What positive agenda?

National Politics

Someone at the DNC isn’t sending all of the memos to all of the right people. This has caused the Democratic leadership to speak somewhat disjointedly. For instance, on Wednesday while defending DNC Chairman Howard Dean from calls that he should resign (at least go on sabbatical until he gets over this seemingly horrible case of foot-in-mouth disease) Senate minority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said:

We’re going to continue to talk about a positive agenda no matter how much people talk about other issues.

My only problem with this statement is that I don’t see a positive agenda anywhere on the left side of the aisle. Even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi apparently didn’t get the memo about the Democrats’ “positive agenda.” When interviewed the other day she said she was proudest of the Democrats for being so vehemently anti-President Bush, and she used Social Security to prove her point:

Well, just speaking about this Congress I’m really very proud of the House Democrats. In the first five months of this year, they�ve taken George Bush from being a president with new fresh ideas about Social Security in the public mind to a guy who wants to cut our benefits. His numbers have gone so far down on the privatization issue, and I give them a great deal of credit for that. We worked closely with the Senate Democrats as well�to beat the drum against his Social Security proposal.

And I was proud too because there was a lot of pressure on some people to put out their own plan, but that would have taken focus away from the president’s plan. We have a plan, save Social Security, stop taking money out of the trust fund, stop privatization. And we’ll have our fuller ideas on retirement security just as soon as the president says uncle on the privatization plan. Totally unacceptable.

The positive agenda here? Was it something like “I’m proud that we were so positively negative about President Bush’s plan”? Perhaps it was “I’m proud that we’re sticking together in being so positively negative on the President’s Social Security plan.” Or maybe this is spin to tell us that the Democrats lack of a plan (”we’ll have our fuller ideas on retirement security just as soon as…”) is a positive development.

When asked about Rep. Wexler’s, (D-FL), plan to increase FICA taxes on people making more than $90,000 per annum, Rep. Pelosi continued talking about the Democrats’ positive agenda:

No. It’s one person, we’re over 200 of us, have stuck together. If Democrats wanted to do that from day one, it’s raising taxes on our base. That number sounds like a high number but there are a lot of people in the country who are working very hard trying to make ends meet, at a time when they are sending their kids to college, trying to take care of their parents… I just think that it was the wrong approach. But it’s one person, and I think that it’s one person points to the fact that we’re so unified.

Republicans have said that they were taken by surprise. They never expected the Democrats to be as unified, organized, disciplined and focused. And that’s how we have been able to beat the President who’s had the bully pulpit, and take him down from where he was.

Notice what Rep. Pelosi seems to think the Democrats’ positive agenda to be. We see it in these phrases:

• “…they’ve taken George Bush from being a president with new fresh ideas about Social Security in the public mind to a guy who wants to cut our benefits.”
• “His numbers have gone so far down….”
• “to beat the drum against his Social Security proposal.”
• “we have been able to beat the President”
• “take him down from where he was”

Nancy Pelosi’s “positive agenda for Democrats” is apparently something along the lines of “be negative about President Bush.” And there’s a reason why: the Democrats’ ideas just don’t stand up on their own and the leadership knows it. As Rep. Pelosi admits:

• “And the Democratic message just wasn’t strong enough to counter that.”
• “…you first have to take [the Republicans] down.”
• “So we’re going after them, we have to destroy their brand.”

That, America, is the “positive agenda” you can look forward to hearing from Democrats.

Sounds a lot like the “politics of personal destruction” to me.

MickC @ June 10, 2005