Democrats

After months of blaming George W. Bush for the economic hole the country is in, and blaming the Republicans as the Party of No for not helping to dig it out, President Barack Obama has finally begun to take a different tack. He and his surrogates on the campaign trail are now busily selling his administration's accomplishments, so severely assaulted by GOP congressional leaders Mitch McConnell in the Senate and John Boehner in the House, and by Republican candidates everywhere.

In his explanation for the anemic turnout for the city's primary election, University of Baltimore public affairs professor Lenneal J. Henderson paints with too broad of a brush ("Election draws lowest turnout in history," Sept. 14). The professor attributes it to "a cloud of pessimism that has descended on the electorate nationally. " The cloud appears to be much more selective than that, falling predominantly on liberal and progressive Democrats. Victories on the same day by conservative Republicans in special Congressional elections in Nevada and, of all places, New York City, were due to heavy turnouts by impassioned voters (a significant number of whom, especially in New York, were registered Democrats)

Thanks, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., for your warning to the Democrats ("Democrats riding high, but beware a midterm crash," March 10). Now, let me ask a question to a Republican: What do you see a conservative, Republican Party doing to swing the Democrats their way? When I was in my 20s, I asked my father the difference between the. He told me the Republicans live in the past and the Democrats always look to the future. I am now 84 years old and I believe he was right. Since Mr. Ehrlich's party is still in shock over the last election, some keep saying they just didn't explain themselves enough.

Initially the Democrats wanted a one-year extension of the payroll tax hike. Now that it's offered to them, they won't accept it. ("The GOP tax hike," Dec. 23.) Now that the two-month extension has passed, what does that do for the economy and the taxpayers? We'd have this same scenerio played out again in February. This could potentially go on for the whole year over and over and over. How demeaning for The Sun to mention the Wall Street Journal as "our ultraconservative brethren" in their editorial?

It's hard to recognize the Democratic Party these days. In recent decades, it's been a divided, brawling tribe. But this year, Democrats are one big, happy family. Sure, there was grumbling from the left over President Barack Obama's agreement to keep tax cuts in place for couples making between $250,000 and $450,000 a year. But that quickly gave way to satisfaction that Mr. Obama had won the "fiscal cliff" fight, and growing confidence that he can win the next round over the federal debt ceiling as well.

The Democrats initially omitted any reference to God in their platform. In defense, a DNC spokesperson explained that some might find God offensive. Oh really! After much bad publicity about giving God the boot, a vote was taken. Even though the voice vote reflected the majority wanted God left out, the DNC allowed God back on their convention bus, but only as a passenger, not the driver. In an earlier interview, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois was asked why the DNC took God out of their party platform, and he replied "Don't accuse the Democrats of being godless.

Peter Morici made some great points in his op-ed, "Democrats deserve to lose Congress" (Oct. 19). How much more do we need to know than the blockbuster statistics Mr. Morici cited regarding the national deficit? Surely any reasonable citizen can understand that to cause the federal deficit to grow from $161 billion in 2007 to an estimated $1.3 trillion in 2011 is not good management of our public resources! When will the federal government figure out that bad management usually results in a change of management?

Peter Morici writes that "Democrats deserve to lose Congress" (Oct. 19)? Please, Mr. Morici, your column contains too many startling oversimplifications. China entered the World Trade Organization while Bill Clinton was president, but with support — or pressure — from many large corporations that then outsourced thousands of jobs to lower paid workers. Their loyalty was to profits, not American workers. Deregulation of the financial markets and an unnecessary war that was fought on credit are the main causes of our current predicament.

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a GOP presidential candidate, was on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday, and, as usual, the congressman skewered at least one sacred cow of American politics.  Paul's target this time? The notion that Republicans and Democrats are diametrically opposed political parties. You know, the idea that they're bitter political opponents. They fight over everything. They hate each other.  But the truth is, Paul said, they're the same party.  "We don’t have a good democratic process," Paul said.

F or the first time in more than a quarter-century, unemployment in the United States has reached double digits - bad economic news for America, now having shed jobs for 22 consecutive months. And bad social news for the Americans who are out of work, for their families and for their communities, especially when we consider data that tells us 35 percent of jobless men and women have been looking for work for more than six months. It's bad political news for President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress, who continue to make the mistake of treating unemployment as an afterthought rather than the most serious issue facing the nation.