Democrats look ineffective.
If Democrats cannot solve problems voters will elect candidates who say they can.
America faces problems with no easy solutions. Democrats get the blame because they are nominally in charge, in the U.S. and in Oregon. The problems are real. The excuses are legitimate, but they are still excuses. It isn't very satisfying to a frustrated and discontented public.
This is the summer of our discontent.
Inflation. Inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, caused largely by COVID interruptions to supply chains and a world price of oil. The independent Fed by leaving interest rates too low for too long, and the Fed will fix it--by initiating a recession. A president is a victim of this, neither the cause nor cure.
Reproductive Rights. The Supreme Court unleashed the red states. Not Biden.
School shootings. Crazy people have access to guns. Crazy people are out there. The NRA and Supreme Court blocked anything potentially meaningful about access to guns.
Build Back Better. Manchin and Sinema blocked it.
Immigration. Congress cannot pass comprehensive immigration reform. They are gridlocked.
COVID. The disease mutates and evolves on its own. We don't control it. We react to it.
Vaccinations. Republicans say no. Their bodies, their choices.
Russia/Ukraine. This is Putin's doing. We react.
Restrictions on voting. Red states make their own laws, over Democratic objections. Republicans have the power.
Federal voting rights protections. Congressional Republicans block them, and Manchin and Sinema won't budge.
End filibuster. Manchin and Sinema block doing that.
Climate change. This is a world problem. Fossil fuels are cheap and available now, and representatives of fossil-fuel states defend their use.
Western drought and extreme weather. This is due to climate change that was decades in coming, and it is getting worse. See above. A president doesn't control the weather.
Develop wind and solar. China builds most of the components, and they have COVID lockdowns.
Develop Electric Vehicles. Raw materials for batteries are scarce, expensive, and overseas.
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| Medford pick-up truck window |
Oregon Democrats have their own set of intractable problems. The Oregon Governor Kate Brown and Democrats get much of the blame for persistent problems.
Uncontrolled rioters. Portland police are unwilling to act and intentionally sabotage the elected officials.
Homeless encampments in Portland. No place for them to go. No one wants encampments near them. Much of the problem is due to mental health and addictions, and those are not easy for government to fix.
Columbia river bridge. The state of Washington doesn't want to connect to Portland mass transit, and Oregon needs its support.
Departments screw-ups. Employees overworked, demoralized, and quitting. Paying them a lot more is expensive.
Summer smoke. Big forest fires come from unusually dry summers, the effects of climate change, lightning, and 100 years of forest policy. It is slow to change.
Rural areas think Portland area dominates state politics. It is true. It does. The Portland area has most of the population.
Clackamas County vote screwup. There is an incompetent Republican county clerk, elected locally.
Governing is hard. Politics is unfair. It is easier to complain. There are good reasons that the problems persist. The political problem for Democrats is that voters are impatient and frustrated. They elect people to fix problems. They want to hear that someone will be doing something. Democrats need to proposes something very big and bold and controversial on two or three of the big issues. That way they will be seen as trying. Tinkering won't do it. That will look like more of the helpless dithering people are sick of.
Trump understood that. "Build the Wall" was something people understood. Are Democrats too good and mature and realistic to propose potential solutions so simplistic? Something so easy to understand? Something people could chant or put on a bumper strip? Republicans hope so.
5 comments:
Peter’s list of problems is certainly real and doesn’t even include the national debt. Democrats have been unable to address them effectively, but at least they claim they want to. Republicans don’t even pretend to care. Their focus is on more guns, more oil, more fetuses and more control over election results.
In medicine, there are many chronic health problems with no cure. People try to manage their symptoms. Seems like that is where we are at with many of our major problems.
Admitting that there is a problem is the first step in solving any problem. Many Republicans live in a deep state of denial. They often turn to religion (mythology) and conspiracy theories to understand our natural and man-made world.
They also scapegoat women, people of color, the LGBT community, immigrants and people who are actually trying to protect and preserve our ecosystem.
No wonder it is so difficult to get anything done.
Democrats are paralyzed because they are trying to straddle two incompatible political tendencies:
* common sense practical politics
* a left-wing “base“ obsessed with race and determined to label themselves and their party as socialists
Something similar could be said about the Republicans, but they have an advantage because their crazy base is much more focused on culture war issues that are easier to accommodate without distorting policy to the point of incompetence.
"The excuses are legitimate". Can't let that airy, partisan "Politics Is Tough" water-carrying pass without a (partisan) rejoinder on the specific merits. First off, reasons can be legitimate, but not excuses. Second, Joe Biden ran on supposed his prowess in solving complex problems. Was he never more than a tottering Not-Trump placeholder after all? And what of that veritable Colossus of policy and statesmanship, Kamala Harris?
Inflation. "A president cannot do much". Huh? He could have declined to nominate the cloth-eared Fed chair Jerome Powell for a second term AFTER Powell's disastrous inflationary missteps were already in full swing. And how does incompetent Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen still have a job? Failing up...
Reproductive rights and School Shootings. The SCOTUS duly interpreted the Constitution concerning abortion, as it did in 1973. Yes, the SCOTUS has declined to "block" the 2nd Amendment's individual guarantees.
Build Back Batter. Manchin and Sinema blocked it...as part of a Senate majority. Thank goodness (see Inflation).
Immigration. For leftists, immigration "reform" mean de jure open borders instead of de facto as now by Biden's own misguided hand.
COVID. Biden boasted he'd "shut down the virus, not the economy". The latter is tanking; the former has seen two to three times as many deaths under Biden as under Trump, whose COVID death numbers BEFORE a vaccine warranted Trump's resignation. Per the Placeholder, when a candidate.
Vaccinations. Only partially effective and utile, at best, either way.
Russia/Ukraine. "We react". As did Putin, to Biden's disastrous combination of weakness generally, and specific incompetence in Afghanistan.
Homelessness. Mental health and addiction...compounded by feckless Blue leadership which normalizes and validates chronic vagrancy as either blameless or a "lifestyle" choice.
Restrictions on voting and Federal voting rights law. No excuses or reasons required, because neither is actually a problem in the first place.
End Filibuster. Democrats should well recall the ongoing consequences of Harry Reid's folly before jerking that knee again.
Climate change, and wind, solar, electric. China doesn't believe it's an existential crisis, but they'll happily sell us gear.
Oregon's uncontrolled rioters. "Portland police are unwilling to act and intentionally sabotage the elected officials". No, it's the reverse. Elected officials are unwilling to act, and intentionally sabotage Portland police.
Homeless encampments. See above, generally, plus Oregon's Measure 110 has been a toothless, unfunded failure on the treatment side, while turning Portland into a national destination resort for hosts of new predatory layabouts.
Columbia bridge (built high enough this time??), Departmental screw-ups, fire policy, Clackamas County. Bad Democratic bureaucrats abound after decades of one-party control. That includes Secretary of State Fagan, who was warned via a whistle-blowwing State Elections Director, subsequently fired by Fagan's predecessor in November 2020, that the software and other infrastructure supporting Oregon's vote by mail system is hopelessly outdated and vulnerable.
Yeah, nothing Democrats could do. Just unlucky timing, plus optics....
Note to author about a previous blog:
Pancreatitis is another possible side effect of colonoscopy. A very recent case is musician Travis Barker, who is famously married to a Kardashian.
This is a known potential side effect, in addition to the risk of perforation, bleeding, infection, as well as complications related to the colonoscopy prep and the anesthesia.
People should carefully analyze their family and personal risk factors before undergoing any type of invasive procedure. All alternatives should be considered.
Some years back at a VA hospital in Tennessee, patients became infected when the colonoscopy equipment was not being properly sterilized.
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