No Sooner Do I Slap Down The Republicans...

Image credit: Mark M./Occupy Together

Just in case you didn't catch on to this the first few times they did it, the Democratic Party's leading lights once again offered to screw the rest of the country so that they wouldn't have to disappoint the people they actually work for. As Jon Walker reports:

The Democrats on the Super Committee, in their efforts to reach an deal with Republicans, have offered a new deficit reduction package and just like their last offer this one also contains cuts to Medicare benefits. From Politico:
...
There was the opportunity for Democrats to go into the 2012 election with a clear and important distinction between themselves and the Republicans. The Republicans have already come out for cutting Medicare benefits so the Democrats could have taken a firm and very popular stance against cutting Americans’ Medicare benefits.

Super Committee Dems Again Offer to Cut Medicare Benefits

Distinction? But, the Republicans are so much scarier. They're going to take away our Social Security and Medicare, and ...

Wait, I'll get back to you.

Afterword/UPDATE: It didn't fit in well with the preceding narrative, but here's yet another reason to go out and boost Democrats in their fight against The Other Guys (tm), courtesy of masaccio at FireDogLake:

Suzi Khimm of the Washington Post asked a “senior administration official” why the White House opposes a financial transactions tax of .03%, and got this absurd response:

We share the goal of wanting a more stable financial system. We share the goal of wanting a more progressive tax system. The only real questions are — what’s the best way to do that?”

What evidence is there for this nonsense? This is the crowd that didn’t have the stomach to stand up for a crystal-clear campaign promise to raise taxes on the rich, which is how we get a “more progressive tax system”. This is the crowd that couldn’t stand up to the Derivatives Emperor, Jamie Dimon, whose balance sheet is now festooned with a notional value of $77 trillion in various types of derivatives.

Obama Won’t Support a Tax on Rich Traders

[links from original]

It boggles the mind that anyone could seriously assert that the Democrats are any less feckless or useless on the issue of the economy these days than Republicans are. They have stood by and let all this happen, even though they clearly had the power to fix it at one time. They chose not to. After their defeat in 2010, they chose to keep the congressional leaders who brought them that defeat.

Could anything be more damning then their refusal to change course, after what happened in 2010, in Ohio and Mississippi yesterday, and in the face of continuing protests all across the country?

I can't imagine that there is, but I think it's quite possible the Democrats will provide an example before 2012 is done. And in the wake of it, many progressives will continue to provide examples of the pathetic rationalizations that have enabled this foolishness up until now.