Is the momentum fading again?

The last 5 years have been some of the strangest I have ever seen (I know I'm not alone too). It's almost like there's a hypnosis machine working somewhere-maybe there is, with Fox News.

I look back, and several times in the last 5 years we have gotten the momentum. We have been able to make points, and make them stick. We have been able to eloquently criticize the events of the day, and it seemed like people were waking up. Then the hypnosis machine went to work, and every time the people went back to sleep and bought into the governemnt lie.. Richard Clarke...sleep. Democratic convention...sleep. Debates...sleep.

Now, we have John Murtha blow away theadministration, and Cheney tried to attack him, but failed to make it stick because of who Murtha is. This follows after the Katrina disaster where Bush was seen to be visibly goofing off. We really made a lot of headway and had the momentum going. But somehow, it seems like the American public is going back to sleep again. Why?

Some aren't interested, some say "they're all crooks".

Hasn't this government touched enough people in a bad way to make a difference? How do they keep putting people back to sleep?

or rather these lazy people I know seem to think -- no, they seem to expect-- bad things to happen from government, and so to them it is the same old same old. I'm not kidding. They don't see how anyone can improve things.
Granted, the main thing that has effected these folks is the economy-they've seen gas prices go up, and that woke them up enough to grumble. Both men I'm thinking about have sons who are young teens. If there was a draft and their kids were in danger of having to go to Iraq, I think they would be more concerned. Let's face it, people like this don't react unless they see how policies effect them directly. One reason gas prices have gone down, imho, is because people like these fellows were getting mad enough to want to do something about the government.

'cause i know where i go.

as people here at DU. They fall in and out of paying attention. Momentum or not, Bushies approval rating is severely damaged and will not recover. Americans know they were lied to and mislead. That is more important than winning the political point of the day.

(despite recent lapses)will continue their feeding frenzy soon. Wait till credit card shock this winter, heating oil and gas expenses, wait until Average Americans discover, to their horror, how their vote has effected their pocketbooks. The quality of life of the average American will continue to decline as the deficit grows, jobs are exported, and rich people get huge tax cuts.

There's so much serious news out there that doesn't even get reported - like Condi's comments yesterday concerning torture that require an attorney to decipher.

Then there's the spin on Howard Dean's comments, negative all the way, even though the majority of the public agree with him.

We get momentum, but it doesn't hold because the big media giants have an attention deficit (so do the people, for that matter). The likes of CNN would rather report ad nauseum on Saddam's trial and cell phones for dogs.

she and Bush are being very careful. Both use the present tense only to answer questions on torture, secret prisons and interrogations, and prisoner abuse. We don't torture. We are not sending prisoners to hidden CIA operated prisons in other countries.
But.
We may have done that a week ago. Or a month ago.
We're just not doing that today. As I speak.
I am not a liar.

Plus "We don't torture" is ambiguous. Who is "we" anyway? Bush and his cabinet? He could mean that, and then it's not a lie.

The reason there's a sense of losing ground is because of the media coverage. Public opinion, although it may tick up a couple of points, is dead set against Bush and his Iraq debacle. That has to have an impact in the midterms, where the real progress gets made.

But I keep thinking the situation is kind of like this:

They say something vile and stupid, we debunk it, the people pay attention for a bit, then Hypnos comes back and they turn back into zombies. Then The RW says something even more stupid and evil, which we debunk, and after a few days the people go back to sleep. Then they outdo themselves again, etc. etc. Eventually you would think that people would wake up and say "What the hell am I agreeing with? What has happened to me?" Somehow they don't get to that point, and it's far past the time they should have. When will they fully wake up? Is it going to take them actively performing executions on innocent people, or actively taking part in militias hunting down people for their beliefs, before they finally do? Will even that do it?

Maybe I'm just depressed today...

by showing the disparity in the amount we spend on Iraq's infrastructure and the amount the republicans are contemplating cutting from the domestic budget here at home.

But, I think the recent interest and concern that is registered in the polls as well as in the coverage has a great deal to do with the tragic toll of dead soldiers that seems to never let up. I would credit the sacrifices of these fallen troops with solidifying public opinion against the war. That, unfortunately won't be letting up anytime soon. In key states with economic distress, the numbers serving in Iraq are high, as well as in the sparsely populated 'blue' states. The casualties impact these states in ways that that make opposition to Bush a visceral issue rather than an intellectual one. Also the economic distress in these states makes the citizens there more sensitive to the disparity in tax dollars going to Iraq and the money lacking in their own communities.

For these depressing reasons, I'm . . . not as pessimistic about our ability to maintain the pressure needed to move Bush off of his prize.

manipulated. That's why some anti-depressants contain flouride.

I think (could be wrong and I don't know for a fact) that the Dems are in the background planning the attack. Look at Pelosi for instance, for the 2 weeks Congress was on break, I would say with ALMOST absolute surity that she was working her ass off. I bet the same could be said for a lot of them. Do you really think Harry Reid has just gone away? I HIGHLY doubt that. My thinking is they are all getting organized and uniting in the background

and Marcus Wittman of the DLC talk to the media, only too willing to confirm the Big Story of a rift in the party over Iraq. See today's WaPo story, following up last week's.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/06/AR2005120601707.html?nav=rss_politics

Democrats Fear Backlash at Polls for Antiwar Remarks

By Jim VandeHei and Shalaigh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 7, 2005; Page A01

Strong antiwar comments in recent days by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have opened anew a party rift over Iraq, with some lawmakers warning that the leaders' rhetorical blasts could harm efforts to win control of Congress next year.

DLC and DCCC makes me want to vomit my guts out.

One of the predictors said that the majority in the US would be under an influence that would be proved hostile to the nation and that it would last for forty years. It was to have begun in the mid sixties. Russia was mentioned as a possible cause for this influence but not definite. I read this many years ago and think about that article fairly often...It was in a magazine called Fate.. Something strange has definitely happened. Ten years ago I would have thought it impossible for the USA and especially the Bible Belt to support torture...These days anything is possible I guess..:shrug:

Really kooky theories in that one.

Strange that it came true though. 25 years ago it's like most of the US population was replaced by an evil twin.

We have a press that will not question the motives of the war and we have the DLC/Republican stance that makes it impossible to sustain headway.

for their fundamentalism. Christmas.
Seriously. Who the fuck cares if you wish someone Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Holidays or Merry Christmahannukkwanzaa?
And we bite it every time.
What we need to keep reminding people that the ACLU is NOT the Democratic Party...that they even protect the rights of scum like Limpballs.
Then get back on our message instead of taking up (what I consider) a stupid issue when there are issues of far greater importance out there.

They see the economy diving, they see the destruction of our environment, they see less opportunities for their children, they see corruption in government - both parties! But they don't know where to begin to change things so they just keep pluggin' along. When a story does break through the corporate media, they have a glimmer of hope, but then nothing changes. That happens over & over again & soon they no longer have any hope. Unfortunately, many are clueless as to what a poor, poor job the corporate media is doing, so there are many issues they aren't even aware of. As evil as bushco is, the corporate media has done the most damage to our country.

It is a very sad state of affairs.

This is what happened the past 24 hours alone.

Kerry SLAMMED Mehlman and Rush
Murtha corrected Cheney's misuse of terrorist and insurgent(if you saw him on the Today show, it was funny)
NeoCondi is being made to look like a fool in front of all Europe
Dean actually came up with a plan--althought the 2 years thing bothers me-yet still better than any plan the repugs have, which is basically no plan
Fitzgerald took his 17 briefcases and folders to the Grand Jury today

This is just from yesterday and today (so far)

Here's the problem: THE MSM is not on our side. They misquote and mislead (have you ever seen a newspaper that had Murtha's proposal correct??)

The administration controls the information and the issues. The constant exposure of new scandals and misdeeds, the subsequent spinning and lying and smearing, the numbing of the public to real issues, and the ultimate tumble down the memory hole is a pattern we haven't broken out of for five years.

Loved the Reid senate gambit...but what has that gotten us now?

Challenge of Ohio electoral votes was forgotten a week after it happened.

The senate "deal" with the gang of fourteen has gotten us...what, exactly?

Commissions and investigations that are whitewashes help put issues to bed rather than revealing truth.

Conyers' dogged determination to talk about election reform has resulted in.....?

Why? Because they've work for the last 30 years on conservative think tanks, control of media ownership, cuddling up to corporate donors, threatening fundies with gay marriage and bible banning, and developing a ruthless immoral PR approach. We are way behind the curve on all of these.

They've made so many mistakes that the evidence and backlash will just keep piling up.

Take troop withdrawal for example. If they keep the troops there it will take its usual toll. Even if they start to withdraw the troops next year, imagine the thousands of weary and disgruntled soldiers coming back who are gonna start asking questions about why they were over there in the first place.

anything they are told to by the media. There is no doubt in my mind that the deregulation and consolidation of the media is the linchpin in the campaign to control the herd, and that's why raygun did it.
We now have a significant portion of the population that gets 100% of their opinions from the RW media (as if there were a LW media). They never listen to, or read anything that is not fed to them by faux, sinclair, newscorp, and the others. That is all they know, so until something this cabal has done affects them directly, they don't know or believe it.

do not understand politics. That's usually excuse #1. #2 usually isn't that they don't care, it's just that they are so burnt out from their daily lives that they just don't want to deal with it. My husband cares about politics, however as a man working 2 full time jobs to support his family, well, time runs short. When he comes home, he wants to take off his boots and relax. This is the most prominent scenario in people I know. They are so overwhelmed with just trying to make it day to day, that even though politics directly relate to what's overwhelming them, they just don't have the "energy" for it.

But a lot of the careful thoughts expressed on this thread ring very true. When events have an impact "of the moment" - for example, gas prices, as one poster mentioned - then Americans may take a minute or two to think about what is actually going on around them and how events affect them. Otherwise - 99.9% of the time - it's out of sight, out of mind for most people. IMO, most Americans don't spend a lot of time dwelling on the impact of politics on their everyday lives, and it is to their own detriment and that of our country as a whole.

Hopefully the stinkiness of the current owners of the government will get so bad that it will be impossible for even the most disinterested to ignore.