{"id":8473,"date":"2006-09-15T09:45:35","date_gmt":"2006-09-15T13:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8473.html"},"modified":"2006-09-15T09:45:35","modified_gmt":"2006-09-15T13:45:35","slug":"a-new-new-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-new-new-direction\/","title":{"rendered":"A new<\/i> ‘New Direction’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I appreciate the fact that congressional Dems believe the old adage that you “can’t beat something with nothing.” I also think, on balance, Dems were probably right to unveil a legislative agenda in advance of the elections, letting voters know what they can expect from Congress if Republicans lose their majority.<\/p>\n

But to hear that Dems are still fiddling<\/a> with their agenda items with less than eight weeks to go before Election Day is a little painful.<\/p>\n

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the woman who will become speaker of the House if Democrats get lucky in November, began her weekly news conference yesterday holding up a red-white-and-blue brochure.<\/p>\n

“I hope you all received ‘A New Direction for America,’ ” she said, standing at a lectern that bore the same slogan. She called the manifesto “a compilation of many of the initiatives taken by our House Democratic Caucus that encompasses our new direction for all Americans.”<\/p>\n

It was a handsome booklet, full of homey photographs and popular proposals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So far, so good. What’s the trouble? The “Six for ’06” strategy, released in July<\/a>, is still getting little touch-ups, even now, suggesting that Dems haven’t quite made up their minds.
\n
\nAs Dana Milbank noted, “For those keeping score at home, Democrats arrived at “New Direction” yesterday by downgrading one of the “Six for ’06” issues (health care) and upgrading three others (honesty, civility and fiscal discipline), for a total of eight items on the contents page.”<\/p>\n

Even if we put aside the logic behind “downgrading” health care, which strikes me as odd, there’s a broader problem: why are Dems still fiddling with the agenda they released nearly three months ago? And why on earth are there eight issues on a “Six for ’06” platform?<\/p>\n

For months, I was frustrated with reporters who refused to show even a hint of interest when Dems held major events to unveil policy agendas. Given that the Dems apparently are still a little confused, and keep re-releasing slightly altered lists, maybe the reporters weren’t so negligent after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I appreciate the fact that congressional Dems believe the old adage that you “can’t beat something with nothing.” I also think, on balance, Dems were probably right to unveil a legislative agenda in advance of the elections, letting voters know what they can expect from Congress if Republicans lose their majority. But to hear that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}