It is a moot point, the Dems have not been in office to make Policy while Barack is there....and I have not found them to be wrong in the last 8 years.... Since they couldn't do anything with Dubya in there blocking. DD
I'll chime in. I'd say his biggest triumph going against his party when they were wrong was when he voted against the war in Iraq. That matters a lot to many of us. That vote aside, Obama has risen to prominence largely without the party machine behind him. He always appealed to the base, but he took on the Clintons and won in what was essentially a forgone conclusion amongst Dem power brokers that this was "Hillary's Year." Obama circumvented the brokers by building his campaign from the grass roots, and it's those same grass roots for whom he intends to change the direction of the country. Traditional Democrats wouldn't champion the policies that Obama champions, and that's why he beat them. Personally, I think that counts as "going against your party."
Exactly, how is the Democrat congress suppose to get anything done with Bush veto this and veto that? That's part of the reason I want Obama to win, to let Democrat be able to something and see how they do.
The republicans had their chance. Big time. For seven years they had the perfect opportunity to do whatever they wanted to. They had an arrogant administration punch drunk on executive privilege, willing to do whatever it took to push their agenda. They had a republican congress that played as a team, everybody covered everybody else's back- no matter what laws they broke. The protected each other and prevented accountability from reaching any of them for as long as possible. So here we saw the apotheosis of the new 'permanent' republican majority, who were going to bring in a new era of conservative government to the country for a generation. So it's the year 2000, they everybody is on the same page, they're going to cover for each other no matter what. This was the perfect opportunity for them to push their agenda with little obstruction. What did we get? For now I'll leave alone the foreign policy disasters, the war, the secrecy, the lack of accountability, the scandals too numerous to count, the hubris, the wildly out-of-check executive branch, the massive spending, the spying, the lack of respect for the constitution and the rule of law, the abuse of power and the desire to destroy anyone that threatened the power or spoke truth to it... I could go on. I just want to say something about the economic stewardship of the republican party. Here's why I don't care when 'true conservatives' cry for the return of the party to it's 'core values': Now that we're seeing a very big and very real backlash to the republicans this year, conservatives cry "Don't take it out on us! It's those fake republicans in the government that did it! Give us another chance and this time we'll really improve the country!" Ok, let's say you find some fresh young new republicans who won't abuse power, who will respect the constitution, who won't spend "like drunken sailors" (as McCain said back in... 2003?) I want something to be perfectly clear: conservatives got to see their economic vision of trickle-down economics played out for many years now. They got to see their vision of "hands off" government, deregulation, lack of regulation. We all got to see Reaganomics in action. It had it's chance. It's a failure. The conservative dream of hands-off unregluated business, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest.... it is a failure. Now we get to see it for what it is. The rich get richer and the rest of y'all can go *uck yourselves. It's your own fault and your problem if you don't like it. I don't want to hear excuses about fake republicans, the wrong kind of republicans. You had your chance. Trickle-down economics is a failure. Government is going to shift left and we're going to see it, gasp, work to help people who aren't rich.
