March 8, 2005
PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE:
Social Security Stance Risky, Democrats Told: Bush Could Outflank Their Rigid Opposition (Dan Balz, March 8, 2005, Washington Post)
[A]t a time when many Democrats are congratulating one another, others are beginning to worry that their strategy of rigid opposition has not begun to pay any political dividends and that Bush could yet outflank them before this fight is over.The party's situation was posed most provocatively by two veteran Democratic strategists, Stan Greenberg and James Carville. In a memo issued last week, the two wrote: "We ask progressives to consider, why have the Republicans not crashed and burned?"
"Why has the public not taken out their anger on the congressional Republicans and the president?" they added. "We think the answer lies with voters' deeper feelings about the Democrats who appear to lack direction, conviction, values, advocacy or a larger public purpose."
What worries some Democrats about the debate over Social Security is that Bush stands for something and they do not, other than opposition to the creation of private accounts. So far, party leaders believe that posture has served them well. But some Democrats fear that Bush, by having pushed for changes and by appealing to younger voters with his proposal for the accounts, will score a political victory even if he does not get the main element of his plan.
Harold Ickes, White House deputy chief of staff in the Clinton administration, said that without a plan of their own, Democrats risk GOP inroads among younger voters and the potential of Bush engineering a compromise this year in which he claims victory, even in the absence of the personal accounts he has championed.
Leave it to the Democrats to go to the mat for a constituency that won't exist in a few years. Meanwhile, even some Democrats support private accounts if they're an add-on, so the President's eventual victory is all but assured. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 8, 2005 8:02 AM
"a constituency that won't exist in a few years." A point that I've made myself many times. (Great minds think alike?)
"they asked Bush to "unambiguously announce" his rejection of personal accounts in the system"
Are the Dems now taking negotion lessons from Hamas and Norh Korea? They are willing to negotiate as soon as Bush concedes to them? Maybe they should take another look at the recent election results.
"...63 percent of Americans in a recent National Public Radio poll said there was [a problem with SS]" Which probably means that 90% of the rest of the country (that is, the non-NPR leftists) think there is a problem.
As far a Bush so far remaining silent-----this is in keeping with what we are told is a winning poker strategy: Get your opponent to bet big on a losing hand.
"Progressives?" Who are these "Progressives?" Aren't they they people who are resisting change, the ones who want to keep things as they are? What kind of "progress" are they talking about?
One supposes these are "Progressives" the way Communists were "Conservatives" in the FORMER Soviet Union. That is to say, the words mean nothing: war is peace, hate is love, reaction is progress.