I was talking to a friend last night, and we were both bemoaning the lack of progress in passing the agenda Democrats campaigned on - and won big on - in 2008. I was pondering what the political landscape might look like today if Democrats had:*Passed the economic recovery package and had it on President Obama's desk the day he was sworn into office
*Passed health care reform by Memorial Day
*Passed clean energy legislation by Independence Day (we could have symbolically "declared independence" from foreign oil)
*Passed comprehensive immigration reform by Labor Day (appropriate, since most of this is an issue of undocumented workers)
*Turned this fall and winter towards dealing with the budget deficit, entitlements reform, financial regulation and the economy.
If we had accomplished all these things, my guess is that Democrats would be much higher in the polls, having demonstrated that they a) get things done for the American people and b) fulfill the promises they make. Instead, I feel like so far we're getting the worst of all worlds: lots of criticism, ranting and raving, insane cries of "communism" and "socialism," and demagoguery for raising big issues that absolutely need to be dealt with, but at the same time none of the credit for actually getting stuff done.
Now, given the fact that we've essentially wasted the last 9 months screwing around on health care reform, something we've been working on for decades and which I'm convinced we could have gotten done by Memorial Day, all the other items on our agenda have slipped into 2010, a mid-term election year. Brilliant! Once again, the saying about Democracy being the worst form of government ever invented, except for all the other ones, springs to mind. Argh.
