Our second Quote of the Day comes from Dick Polman who in a post on the Democrats’ decision not to press for a vote for tax cuts before the elections, notes the difference between the two political parties:
Here’s the essential difference between the two parties: In 2001, President Bush and congressional Republicans pushed hard for big tax cuts despite having no mandate from the American people. Bush had just lost the popular vote in the ’00 election, the Republicans had lost congressional seats in that election, and the early ’01 polls reported that people were skeptical about Bush’s tax plan (according to Gallup, only 41 percent wanted the Senate to pass the plan, and roughly 75 percent wanted the plan to give more benefits to lower-income taxpayers). Yet the GOP hewed to its convictions anyway.
By contrast, the current Democrats control both chambers, and they’re on the upside of a winning campaign issue. A late-August Newsweek poll reported that only 38 percent of Americans want to extend the tax cuts for the rich; Gallup puts that figure at 37 percent; CNN, 31 percent. And yet they’re too scared to take the tax fight to those chambers, even with the wind at their backs, and give their own grassroots supporters a reason to vote.
Heck, they’re too scared to even give their own beleaguered candidates an issue to run on. Witness this cry of frustration from Pennsylvania senatorial candidate Joe Sestak, who said in a statement late yesterday, “This is no time to shy away from this fight….We were elected to fight for ordinary Americans, and this is the moment when we prove we can fulfill that public trust….We cannot afford to kick the can down the road. Let’s stand up and say ‘enough is enough.'”
But a party can’t stand up for itself if it lacks what the Cowardly Lion called “duh noive.” Unless or until the Democrats finally get the nerve, they don’t deserve to be king of the forest.
And all signs point to the Democrats not being king of the forest after Nov. 2010 election day. At the most, if polls are correct, they’ll be king of part of the forest — with the crown knocked off their heads.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.