“Listen, the immigration debate is a tough debate,” Bush said. “I’m under no illusions about how hard it is. There are people in my party that don’t want a comprehensive bill. There are people in the Democrat Party that don’t seem to want a comprehensive bill.
“Now, it’s going to require leadership from the Democrat leaders in the Senate, and it’s going to require me to stay engaged and work with Republicans who want a bill,” he said. “We made two steps forward on immigration, we took a step back, and now I’m going to work with those who are focused on getting an immigration bill done and start taking some steps forward again.
Thanks Mr. President for reminding Democrats why we should be treating you like the lame duck that you are. Why are we bothering to try to work out a compromise that’s too heavily corporate and that still treats people who want to come to this country like shit when we’ll probably have a few more seats in the Senate and a Democratic president in a year and a half? Why bother giving President Bush a victory that’s starting to compromise our values?
I mean, the fact that he can’t even be bothered to not distort the name of the party he’s trying to work with was hardly the first breach of conduct (I’d say stealing the 2000 election) or the most serious (that would probably be disappearing 7 and 9 year olds but really, who knows at this point?). But someone should tell him that maybe the President of the United States should be able to get the name of the majority party in both houses of Congress right on the first try.
The party has been called the Democratic Party in one form or another (Democratic Republican for a while) at least informally since Jefferson’s day, because whatever their faults Jefferson and the people who followed him since then have been the party of the demos. The Federalist party with it’s Alien and Sedition act, and its strong use of force against the people and even more so the Whigs were pretty explicitly the party of the aristocracy. And the Republicans have been since fairly early on a big business and corporate minded party. And in most of the time that we’ve been a party, being the democratic party was considered an insult in many quarters.
Of course, it’s not an insult today, and if Bush says, “the Democratic Party” or, “Democratic Leaders” well people will hear “the democratic party” or “democratic leaders.” At But in the same way, we’re perfectly willing to call the Republicans the Republicans or the Grand Old Party, even if they aren’t grand and they are a younger party.*
There was a time when only crazies intentionally distorted the name of the Democratic Party; John Birchers, and the like who nobody took seriously. But at some point, bloggers with a screw lose (hell with a few missing) and the former House Majority Leader decided to join the act. Eventually the President started saying it. And while it may have been cute when his party ran the show in Washington, D.C., he needs us more than we need him. We can wait him the hell out, get a good deal, and not give some political cover to a madman. He’ll be gone in less than 2 years, the least you’d think that he could do was pretend to try to work with us.
*With some exceptions