The Central Question, What Differentiates Democrats From Republicans

President Obama went to visit with Senate Democrats today in another #questiontime session. I know quite a few people are panning it because it wasn't quite the high drama of his trip to the GOP retreat last year, but I still think he put on another great performance. Several Corporatist Democrats got up and tried to grand stand, most notably Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln. I mean really they sounded more like Republicans than many Republicans at times. But President Obama in albeit a polite fashion, pushed back on their self defeating premises. Maybe the best quote of the day was when he was responding to Blanche Lincoln when she tried to label members of her own party as "extremists" and inferred that Democrats shouldn't do anything to upset Wall Street and the banksters.

Well, if the agenda -- if the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place for eight years leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression -- we don't tinker with health care, let the insurance companies do what they want, we don't put in place any insurance reforms, we don't mess with the banks, let them keep on doing what they're doing now because we don't want to stir up Wall Street -- the result is going to be the same.

I don't know why we would expect a different outcome pursuing the exact same policies that got us into this fix in the first place. Michael Bennet articulated it very well. Part of the reason people are feeling anxious right now, it's not just because of this current crisis -- they've been going through this for 10 years. They've been working and not seeing a raise. Their costs have been going up, their spouses going to the workforce -- they work as hard as they can. They're barely keeping their heads above water. They're trying to figure out how to retire. They're seeing more and more of their costs on health care dumped in their lap. College tuition skyrockets.

They are more and more vulnerable, and they have been for the last decade, treading water. And if our response ends up being, because we don't want to -- we don't want to stir things up here, we're just going to do the same thing that was being done before, then I don't know what differentiates us from the other guys. And I don't know why people would say, boy, we really want to make sure that those Democrats are in Washington fighting for us.

That ladies and gentlemen is what this really all boils down to. When you have Democrats who are trying to mimic Republicans like Lincoln and Bayh et al, all they are really doing is making it easier for voters to vote for ACTUAL Republicans. The truth is when it ocmes to the Democratic Platform its the ConservaDems like Lincoln who are the extremists, running far to the right of what most mainstream Democrats both in office and out, want for the country. It was a moment that those of us on the left who haven't lost our damn mind would be wise to continue to point out and promote. Especially as this year goes on and the ConservaDems continue to be a bigger obstacle for progress than the GOP