I defy anyone to make the argument that Biden was representing the voters in his district with his support for bankruptcy restrictions.

Biden, Dodd, Feinstein, Kohl, Dodd, Lieberman, the Nelson twins, Carper, Conrad and Landrieu are going to be a rotating corp of Faux Republican Corporate Scumbags Du Jour for the next two years. The usual suspects in the House will grease the skids for a whole lot of anti-middle class economic issues in that  house as well.

Dems need to articulate the differences between the parties more clearly on Social Security. It would be far more persuasive if they had a half dozen kitchen talble economic issues that defined the party. Republicans can continue to split working class voters because the Dems have abandoned the New Deal with the exception of Social Security. On fundamental economic issues, Nader is right. Aside from Social Security, there is no difference between the Dems and the GOPers.

I would go further: suspension of all future Bush tax cuts and repeal of those for the highest earners in the interest of balancing the budge and alleviating the pressure on entitlement programs.  If he does not want to play, than he has to live with having his nose rubbed in it.

Ezza Klein's call to arms a few days ago also addresses the Democrats failure to address the larger questions of our beliefs and the proper role of government:

"As successfully as the Democrats seem to be repelling Bush's assault on Social Security, we still show no conception of how to turn our defensive entrenchment into a powerful counterattack. We cheer when one of our number tags privatization as an attack on Social Security's legitimacy, but what about on the legitimacy of government?"

Ezra quotes and links to the full text and online audio of FDR's masterful 1936 re-election campaign speech, where FDR repeated again and again the refrain "For all these we have only just begun to fight."

Listening and reading to FDR's vision of the role of government and his call to arms to the public to fight a Republican onslaught against government is a tonic and inspiration for all of us in this period of uncertainty regarding the Democratic Party 'quo vadis" (which road) choices.

Ezra's summary of his post says it all and says it well:

"...this isn't a legislative scuffle but a philosophical war. FDR would have agreed. Why don't we?"

Listen to, and read, the FDR speech: http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/text/us/fdr1936.html".

You will see that we have a long road ahead to regain ground that we have lost.

This executive wants private accounts that invest in the stock market and his stock in particular. He sees private accounts as transferring risk from him to the public--risk, he surely knows, that is already being transferred through instruments such as IRA's, 401K's, and the explosion of mutual funds over the past decade. He's profited handsomely from that transfer of risk. From a corporate perspective he wants that transfer to continue, and from a personal one he needs it to continue to support his lifestyle.

And, without surprise, The Cunning Realist found that the bank employee's sentiments concurred.

He said: "I want that dumb public money coming across my desk." It's debatable whether that money would come across HIS desk as well as how much the financial industry in general would benefit from private accounts, but his expectation is clear.

Recently public interest groups such as the Campaign for America's Future have come under attack by supporters of private acccounts for suggesting that securities firms would profit from the President's Social Security plan. If executives at large publicly-traded technology firms and employees at large investment banks actually will not see any profit from this planned shift of public funds into the private sector, maybe somebody should tell them. This would likely dry up any remaining support for the President's privatization plan.

The attempts by the administration to downplay these issues, and in some cases even deny them, I believe, have been intellectually dishonest. It is time for the president to clearly state how his plan will work so it can be openly and honestly discussed.

You can read The Cunning Realist's inaugural post at  http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/2005/03/some-opening-comments-and-bit-about.html

Because simply the GOP have better framed their entire agenda (even if every one is a Trojan horse for their real constituency - corporate America) and its so easy for them to say our agenda is nothing but tired old ideas, etc.

We are in the position of defending something - the infrastructure of the new deal. So we are the conservatives in that sense.

And we occupy the conservative mind - space on issues like the budget deficit and environmental conservation. They would say their environmental approach is "progressive" in the sense that it advances the economic interests of the American people, but in fact it only advances the interests of energy corporations.

So in very simple terms they are the party advocating change of some type while we are advocating adhering to existing relationships and structures.

We have however made widespread progress on terms like "corporatism" and we have been successful tagging them with being more concerned about the interests of corporations than the interests of average people.

The reason why this is not working for us at the ballot is that we no longer have a true mass media reaching average people which enlightens them about the damage the BushCo agenda is doing to the interests average American.

The existing mass media favors Bush and the GOP and they do not cover the downside and costs of the BushCo corporate agenda on the average person.

When the downside to any issue is mentioned, its always no one is too blame, it is as it must be.

Another reason we don't have more traction is that  as a party our credibility on every issue is threatened by the DINO whores who go off the reservation on policy and messaging with impunity.

This is why we have to get rid of the DLC and punish DINOs who adhere to that ideology (fuck the  working class / suck up to the corporate class).

The Clinton era is long gone, no one on the political scene who can make the "third way" work. And in fact many of Clinton's policies like favoring NAFTA (favoring job/industry exporting) have lost us the constituency we need to be a viable contendor in national races, that is Clinton's real legacy.

The GOP have the American corporate mass media and they can cover their lying and stealing while we can't get traction even when we can and do construct a frame for the issues which puts forward our more popular views.

If you're interested, we've put together a blog specifically about this horrendous bill, which I've discussed in a diary. Hope you'll check it out and add to the pressure we're trying to put on senators to vote against or substantially amend this bill.

The blog, generously hosted by Talking Points Memo, features bankruptcy expert and financial hero Elizabeth Warren (of Harvard Law School) and several of us, her true-believing underlings.

Its a future in which a third 'industrial revolution' is going on..

If you have a job, be thankful and work like crazy to build up your skillset. Seriously..

Why? Because if you don't, you will lose it as all hell starts breaking lose in a few years time as millions lose their jobs from automation.

Especially those older folks over 30-35...

Its supply and demand.. The jobs will go to the creme de la creme..the best - or the cheapest..

For a glimpse at the future of work check out

http://www.acm.org/technews/

Do you see that many of us in it?

I am not a Luddite, I love automation in all its forms... I just think its also my moral responsibility to prompt others who may not be so aware of what the near future holds as far as new technologies.

Its not the business world's responsibility, or the government's, really, to provide jobs when those jobs are not needed.

OTOH, as the richest country in the world, we need to be aware of the fact that those of us who don't actually do something truly unique (i.e. NOT SCRIPTABLE) - which is most of us.. will NOT be able to extract a living from said activity in a few years.

Moore's Law says that the amount of computing power available for a given amount of money doubles every 18 months. If anything, that is a conservative estimate..

Do the math...

First, ask why is Bush spending the trust fund, bank account, etc, etc, if Social Security is in such crisis. (Answer, among others: to give a tax break to rich americans.)  Also, force him to take social security proceeds out of his budget deficit calculations.

Second, reframe the issue (like wingnuts did w/Harry and Louise) by equating it with car insurance, health insurance, all types of insurance.  Show the small percentage, but real cases, of elderly who have had bad breaks and come to rely on the social security check.

Time to go on the offense.  If dems can't do it with this issue, when are they going to?

That could make government MUCH more efficient..

And no more 'stealth' bills.. Every citizen could read and comment on pending legislation.. and lobbying as well..

They are already doing this in both Europe and Australia...

WE NEED MORE TRANSPARENCY IN GOVERNMENT!

             William Tecumseh Sherman

I would rather that George W. Bush spend four years in a penitentiary than in the White House.

             David Kowalski

It's all about education on the numbers. Plenty of people simply assumed that privatizers had them, and as a result were cowering in the corner. Now they are realizing that they can stand up and defend themselves. But what people don't understand is that Republicans have brought a rubber knife to a gun fight. They don't have the numbers. At all. They are setting themselves up for a huge fall, or to be more precise a really shitty Spring. They are liars and are going to be shown up as thoroughly incompetent liars because 2004 happened. And it didn't happen the way the Social Security Trustees predicted it would happen.

The difference between a Trust Fund that is bleeding $500 billion a year in 2040 and one that is piling up $400 billion a year in surplus is the difference between a model that predicted 2.7% growth in 2004 (Intermediate Cost) and one that predicted 2.8% (Low Cost). Real world 2004 returned 4.0%. 2004 Report: Estimates in dollars 2004 Report: Economic Assumptions

People on both sides of this issue are still working within a paradigm that puts weight on 2008, 2018 and 2042. Those are quite literally last years numbers. They have less than thirty days to live, the new Trustees' Report is due by March 31st. And the trend in the following table will continue: Depletion pushed out in time and payroll gap decreased. EPI: Changes in Trustees Projections

Defending Social Security would be the right thing to do even if it was faced with funding challenges. But defending it knowing that the numbers suggest that if anything it is currently overfunded is like fishing in a barrel using a hand grenade. Republicans are road kill on this one.

They don't have the numbers.

What do we stand for? How can we sum-up who we are in a way that is simple, straightforward and easy to understand:
As far as I can tell -- This is who we are:

A Democrat stands for --

1. Economic rights -- An average working family has the right to live in dignity;
   
2. Civil rights -- You can't treat people as second-class citizens because of sex, color, religion, ethnic background or bedroom habits;
   
3. International fair-play -- might does not make right and we have to learn to work and play well with others;
   
4. Protecting the individual from the powerful --  people should not be bullied by powerful government and powerful corporations;
   
5. Protecting our earth -- The earth belongs to no one -- we are just borrowing it, and like any good neighbor we should take care of it and clean it up before we pass it on to the next who use it.

Bob