In hindsight, I think that this was somewhat unavoidable.

[TheWraith]

The Republicans took a strategy of trying to fuck up all attempts at progress, and hoping that the voters would have a temper tantrum and be pissed at the Dems because the entire Bush legacy wasn't fixed by now.

Unfortunately, it worked. It's like the old saying, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average person. And looking back, despite all the second-guessing on DU today, I don't see much way around that. The Repubs weren't about to let us do anything more than we were able to hammer through already, and that wasn't going to change no matter what policy tack we took. More liberal, more conservative, doesn't matter. The Reps were going to try the same strategy, and we were still going to be brought to this point.

The good news is that despite how much they won, they have a relatively narrow majority. If we do well in two years, we can take it back.

[jberryhill]

1. Waiting in rapt anticipation for the first veto fight

They don't have the numbers for one.

[Ruby the Liberal]

2. Can I offer another positive?

What Dems are left, are LEFT. The Blue Dogs were purged in a huge way. The tent will be smaller (and more focused) in January.

May be good, may be bad, but I'll take it for now. :toast:

[TheWraith]

4. I would say it's bad.

We never had a problem rounding up enough Dems to pass any sort of left leaning legislation, from cap and trade to a public option. So we always had a solid left-leaning majority in the House. Now we don't have that anymore.

[unblock]

3. well, you can't bring a knife to a gunfight. when republicans declared war, the ONLY solution was

to fight back, and hard.

what was inevitable was losing some seats. this nearly ALWAYS happens in a president's first mid-term election.

GIVEN THAT, democrats should have formed a strong, LOYAL coalition WITHIN THE PARTY, enough to forge a majority, and tell them they'll be protected and rewarded if they stay true to the cause, and the blue dogs or dinos who want to distance themselves are on their own.

start with an olive branch of bipartisanship, sure, but then QUICKLY react to uncooperativeness by SLAMMING the republicans for starting the hyperpartisanship and then RAMMING the democratic plan through.

this sacrifices a few seats, but as i said, that was inevitable. what it does do is let every democrat who was inside the tent go back to their constituents with a big list of legislative accomplishments and to look like fighters who can stand strong for their principles.

[TheWraith]

5. I keep hearing people advocate we "ram it through."

Like somehow it was just a lack of willpower from the Democrats.

Ram it through HOW?

Seriously--it takes 60 votes to pass cloture in the Senate. Without those 60, nothing goes anywhere. When you have 40 to 41 Senators solidly against you in a wall, how exactly are you supposed to "ram it through?" Particularly when our side is nowhere near as monolithic, and the senators who stray from the pack know that you can't do anything negative to them whatsoever, and they can hold you up for whatever concessions they want if you ever expect to pass a bill?

[unblock]

6. once the other side has completely demonstated lack of cooperation, the "nuclear option" is viable

back when democrats were the minority in the senate, the republicans used the threat of the nuclear option to keep democrats from abusing the filibuster the way republicans did as soon as THEY were in the minority.

we could have given the same treatment right back at them. if they didn't back down, we could have used the nuclear option, at which point you only need 50 senators.