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Edited on Wed Nov-26-03 06:03 PM by Capn Sunshine
The post-medicare vote has many scratching their heads at all levels of the party. There is a definite problem afoot; the dog and pony show distractions and subsequent balkanizing of the party known as the primary season have just claimed a victim.
"Democrats have owned the Medicare issue for nearly 40 years. But this week, the Republicans climbed into the driver's seat and mashed the gas pedal. In closed-door sessions that excluded nearly all Democrats, through rule-bending roll calls, dishing out goodies to friends and twisting arms of the recalcitrant, the Republicans passed $400 billion worth of changes. Democrats spent the day picking carpet fibers out of their hairdos and sorting out their reactions. <snip> Longtime party strategist Harold Ickes was at a loss to see any upside to a Republican victory in an area Democrats have always owned. He said he was flabbergasted that key Democratic senators, led by John Breaux (La.) and Max Baucus (Mont.), went along with it.
"It's totally beyond me," Ickes said. "I think it has seriously undermined our ability to change occupants of the White House next year. Republicans will make it sound like they invented Medicare. That's a big piece of political real estate to give up."
"There's clearly an absence of forceful leadership at the top of the Senate," Borosage said. "In the Senate we saw the difference between the other side's discipline and our lack of it, and I think Democrats are disappointed in the extreme." For some, the experience was another milepost in the process of coming to terms with life outside of power. That old friend of many decades, the muscular AARP, entered the Medicare battle -- on the other side. The wily and experienced Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) had his pocket picked. It was humiliating."It's an odd dynamic," said Eric Hauser, a strategist on the party's liberal wing. "When I came to Washington in the mid-'80s, the idea that Democrats ran things was just like the sun coming up in the east. Now, with each passing year, Democrats are less relevant."
THIS IS WHAT THIS PARTISAN CANDIDATE POLITICS BUYS YOU. WAKE UP EVERYBODY. excerpts from a WAPO piece by David Von Drelhele I'm looking for the link!
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