Pick Our Battles?

Citizen X is my 2nd favorite serial killer movie, mainly because of the lovely exchanges between the two leaders of the Chikatilo investigation: Fetisov and Burakov.

Burakov: You think a man is what he says, don't you?
Fetisov: He is if he talks for a living.
Burakov: A man is what he fights for.
Fetisov: I don't fight for anything.
Burakov: I know.

I bring this up because kos (Link above) provides a set of excuses for why Democrats in marginal districts are voting for this miserable bankruptcy bill. What it comes down to, for kos, is the need for Democrats to pick their fights with the Republicans, to conserve their strength for the really big fights, and all that sort of mature sounding jazz.

No.

Not only is that my response to kos on this topic, but it should be the Democrats' response to, well, pretty much everything the Republicans want to do this year. Right now, they're using our "focus on social security" strategy to push through all manner and type of awful legislation on Medicaid, the budget, bankruptcy. They're fucking over our state governments, and playing us for punks.

I remember how the Republicans handled Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, and while I admired none of it, (With my persistent cough, that national health insurance would have come in pretty handy about now. Thanks Bill Kristol for NOTHING.) I did notice their ability to oppose multiple ideas at the same time. Gays in the military, health care, the budget, the stimulus package, Clinton's nominees all in a one year span. They won some, they lost some, but they did a lot of opposing.

Democrats need to shed their fear of the "obstructionist" label. What is so terrible about obstructing bad law? Isn't that what legislators are supposed to do? Maybe if we did some serious obstructing, the Republicans might feel some need to return to the "reality based community". Maybe the Bush administration would establish a record by promoting a policy that makes sense and doesn't shaft the poor. Maybe a Democratic voter could finally, with a straight face, complete this sentence when speaking to a Republican, "I prefer the Democrats because they fight for me."