Democratic Party Videos

Roy Herron, candidate for Governor of Tennessee, explains his positions at Blountville, TN on November 14, 2009

Now that the Left in America has assumed power has anything with respect to war really changed? Left Right, Right Left - both wings on the same bird. The war goes on. Innocent peope die and if you'd ask most Americans, they wouldn't know why - nor do I. Open Up Your Mind and Listen to grooveTEK electronica music and be part of the free music movement @ http://grooveTEK.net

DOWNLOADS: (704) PLAYS: (1291) (h/t CSPANjunkie) Donna Edwards tells her story of being a young mother without health insurance and how she is paying America back with her vote for health care reform. Edwards: I collapsed and was taken to an emergency room. Without health care I was treated as one of those uncompensated and now it's time for me to pay the American people back with a vote for comprehensive health care reform. This bill will take the burden off of providers and Americans for paying the costs of uncompensated care and safeguards for the health of all Americans. She's been a solid progressive voice in Congress. We need more like her. I watched the endless insanity of the Republicans in the House on full display all day and night Saturday. It made me sick, watching them line up like replicants, making sure they used the same talking points over and over again. When they talk about "freedom," all they do is smear what that word means to the world. C&L Annette emailed me and said we should start calling them the Republick Party. I like that. You won't read much about their behavior during a crucial time in our history because the media shields the nuts who are loose in the halls of Congress. Howie Klein writes: I love Donna Edwards. Her short speech about why she was voting for health care reform made me cry last night-- and not fake Glenn Beck tears. Like Donna, there was a time in my life when I couldn't afford health insurance-- or health care-- either. Americans deserve better than predatory insurance companies thriving on misery. This is why America needs more members of Congress like Donna Edwards and less like Paul Ryan, Suzanne Kosmas and John Barrow

DOWNLOADS: (864) PLAYS: (484) (h/t Heather) I can see that Ben Nelson and the Conservadems/Baucus Dogs have a plan. They bitch and moan about the effect a public option would have on the poor, poor health-insurance industry, so if they do have to vote for a public option in the Senate that clearly benefits Americans and not his favorite donors, they will only do it under the provision that the states "opt in" rather than "opt out." His hair has been saying this for a while now. Nelson's hair doesn't explain why he favors the "opt in" version and Harwood doesn't bother to ask. And he can count on the media to not inform America what the differences are in an opt in or an opt out version of the PO so when we complain about it the Villagers will attack us. He was interviewed by John Hardwood, a Villager of the highest order on MSNBC. Here's what Ben Nelson's hair said: Harwood: You'd agree that unless a comprehensive health care bill would pass that it would cripple his presidency. Nelson's hair: Well, I don't know that we should conclude that some form of health care reform won't pass. I believe that some form of health care will pass. Harwood: What in your mind are stoppers, things that, knowing this place, things that either because you oppose them or other senators oppose them, simply can 't be in the final product to have it pass? Nelson's hair: Well, it's very difficult to see how that CLASS Act that was in the HELP committe bill would make it [that's long term care provisions] I think also any kind of public option that would undermine or destabilize the private insurance that 200 million Americans have, I don't see that that would make it. But some version such as an opt-in, for the states with a state option, that could very well be in. Digby alerted me to this clip and she astutely writes: But I am still suspicious that there might be a play to make opt-in the reasonable alternative to opt-out. It just keeps cropping up in all kinds of places, often from White House reporters. It's worth keeping an eye on anyway. Harwood thinks that Nelson will stick with them on cloture and I haven't heard otherwise. (and if Harwood asked him he didn't say, the putz.) But he certainly keeps dangling himself out there as a vote for opt-in, so if this thing really comes down to the wire I could see it happening. Again, I don't think the village media have clue about just how different the two things are. It's just bumper sticker slogans to them. The Hill reports that Sheldon Whitehouse also trumpeted the same thing. The Senate health bill is drifting toward ending up with an "opt-in" provision versus an "opt-out," one Democratic senator said Friday. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) predicted that healthcare reform in the upper chamber would shift from its current construction, which allows states to opt out of a public option, to a version that forces states to opt into such a plan. "I think it's falling into an opt-in, versus opt-out," Whitehouse said during an appearance on MSNBC. "You have a public option, but it's up to a state to take an affirmative act to take advantage of it." Whitehouse suggested the opt-in as a potential compromise on the public option to win enough Democratic votes in the Senate, where Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) has said he will vote against a bill containing a public option, and several other centrist Democrats have been reluctant to support the current proposal. I'm doing some digging around to see what's really happening and I'll have news soon. Reid is already having the "opt out" scored by the CBO, but my sources indicated that the Senate has not sent out the "opt in" to be scored. From what I'm hearing. The "opt in" would not pass the House conference.

Learn more about the American city known as 'Second City' and 'The Windy City' - Chicago, Illinois.

DOWNLOADS: (526) PLAYS: (674) Harry Reid's leadership has been about as bad as it gets. He complained that we needed 60 votes to pass anything and now that we have it, he still is complaining. We're not fighting the Republicans who have no power, but the Conservadems who are blocking real reform. Markos writes: Bill Frist never had 60 votes. Bill Frist never cared. Republicans ran the Senate as if they owned the place, even when enjoying razor-thin majorities. Yet when Democrats took the chamber, the first thing Harry Reid did was complain that he couldn't do anything because he didn't have 60 votes. Then voters delivered 59 votes. And Harry Reid whined that he still couldn't do anything. In fact, nothing would ever get accomplished unless they had 60, and to do that, they had to bring turncoat Joe Lieberman back into the fold, even though he had spent the previous year making common cause with John McCain and Sarah Palin, even speaking at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota. You see, we were told, Joe Lieberman is with us on everything except the war! So we need him for 60, and when we have 60, everyone will get ponies! And if Lieberman strays, why, Evan Bayh said Senate Democrats could punish him! We're told that Lieberman needs to still be part of the action because he's with us on everything except the war. Now we have to include health care on his list of shit he's against us on. What next? Kos continues: And take special note of this sentence: Senator Reid is focused on crafting a health care bill that will overcome a Republican filibuster. Republican filibuster? Democrats have 60 votes. There is no Republican filibuster, just a Democratic one. The problem is Reid's inability to keep his caucus together. His office can't even be honest about Reid's leadership failures. Fucking liars. I'll take a Chuck Schumer-run Senate with 57 Democrats (bye bye Reid, Lieberman, and Lincoln) than a Harry Reid-run one with 75 Democrats. We need an up or down vote on health care. If Reid can't get his own party to vote for cloture, he should step down as leader. He's a joke. And Holy Joe is definitely standing in the way of health care reform. Is he just a mean old man who just wants revenge because he was a warmonger that got booted out of the Democratic party by his own voters? Why take it out on America and oppose real reform? He had his chance when he bolted and supported Sarah Palin and McCain. Harry Reid promised to keep Joe in line and on Cavuto he's actively working against him. Lieberman tells Cavuto that he's against reconciliation because it would kill bipartisanship. How much bipartisanship have you seen during this health care debate? And once again this bitter man is talking the Republican line of "we're doing too much, and we must slow down." If he can't even vote for a bill that appeases the Baucus Dogs, then what will he vote for? David Waldman asks: If one Republican vote for the Baucus health insurance "reform" bill makes it bipartisan, how many Democratic "no" votes on cloture does it take to make a filibuster of the public option bipartisan? Maybe Glenn Thrush knows. Or maybe not. After all, he granted anonymity for this important observation: "If there really is such a groundswell of support for the public option, perhaps senator Schumer would like to show the caucus, especially the centrist Democrats, how he can come up with the 60 votes necessary to overcome the [Republican] filibuster that he damn well knows is coming," said a senior Democrat. In a full Senate, a "Republican filibuster" requires 41 "no" votes on cloture to sustain. There are only 40 Republicans in the Senate. UPDATE: Mike Stark found Joe before he entered a car and asked him if he would filibuster a health care bill that had the public option. Stark: The first person I saw on the Hill tonight was Senator Joe Lieberman. He was exiting the House side of the Capitol and looking for his driver. I tried to press him a little on his non-committal answer re: filibustering health care over the public option. Maybe I’m inclined toward optimism, but I’m thinking he’s hoping he doesn’t have to make that decision .

The lunch from the 2009 California Democratic Party State Convention in Sacramento on April 25, 2009.

Susan Shelton, Democratic strategist, talks about redistricting and the political races in Texas in 2008. She was at Mitzi VanSant's Democratic gathering at her beautiful home in scenic downtown, Smithville, Texas. Video by austincast.com with spring.net videographer Paul Terry Walhus

Bill Moyers on the Democratic Party and its new nominee. Plus, there's nothing new in Scott McClellan's book about the propaganda campaign or the role of the press in selling the war, so why is it such big news? Journalists Jonathan Landay and John Walcott of McClatchy newspapers and Greg Mitchell of EDITOR AND PUBLISHER analyze the reaction of the administration and the media to McClellan's book. And, the Annenberg School's Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Dr. Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute and Scholar Practitioner Program at the University of Maryland, contemplate what's next for Obama, Clinton and the rest of the election cycle.