State Rep Jake Zimmerman always brings out an SRO crowd at West County Democrat meetings, and Monday’s gathering was no exception.  Summarizing the feelings of  “disconsolate” progressives everywhere, Jake wailed, “We’re dooooommed.”  Truthfully, it’s not hard to find things to complain about these days what with Loopy Joe Lieberman gumming up the works on health care reform and the relentless repetition of Sarah Palin’s latest nonsense in the media.

But Zimmerman cautioned his audience to take a step back and look at the long view.  A year ago, no one had heard of a “public option.”  The goal was to get more people insured and to put an end to some of the more outrageous acts of venality committed by the insurance companies.  And it looks like some of those major goals are going to be achieved soon.  Keeping in mind how long it has taken to get to this point, we really should be at least a tad optimistic about the future.

Yes, the filibuster thing is a pain in the…………..

 

but let’s not be hasty about changing the Senate rules.  As Jake reminded us, if it weren’t for the power of the minority party to gum up the works, G.W. Bush would have privatized Social Security and gotten away with tons more stupid stuff than he did.  Checks and balances work both ways.

President Obama has accomplished some amazing things in less than a year in office.  E.g, he’s appointing people to run agencies who actually believe in the mission of those agencies.  As a friend of Jake’s who works for Housing and Urban Development said,  Obama has put the “UD” back in HUD.  We now have people protecting public lands after two terms of Bush’s people giving the green light to some of the most egregious acts of violence against our national treasures.  We are already seeing a reversal in attitude at the FCC – thank goodness.   And who would have believed we’d see money budgeted for high speed rail in our lifetime?

(Aside: Obama’s loyalty to Geithner and that whole Wall Street insider crowd did not come up but probably should have.)

Sure, the media megaphone blasts Obama’s policy in Afghanistan, but what we aren’t talking about is how Russia and China are quietly agreeing with us on major problems like Iran and North Korea.   What a difference an election and a new president make. Obama’s foreign policy is based on long-term, strategic thinking.  He’s playing chess while his critics are playing checkers.

What about the tea bagger threat?  Zimmerman says we can, again, look at history.  Fringe groups, whether to the right or left, always end up fighting amongst themselves and fracturing whatever movement they manage to achieve.  Thus it is with the current slugfest over what TEA Party really means and who should control the club treasury.  Zimmerman admits the Dems might lose a couple of seats in Congress next year, but as we start to see the economy turn around and people aren’t as susceptible to the poisoned pills being dispensed by right wing quacks, things will settle down, and Obama will be re-elected in 2012.  

In answer to the complaint by some several members of the audience that  Democrats seem to be afraid to confront their critics,  Zimmerman reminded us that the best way to fight them is to win elections.  On that front, we need to get Robin Carnahan elected.  Even though the Repugs are doing everything they can to help us win by nominating a career politician who left his wife to marry a lobbyist and who has one of the most hated names in Missouri, we must pull ourselves out of our blue funk and work our butts off for Robin……starting now.

http://www.robincarnahan.com/