During the roundtable discussion on ABC's "This Week," Arianna responded to retiring Sen. Evan Bayh's (D-Ind.) claim that the major problem in Washington is too much partisanship. Such statements, she said, are made "with metronomic regularity ... That is one of the most ludicrous complaints."
Washington Post columnist George Will offered a "hear, hear." Arianna continued:
Every major milestone in American history has been won after a major protracted and partisan battle. Go back to the Emancipation Proclamation, the 19th Amendment, the New Deal, Medicare, Social Security, the Voting Rights Act. These were big partisan battles -- one of them involved a civil war. And so the idea that somehow we can all come to the middle and do what? Free half the slaves? Or free them from 12 to five? These are major issues that people have very definite differences on.
ABC's Terry Moran interjected, arguing that "the country is in the great muddled middle. All polls show on most issues, they would like some compromise."
"That's not true at all," Arianna responded. "Even the despised public option has 70 percent behind it. Nate Silver crunched the numbers: the jobs bill -- the $100 billion jobs bill, not the $15 billion jobs bill in the Senate -- has 70 percent of the people behind it. The idea that we are in a mushy middle is simply a media invention."
WATCH:
At another point, Arianna weighed in on CPAC, the major annual gathering of conservative activists.
"The violent imagery was fascinating," she said. "Even [Minnesota Gov.] Tim Pawlenty, who is supposed to be a moderate, said we need to take a page out of the playbook of Tiger Woods' wife and take a nine iron and smash a window out of big government. That was the day after the pilot had flown a plane into a federal government building. So that kind of rhetoric is disturbing. And of course what must be troubling for the conservatives is that the big hit, the guy that got the rock star welcome, was Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney left office with a 13 percent approval rating! There were shouts of 'Run, Dick, Run,' which I'm sure the White House is fully endorsing."
Maybe Arianna was refering to English as spoken in england, which is nearly a different language than our own.
Get a grip Americans. We could not have a better man in the White House. A standup guy, with big huevos, taking all the incoming flak and being a genuine leader.
We are not rising to his example. We are not meeting our responsibilities as citizens, parents, and human beings who ought to be caring for the least amongst us.
No! The problem is not what's wrong with our President and his administration.
The problem is what's wrong with us; the whiny, entitled, selfish, uncaring, Exceptional Americans, who take our birthright and our heritage for granted.
WE are the problem.
The problem is the Democrats are not able to get through legislation like Republicans do when they have smaller majorities. Obama is part of that problem. As the post pointed out, 70% of Americans support a public option, where is that in the Obama health care plan?
The problem with Obama is he wants to have some happy bipartisan solution when the other side will never (or very rarely) give him it, and when they do, it will be worse legislation. And Harry Reid, he needs to make the Republicans really fillibuster, not back down because they threaten. Make them vote on issues, and make them on the less important ones, that will show Republicans as the obstructionists that they are.
As Sean Connery's character pointed out in the Untouchables, the Republicans are showing up at the knife fight with a gun, while Dems have knife, they are putting us in the morgue, and we are only putting them in the hospital. Dems are not fighting the same battle and are getting run over in the corporate media because of it.
Sure, some are just racist, and don't like him because of that, and some - a lot of them racist too - are ideologically against anything other than pure stupidity. But they are, thankfully, a fairly small fraction of the population.
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Why did I bother voting in Democrats as well as contributing money to democrats? I voted them in to legislate democratic/progressive programs...Not to write bills to make Republicans happy. I am waiting for some recognition from Dems that they are the majority party and to grow a spine...and I am waiting for the Republicans to realize that they are no longer the majority party. They are the ones who should be making bipartisan efforts at compromising...If I wanted to further the Bush agenda, I would have voted for Republicans...
Good thing it only lasts one term.
And the right wing was against them all. When will they ever learn? The long-term correct judgments always come from the left. Always.
You are correct! It's called "progress." and Republican regressives are the self-proclaimed cold-blooded killers of progress. It's in their pyscho-social DNA. They want to drag us backwards while the world is moving at fast-forward.
of the tea bag people closely. Crying about taxes when half of these folks
are on Medicare & SS. What taxes & why are the republicans, if elected,
lower the taxes they don't pay in the first place? You tell me?
Wow, did you deliver: raising over $80,000 to help him and another public option heroes.
Today, we're asking you to help us continue our effective activism on the public option -- and help us elect more bold progressives to Congress in 2010.
Could you chip in $3 toward the PCCC's ongoing work? Click here.
When thousands of people chip in, that fuels our people-powered activism.
Here's what reporter Nancy Scola at TechPresident wrote about us on Friday:
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has emerged at the forefront of an effort to -- successfully, it seems -- reinsert the public option into the Washington debate over where the Democratic push for health care reform goes from here. Rather remarkable for an organization founded by a trio of activists a little more than a year ago.
...the Progressive Change Campaign Committee's rise, and its success at funneling the left's political passions into the legislative process, have been pretty striking thus far.
Could you help us continue making an impact by chipping in $3 toward our ongoing activism? Click here.
Roll Call recently previewed some of our 2010 electoral work:
Push for what we need.
Memo to the WH: It's the Wall Sreet bailout, stupid. Reform the financial sector now!
And if this health care bill really doesn't lower anyone's premiums, but is instead a windfall for the insurance companies, then absolutely drop it and start over.
Or else you will see your congressional support completely swept away in the midterms just exactly the way Brown beat Coakley.