Do you think Dem leadership realizes how demoralizing situations like this are for their base?

[Scubamatt]

57. I counted how many posts

this thread was allowed before the inevitable "what are they supposed to do?" responses start rolling in. I've not been a member as long as many of you have, but I have noticed that whenever a poster criticizes our leadership, they tend to get quickly flamed as "complainers" or patronized with "you just don't understand how our system works" messages. Agreed, we control no official reigns of power. But that didn't stop the Republicons from throwing monkey wrench after monkey wrench into the Obamacare negotiations. They used the power of their bully-pulpit, in the broadest sense, to partially re-frame the debate, such that Obama had to abandon any notion of the public option in order to quiet the opposition. Newsom, Pritzger, Crockett and others are gaining traction because they are regularly pushing messaging that resonates with our media driven polity, all the while showing that they are fighters who are not going to passively accept this this authoritarian takeover. It may not result in one change in policy, but it energizes people and gives them hope - critical things in these dark days. I want a broader segment of our leadership to follow those examples.