Democratic Party = party of governing, or occasional stabs at it during moments of crisis, with good and not so good members and policy positions.

Republican Party = party of obstruction to efforts at actual governance, with varying levels of skill and shamelessness. But all are, to borrow an observation from Garrison Keillor,  “above average” at it. Something about brain chemistry, I suspect.

The Senate’s passage Tuesday of the economic recovery package followed a now-familiar 30 year pattern. The Democratic President Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton before him in 1993, faced a monolithic wall of GOP opposition to his economic program. But Republicans Ronald Reagan in 1981 and George W. Bush 20 years later enjoyed substantial Democratic support for their dangerously irresponsible and regressive tax cuts that as predicted drained the federal treasury. Now as then, for Republicans the road to economic stimulus is a one-way street.

This is why two is not enough. To borrow from another good writer: “We can do better.”

Candace Richardson was one of the hardest workers for Obama in Oklahoma. Like many of us progressives, she’s a little concerned about what caused Oklahoma to buck the trend and move to the Right instead of the Left in the election.

She’s put out a call for others to join her in making some changes in the base of the Oklahoma Democratic Party.

On December 11, 2008, at 5:30pm, we will have a brief meeting in Oklahoma City at the upstairs conference room of Java Daves, 10 NE 10th (just west of the Broadway Extension on 10th St). It is time to stand up for our Democratic values. It is time to move this party in a new direction.

We invite you to join us and continue to work for change. Channel your hope, because WE KNOW what can be accomplished when people come together united by a common goal! Email me at crich1254 -at- yahoo -dot- com [altered for privacy] for more information and to RSVP for Dec. 11th.

And, yes, I know that if you are a conservative Republican, you are just cool about Oklahoma not voting for Obama and being the regressive joke of an America that is moving on and upward with or without us. We get it, really; you don’t have to explain it to us again here.

Grassroots power. The Oklahoma Democratic Party is trying to keep funding the staff people that were part of Howard Dean’s 50-state grassroots party-building strategy. That program is being laid down, apparently — despite its demonstrable success for the past two campaign cycles. I could go off on that tangent for a rant, but back to Oklahoma — Oklahoma Dems would like to keep this now experienced staff around to help the party continue to build and, I dunno, do better next time. So if you’re inclined, donate here

Inhofe back to business. The Oklahoma Gazette reports that Inhofe is going to focus his time and energy on dismantling the 527s that he thinks did him dirty in his recent reelection campaign. He won by a considerable margin, but no matter, he’s on the warpath. I’m sure this new mission he’s taken on will do lots of good things for the people of Oklahoma.

Little Axe Case remembered. In 1981, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State came to the aid of two Little Axe, OK, families who were being attacked for their objections to denominational prayers in the local school. Oklahoma City minister, and blogger at Mainstream Baptists, Dr. Bruce Prescott, interviewed one of the victims on his radio program, and AU picked it up on their site, and prominent science blogger and atheist PZ Myers noted it at Pharyngula as well. Both posts generated lots of comments.

And therein I learned that Joann Bell, the longtime director of the Oklahoma ACLU was one of those Little Axe women who fought the school board and the whole town. I’d heard about the Little Axe story, even saw it detailed in a documentary, but never realized that it was that Joann Bell that was involved.

Keeping it wild. In the Gazette I also see news that The Nature Conservancy of Oklahoma is initiating a new project in OKC and Tulsa to get more young professionals and families involved in their work to save wilderness areas.

Waiting for justice. A documentary has been made about the survivors of the Tulsa Race Riot (thought to be the worst racist massacre in U.S. history in which a successful black community was destroyed) and their desire for reparations Before They Die. I’m not sure when this film was released, but it’s been shown in Tulsa, and recently in New York City. If it hasn’t been shown publicly in OKC, it should be.

Well, as suspected, the capitulation continues unabated. The Netroots is sick about it, but not really surprised. Hunter at Daily Kos pretty much sums it up in Why it Matters.

As Jane Hamsher states, the real message of today’s vote, from the 32 Democratic Senators who gave Lieberman a pass, and, yes, President-elect Obama, who whipped the vote:

This is about telling you that you mean nothing. That democracy is a nice word, but it should never threaten the entitlement of the most exclusive club in the world.

No matter what Joe Lieberman does, the people who are protecting him hate you much more than they hate him.

We just continue to fight for accountability and progressive values to make their way to the top.

So, we're all disgusted at the Dems caving once again. The diaries and comments on this site will be red hot on the topic for days. But what real action can we take? Preferably something immediate, rather than two or four in the future. One thing I did was unsubscribe from Harry's Reid's "Give 'Em Hell, Harry" list. You can do so here. If enough of us do it today and tomorrow, he might sense some unhappiness in the ranks. Another project I heard about was Laugh at Lieberman. I don't know if I understand the efficacy of this tactic, but it's out there. I report, you decide. What other ideas have you come up with or heard about? I've collected some after the fold. Post yours in comments. (more...)

Oh, the humanity!

• We will give you an ice cream cone. However, no sprinkles. And when you eat your ice cream cone, wishing you had sprinkles for it, maybe you’ll think about what you’ve done.
• You are no longer allowed to hang your coat in the Democratic Caucus cloakroom. You must hang your coat on a hook which we have had installed next to the cloakroom for your convenience.
• Your parking space has been moved two rows back. We think the extra 19 steps each morning will give you a lot of time to reflect on your actions.
• Your committee meetings and hearings will now be aired only on CSPAN3 — the MTV2 of CSPANs.
• The next time you go on Hannity’s show on Fox News and proclaim that President Obama is a terrorist-sympathizing, baby-eating, grandma-raper, we reserve the right to be quoted by the Washington Post saying that although you are a very good guy and a close personal friend, that your comments were probably not fully accurate. So THERE.

Actually, Turncoat Joe’s punishment was not nearly as harsh as that. Seriously.

I didn’t vote for Al Gore in 2000 and Joe Lieberman, Al’s stupendously stupid VP pick, is why. He was a whiny sanctimonious prick then, and he’s gotten worse every year since. His political assholery is becoming the stuff of legend. Only now, after being rejected by the Connecticut Democratic Party in 2006, he has an “I” next to his name. But he caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate, and, because in the last Congress they needed him in the caucus to maintain majority, he was given a plum chair of an important committee, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

That means subpoena power.

But he did zilch with that power between 2006 and 2008, despite the Katrina debacle, porous ports, multiple instances of corruption and irregularities in the executive branch, all which should have been investigated by his committee. His counterpart in the House, Henry Waxman, was busy as a beaver, and exposed plenty. But without an ally on the Senate side, nothing much but “sternly worded letters” could come of it all.

So now, after a long campaign season in which Independent Joe Lieberman who caucuses with the Democrats was joined at the hip with Republican presidential nominee John McCain, saying McCain loved his country and Obama did not, now there is a grassroots fueled effort to strip Turncoat Joe of his chair at Homeland Security.

And, what do you know! Suddenly, leading that committee is of utmost urgency to Joe Lieberman. Wonder why that is?

Yet, amazingly, many high-level Democrats are willing to let bygones be bygones and let Lieberman keep the chair, where, it is suspected, he will suddenly find a reason to call his committee to work investigating the new Obama administration. Just as Democratic Senators who should have known better, like Barbara Boxer, went to Conn. to campaign for Joe despite the state party’s distaste for him, now they are letting their “friendship” get in the way of political reality and necessity.

The netroots is calling for accountability for How-Low-Can-He-Go Joe, and have set up several tools to persuade the Senate Democratic Steering Committee to give the chair to someone more deserving and trustworthy.

The Dems no longer need Joe for majority status, and based on his recent voting record, he is not even a “progressive vote” on “everything but the war” any more. He is a vile, bitter, corrupt man. I’d kick him out of the caucus completely, but that’s not what’s being asked. He can leave and caucus with the Republicans if he wants — what’s in it for him? He won’t have any leadership role on any committee and no avenue to re-election.

Call the members of the Steering Committee and tell them: Joe Lieberman must GO!

The whole world is trying to figure out what’s up with us here in Red Dirt land. Last Tuesday, for good or bad, we certainly took a different tack, and everyone wants to know why.

The great blog Down With Tyranny regularly has insightful posts about Oklahoma politics, with some of the best rants against Inhofe for years now, and was a good source of info about the Andrew Rice campaign. Today, a look at what the hell happened in Oklahoma last Tuesday. Leading in to the piece is a photo from the Dust Bowl which still epitomizes Oklahoma’s seemingly hopeless situation.

Can You Guess Which State Was The Most Reactionary In This Year’s Elections? Hint: Think Rodgers and Hammerstein

But the state least connected to the American mainstream and most politically isolated on Tuesday was poor, sad, reactionary Oklahoma, which gave almost 66% of it’s vote, the most of any state, to McCain. While analysts are working on a post-mortem, or autopsy, on McCain’s no longer twitching campaign, Oklahomans must be wondering what’s wrong with the rest of America.

Daily Kos’s most famous and beloved Okie diaries, droogie6655321, riffed off Thomas Frank’s 2005 examination of Kansas politics, with What’s the Matter with Oklahoma?

What I’m not interested in is sweeping generalities about Oklahomans. If you want to call us all ignorant, misinformed, racist or backward, I suggest you do it an upcoming open thread and not here. As unfathomable as it may seem to us, there is a reason why Oklahomans choose Republicans over Democrats, and I want to know why.

Droogie’s question generated 988 comments and was followed by Sooner Kos discussion threads here and here

The traditional media weighed in on the anomaly which is Oklahoma. The New York Times:

Where Tuesday’s Tide Was All Republican

“Oklahoma Democrats, with very few exceptions, are the old-line white Southern Democrats,” said David Ray, another political scientist at the university. “They don’t like liberals or liberalism.”

Indeed, the state has a political landscape closely resembling that of the old solidly Democratic South, especially in its southeastern corner, known as Little Dixie, where many Southerners settled after the Civil War. When conservatives of the Old South began abandoning the party decades ago, Oklahoma’s Democrats lagged behind the historical trend. Further, the state has relatively small black and Hispanic populations, and so the Democrats did not absorb as many new voters from those groups as in the states of the old Confederacy.

These days Oklahoma Democrats dread running for local office in presidential election years, for fear of being associated with liberal nominees at the top of the ticket.

“Being liberal in Oklahoma, with the exception of a few legislative districts, will not get you elected,” said State Representative Joe Dorman, a conservative Democrat.

[...]

But Mr. Gaddie said that perhaps the most important factor in Mr. McCain’s strong showing here was religion. An Edison/Mitofsky exit poll found that more than half of Oklahoma voters identified themselves as evangelical Christians and that a heavy majority of them had voted for Mr. McCain.

Mr. Gaddie, himself a pollster as well as a college professor, said: “A question we always ask in our polls is ‘How often do you attend church services?’ If a Democrat is not going to vote for a Democrat, they are a frequent church attender.”

Another advantage for Mr. McCain was that the state’s economy, based mostly on the oil and gas industry, has been buffered somewhat from the national economic slowdown. Unemployment remains low, the housing market stable.

For all of that, the Democratic Party is far from dead in Oklahoma, especially in the state’s southeastern section, where, despite the social conservatism, many people still talk about the New Deal and revere Franklin D. Roosevelt.

and Washington Post also remarked on the Oklahoma phenom.

As Much of Nation Went Blue, Okla. Applied Extra Coat of Red

Exit polls found that more than half of Oklahoma voters identified themselves as white, evangelical or born-again Christians. Of those, a heavy majority went for McCain.

State Republican Chairman Gary Jones said it was “not so much an issue of race,” but rather of conservative Oklahomans voting against someone known as “the most liberal member of the Senate.”

Jones said the conservative positions of McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, helped motivate Oklahoma voters.

One thing all these analysts seem to agree on is that Oklahoma not being so hard hit by the economic downturn played a part in the election results. We just aren’t hurting as bad as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, et. al.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But in Oklahoma, the pain wasn’t great enough to trump the other ideology (”family values”) and/or misconceptions about Obama as elsewhere in the nation.

If Obama does a good job as president, which I expect him to do, perhaps Oklahomans will at least drop the latter rationale for not voting for him when he runs for re-election in 2012.

Today I took advantage of Oklahoma’s early voting opportunity. I went down to the Election Board for Canadian County and found a line. It took me about 50 minutes for the whole process, which is way longer than the other two times I’ve done early voting, but from what I hear, not nearly as long as today’s lines in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

I voted for Obama/Biden. Andrew Rice. Jim Roth. Frankie Robbins. Consider these my endorsements, if anyone is looking for free advice on the matter. If one of them wins, I’ll be doing better than I usually do. If two win, it will be a lifetime achievement for a single election.

On the judicial retentions, I voted no on all except Colbert. He’s the only one I could find any reasonable info on with Google. African American, sounds reasonable in terms of background, i.e. no blatent nativist tendencies evident. For the others, I put my “toss incumbents out on principle” principle into play. This is probably not a good plan, but judges always get retained, don’t they? I wish they’d have to sweat it more. Lifetime appointments are a two-edged sword, in my opinion.

As for the state questions: I voted no on the vet’s exemption on property tax. I do think vets should get some breaks, but not clear on why this has to be in the state Constitution. No matter, this will pass overwhelmingly, so my dissent is meaningless. No also on the hunting thing, which is an NRA-sponsored solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Yes on wine sales and yes on that procedural thing on property tax exemptions (I hope I understood that one right).

On a couple of other local races, I voted Democratic, although I don’t know anything about the candidates. I just went with the underdog party in a conservative state. I don’t like to do that; I guess I’m getting lazy in my old age.

Speaking of voting Democratic, I now have to decide whether to remain registered in the Democratic Party or go back to Independent. I usually go back after the primary, but this year I waited to consider my options after seeing how things turned out. I am seriously considering ending my quixotic Green efforts here in Oklahoma. I’m over 50, and if I stay here, which looks a lot more possible than I originally thought when I arrived in 2003, then organizing within the DP as a progressive Dem is not only the closest practical political goal, but also about the best use of my skills and time left on the planet.

Of course, it would be a lot easier decision if the state Dems could refrain from frequent outright hostility to each other, not to mention real and possible allies.