Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Evan Bayh: 'Party's Liberals 'Tone Deaf' And 'Overreached In Their Agenda'



WSJ:

Before Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh suddenly announced he will not seek re-election in November he had issued several warnings to fellow Democrats. Last month, for example, he told Gerald Seib of this newspaper that his party's liberals were "tone deaf" to the fact that they'd "overreached" in their agenda. "For those people," he said, "it may take a political catastrophe of biblical proportions before they get it."


Evan Bayh's announcement that he will not be running for reelection in November is but one of many warnings to the liberal left that Americans do not want the liberal left agenda enacted, just as they don't want the country run from the far right.

Independents, Moderates and Centrists are by far the largest voting blocs in comparison to liberals and conservatives, yet the lesson does not seem to be getting through to the far left liberal Democrats as the party as a whole continues to try to push through their agenda.

Obama has fallen in the polls, the majority of Americans, according to the latest CNN poll, do not think members of congress should be reelected and 52 percent do not think Obama deserves another chance in 2012, the majority also is against the Obamacare proposals in the House and Senate and do not want bigger government.

As the far left pushes their Democratic leaders further to the left, the rest of America is standing up to be heard, loud and clear, but as Bayh said, the Democratic party's leaders are "tone deaf" or simply just ignoring the masses.

Either way, this has made the atmosphere heading into November, toxic for them.

The continued claims that it is Republican obstructionism, when Republicans alone do not have the seats, nor the power, to obstruct anything by themselves, is ringing hollow to anyone that understands that Democrats have majorities, for now, in both the House and the Senate and a Democrat in the White House.

They also try to blame the "system", claiming American is ungovernable, but as the Wall Street Journal reminds us, the system has worked better than others for 225 years.

A fourth crackup is already well underway and is even more remarkable considering how Democrats were set up for success. Inheriting a recession amid GOP failures, Democrats had the chance to restore economic confidence and fix the financial system with modest reforms that would let them take credit for the inevitable recovery. Yet only 13 months later, Democrats are down in the polls, their agenda is stymied by Democratic opposition, and their House and Senate majorities are in peril as moderates like Mr. Bayh flee the scene of this political accident.

Democrats have responded by blaming "obstructionist" Republicans, who lack the votes to block anything by themselves; or a failure to communicate the right message, though President Obama is a master communicator; or even Madison's framework of checks and balances, though this system has worked better than all others for some 225 years.

John Podesta, who ran Mr. Obama's transition and heads the Center for American Progess that has supplied the Administration's ideas, summed up the liberal-media mood last week when he told the Financial Times that American governance now "sucks." If you can't blame your own ideas, blame the system.



Instead of trying to blame everything and everybody else, the far left liberals like Pelosi, Reid and Obama, need to look in the mirror, start listening to the electorate and understand they misread their "mandate" in the 2006 and 2008 elections and they need to work towards the center again, or November is going to be worse for them than the initial projections have shown.

Americans have already sent one rebuke to Democrats in the form of Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts. Now Mr. Bayh, a senior Member of their own party, has sent another by skipping town and putting another Senate seat in play. Our guess is that it will take one more repudiation in November before Democrats relearn that you can't govern America successfully from the political left


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