Sen. Dorgan to White House: Hey, thanks for nothing

Imagine you’re a three term US Senator, a part of the biggest congressional majority held by Democrats in decades. 

2008 brought a tidal wave of hope and change fever, fueled by Barack Obama’s pie-in-the-sky rhetoric, bolstering the majorities gained in 2006, and generating tons of political capital.  The Republican party is all but extinct and is in disarray.  Nothing stands in the way.

The new administration is sworn in, promising to revive the economy and pulling the US from the “precipice”—the worst economy since the Great Depression.

Then you wake up in December, and you realized that the incompetent leaders of your party just spent the last nine months pushing the biggest Federal entitlement expansion in modern history, squandered its precious political capital on backroom deals, union payoffs—-pushing and pushing an unpopular healthcare reform package. 

Rarely throughout the contentious summer and fall, if ever, was there a mention of creating jobs or reviving the economy from the White House or the congressional leadership. 

Now, the political climate is such that the Democratic party is toxic in deep blue states, it’s ambitious agenda on the rocks.  You’re once safe Senate seat is all but out of reach.  You have to call it quits. 

How do you feel? 

If I had to make a bet, it would be just like how Byron Dorgan feels right about now:

 A top Senate Democrat on Friday stressed that jobs and economic recovery, not healthcare reform, should have been the president’s top priority last year.

While Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) described President Barack Obama’s focus on healthcare as “very important,” he said the timing of Obama’s legislative push ultimately “wasn’t good.”

The North Dakota senator later added Obama should have pursued an agenda that was “all economy, all the time [and] all jobs, all the time” in order to “repair this economy and put people back to work” more quickly.

[...]

But the president won the election — I didn’t,” added Dorgan, who will not run for re-election this year. “

[…]

Dorgan’s admission Friday that Democrats erred by focusing almost exclusively on healthcare reform in 2009 is sure not to sit well with the party’s leaders.

In other words, the Obama administration, with supermajorities in Congress being elected to promote the general welfare of the country, fumbled the ball.  They blew it. 

Instead of focusing on the economy and trying to create jobs, the Obama Democrats spent their time trying to ram through a healthcare reform package that lawmakers will not vote for and that the majority of Americans don’t want.

Nothing is so sad in politics as wasted political capital, so precious is it to obtain.  And it’s all because of Barack Obama’s enormous ego and the complicity of the mindless drones in the Democratic leadership.

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