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The Political Deficit: A Democratic Agenda

One the backslapping and congratulations begin to wane, it will be critical to the future of this country for the democrats to develop and exercise a bold agenda of righting the wrongs of the past 6 years of the Bush Administration. Before they can do that, there needs to be an acknowledgement that the democrats did NOT squeak by with a majority in the house and senate by having a vision or a plan that the people entrusted to them. They won because of the disgust and abject mistrust of the republican house and senate and 10 years of abuse.

Shrub claimed to have gained “political capital” after the 2004 election- and as ridiculous as that statement was, he wielded that capital as if it actually existed while the democrats, the press and the public sat idly by. Our country is in shambles. Shrubs policies from “you are either with us or against us” to “spreading democracy and freedom in the war against terror” has had a definitive impact. We now have nearly everyone against us, allies included and we have spread terror far and wide and destroyed our best chances of freedom and democracy in the middle east. Our domestic policies are in dire trouble as well- education systems failing as “no child left behind” has left millions behind, the dismantling of FEMA leaving this country with no Federal emergency management abilities whatsoever and even as far as to shut down the EPA libraries around the country as a “cost saving measure” literally making it impossible for any kind of environmental impact studies to be completed without costing 20 times as much and taking far longer than they used to making challenging any development plan an impossibility.

Who has suffered has been the American people, the Iraqi people and our fellow citizens of the world who’s lives are far more at risk in nearly every single country since Shrub and the Repiglicans policies have been in effect the past 6 years. The ENTIRE world is looking at us now, as are the American people; even with a jaundiced eye, having a shred of hope that the new Democratic leadership can begin to mend and resolve the countless disasters inflicted on us by the Bush Administration and his incompetent cronies.

The Democrats MUST understand that the mandate for change and political “capital” they have gained is primarily because of the political DEFICIT created by the past 10 years of greed and ineptitude, It is up to this leadership to prove that America is NOT a country of morons unable to elect people to office that posit a progressive and benevolent change. The republicans lost because they took it all too far- the joke that I Karl Rove is no longer funny; he has NEVER been a genius, he only played out the worst traits in all humanity and subverted intelligent discussion and genuine democratic principles. It was funny to the conservatives in 2000 and even still, although in lesser numbers in 2004. After eight years of “Slick Willie” they saw the meanness as a post-partum politic payback for having a centrist with fiscally responsible and mostly intelligent policies in office who deflected most of the far right policies from gaining any hold and really put the Reagan and Bush I presidencies to shame in effectiveness.

To realize the opportunity before them, the Dems will need to do a few things; they will need to be relentless on eradicating the worst flagrances of corruption in Congress (a good argument for Murtha, war hero or not, to not have become majority whip) by listening to minds like Norm Ornstein’s. They will need to hold discussions with the generals’ that had “retired” after disagreeing with Rummy and understand how to redeploy our troops into a training role instead of a policing role. They will need to force the president to sit down with Iran and Syria and the Saudis and work on different levels of carrot and stick as these countries will be integral to getting the violence to back down and controlling the insurgencies as much as possible. They will have to FORCE the shrub to negotiate with our enemies. The Dems will need to be loud and direct about the economy only being healthy for major corporations and institute an immediate national minimum wage hike and address national health care and education. The corporations will scream and kick and with every thrash the Dems need to have the balls to call them out to where they shut the fuck up enough to learn to negotiate with congress as they had in the past instead of writing it’s policy.

The Dems have a very short time to make corrections and act before our country becomes completely financially and morally bankrupt. With our present trajectory, in two years millions of Americans will have their home foreclosed on, be hungry and working low-paying jobs if any at all. We are almost at 3,000 Americans killed in Iraq with over 125,000 Iraqis dead and tens of thousands of Iraqis and Americans alike wounded. To stop this war the Iraqi infrastructure MUST be rebuilt and Americans pulled out allowing the Iraqi people some autonomy- by doing this, the last thing the Iraqi people will remember before the Americans left is that they FINALLY got the electric working and clean water flowing and economy moving again. Maybe in a generation or two they can forgive us for what we’ve brought to their country. The tens of thousands of American lives destroyed by this fiasco need to be addressed too. Counseling and medical care- cheap housing, retraining and re-purposing for the men and women returning wounded or worse crippled and unable to resume their normal lives. We haven’t even taken care of our own and Shrub’s people continues to cut benefits even as they demand more commitment from the troops.

The Democrats cannot drop the ball. They cannot play the “game” any longer. Too many lives have been destroyed these past six years. The entire world is watching; not the least of which, the American people.