Payroll Tax Cut Extension

Credit where credit's due. Obama and the Dems faced the Republicans down, got a big win, made them look like chumps, and demonstrated a bit of stones for a change.

Heck, look at this:

Reid and Sen. Chuck Schumer reached out to the White House early in the standoff to convey their view: They can win without giving an inch. The White House agreed, giving way to a no-compromise strategy championed internally by senior adviser David Plouffe, who, like the president, was in a fighting mood, according to multiple sources.

Their thinking, according to White House and congressional aides: Obama and Senate Democrats already negotiated through McConnell. They made concessions. Eighty-nine senators, in a rare moment of overwhelming bipartisanship, approved the deal. And the public, according to polls, was on their side. Case closed.

“We were resolved to hold the line on this from the moment the speaker’s office indicated they were going to cave to the pressures from the fringe element of their caucus,” said a Senate Democratic aide. “We felt we had such a resounding vote in the Senate that they were going to be trapped. It was going to be impossible for the Senate Republicans to walk away from it. They were doomed to be divided because of that.”

I don't even think that the Senate unanimity had much to do with it. The Republicans have been more than successful without it in the past. The simple truth here is that fighting for legislation that is publicly popular works. Yes, you need to be smart and canny about how you do it, and I was impressed by the full-court press the White House executed to get this thing passed. The lesson's still clear. With any luck at all, they'll remember that going forward into 2012.

This is a bit bittersweet, though. You can't help but wonder about how different the world would be if the White House had been willing to do this from the beginning.

Kevin Drum Tears a Strip

Kevin Drum is pissed. After the latest dismal job report—followed by the latest Krugman skewering—he has clearly had enough.

We are ruled by charlatans and cowards. Our economy is in the tank, we know what to do about it, and we're just not going to do it. The charlatans prefer instead to stand by and let people suffer because that's politically useful, while the cowards let them get away with it because it's politically risky to fight back. Ugh indeed.

The truly sad thing is that it's more politically risky not to fight back. David Plouffe aside, unemployment is going to have a massive effect on people's voting habits. They aren't going to give a tinker's damn about deficits or debts if the employment situation doesn't improve.

Hell, the only reason they care about either debts or deficits at all now is because a large part of the public has been convinced that cutting the deficit will help the job situation. It won't. Even the terrible economists grant that it won't. It still doesn't matter. If people are still lacking jobs, they'll "toss the bums out" no matter how solvent the government is. The politically wise move is not to give in.

Good luck convincing Washington Dems of that, though. They'll keep on following that deficit drumbeat right off the cliff, with Obama at their head. Some nutter like Bachmann will get the reins. Then the fun will TRULY begin.

The Republicans Want to Cause a Bond Panic....

...just so that they can gut what remains of America's social safety net, and by extension its middle class.

And, as digby points out, along with Stan Collander,  the Dems appear to be perfectly willing to go along with it.

He says that just because the Republicans get their wish for a failure of a clean vote, it does not necessarily follow that they would vote for a "dirty" one either. He feels this vote is entirely a kabuki dance that's necessary (because of the polls saying people don't want to raise the debt ceiling) for the Republicans to record a "no" vote no matter what's in it.

So basically, the Democrats are sacrificing their position so that Republicans can be comfortable voting to raise the ceiling with spending cuts in a couple of months. If Collander is right, the Democrats are even stupider than usual. It's a twisted good cop/bad cop scene where the Republican base applauds its leaders for being tough guys and the Democratic base hand theirs a hankie and commiserates with their powerlessness. (And then the leadership goes out and has a cup of coffee and a donut, or in more common parlance -- Tipnronnie have a drink together.)

Digby has a point. That seems fits both bases quite nicely. The Republican base gets to celebrate a Republican victory, whereas the Democratic base gets to mourn one.

Collander does allude to an end game that seems to be making its way into the beltway ether:

Many Members publicly insist that a big “no” vote on a clean bill will have little to no effect on financial markets. But here’s another dirty little secret: There is a growing suspicion that, like what happened the day after the House rejected the Troubled Asset Relief Program in September 2008 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by almost 7 percent, such a vote could quickly change market perceptions of the situation and have a substantial negative effect on interest rates and equity prices.

It’s even possible that’s part of the plan. Former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said last week that it is going to be difficult to get Members of Congress to agree to increase the debt ceiling without some kind of “turbulence” in the bond market. A big “no” vote on a debt ceiling increase bill could easily accelerate that type of disturbance in the financial force. Indeed, it might be what’s needed to precipitate it and the leadership may be counting on that happening.It’s even possible that’s part of the plan. Former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said last week that it is going to be difficult to get Members of Congress to agree to increase the debt ceiling without some kind of “turbulence” in the bond market. A big “no” vote on a debt ceiling increase bill could easily accelerate that type of disturbance in the financial force. Indeed, it might be what’s needed to precipitate it and the leadership may be counting on that happening.

 So that's where it stands. After all the bullshit about building confidence by cutting spending, we now have a Republican party that's preparing to DEMOLISH confidence by cutting spending.  Notice the common theme, there? It isn't about building a strong economy. It's about driving taxes to zero for their ultra-monied friends and clientele, while simultaneously driving wages to rock-bottom by making people so desperate that they'll accept absolutely anything.

Digby again:

I don't know what kind of sick nihilism makes a scenario like that remotely possible, but again, I don't believe it. We are talking about Big Money here and there are a lot of things that aren't working right in this country right now, but the greed mechanism isn't one of them. I don't believe "the markets" are going along with that plan. And I don't think even the Republicans are going to take that kind of risk going into an election year.

But if these people are actually planning a financial panic in order to destroy the safety net, can someone explain to me just how it is they can possibly be considered anything but criminals? This isn't a joke. Panics have a way of getting out of hand --- it's not like you can wave a magic wand and it stops. At the very least can we at least admit that every single sentence they've ever uttered about the desperate need for market "confidence" and "uncertainty" was unadulterated rubbish? (If this happens keep an eye on the short sellers because somebody's going to make money on it and you have to assume the people who caused it are among them ...)

The Democrats can turn this clean vote against the Republicans if they want to. The polls may say that the people don't want the debt ceiling raised, but they also don't want the government shut down, Medicare to get privatized and the economy to get worse. If the Democrats have even a modicum of guts they'll relentlessly hammer this vote home for the next two months as a sign of the Republicans' willingness to do anything to destroy Medicare, even destroy the economy. There are several months of negotiations ahead and they could tie this albatross around their necks right along with the dead Ryan plan if they want to. The real question is whether they want to.

Well, that's the rub, isn't it? I disagree with digby that this is implausible. It's extraordinarily plausible, and will pay off big for the Republicans and their buddies. Going along with this program of tax cuts WILL mean that the Democrats will get punished. The Republicans will get away with selling the cuts by lying about their economic impact and because they'll retain the support of their deluded base. The Dems will watch as their base simply doesn't bother to vote. The "swing" voters won't help the Dems, either; they'll go to whichever party can promise that they won't be homeless in two years, and the Republicans will be more than happy to swoop in with supply-side horseshit about how this engineered panic will ultimately help "job creators".


It's a lie, of course.  the whole POINT of this thing is to demolish the middle class and loot the wreckage left behind for every nickel. The middle-class will be poor, the poor will be destitute, and America's income distribution will look like something out of the third world. But, hey, that's what Republicans are ABOUT, now, isn't it?

Digby's right in saying that the Dems could turn this around. The Republicans are taking it on the chin for this anti-Medicare bullshit of theirs. The Dems could absolutely savage the Republicans for using this sort of game to threaten America's economy. They probably won't do it, though. If they had THAT sort of sense, they wouldn't have gotten their asses kicked last year after a recession which should have discredited the Republicans once and for all.

Edit: And, yes, the Republicans are probably gunning for a bond panic.  They've been hoping for one for years, because rising interest rates would give them the cover they need to insist that America's turning into Zimbabwe. When the current situation just isn't supporting your story, why not create the situation yourself?

Osama's Dead, and Obama Got Him

Yep. It's true. That bastard's toast, and it was the demmycrat that was responsible.

Not even in a figurative sense, either. Go read Chris Bowers' Twitter feed. Obama was given the information back in February, chaired the meetings that set out the operation while they confirmed the location, and gave the go-ahead on Friday.

Bowers quotes officials as saying "Administration officials believe bin Laden's death will put Al-Qaeda on path of decline that will be difficult to reverse." Can't disagree there. They were already on the downslope; this is going to be a body blow that will likely be the end of the organization. We can only hope.

It's instructive, though. Eight years of Republican rule, and nothing happens. After a little over two years, it's the Democrats that get it done. It's just another reminder of how incompetent the Republicans really are. I can only hope that, when 2012 rolls around, the American people will remember that too.

(Edit: fixed tags.)

E.J. Dionne Asks "The End of Progressive Government"?

This has been in the works ever since the Republicans started lying their way into a House majority. Hell, it may have been in the works since Citizens United opened the floodgates of corporate cash. But now, finally, here we are.

Americans are about to learn how much is at stake in our larger budget fight, how radical the new conservatives in Washington are, and the extent to which some politicians would transfer even more resources from the have-nots and have-a-littles to the have-a-lots.

And you wonder: Will President Obama welcome the responsibility of engaging the country in this big argument, or will he shrink from it? Will his political advisers remain robotically obsessed with poll results about the 2012 election, or will they embrace Obama’s historic obligation — and opportunity — to win the most important struggle over the role of government since the New Deal?

This week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will announce the House Republicans’ budget plan, which is expected to include cuts in many programs for the neediest Americans.

The Ryan budget’s central purpose will not be deficit reduction but the gradual dismantling of key parts of government. Remember that Ryan wants both to preserve the Bush tax cuts and, over the long run, to enact more breaks for the wealthy, including the elimination of the capital gains tax.

Ryan’s plan reportedly will include steep Medicaid cuts, disguised as a proposal to turn the program into a “block grant” to the states. The net effect would be to leave even more Americans to the mercies of the private insurance market.

In deference to the GOP’s success in turning last year’s health-care law into “Obamacare,” let’s call this proposal Ryancare — and let’s make sure we look carefully at its impact on the elderly and the disabled, the main beneficiaries of Medicaid.

Put the two parts of the Ryan design together — tax cuts for the rich, program cuts for the poor — and its radically redistributionist purposes become clear. Timid Democrats would never dare embark on class warfare on this scale the other way around.

No shit. What's so enraging about this is that the Republicans are likely to accomplish more with their majority in one House than the Dems did with both Houses and the Presidency. The Republicans have stood their ground over and over again, and the Dems have caved over and over again.

And this is part of the reason:

But while I am assailing his ideas, let me put in a good word about Ryan himself:he is, from my limited experience, a charming man who truly believes what he believes. I salute him for laying out the actual conservative agenda. Here’s hoping he is transparent in the coming weeks about whom he is taking benefits from and toward whom he wants to be more generous. If he thinks we need an even more unequal society to prosper in the future, may he have the courage to say so.

WHY? Why praise a man who is trying to tear apart every program that has ever helped the non-wealthy in America? And why, especially, praise him for being "charming" and for consistency? He is a VILLIAN. Not only that, but he is a villian who, by all credible standards, knows absolutely nothing about economics and will most assuredly do more harm than good.

HIS HEALTH CARE PROPOSAL WILL KILL PEOPLE, DIONNE. DO NOT "SALUTE HIM" FOR HOW "CHARMING AND HONEST" HE IS ABOUT THAT.

(What the hell is it about the American media that they must embrace amoral, potentially-deadly bastards as long as they're honest about it?)

You want to know why the Republicans are winning? There it is. It may not be what Dionne thought it was. Dionne almost certainly was just trying to play a silly little trick where he damned with faint praise, and he spends a fair amount of time tearing the policies apart.

But what it really is is the same goddamned thing that happens every time: reasonable progressives giving quarter to bastard conservatives, ones that would never, ever return the favor. The same thing he's saying that Obama must not do, he's doing. The same Republican policies of minority rule, gutted revenue, and destroying social security and medicare that he's decrying, he's actually aiding. He can castigate the policies all he wants; it's completely irrelevant.

In the interest of being "nice" and "fair", he's handing his enemy a rope and an instruction manual on noose-tying. Ryan doesn't deserve it. "Charming and honest" or no, he deserves nothing but scorn.

No quarter. Not ever.

Punch Some More Hippies, Barry

If the White House were half as eager to take shots at Republicans and conservatives as they are their own base, they might have not got their asses kicked last November.

Edit: Hah, I didn't even make the connection. His new chief of staff is a Daley. If anybody knows about beating the holy hell out of dirty liberal hippies, it's the Daleys.

Senate Filibuster Reform

Not perfect, but a damned sight better than what's there right now.

My only concern is that the ConservaDems will come down on it because it diminishes their importance and power. Remember, the Republicans weren't the problem once Franken was finally seated. It was recalcitrant Democrats.

The Hidden Story About Dixie Blue Dems

Politico's going through a whole song and dance about how Dixie Dems are extinct. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. I've heard that sort of thing before.

But I wanted to highlight a somewhat buried point here.

Most people in north Alabama cannot identify with Nancy Pelosi” is how incoming Alabama House Speaker and state GOP Chairman Mike Hubbard put it.

But it also has to do with the narrative Republicans have ceaselessly driven.

“Democrats are the party of entitlement and of more government intrusion,” said Hubbard, calling health care reform “socialistic.”

And while Southern Democrats once could’ve avoided being painted with that brush thanks to personal relationships and influential newspapers in their region, the explosion of new media has made it more difficult for them to differentiate themselves from the national brand. How people get news about politics, and much else, has fundamentally changed.

Melancon, a Blue Dog Democrat, recalled how people would approach him in the final weeks of his Senate campaign to ask why he voted for health care reform. He hadn’t.

“I’d ask folks, ‘Where did you hear that?’ and they’d say, ‘I don’t know,’” he recalled.

Often, they would cite a forwarded e-mail.

“I have to tell my own friends to not forward me that gobbledygook unless they’ve fact-checked it,” Melancon lamented. “If you’re going to forward it without taking the time to figure out if it’s true, then you’re as bad as the person who sent it.”

I'm sure you noticed the key point there: it doesn't matter how you voted. Melancon voted against the Health Care Reform bill, and guess what? People blamed him for it anyway. They were convinced that he voted for it, because his party voted for it. The "D" beside his name meant "health care" no matter what he did. His actual vote didn't make a lick of difference.

ConservaDems and supporters of ConservaDems should pay very, very close attention to that. Taking a stand against a bill that your state or district won't like won't make a bit of difference.  You're going to get blamed regardless. The only hope you have is that the bill in question gets out-and-out killed, and even then you might get punished for your party having proposed it in the first place. You can't win by opposing.

So what CAN you do? Something that may be almost bizarre: you can try to make the best legislation you know how. ObamaCare is so controversial not because people think it went too far, but because of the concessions made to to try and get votes from recalcitrant conservative Senators. Those concessions were what made it such a pretzel of industry handouts and half-hearted regulation; without them, it would have almost certainly been a cleaner, more focused, more effective piece of legislation. With a public option, no less. If everybody involved had been focused on the quality of the legislation, instead of optics of "conservative" v. "liberal", they would have produced a reform bill that would stand up all on its own. Sure, the Republicans and the conservative movement would have taken shots at it, but what would have mattered would be how it improved people's lives.

Yes, this isn't necessarily going to help House ConservaDems that much, since the problem is primarily in the Senate, not the House. Senators will have to learn this lesson as well. But at least said CDs will realize that they can't run against their party like they used to. Dems, like the Founders, need to  "hang together, or hang separately". Useful lesson, that.

One Of the Big Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives

When liberals win big, as in 2006 and 2008, you never hear people say that it's a triumph for liberalism.

When conservatives win big, as they did this year, you CONSTANTLY hear people say that it's a triumph for conservatism.

If it were just the media, then that'd be annoying but understandable. They take their cues from Fox, and Fox is a propaganda arm of the conservative movement. What's bizarre is that liberals never claim victory either. They are, as we see over and over again with that "progressive" bullshit, totally afraid to claim victory for their ideology. Hell, they're unwilling to even DISCUSS their ideology. They'll talk about the economy, they'll talk about warfare, they'll talk endlessly about political missteps and tactics and strategies and all that horse-race crap that only the media actually cares about. But you never hear them say "this shows that the American public is actually pretty liberal; it's just had the word demonized by agitprop from the well-heeled-and-amoral."

Meanwhile, every two-bit conservative from Canada to Mexico is crowing about how the 2010 results are a victory for conservatism. People like Mike Pence babble on and on about how the results are "a victory for conservative values". They're shouting their ideology from the rooftops.

The results aren't any sort of victory for conservatism, of course. How could they be? It's been a grand total of two years since Obama swept the nation. People's beliefs don't change that fast. No, they're a reaction to an unbelievably shitty job market, combined with the regression from the Democratic wave of 2008 and a metric tonne of Citizens United-spawned attacks ads. Americans are no more "conservative" in values than they were two years ago, and every time you actually poll them about their REAL beliefs, they end up coming across as fairly liberal. Hell, most want to repeal Obama's health care legislation because they want to add a public option. That ain't "conservative".

And what'd be nice if a liberal was actually out there saying that. If one of these talking heads said "most Americans are liberal, but don't realize it, because they've been told all their lives that liberals eat babies for breakfast". I know it's not popular and, perhaps, not politically savvy to tell the American people that they're being bamboozled by agents and apologists of that 1% of the population that's walking away with a full quarter of America's income. Such talk always seems to raise the spectre of the Cold War Commies in the American mind. Class inequality was the cause of The Enemy.

Nonetheless, it's true. And wouldn't it be nice if liberals calmly, forthrightly, and unapologetically spoke the truth for once?

REPEAL HEALTH CARE! (FOR THE PUBLIC OPTION!!?)

Yep, that's right. You know all those people who say they want to repeal the health care legislation? The ones that wingnuts are always trumpeting?

What they AREN'T telling you is that, for more than half, it's because they want a public option added.

Many have assumed that those advocating for repeal wanted Congress to take no further action on health care reform. However, this survey found that 48 percent of Americans actually would like for Congress to continue working on health care system reforms as opposed to focusing on other topics. In fact, the survey found that 63 percent of those individuals who supported repealing the legislation also were in favor of Congress continuing to work on health care system reforms.

When asked how important they thought it was for Congress to work on “establishment of a public option that would give individuals a choice between government provided health insurance or private health insurance,” 67 percent of Americans rated this as an important topic to address. This finding is even more striking given the fact that 59 percent of those in favor of repealing the health care reform legislation rated the public option as important to pursue. Another surprise is that 67 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of Independents also agreed that the public option was an important topic to be addressed by Congress.

They do want health care reform. They just don't necessarily want this form of health care reform. Which is understandable, since the Senate passed a dog's breakfast of a system that is largely a handout to health insurance corps.

That's why it's important to get past the hype and look more closely into what people really want. Even THEY might not be totally sure what they really want; but it's not the pro-business status-quo that the Republicans are selling. They want something better, and it's tragic that neither the Republicans nor Dems appear to be willing or able to give it to them.

An Obvious Point About Political Ideology That Still Needs Stating

America is not significantly more conservative than it was two year ago.

No. Sorry. It isn't. Political ideology doesn't work that way. You don't whipsaw back and forth. If anything, once somebody fixates on something it's impossible to move them thanks to cognitive dissonance. Again, we'll have to see exit polls and data manipulation over the next few weeks as things settle, but one can safely grant that that wasn't what happened. The same America that tossed out the Republicans four years ago and embraced Obama two years ago is the one that swung Republican now.

What people can become in two years or four years is angry, scared, and frustrated. Most Americans believe that their country is on the wrong track, and haven't seen any benefits from Obama's (poorly crafted and poorly targeted) legislation. They won't have seen any benefit from the health care reforms, they didn't get to keep their house because HAMP never worked properly, and as for the bank bailouts that may have saved the economy, well, the less said the better.

Sure, some sources are saying that the electorate yesterday was more "conservative". That doesn't mean people changed their position. It means what we expected: Democratic partisans were dispirited and barely saw the point of voting, whereas Republican voters were activated by the combination of a deluge of corporate advertising and one of the biggest astroturfing campaigns the world has ever seen. As I said in my last post, the "tea partiers" are the same old white, conservative, well-off males that ALWAYS vote Republican; the only difference is that they were given a standard to rally around.

(Obama provided that for progressives in 2008, and then abandoned it in the dirt. I only wonder whether the Republicans will make the same mistake.)

I think that the big story here may well turn out to be Citizens United and the spending. There's some great research waiting to be made about the amount of spending that corps and their various advocates made in various districts and the succcess of the Republican candidate there. Yes, the Republicans have a better ground game and, yes, the Tea Party activated conservatives. But TV advertising still matters a LOT, especially among the older, white Americans that the Republicans were courting. I suspect that it will have made a big difference.

The only silver lining here is that the Republicans have probably taken the wrong lesson from this. They'll think they've received a mandate for conservatism. They haven't. They, like Obama, received a mandate for change. Since the only changes they can make are disastrous and stupid, I suspect that they won't last very long. I could be wrong, and maybe America will fall back into Republican hands only four short years after the Republicans helped destroy its economy.

But, again, the country that voted for Boehner's bunch tonight voted in Pelosi's crew in 2006, and swept Obama to power in 2008. Never forget that.

Edit: Cenk Uygur makes a good point about the Dems over on FDL:

Did you deliver for the average American voter or did you deliver for Wall Street? Come on, look at the numbers. Wall Street is backing to make record profits and bonuses and we’re at nearly 10% unemployment. People aren’t stupid. They got robbed. The system didn’t get fixed. It’s still rigged in favor of the rich and powerful.

Some liberals, progressives and Democrats will accuse me of party treason for saying that. They’re right, I don’t give a damn about the parties. In this day and age, I would never vote for a Republican in a national election because they have shown themselves to be a completely owned subsidiary of the rich and the powerful. They have demonstrated gross incompetence and are purposely derelict in their duty to the voters. But that doesn’t mean I have to be excited about the Democrats. Who is excited by Blanche Lincoln? Other than corporations who bought her years ago.

The Democrats said they were going to bring change – and they didn’t. That is their fundamental error. And that is why they are being voted out right now. But knowing how Washington works, they will not get that through their thick skulls. Instead, they will probably go further toward the jackals on the right after this election. They will cater to big business, Wall Street and the top 1% of this country even more after this election – and then wonder why people don’t trust them.

The bit I bolded couldn't have been better stated. Americans don't just want a change in how they're governed. They NEED a change. The Republicans sort of understand that, which is why Boehner kept blubbering on about change last night. It isn't a change in ideology, it's a change in structure and attitude.

The ironic thing is that Americans WOULD have gotten that change, had the Republicans not blocked it and had Reid and Obama not coddled them while doing so. We'll never know how they would have voted had Pelosi had the votes she needed in the Senate.

Precisely the Wrong Interpretation

Oh, Harry Reid. Why couldn't Sestak have won and YOU been tossed out?

Reid gets exactly the wrong lesson from this. From the Times:

In an early morning appearance on NBC’s “Today” show, Mr. Reid said it was time for the parties to cooperate. “The message to America today is that we’ve got to start working together,” he said. “The only way we can have progress is by working together. If that means legislative compromise, we’ve got to do that.”

Did the Republicans EVER say this? Ever? Even when they had gotten their butts kicked, they'd always talked about being a voice for conservatism, and their obstructionism benefited them handsomely in this election. Now you want to REWARD them for that by passing batshit-insane right wing legislation?

What, you think YOU will get the credit for that? In this media environment? Give me a break.

The Democratic Party of the United States of America are poorly named. They aren't Democratic. Not Liberal either. There's only one party name that TRULY fits this lot:

The Know-Nothings.

Yglesias Makes a Good Point on "Overreach"

I liked this bit quite a bit.

It’s inevitable that “liberal overreach” will be blamed for Democratic losses if they’re large tonight and also blamed if they’re small. But what I think overreach analysis always requires is more of a marginal approach.

For example, granting ad arguendum that the 111th Congress engaged in liberal overreach, which Senators who win today would have lost had the Affordable Care Act included a public option linked to Medicare? The answer seems to me to be nobody. Which Senators who win today would have lost had the 111th Congress passed a cap-and-trade plan through reconciliation? Here, it looks like Patty Murray. Would a “scaled back” health care plan have saved Blance Lincoln? Clearly not.

The ConservaDems extracted concession after concession from the President, leadership and caucus and still got their asses kicked. The party would have honestly been better off had it swung for the rafters; it would still have lost independents, but at least the enthusiasm gap wouldn't have been so crippling.

Edit: It also comes back to that disengagement problem. One of Yglesias' commentators said that "people might think that Obama, Reid and Pelosi went too far with that 'socialized medicine'". And, yes, they might. But there was absolutely nothing that the Dems could have done about that. It was the most corporate-friendly, conservative-friendly health care reform bill you could ask for. The only reason it's called "socialist" is because it was labelled as such by the Republicans, BUT THEY WOULD HAVE CALLED IT THAT NO MATTER WHAT.

There was no point to reaching out to the conservatives and blue dogs. It didn't help, and was never going to help. Maybe good legislation would have. But I suppose we'll never know.

Re-Edit: And once again, the public doesn't give a damn about right v. left "linear" politics. They don't punish "moving to the left" any more than they punish "moving to the right". They vote based on their lives, beliefs and identity. So the attempt to "move the bill to the right" would never have moved them.

Lessons from the 2010 Election

So there seem to be, in absence of detailed exit poll data, certain things that we CAN take away from this debacle.

First, to misquote Gordon Gekko, obstructionism WORKS. Obstructionism is GOOD. The American people voted in the Dems in 2006 and in 2008 to enact real, positive change. The Republicans made damned sure that wouldn't happen by posing a united front in the Senate. The Dems tried, over and over again, to try to pin the Senate's failure to enact cloture on the Republicans. It never stuck. It was never GOING to stick; the press was too busy focusing on horse races, and the public doesn't give a damn. They'll blame whomever is in power.

That also goes for the Republicans' negotiation tactics. Playing at being convincible when talking with the President and Congressional leadership, extracting concession after concession with no concession in turn, and then walking away at the end worked SPECTACULARLY well for the Republicans. It might not have if they ended up getting blamed for the resulting legislation, but they never, ever did. Part of that was due to Obama's own overly-concession-prone negotiation style, and the Dems' inability to create and stick to a message. But I think a lot of it is just the simple fact of politics, and something the Dems should remember going forward when they work to frustrate the Republican house.

Second, Citizens United paid off BIG for the Republicans. I don't think there's any doubt about that. Dems were yelling that they were getting HAMMERED with corporatist advertising in State after State. Obama tried to tie the ads to big money; but, again, the public was simply not in the mood for justifications or excuses. It's only going to get worse; I think that 2012 may be the first election that is basically bought-and-paid-for if things go badly.

Third, I also think that the teabaggers paid off for the Republicans, too. Sure, they lost Nevada, but Rand Paul managed to pull it off, along with others. More importantly, they did what they needed to do to relabel their party. The teabaggers are really just the same old, white, upper-middle-class conservative males that have ALWAYS been the backbone of both the conservative movement and the Republican party. What's changed is that now they have an identity to look at, and that the media can freak out over. That's something the progressives don't have, and have never really had. Partially it's because of their tendency to splinter, but I think it also has to do with our fourth reason.

Fourth, the Dems completely destroyed their electoral machine. OFA is a sad shadow of what it used to be. It was never going to be as big as it was in 2008, of course. But as one of the people on CNN pointed out, Reagan made sure that he kept his young Republican groups engaged throughout the term, instead of just trying to rally them when election time rolled around. The rest of the progressive groups were if anything WORSE off, thanks to the combative, hostile relationship the Obama administration had with its own base. The enthusiasm gap was dramatic throughout the race, and I expect that in the days ahead we'll find out just how dramatic it was. But I think it didn't need to be, and that it's Obama's own fault that it

And finally, the combination of the hatred of BOTH parties and the results, along with the economic situation, shows that the American people still want change and not necessarily what the Republicans are peddling. This may be the Republicans' undoing, since their policy prescriptions will NOT make thing batter. The best they can hope for is a slight spike from businesses and investors who assume that their party will be pro-business, but I suspect that the fundamental problems will likely reassert themselves soon enough. The Republicans' plans are economically suspect at best, and likely catastrophic; they would be best buried by the Democratic president and Senate. But since I doubt the Dems will have that kind of sense, it's likely that they'll try to "work with the Republicans" in enacting part of the Republican agenda. Then, when things get WORSE, the finger-pointing will begin.

This isn't what I would have wanted. THIS SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. The Dems and the President should have known that this would be the ultimate end of their frustrated, inadequate, poorly-focused efforts over the past two years. THIS is what happens when you listen to people like Rahm Emanuel. THIS is why they need real victories to show the American people. THIS is why catering to the blue dogs to the exclusion of all else doesn't work. (They got hammered tonight.) THIS is why you don't abandon the networks you built up. And THIS is why you need to develop a strong identity and pay close attention to your Supreme Court nominees.

But I suspect that they'll get the wrong message. They'll think that they've "moved too far left" or some such nonsense. It's not about left and right. It never was. It's about people wanting some security and prosperity in their lives. And when the Republicans fail at providing it, things are going to get a whole lot uglier.

Election Day!

No, I don't expect it to go well. No, I don't think the Dems have proven their case. (I don't think the Republicans have, either, but they aren't in power right now.)

And I'm with Krugman; I suspect that the next few years will bring little good. The chance was Obama and the Dems' to waste: and sure enough they wasted it. They did SOME good, of course. Health Care may well be better than nothing, as is FinReg. But only barely, and considering the outsized majorities they had, well...

In any case, the frustrating part will be if the Republicans DO win back the Senate. Because when they pass bill after bill, counting on the Dems to let them get cloture, I can guarantee all of you that neither the Dems nor the media will make a peep about the fact that the Republicans convinced all of them that a Democratic Senate needed a sixty-seat majority to pass legislation, while a Republican Senate does not.

In any case, go vote. It may or may not help. But there ARE good Dems out there; your Feingolds and Graysons and whatnot. They DO deserve your support. Even the Blue Dogs might, barely, if the alternative is one of those "Tea Partiers" snug in the pockets of the Koch brothers.

But while you vote, stop and think about how the Republicans were given up for dead two years ago. Think about what changed. And think about why.

Blame the Progressives

Well, this was inevitable. As highlighted over on Kos by Joan McCarter, Time's Michael Scherer is pre-blaming the results of the 2010 election on progressives.

Yes, despite the fact that progressives were not listened to—when not openly mocked—and the fact that the White House basically bent over backwards to appease the Republicans, Scherer is blaming them.

even as Obama aides were aware of a growing disconnect, it didn't seem to worry their boss. Instead, the ambitious legislative goals usually trumped other priorities. Both in the original stimulus package and then in the health care and energy measures, the White House ceded most of its clout to the liberal lions who controlled the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. That maneuver helped assure passage of reforms, but it also confirmed some of the worst fears about how Washington works. "I'd rather be a one-term President and do big things than a two-term President and just do small things," he told his team after Republican Scott Brown was elected Senator in liberal Massachusetts and some in the Administration suggested pulling back on health reform.

Not that anybody couldn't have seen that happen. It's the village. They love punching hippies.

Here's Joan:

It's obviously not just the way the right wants to tell the story--it's how the Village wants to tell the story. The evil liberals got their way and forced Obama to overreach on all these policies--never mind that there is no public option, that the energy bill is a shell of what it should have been to either address energy independence or climate change, and the stimulus was about half a billion less than most liberal economists (and WH advisor Christina Romer) thought was necessary and less than what the more liberal House wanted.

One has the feeling that Michael Scherer wouldn't recognize a liberal lion if it bit him on the ass. Say what you will about the stimulus, health care reform, the as-of-yet unpassed energy reform bill, you can't say that they ended up looking like the proposals progressives put forward.

Scherer doesn't CARE if they're actually liberal lions or not. That's not the game. The game is to reinforce the prevailing narrative and, by doing so, cement your status as a "serious journalist". Fame (and well-advertised book releases) will follow.

No, if he cared, he would have had to have addressed progressives' sense of resignation and betrayal, and realized that "overreach" wouldn't properly explain that. He'd need to look to reasons why Obama disappointed everybody, which is quite a bit tricker than simply wanking on and on about those filthy hippies in the Democratic Senatorial caucus.

(The truly bizarre thing is that the guy acknowledged that the stimulus was too small on his blog. Yet not a word of this appeared in the piece.)

The real story here was, is, and will remain the fact that the Republicans understand just how well obstinacy works. That they can block whatever they please, and it's the Dems that will catch hell for it. That the media is lazy, and will listen to whoever has the loudest voice and repeats the most instead of doing actual reportage. And that the deep pockets of secretive ideological zealots can make all the difference.

But that won't make you friends in Washington. It's just the truth. And who gives a rat's ass about that?

You Gotta Be Kidding Me

Hey, Barry? Got a tip for you.

If you take a stand on something, even something controversial, don't take it back a day later. The people who did support you will feel betrayed—for good reason!—while the people who were mad at you will stay mad at you. Everybody else will just think that you're spineless, which is the last thing a Dem needs. 

Bad policy I can understand, especially by now. Bad politics is just shameful. 

Gibbs Just Keeps Getting Better

Instead of backing off, like a sane man would do, Gibbs is doubling down on this "professional left" crap. Yet he's saying that "he fully expects liberals to vote".

Why, exactly? There's a big enthusiasm gap between liberals and conservatives, and it's only getting worse. Liberals aren't going to be cowed into either silence or support by the whole "vote for us or you'll get the Republicans" line, especially when the White House itself installed a center-right candidate in Arkansas that can't possibly win.

I honestly don't even understand the point of this. Attacking the left isn't going to shut them up. Hasn't before, won't now. It won't endear the government to the right, either; the right ain't gonna vote for you, no matter how many liberals you piss off. The press might say some nice things about you because of how much they despise your typical "DFH", but that fleeting support will be long-gone by the time the election rolls around. They'll be distracted by a new shiny, and the left will still be pissed.

What the hell happened to "no-drama Obama"?

Gibbs Railing Against "Professional Left"

Just another day:

The White House is simmering with anger at criticism from liberals who say President Obama is more concerned with deal-making than ideological purity.

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough.

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

Why, yes, those filthy dirty hippies should be drug tested, am I right?

("Right" indeed:)

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

The White House, constantly under fire from expected enemies on the right, has been frustrated by nightly attacks on cable news shows catering to the left, where Obama and top lieutenants like Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have been excoriated for abandoning the public option in healthcare reform; for not moving faster to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay; and for failing, so far, to end the ban on gays serving openly in the military.

A Democratic president and his mouthpiece taking shots at their own base in a fashion almost identical to the right. I can almost hear Gottfried's Iago the Parrot yelling "I may have a heart attack and die from the surprise!" as I read that.

In any case, all of those bits cited above are legitimate criticisms of the president's policies; far more than that "president Kucinich" stuff. I expect that that's part of the problem. It's easy to deflect the right's attacks, because they are utterly insane. They're based on ideas that are proven to be completely ludicrous, and aren't being presented in good faith in the first place. Liberals are far more dangerous. They have a point. Plus, I don't think Obama was really thinking about his own theoretical base when he was talking about "no red or blue America" and "teams of rivals" and all that. He, like so many Dems, assumed that the effective spectrum was between them and the right. That he might get criticism from non-conservatives may well have never occurred to him. Especially with all the Obamamania at the time.

So, who's Gibbs angry at?

While visibly frustrated, Gibbs did not specifically name any of the White Houses’s liberal detractors by name.

Oh. It figures that he'd never name any of them. That might get a bit inconvenient. The article mentions the Progressive Change Campaign's Adam Green, but he's just one of many. A lot of progressives are pissed these days.

Gibbs’s tough comments reflect frustration and some bafflement from the White House, which believes it has done a lot for the left.

In just over 18 months in office, Obama has passed healthcare reform, financial regulatory reform and fair-pay legislation for women, among other bills near and dear to liberals.

Obama is also overseeing the end of the Iraq war, with the U.S. on schedule to end its combat operations by the end of this month.

He’s also added diversity to the Supreme Court by nominating two female justices, including the court’s first Hispanic. Yet some liberal groups have criticized his nominees for not being liberal enough...

...The lack of appreciation or recognition for what Obama has accomplished has left Gibbs and others in furious disbelief.

Larry Berman, an expert on the presidency and a political science professor at the University of California-Davis, said he has been surprised that liberals aren’t more cognizant of the pragmatism Obama has had to employ to pass landmark reforms.

“The irony, of course, is that Gibbs’s frustration reflects the fact that the conservative opposition has been so effective at undermining the president’s popular approval,” Berman said.

“And from Gibbs’s perspective, and the White House perspective, they ought to be able to catch a break from people who, in their view, should be grateful and appreciative.”

See, this is what people like Gibbs (and Berman) just don't get. Progressives and liberals do understand that there needs to be a level of pragmatism. They do understand bargaining and negotiation. But as Green said in the article and as a lot of people have said elsewhere (including myself), this administration rolls over for Conservatives without bothering to negotiate. They aim too low to start with, and then trade off everything else worthwhile in exchange for practically nothing. They aren't willing to take a stand, aren't willing to pick issues to attack Republican intransigence on, and (as we see with this story) attack their own side at every opportunity.

The big problem is that progressives believe that the administration and this Congress (principally the Senate) is alternately weak and too willing to be bought-and-paid for by whichever corporation has the biggest pockets. They believe this because Obama and the Congressional Dems have given them every reason to believe it. Whining and moaning in the media won't change that, and won't make it go away. You have to prove to progressives that you have their best interests in mind. You have to show them that you ultimately respect their beliefs and will honor them as your core supporters.

But, instead, progressives get smeared with this nonsense.

Hell with 'em.

America Says "Cut DOD, Not Social Security"

Every so often, I'm pleasantly surprised. Not often, but occasionally. This is one of these times, as a focus group of Americans choose a path to deficit reduction that Washington's big deficit hawks weren't expecting:

President Obama’s deficit commission is moving forward with Social Security and Medicare explicitly in their sights. They got a dry run for how this effort is likely to sell with the public on Saturday as the Peter Peterson funded group America Speaks sponsored a series of 19 "21st Century Town Meetings." It seems that events didn’t quite go as planned.

The exercise was intended to convince people that there were no options other than large cuts to Social Security and Medicare to hit their deficit targets. To ensure this result, the America Speaks crew put together a booklet that exaggerated future budget problems (the exercise was for the year 2025) by assuming a worse budget path than the country is currently facing.

America Speaks also excluded the possibility that the Fed would buy and hold more debt, in effect continuing its current course. This would substantially reduce the interest burden facing the country in 2025. While in normal times this could cause inflation, that is unlikely to be a problem in the foreseeable future. In comparable circumstances, Japan’s central bank has bought an amount of debt nearly equal to the country’s GDP (the equivalent of $14 trillion for the U.S.) and its economy is still facing deflation. There is no reason that the Fed could not follow the same path, unless the goal is to force cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

The America Speaks folks also denied participants the option of reducing public sector health care costs by reforming the U.S. health care system. As they say at America Speaks, everything is on the table, except reforms that would hurt powerful industry lobbies. The America Speaks crew also neglected to mention the Social Security trust fund and that it would have enough assets to pay all benefits through the year 2043, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Given this stacked deck the participants rose up in revolt. They demanded the option to vote on a single-payer type health care system. The idea being to reduce costs by making health care more efficient rather than just cutting services in Medicare and other public sector programs. They also voted overwhelmingly for defense cuts and for every progressive tax option in the book, even though many had been seriously mischaracterized. For example, they listed the potential revenue from a financial speculation tax in 2025 as $30 billion a year even though there is good reason, based on the experience of other countries, to believe that we could raise close to ten times this amount.

I would not have expected this, considering how public opinion and the "acceptable options" are portrayed in the media. Nevertheless, here we are, with ordinary Americans saying "keep the 'entitlements', enact REAL health care reform, and ditch the wars".

It does raise a question, though. Considering these results, how on earth is it that the Dems aren't doing better? Is it because the people are being misled as to the options? Or is it because the Democrats don't understand what Americans actually wants?