Steny Hoyer: Don't expect us to be real Democrats

Today, Senate Democrats showed us that disloyalty and trashing the Democratic agenda have no consequences. Joe Lieberman was rewarded for his bad behavior.

Next up, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

Using the coded language of the right wing, Hoyer said today that Democrats in Congress aren't really going to be Democrats:

As the House prepares to elect its leaders, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is challenging the idea that the expanded Democratic majority and its leaders will make a hard left turn.

“For the first time in decades, we are a true national majority party—and if we want to stay that way, we must govern like one,” Hoyer (D-Md.) is to say in a speech today at the National Press Club, according to excerpts of his remarks obtained by The Hill.

Hoyer did, in fact, deliver this speech today at the Press Club. But, he wanted the message out in advance that he'd be trashing the left, which is why his office gave it to The Hill in advance.

Hoyer, as usual, has it all wrong. If Democrats want to stay in power, they need to enact the agenda of change for which people voted. The Democrats need to actually lead, something Democrats often seem incapable of doing. Instead, too many Democrats, like Hoyer, undermine the progressive agenda every step of the way. The biggest problem we're going to have this year won't be from Republicans. One of their leaders, Eric Cantor, told the Washington Times the GOP is irrelevant:

"Where we have really fallen down is, we have lacked the ability to be relevant to people's lives. Let's set aside the last eight years, and our falling down in living up to expectations of what we said we were going to do," Mr. Cantor told The Washington Times in his district office outside of Richmond. "It's the relevancy question."

Cantor is right.

So, the biggest obstacles to change will be Democrats like Hoyer who will undermine the agenda that the American people think they're getting from President Obama. The corporate-backed Democrats prefer pablum and inaction. And, we've already seen that Senate Democrats are spineless. The Democrats on Capitol Hill are going to be their own worst enemies.