DEMOCRATS = The Fear of Success? ...Maybe

Today on www.commondreams.org, Thom Hartmann has published a very compelling piece outlining his view of the Republican strategy for 2008. I urge you to read the article in total but essentially he makes the case that the purpose of the Iraq war was nothing more than consolidating political power. Not for oil, not for peace, not to fight terrorism but as a device to maintain control.

Well this makes perfect sense to me.... I have been searching for some sense in this madness... and all this time it was the most simple of plans: Focus the masses, exploit it for as long as you can then change strategies... First it was lead us towards war now "morphing" again... Suddenly the responsibility for the war is shifting to the Democrats... The media is playing it up...the republicans are working the angle and the Democrats are working their way toward a stunning defeat in 2008...

Yes, put away your Hillary Stickers... forget about Barach... and let Al sleep; because as the economy of thought evolves and the "shape shifter" conservatives get "fuzzy", we should get ready to wake up one dreary November morning to yet another republican landslide. The reason is quite simple actually, the Democrats are working last elections angles while the Republicans have moved on. They started this war and now they are getting ready to end it...on their terms...on their time frame.

The Democrats had their chance to take back control and initiative... They could have just not funded the War PERIOD!....That is, let the funding run out...no vote...no veto... no more deaths.

Instead we have more fear...fear to take a stand...fear to be painted as non patriotic... ultimately: Fear to take control. I think this crop of Democrats are so used to being number 2 that ever since they took control in November they have been doing nothing but try to give it back. They want the titles, they want the roles but they fail to embrace the true essence of leadership...To paraphrase JFK they should do these things "not because they are easy...but because they are hard"... The Democrats believed, I think, that they would be "greeted as liberators"... That the remaining republican legislators, tired of the tyranny imposed on them by Delay and company, would greet Pelosi and Reid with flowers. That the votes would pile up and the war would end soon....or not.

Maybe they don't want to end this war...maybe they just want power and are really hoping for their own Rove to ride in with a blue shade of psychological Jiu-Jitsu to use the people's own power against them...maybe they don't really care about us either...

Maybe we the voters are the one's really afraid of success.

I voted for Nader in 2000. I guess, looking back, it was a wasted vote (and I take responsibility for that vote!) but at the time I was fed up with the 2 party system which seemed to me like 2 sides of the same coin. All about power..all about lobby money, all about maintaining things as they are.

Now I am starting to believe that it is we the people who do not want change. It is we who are afraid of success. I hear the phrase bandied about so frequently in terms of Iraq.."the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over but expecting different results". Well maybe we are insane to believe that voting Democratic will make any more difference in 2008 than it did in 2004. Or that this time it will be different...they will try and break our oil addiction...that we will address address global warming...that health care will be recognized as a right...that the middle class will not only be salvaged but revered!

Thom Hartman thinks the war will end in September... Well it should have never started and what about all those soldiers who have died?...What do we say to their families? Sorry about that?

I fear that if we trust the Democrats we will end up back in the hands of conservative social "craftsmen" who play Black against White and the Middle against the bottom in the service of transferring more power to the powerful...

I fear that if we do not make better choices in the voting booth then we can then look forward ....to more of the same.... the next war... the next crisis ... the next illusion.

Or maybe we can stop acting insane.... Maybe its time as voters to finally succeed....Third party anyone?