest a hardening of anti-Bush feelings. “Sometimes it takes a big fight like this to bring people around,” Nichols said. “I think we’ve accumulated enough years under a conservative government that people are finally beginning to understand the difference and what it means. That’s the plus side,” she said, for Democrats of the Medicare defeat. “Hopefully there’s enough anger and dissatisfaction out there,” she added. “We may have the makings of a real movement.” © 2003 The Washington Post Company msnbc.com