Good question.

Perhaps we should hire some consultants to answer it for us.

 ...that WE have to do all the work.

 By "we" I mean the Democratic grassroots and netroots, and other local heroes.

 Our House and Senate leadership fails us almost daily. They almost ALWAYS have to be coaxed into actually behaving like an opposition party, whether the issue is Iraq, Katrina, radical judges, warrantless wiretapping, John Bolton, anything. They seem to be pathologically afraid of taking ANY kind of fight to the Republicans -- even when said Republicans are ripe for the taking.

  And this is why the Democrats lose elections.

  I honestly can't figure it out. How could the party of such great, energetic, committed Americans like Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy fall almost completely bereft of anyone who will stand for the party's traditional values? I mean, when our House leader is someone as politically bipolar as Rahm Emanuel, it's no wonder we don't get any traction.

  The Democratic Party does retain a few strong, forceful spokesmen -- Dean, Clark, Feingold, Murtha. But the party power structure itself works overtime to marginalize them. It's almost like the Hillarys of the world are afraid of being shown up by those who remember what Democrats are SUPPOSED to sound like. It's criminal that Republicans like Hagel are harsher war critics than almost anyone the Democrats throw out there.

 So that's my answer: We have no official leadership. The PEOPLE are doing yeoman work, but the established party infrastructure does everything it can to make our lives more difficult.

i agree with you Matt, the Katrina anniversary/storyline has not been as potent as it should be.

two main reasons for this:

1) bush/rumsfeld uping the rhetoric by sprinkling their recent speeches with 'nazis' and 'fascism' to go with the round 5 year anniversary of 9/11.

2) this has been a quiet hurricane season so far.  

I feel awful saying this, but once another hurricane has its sights set on Carolina/Florida or god forbid the Gulf Coast, you can bet the new media narratives will be "What lessons have we learned from Katrina" "Are we prepared?" "Can the gov't handle this one".

until then 9/11 trumps it.

I hate to say this but the vast majority of Katrina's victims were poor and African-American. And if you're a single or married blue-collar or middle-class white woman in one of those contested battleground districts in Ohio or Pennsylvania, a year later, you could care less about those flighty dark-skinned folks who couldn't be bothered to get out of the way of a Category 4 hurricane. If Katrina had taken out a Caucasian city -- Houston, say, or Tampa -- the tragedy would resonate more with swing voters.

Sadly, tragically -- and this speaks volumes about the American character in 2006 -- centrist white voters couldn't give a shit.

Just look at Joe Lieberman. He made such a fuss about Katrina in the immediate aftermath but has kept silent since then.

Whither Katrina?

Whither Mary Landrieu? Crass though it may seem, this is a political web site, so I'll just point out that Katrina could have made Mary Landrieu's career. She could have beaten George Bush over the head with it for an entire year.

Instead, she settled for table scraps (most of which never showed, anyway), and got rolled time and again in one of the sickest and most pathetic games of go-along-to-get-along ever played.

A year filled with crucial bills, Supreme Court nominations, nuclear option fights, filibusters, secret holds, and Lord knows what else, and Mary Landrieu couldn't make an issue out of George Bush drowning her own home town.

Mary Landrieu may be the single worst Democratic Senator out there.

It's certain that none is worse.

Her home town was destroyed due to right-wing ineptitude and malice, and she turned around and helped the assholes who did it.

That's because she's one of them in all but name.

Landrieu is going to wind up chasing an empty banner, stung by wasps.

Landrieu will jump to the GOP next year. I'll be the first to say ood riddance, Bloody Mary.

She's better than opponents Woody Jenkins or Suzanne Haik Terrell and what other senator has threatened Bush with physical violence ("I might likely have to punch him - literally")?
I'm sure Mary Landrieu has had to deal with the consequences of Katrina every single day and she doesn't deserve to be treated badly by the blogosphere.

I agree about Mary Landrieu, her response has been thoroughly incompetent in every sense.  But what about Ray Nagin?  When asked why it was taking so long to rebuild New Orleans, he referred to the ground zero rebuilding effort.  Why doesn't he say that New Orleans is not being rebuilt as it should be because of President Bush? As much as Mary Landrieu, Ray Nagin should be travelling all over the country, giving power-point presentations about Hurricane Katrina's aftermath and talking to people about how the power is still not back in many neighborhoods, and how most houses have still not been rebuilt.  Instead of defensively talking about his personal record, he should be talking about the misplaced priorities of our country (as well as Senator Landrieu) and reminding our country that George Bush doesn't give a damn about poor people.  

I had the opportunity to write to her and several other Democrats that were being tagged as "moderates" during the last election cycle.  Not only were their responses filled with fear, they also projected a lot of hate towards Liberals in general.  It was at that point that I began to question the Democratic Party on a national level and started paying much more attention to Kos and MyDD.

The general groupthink at that time was "Gee, I better go along so I can appease my Republican constituents."

What does that groupthink reveal?  Basically that she and a host of other Dems weren't even paying attention.

but I thought it was being discussed in Af-Am communities.  Although I don't have any ads or campaign press releases at my fingertips to show it.  Though it didn't stay on the front pages very long.  Having the entire administration accuse the country of appeasing Nazis didn't help much either.

I think part of the problem, though, was that an effective narrative was undermined, not just by Landrieu, but by Blanco and Nagin.

I don't judge any of them in the circumstances of the storm itself.  But take away the storm and it seems that their infighting and ambitions are getting in the way of a grounded narrative taking shape.   And just some bad decisions.

It is not too late to get it back into the debate, though.  And I'm very glad this was brought up again on MyDD.

Mary Landrieu did not replace John Breaux, she served alongside him.  

When the hurricane happened my first political thought, which sad to say about myself came far too soon after the horror of the hurricane, was that the depopulation of New Orleans, which is the largest Democratic vote in the state, meant that no Democrat was ever going to be elected again for a long time. Landrieu loses in 2008 and no other statewide Dem will win again for a long time.

As David Brinkley, New Orelans native, and presidiential historian, said the neglect will have such a noticeable political effect -- turning a blue state red -- that the neglect almost seems like policy.

How convenient for Republicans that this works oout so well for them.

Katrina isn't a story that still resonates with most Americans.  Look, it's a big country, and people in Michigan don't have to think about people in Louisiana if they don't want to.  In order for Katrina to maintain political potency, it has to affect the lives of lots of people.  The war in Iraq and the GWOT are things that continue to affect the country as a whole.  And every day.  Every day there is a news cast about Iraq or terrorism.  So, it remains relevant.

Katrina is not nearly as strong of a story.  At this point, the only people outside the immediate disaster zone who are still being affected by Katrina are people living in San Antonio, Houston, Austin, Atlanta, Dallas--cities where large numbers of evacuees relocated (and were forced to relocate).  Everyone else in this country has the convenient option of shutting their eyes.  And they choose that option every day.

I love how Democrats love to eat their own, like eating Landreau apart. Sure, she might've messed up pretty badly after Katrina, but calling her the worst Democratic Senator? Talking about progressive and non-progressive, we've got buddies like Ben Nelson, Max Baucas, Blanche Lincoln, and our informal Democrat Jeffords. And equal to her we've got Carper and Pryor, with Byrd and Bayh not too far behind her. Why not suggest eating them all apart as well?

Fucking dumbasses.

Katrina is a lot more than ineptitude, it is a story of greed and ideology run amok.  For well over 150 years, the federal government took responsibility for the levees along the Mississippi.  Bush and his gang demurred breaking a nationall consensus that extends, in its way, all the way back to Thomas Jefferson.  And for that, and destroying one of the most beloved cities in the country that man and his party gain votes in Louisiana?  Nonsense.

Privatized FEMA wa inept, incompetent and a shadow of its former self at great financial cost and psychological cost to the American people. The Reserve was in Iraq and not where it belonged, saving the lives and safe-keeping the property of locals.  The Army Corps of Engineers, once an elite branch of a proud service, fell laughably and sickeningly short.  No one was held respomsible even though "conservatism" was shown like the Emperor, to have no clothes.  It just does not work.

Charlie Melancon is more conservative than Mary Landrieu but he fought like the devil for his state and his constituents from the start.  Yes, the Bush machine targeted him and he took a hit at the start but he should survive and eventually thrive.  The one who got an undeserved bump out of this is David Vitter.  He is an even worse Senator than Landrieu but the Bush machine lined up behind him.  He has done nothing and worse than nothing for his state.

The evacuees are spread out and at least some blame politicians in general, not just Republicans.  If handled right and fought hard, Democrats would be getting a Truman-like bounce in places like Houston, southwest LA, and Atlanta from the evacuees.

In this household (a white one in suburban NJ), Katrina is a bigger deal than Iraq.  Way bigger.  He did more than let an American city die.  He heartlessly and cruelly shoved it into the grave with no damned reason except for greed.  George Bush did more damage than Katrina or, in fact, more damage than Sherman rolling through Georgia and the Carolinas during the Civil War.  We laugh in the faces (quite literally) of the Republicans and their lie machine.

People in even the most Republican sections of this state know that in a state where it seems half the population lives in a flood zone, George Bush has left us at the mercy of nature and waiting for disaster to strike.  It floods in Jersey.  it floods in Republican areas in Morris County.  A lot.  It floods and storms in that other Republican citadel, the Jersey Shore.

Why is Menendez tied with Kean?  Has he tied Katrina to Kean's tail?  I don't see it.  Has he tied the urge of Republican Senators to raise flood insurance premiums by 25% per year and keep raising them by that rate for many years to come to Kean?  No? Hey, my dentist was complaining about Bush and flooding.  Six or eight months ago. (And not specifically about New Orleans, certainly not about Iraq).

Bush has shattered the American community and replaced it with some farce where the rich and connected feed on no bid, no audit government contracts while the rest of us are left to worry if we are the next part of the American family that will be shoved under.  Jefferson knew back in 1803 that New Orleans was more than a city but that it was the key to a port and transportation system that would deliver the goods of the Mississippi Valley to market and distribute the products of the rest of the world to that market.  This boob-in-chief ignores it at our peril (certainly not his).

 

the worse Democrat out there.  The only two who are worse are Lieberman and Nelson in Nebraska.  Landrieu needs a real strong primary candidate, and Landrieu needs to be put out to pasture.  She sucks.  

That was my immediate thought when I read this diary, when was the last major emphasis on Katrina, here or anywhere else?

It's probably due to fear, no focus on Katrina since we dread it will deflected to Nagin and Blanco instead of Bush.

The irony is we lack memorable short themes and sound bites on our side, yet Katrina provides one of the great ones, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." If we ever nationalize things before November with an anti-Bush commercial you could use that clip along with goodies like, "I'm the decider," and quotes about progress in Iraq, and especially the many positive comments he made regarding the economy.

No city in the country is immune from natural disaster; New Orleans just happened to draw the short straw.

If you live where the ground can quake, a forest that could catch fire, or a river that could flood, you might be next.  

Wherever there is wind and water, there is danger. The guys who let New Orleans be destroyed--Republican party campaign managers rewarded with life-or-death jobs--still run FEMA.

Bush is a failure, and the Republicans in Congress have rubber-stamped every one of his failures.

If you vote Republican, better pray for good weather.

---------

Landrieu is just about as far away from progressivism and the netroots in the Democratic party as you can get.  Her, along with another Louisianan, John Breaux, just seem to be happy appeasing Republicans.  I feel for those down in LA, they're getting screwed from both sides of the aisle.  

Also, Landrieu figures prominently in the "Lieberman Caucus" in the Senate right now.  What a DINO.

Landrieu was kicked off of EMILY'S LIST because she couldn't stick to a pro-choice position. Waffled. After they (we!) gave her Early Money so that she could be elected the first time, once in the Senate Club for High Status Slackers and Cowards, she caved.

Landrieu was kicked off of EMILY'S LIST because she couldn't stick to a pro-choice position. Waffled. After they (we!) gave her Early Money so that she could be elected the first time, once in the Senate Club for High Status Slackers and Cowards, she caved.

Mary Landrieu is a joke. Unfortunately she's a joke that causes damage and destruction wherever she goes.

She rode the "lookitmeI'magirlpolitico" wave for decades, and rode her dad's name into office without being particularly qualified for any job she's held. Watching her blab away during Katrina trying to sound tough and important was just pathetic. She is useless.

Too bad the Democratic Party in Louisiana can't get it up to kick her out and replace her with someone any better. Its not just about getting rid of a dumb person in office - it's about realizing that elections have serious consequences, in this case when Louisiana needed someone to step up and lead, she failed.

Now, the rest of us need to look at our own leaders in our own hometowns and states and ask "Is my Senator as stupid as Mary"

If so, kick 'em out.