from The Hill
I am fed up with those Democratic strategists who parade to cable-news shows and pollute the pages of newspapers with the pap that the way for Democrats to win in 2010 is to throw mud at Republicans.
John Harwood in the Monday New York Times gave a fair account of this dumbed-down view of American politics. There is a time for Democrats to attack Republicans, but only to promote real change helping real Americans.As James Carville might say: It's the jobs, stupid. Many Democratic strategists don't care much about policy, but for anxious Americans who elected Democrats, it's all about policy.
Democrats will do more
to win in 2010 by creating 2 million new jobs than by spending $20
million to pay Democratic strategists to produce dirt-caked television
ads.
Democrats should wage a policy war to create jobs. They
should attack rising credit card interest rates and skyrocketing
healthcare premiums. They should attack the foreclosure wave from
bankers who take huge bailouts and pay themselves gargantuan bonuses.
Democrats
should attack rising homelessness among veterans, women and children.
They should attack the rip-off recession and rip-off recovery, where
stock prices soar with every new layoff while the rich get richer, the
poor get poorer and the middle class gets screwed.
Democrats
should attack when veterans don't receive the best healthcare and when
women are cheated by insurers. They should attack when Main Street jobs
are exported to slave-wage nations, when banks refuse to lend to small
businesses and when workers are treated like the petty cash of
profiteers who lay them off to save money, all while collecting
million-dollar salaries for themselves.
I support the
reelection of Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey. But it is pathetic when a
Democratic governor, running on his record in a Democratic state, is
reduced to mocking his opponent's body fat, while smirking Democratic
strategists tell weak politicians in a jobless nation that this is what
Democrats stand for.
Democrats should get off their behinds
and pass an extension of unemployment benefits, pass a tax credit to
create new jobs, pass some targeted public-works programs, pass an
extension of the housing tax credit, pass a bill to freeze credit card
rates and tell banks that either they voluntarily accept a six-month
foreclosure freeze or Congress will enact it for them.
Democrats
should attack when insurers issue a bogus report on the eve of the
Finance Committee vote on healthcare that is an attempt to frighten
consumers, a land-grab for more gluttonous profits, an expression of
contempt for the committee and a humiliation of its chairman.
Democrats
should pass the public option that is supported by a majority of voters
and attack those who put insurance-industry profits ahead of the health
of Main Street America. Democratic strategists need to learn to attack
not the body fat of Republicans, but the fat cats that reap unearned
income and unfair profits from the Gilded Age status quo that Americans
elected Democrats to change.
