I found the above quote this morning on the Facebook page of Jason Thigpen, the North Carolina Republican-turned-progressive Democrat running for the House seat occupied by Walter Jones.
Yesterday the Senate postponed voting on extending unemployment insurance for the 1.3 million Americans whose benefits expired last week and for even more people whose benefits will expire between now and July. Reid sensed he could get 5 Republicans to cross the aisle and back the American people, instead of their own party's determination to make Obama fail by making America fail. It worked.
Here at DWT, once we saw Patty Murray and the Senate Dems sacrifice the working poor to the voracious appetite of conservative predators in their shameful compromise with Paul Ryan, we amped up our coverage of the Republican War on the Poor and the Republicans' latest advances in the highly effective class war they've been fighting against America's working families for decades.
A friend, who apparently doesn't read this blog, just called me astounded that this week 1.3 million Americans would be losing their unemployment benefis. He had just found out. "What are they going to do," he asked. I mentioned something about turning their anger, in a decidedly non-electoral way towards the individual conservatives in Congress, who have authored their impending misery.
I wish I could say that of course Bernie is focused on the real issues of economic equality that plague most working families. After all, he went to James Madison High School in Brooklyn, just like Ken and I did. But that "of course" would be less than accurate. Norm Coleman was also a student there-- and so was Wall Street shill Chuck Schumer. At Madison the only kind of elitism that was encouraged was intellectual elitism-- not the kind of economic and social elitism that has since we all graduated pushed the U.S.
Take a look at those poll results above that PPP found when they surveyed CA-31 (the Inland Empire). The very extreme right Republican incumbent, multimillionaire Gary Miller, has one of the most dismal job approval ratings of any incumbent in any district in America-- 27%. If the election were held today-- with no campaigning at all-- he would lose to any Democrat 48-39%.
The above FDR reelection speech from 1936 warning voters about GOP intentions towards the popular social insurance policies they had fought so hard against, is no less relevant today than it was then. Roosevelt went on to win 60.8% to 36.5%, taking every state but Vermont and Maine and winning the electoral college 523 to 8. Democrats continued winning seats in Congress and wound up with a margin of 334 (+ 10 left-leaning independents) to 88 in the House and 76 (+ 2 left-leaning independents) to 16 in the Senate.
There's a last minute, rush/rush-end-of-the-world vote scheduled for Thursday in the House, presumably Friday in the House of Lords, for the Frankenstein's monster of a "compromise" that Establishment shills Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Patty Murray (D-WA) reached Tuesday. The Budget Deal sucks. Can progressives stick to their values and principles and defeat it? Probably not. It's either this or the Republicans will shut down the government again.
While congressional Republicans-- with their 9% job approval rating-- boasted about obstructing President Obama at every turn, the Administration was imploring Congress to extend unemployment benefits to the longterm unemployed.
It's nothing new to hear progressives bloggers-- particularly this one-- try to persuade donors, and even Members of Congress, to defund the DCCC, particularly while Steve Israel is recruiting fellow corrupt conservatives to serve in the interests of Big Business and undercut ordinary working families. The Democratic Establishment, Beltway "professional Democrats," don't care for us either.
