Herb Paine speaks his mind

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

2010 Democratic congressional candidate Herb Paine says in this opinion what many of us have been discussing privately among ourselves. It is currently available on The Arizona Guardian but may be subscriber blocked soon. Guardian Contributor Herb Paine – Ceding the Sensible Center: Crisis at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

How is it that this Administration and the Democratic Party have allowed an extremist right wing fringe group in Congress to frame the current debate around spending, to link the Federal debt with the debt ceiling, and to extort the national treasury? The frame is bogus, but remarkably the Tea Party is getting away with it. The response of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party has been nothing less than pathetic, tardy, and spineless. What’s gone wrong with a Party that seems paralyzed about how to seize the sensible center of American politics?

I want to address these questions in the course of my commentaries. But first, let me speak to the current debacle on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The American problem isn’t spending or the size of government, although certainly both could stand reform and reduction. The monster deficit – the creation of a Bush Administration run amok and the result of a deadly burst of the housing bubble – could have been mitigated if the nation’s focus three years ago had built on the bailout and shifted squarely to a massive redirection of the economy to a dramatic homegrown job creation and enterprise development strategy – to bold reinvestments in innovation, manufacturing, and infrastructure.

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Key point: The real issue is not economics at all but rather a determined effort by a group of ideologues – heirs of the John Birch Society, the Young Americans for Freedom, the Ayn Rand Institute, and other proponents of extreme conservatism – to turn back the clock on nearly seventy years of American progress. These are folks who never liked the New Deal or its later versions – the New Frontier and the Great Society – and who perceive social responsibility as socialism. No, this is not about deficit reduction; it’s about a stubborn and selfish attempt to renege on America’s long-standing social contract.

These true believers have worked hard at their goal. They are focused and tenacious; they stay on message; they think, plan, and act for the long-term. Over the decades, they have almost stealthily occupied seats on school boards and town halls and pitched their social values message to a fearful and susceptible public that their America has been stolen by socialists. Their drive has been rewarded as the results of recent elections have shown how voters are willing to vote against their own best social and economic interests and how willing they are to sacrifice their freedoms to protect their notion of security.

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It’s beyond maddening to watch the current debacle on Pennsylvania Avenue. It’s beyond frustrating to observe the inability or paralysis of the Democratic leadership to reveal the blatant hypocrisy of the radical right. If the debt ceiling crisis has revealed just how deep is the division within the Republican Party and how intransigent and mindless are the Tea Party bullies, it also speaks volumes about the timidity, fragility and deficiencies of the Obama Administration and Democratic Party leadership.

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If the Obama Administration is inadequate to the task, where is the Democratic Party?

In fighting the vendors of fear, the Democratic Party has been asleep at the wheel, lacking a potent unified counterpunch message, and failing in the art of building and mobilizing its own army of political street fighters. Listen to their talking heads and see how disjointed and uninspiring their messages are. By now, the Party should be much better and more sophisticated at framing.

Any time any enterprise is losing its competitive edge, it needs to rethink the way it’s conducting its business – from its operating premises and value proposition to its strategies and tactics. Such is the case with the Democratic Party. While the right is gearing up to grab the Senate and the White House in 2012 – with dire implications for our national well-being – the Democrats had better, sooner rather than later, seize the sensible center of American politics. It can be done. I worry that it won’t be.