The Failure Wasn't Obama's

You can't miss the hand-wringing: Obama once again gave away too much, Obama could have cut a better deal, Obama governs as a moderate conservative.... And there's truth to all of that. But still, we're speaking of legislation. Remind me again, how many votes does the President get when a bill is being considered by the House or Senate? If a better bill was out there, where is it? I don't even recall one being advanced by a majority of the Senate - sure, such a bill would have been subject to a filibuster, but wouldn't it have been helpful had the Democrats put together a sane, solid proposal and announced to the world, "Here's the wonderful bill you could have if only John Boehner could get his Tea Partiers under control." Even after the deal was struck Boehner had to scramble to keep them in line. Two meetings to convince the inmates that even if they run the asylum, it's best not to make that fact too obvious.

Where does the Democratic Party stand? That has been a fair question throughout Obama's Presidency and the answer has too often been, "In the path of the President's agenda." Obama has been politically cautious from the start, seeming hesitant to even speak publicly on an issue that is before Congress unless he is apt to receive a favorable vote. That is not something that particularly distinguishes himself from his predecessors, and you can see from Bill Clinton's experience with healthcare reform or G.W.'s experience attempting to partially privatize Social Security how much damage a President can do to himself if he takes a strong position and can't obtain support for his agenda even from his own party. Obama thought he had his party's support for healthcare reform, something that has been on the Democratic agenda for decades, something that Republicans feared could devastate their future at the polls, something that had been discussed and debated to death. He made some ugly up-front deals to get the major special interest groups out of the way, turned to his party and said, in effect, "Now produce a bill," and... Congress, in particular the Senate, bungled it.

Thanks to delays resulting in no small part from ineffective Senate leadership, the bill almost died in the face of an onslaught of Republican misinformation and demagoguery, and even after that it almost died due to the huge giveaways demanded by a handful of self-serving Senators. Had Senators Nelson, Lieberman, Landrieu and their ilk been willing to set aside their self-interest, can anybody dispute that we would have had a better bill? By a similar measure, had the Blue Dogs been willing to act responsibly as legislators, rather than echoing Republican talking points, voting against the bill and even running against the bill, could they not have supported the legislation while explaining to their constituents how they made it a better bill through their demands and contributions? After all, fat lot of good it did them to brag about voting against their party and President.

The same is true for the stimulus bill. For energy policy and climate change legislation. For immigration. The Democratic Congress had ample opportunity to put together and pass meaningful reform bills, but instead watered down the stimulus, sold out on healthcare reform, and got all wobbly in the knees about passing any other significant legislation. Their well-known reward was the loss of control of the House and coming close to losing control of the Senate. Good job.

So imagine you're the President and assume that, like most politicians, you wake up in the morning and ask yourself, "What do I have to do to get reelected?" Do you say, "I'll do the same thing I did with stimulus and healthcare reform legislation, back when my party controlled both chambers of Congress, and help my party put together a bill that my own party will insist be watered down, and even assuming I can get a bill with majority support in the Senate ignore the fact that any bill with the Democratic imprimatur will be rejected out-of-hand by the Republican-controlled House and filibustered by Senate Republicans?" Or do you take a look at the political environment, the near-useless media coverage, and your own party's internal divisions and say, "The people say they want a balanced budget, the people say they want government cuts, opinion polls show that a ridiculous number of people believe that government spending causes unemployment to rise. My party can't put together a progressive bill, or even a mediocre bill that would pass in the House. I can work with the Republicans, get a bill that will pass, prevent the economic catastrophe of default, legitimately claim to have engineered a bipartisan compromise, and get a deal that I can point to in the next election to say, 'I'm the adult in the room who's working to balance the budget.'" (Now imagine on top of that, that you personally believe in the virtues of leaner government and a balanced budget.)

Listen to the leaders for the Republican nomination yammer about this vote and you get a good sense of the pathetic state of political media coverage in this country. The Republicans most likely to win the nomination assume that the voters are politically ignorant, speak to them in a manner that an informed voter should find offensive, and expect their demagoguery to carry them into the White House. Yes, the argument can be made that the President could do more to educate the public and attempt to lead opinion, but the reality is a bit different. The President has no chance of winning over the Tea Partiers or making a significant dent in Republican opinions, and the media already knows the true story. The President might try to convince those within his party to support more progressive legislation but that's apt to earn him the same type of criticism from the left that he's received on pretty much every piece of legislation he's signed, not actually get him any more votes for his legislation within his party, and will do nothing to change the fact that the Republicans control the House and can filibuster in the Senate.

The roots of this bill lie in the Democratic Party's perception that their 2008 victory was their opportunity to cash in, as opposed to an opportunity to govern responsibly and pass important legislation. Speaking cynically, that's about what you would expect from politicians. But you might have thought that the Democratic Party would have some memory of how it behaved during the first two years of Clinton's Presidency and how Clinton, having barely survived, became a cautious poll-watcher and triangulator who fastidiously avoided thorny issues for the remainder of his Presidency. They say that those who don't know history are destined to repeat it, but what does it say about you when you do know the history and choose to repeat it?

Is it Safe for Republicans to Make Sense?

While Newt Gingrich scurries away from his accurate assessment of Paul Ryan's plan, apparently because Republicans aren't allowed to disagree with the plan, Paul Ryan himself seems to be scurrying away from his plan, or at least insisting that it isn't fair for the media to accurately describe its effects. I guess in an odd way that makes sense - the two men agree that it's completely unfair for the media to accurately report on their words, beliefs and actions.

But don't worry - David Brooks tells us that there are two or three reasonable people in the Republican Party, and they're talking to him.

Already many consultants are telling Republicans to drop austerity and go back on offense: Spend 2012 accusing the Democrats of sponsoring death panels. The Democrats will spend 2012 accusing Republicans of ending Medicare. Whichever party demagogues best wins.

But, over the past few days, I’ve spoken with a number of Republicans — in Congress and elsewhere — who don’t want to do that. They fervently believe the country is in peril. They want to find a way to reduce the debt without committing political suicide.

Great. And their names are... off the record? It is such a toxic environment within the Republican Party that you can't even make an on-the-record statement against demagoguery?

Brooks proposes that the Republicans should increase taxes on the middle class by eliminating employer's tax deduction for employee health insurance, and further "raise tax revenues on the rich". He does not claim that any of his anonymous Republicans support this idea. I suspect he's playing a rhetorical game - "Here's how the Democrats are being reasonable, while these are reasonable things the Republicans could do," rather than admitting that his ideas, whatever their merits (and if you read his columns you know that they mostly lack merit), have no traction in the Republican Party.

I sometimes wonder if Brooks should stick with his pop psychology and thinly disguised book reports, as it seems that when he starts presenting his own ideas he goes quickly and hopelessly wrong. His memory of recent history suggests he takes in more fumes from the beltway than he does facts:

Republicans won in 2010 because the working class fled from the Democrats’ top-down big government liberalism.

From the perspective of the reality-based community it had a lot to do with a crappy economy, anger over bailouts that were for the most part a continuation of the prior administration's policies, Republican demagoguery over Medicare ("death panels", "Medicare cuts to pay for other (undeserving) people's health insurance") and stimulus spending ("The stimulus bill was horrible. I'm proud to have delivered $50 billion in government spending to my district, and am happy to pretend it had nothing to do with the horrible stimulus bill). Oh - and let's not forget Republican demagoguery on immigration.

Brooks defines the issues that he believes motivate voters who, when not instructing the government to keep its hands off of their Medicare, supposedly want small government:

But these families have seen the pillars of their world dissolve — jobs, family structure, neighborhood cohesion.

Jobs? That would be "It's the economy, stupid," but what's this nonsense about "family structure?" Which faction of Republicans votes for Members of Congress based upon their concern that Aunt Sallie and Uncle Bob might get a divorce? Is Brooks in fact talking about demagoguery on gay marriage - a return to the culture wars, a successful topic for Republican demagoguery in past elections? "Neighborhood cohesion?" Yeah, I guess we are talking in silly code. What does that mean if not, "People of the wrong color are moving into our neighborhoods."

They need to lay out the facts showing that Medicare is unstable and on a path to collapse, as Representative Paul Ryan is doing. But they also need to enmesh Medicare reform within an agenda to build solid communities: more money for community colleges and technical schools, an infrastructure bank, a values agenda to shore up marriage and family cohesion, tax holidays to help the unemployed start businesses, tax reform to limit special interest power.

First, Paul Ryan is not laying out facts. His "budget" is a pile of nonsense, and he is being anything but honest about his plan to privatize Medicare. Second, as Brooks acknowledged up front, Republicans are running scared because when voters recognize the implications of Ryan's plans they hate them. And it's not even clear that voters yet fully understand that Ryan's plan to gut and privatize Medicare is not so much about preserving health insurance for seniors as it is about providing yet another round of massive tax cuts to the wealthy.

In terms of Brooks' concepts for Republican spending, yes, it's easy to spend more money on community colleges. But if you really want to get that done you would be talking about potentially peeling off enough Republicans to join in a Democratic effort to provide education funds - because the Republican Party is all about cutting and they've already promised more in cuts than they can deliver. "Build solid communities"? Could you be less specific and just maybe sound a bit more (to Republican ears) like a big government hippie? An "infrastructure bank" - a centralized agency charged with arranging finance for infrastructure projects - with an eye toward budgeting for and increasing spending on infrastructure? Even if you recognize the sorry state of our nation's infrastructure, do you seriously believe the Republican Party is going to get on board with that? A "values agenda", meaning... what other than culture war demagoguery? "Tax holidays" to help the unemployed start businesses? Pie, meet sky. "Tax reform to limit special interest power"? Not even John McCain seems inclined to support that type of reform.

When David Frum looks at the Republican Party that drummed him out, he sees a need to transform that party into the type of party that might adopt some of Brooks' theoretical platform. He should be paying attention to Brooks: It's safer and much more lucrative to pretend that party already exists.

With Victory Comes Responsibility

For decades, although voting Democratic for the President and, more often than not, for the governor, Michigan has been a Republican-dominated state. Governor Granholm had a Democratic majority in the State House for only the past two years. Even with that, Senate Republicans stymied any meaningful Democratic initiatives. Assuming there were any....

One of the frustrations of living in Michigan is seeing the dearth of ideas for "fixing" the state's problems. Things started to go south before many of the state's sitting politicians were born, and have been on a serious downward track for decades, but it often seems like there's been no change in state "policy" - wait long enough and things will get better on their own. Yes, Michigan is attempting to subsidize its way into being a new home for TV and movie production, but even if that effort succeeds it will do little for the state's economy as a whole.

Now, with the 2010 election, Michigan has a Republican governor, a Republican House, a Republican Senate with a supermajority, and will have a Republican-dominated state Supreme Court. A friend lamented this state of affairs, and the inevitable gerrymandering that will soon occur to try to cement a Republican advantage into the state's electoral districts. And yes, if you're a Democrat, I can't say there's much to cheer in any of that.

At the same time, victory - and victory of a magnitude that it can really be called ownership - carries responsibility. I know that many Congressional Republicans hope to shirk that responsibility, sabotaging the Senate and the White House such that the government seems ineffective and they can gain additional power in the next election. But Michigan's Republican Party has no scapegoats, and is pretty close to maximum power. If it does not deliver, it is safe to say that it cannot deliver.

If the recession continues, or if Michigan remains in recession while the rest of the nation recovers, it will be perfectly reasonable for voters to hold the state's Republican Party responsible. After all, unless they're going to throw up their hands and admit that they have no solutions to the state's problems, they are implicitly responsible. And if they do make such an admission I'm not sure that it helps them, as it would effectively be an admission of incompetence. That is to say, in two, four, six years... however long it takes... if the Republicans don't deliver something they're likely to experience what G.W. Bush and the Republicans went through during the 2006 and 2008 elections. Gerrymandering may be enough to get some of their seats back if things don't immediately get better (as we just saw, nationally, with Democrats losing most Republican-leaning seats won during the prior two elections) but it won't save a party from a backlash against its ineffectiveness.

My friend asked, "But what if the Republicans succeed?" Um... well, then, no backlash. But I'll take a vibrant state economy over either the ineffective governance of the past decade, and certainly over the type of yo-yo elections that effectively just held the President responsible for his predecessor's incompetence. (Which isn't to say that, particularly in retrospect, there aren't a lot of things the President and the Democrats, particularly a self-serving, party-sabotaging faction in the Senate, couldn't have done differently to potentially avoid or diminish this outcome.) In simple terms, when you control everything there's nobody for voters to blame but you.

Somebody's Gotta Win in 2012

Grover Norquist says that in 2012 the Republicans will "own" Congress, with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. It's possible, I suppose. A terrible economy gave the Republicans a lot of momentum, and freedom to run a substance-free campaign this time around. Things could remain bad.

It's one of those odd things about elections, though... a lot can change in two years. Even if Norquist turns out to be correct there's a legitimate question as to whether they would have done even better in 2012 without their present majority in the House. Seriously, since healthcare reform passed they have had the Democrats in the Senate so tied up in knots, the odds are the legislative process would have remained locked up through the next election anyway. Now they risk being held responsible for gridlock, and risk being held accountable for failing to produce legislation.

So far, so bad? They're apparently going to balance the budget by spending more money. And even the Wall Street Journal appears prepared to hold their feet to the fire.

That isn't politics; it's arithmetic. The Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank, crafted an illustrative scenario to get the deficit down to 3% of the overall economy by 2015.

On the list: a 75% cut in federal farm subsidies, a 50% cut in vocational and adult education, a 14.5% cut in the defense budget, an 8% cut for the National Institutes of Health, a 5% cut for the FBI, a 3.1% cut in veterans' disability benefits, etc.

A left-right plan by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and National Taxpayers Union would wipe out $62 billion in business subsidies.

Brian Riedl at the conservative Heritage Foundation says he can save $343 billion next year. His recipe: Cut $15 billion in farm subsidies, $10 billion in aid to states, $8 billion in aid to college students, $8 billion more by lower cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security and other benefits, and so on. Will Republicans embrace any of these?

With control of the House, Republicans will have to offer and try to pass a budget of their own next year. That offers a test of their spending-cut resolve. This is going to be interesting.

The next two years, and perhaps most importantly the next year, will let us know how good a politician Barack Obama really is. He is free, now, to hold Congress accountable for its inaction. Whatever happens, the word "interesting" seems fair.

Legislative Achievements and Election Results

Ross Douthat poses the question, "Was it worth it?" His theory is that the present election is a "backlash" against healthcare reform and... well, he doesn't mention anything else, but presumably he believes that there is also a backlash against the Obama Administration's continuation of Bush-era bailout policy toward the financial and auto industries, and the economic stimulus bill. But let's be honest for a moment. The key issue is the economy, and the only thing that the Democrats could have done to better the economy would have been to gamble on a larger stimulus bill. The auto industry bailout actually worked. The financial industry bailout was lemon capitalism at its worst, so people have every right to be disgusted, but it was bipartisan lemon capitalism - pretty much all of our nation's legislators were on board. Vote the bums out - all of them... er, where was I going with this again?

Oh, yes.

History already informed us that the Democrats were going to lose seats in this election, even before we talk about the terrible state of the economy. Or the fact that a lot of Dems were vulnerable because they held seats in Republican districts, having won elections when voters were punishing the Republicans a whopping two to four years ago. Although Douthat singles out healthcare reform, why should I believe that the Dems would have retained control of the House had they not pushed that legislation through? And if you are imagining a world in which the Obama Administration had let GM, Chrysler and AIG fold, and had pulled all support from the financial industry... let's just say, our present economic problems would be enviable.

So President Obama is in pretty much the same situation he would have been in had the Democrats pursued a minimalist agenda. He may have lost a few more seats, and there may be a few more... should I say "eccentric"... Republican Senators than might otherwise have been elected, but a smaller Republican majority in the House is still a Republican majority.

Here's another thing to consider: Had the Democrats been timid in their legislative agenda and still lost seats, every indication is that they would become even more timid. Had they lost the House, as was almost certain to occur due to the economy, they wouldn't have been able to push through any significant reform. So the reward for not pushing a modest, pro-corporate, largely status quo sustaining "reform" bill would have been losing the ability even to do that. Wow.

It also seems fair to ask, if your party believes an issue is extremely important, but you think there might be a significant backlash should you enact legislation addressing that issue, should you do nothing? Is the G.W. Bush model on Social Security reform the one Douthat sees as "working", leaving aside for the moment the fact that the Republican Party was hammered in two consecutive elections despite dropping the issue? Is Douthat arguing for what often appears to be the status quo - nobody will address the nation's most pressing issues until they reach a crisis point for fear of having to take responsibility for their actions?

Broder's Bizarre Budgetary Bipartisanship

David Broder, commenting on the U.K. government's emphasis on balancing its budget, shares this gem:

Britain's budget deficit, now 11.4 percent of the size of its overall economy, is not that much larger than the United States' -- 8.9 percent -- but the debate has been similar in both countries.

Seriously, Broder believes that there's no significant difference between a budget deficit that's 11.4% of GDP and one that's 8.9% of GDP? In terms of the U.S. economy that difference translates into almost $170 billion dollars. Pocket change?

It is also important to look at the current U.S. budget deficit in the context of the recession. As Paul Krugman has pointed out, the issue is not so much that government spending is rising beyond the norm, but that government revenues have plummeted. That has exaggerated the size of the deficit, but in a much less alarming manner than if tax revenues had been sustained:

Government spending has continued to rise more or less on its pre-crisis trend. Revenue has plunged, because the economy is deeply depressed.

Broder would apparently have us believe that he has no appreciable understanding of the difference in the social safety net between the U.K. and the U.S., that he has no understanding of the nature and extent of the economic crisis in the U.K. and how dependent the U.K. had become on its bloated financial sector, and that he has no understanding of the difference between the U.K.'s parliamentary system of government and our own system. I suspect that he has more knowledge than his arguments suggest.

My British friends tell me that it is only because of the two-party coalition that Cameron can take these risks. If he were dependent only on a minority Conservative Party, the risk of a public meltdown -- similar to what is happening in France -- would be too great.

It works like this: If you have a parliamentary majority you can pass your legislation on a majority vote. If you do not, certain key votes such as a budget can trigger a "no confidence" vote initiated by the opposition parties, and if you lose that vote your government falls. Thus a minority government is weak, and must work with opposition parties to avoid losing no confidence votes. The parties prefer majority governments, where they can often ignore the opposition parties' complaints and demands. But a strong coalition can put them into a similar position. As long as the coalition holds, the government cannot fall to a no confidence vote.

Broder is thus correct that the coalition government between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats allows P.M. David Cameron to push legislation and budget cuts that would be "risky" were he leading a minority government. But he ignores the fact that this is far from Cameron's ideal. What he would much prefer is to have a majority government, not a coalition government, and thereby to be able to do what he wants without cutting deals with or making concessions to the Liberal Democrats.

To the extent that we would look for a "similar breakthrough" in the U.S. system, it would not be the two parties joining hands and acting as a massive coalition. It would be... politicians "crossing the aisle" or the Independents in the Senate choosing to caucus with the Democrats such that they obtain or maintain a majority. Funny, Broder doesn't recognize that as a "similar breakthrough". Another thing that would bring us closer to the parliamentary system Broder seems to idealize would be the elimination of the filibuster.

So what does Broder pretend would be similar to a parliamentary coalition government? Um... no surprise.

If Republicans emerge next month with sufficient leverage in the House and Senate to approach Obama with a proposition, they could insist that he "do a Cameron" when it comes to federal spending: a radical rollback now in the welfare state in return for a two-year truce on such policy questions as repeal of the health-care law.

Did you catch that? If the Republicans win the House and gain votes in the Senate, Broder wants the President to accept from them the promise that they won't do something that they cannot do - pass a repeal of health care reform that would fail in the Senate or, if by some miracle it did not, be vetoed - in return for having the Democrats agree to "a radical rollback... in the welfare state", meaning "slash Medicare and Social Security". It's not entirely clear to me how you would simultaneously preserve healthcare reform while slashing Medicare, but I don't think Broder's primary concern here is consistency.

Even better, there's good reason to believe that the talk of repealing healthcare reform is nothing more than that - talk. The Republicans won't want to repeal the popular elements of the reform bill, but they're tied inexorably to the components that are unpopular.

You want to kill the individual mandate? Then you have to return to having people denied health insurance over their pre-existing conditions. You want to defund Medicaid expansion? You'll not only remove coverage from millions of working class Americans, you'll put a serious financial burden on the states, "red states" included. You want to reverse the Medicare cuts? Not only will you make David Broder cry (what good is bipartisanship, after all, if you increase Medicare spending) but you'll deprive other reforms of necessary funding. You want to restore the Medicare prescription benefit "donut hole"? It might make Broder happy but it will cost you at the polls. You want to repeal the entire bill despite the sacrifice of reforms that are at least in part necessary, popular or both? You'll increase the projected budget deficit.

So not only is Broder asking for massive concessions from the Democrats based upon their promise not to do something that they cannot do, the hollowness of the proposed gesture runs much deeper. And all the Democrats have to give up in return for the usual nothing are the party's biggest achievements over the past century. What a deal.

At the same time there's no reason to doubt that the Republicans could join with the Democrats to effect some tweaks and modifications of Social Security to improve its long-term fiscal health. Broder has been around more than long enough to know that's happened in the past - tweak the tax rate, tweak the age of eligibility, and voila. So really, if the idea is to balance the budget and preserve the long-term viability of Social Security, it's a no-brainer.

Medicare is much more complicated, and as previously alluded the reform bill includes provisions that are meant to help make Medicare more cost-effective, reduce waste and improve care. Yes, it's possible and necessary to continue in that direction, but do you have any sense that the Republican Party is going to emerge from this election and tell the "Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare" faction, ginned up by Republican lies about "death panels", that they're cutting Medicare? Seriously - which party was responsible for the last massive, unfunded expansion of Medicare? Surely Broder knows.

Broder is probably right, that freed of the obligation to take responsibility for the cuts - "It's what the President asked of us" - the Republicans might go along with slashing Medicare. But there would not be even the slightest hint of "bipartisanship" involved. It would be a colossally stupid, self-desctructive act by the Democrats. This is one of the reasons we're trying to balance the budget with "commissions" instead of legislation - neither party wants to be responsible for Medicare cuts and, Broder's wishes having been duly noted, as they cannot find a way to vote for significant cuts without serious ramifications at the polls, they're looking for an approach that let's them pretend that "no one is to blame" - that the cuts sort of, somehow happened on their own.

What about the items on the President's agenda that he couldn't get past Republican filibusters and self-serving Blue Dogs and a certain independent? A carbon tax? Immigration reform? Why doesn't Broder imagine President Obama requesting Republican cooperation on those issues, where their support would make a genuine and necessary difference, as opposed to having them provide a meaningless concession? (Yes, that's a rhetorical question. Here's another: Would Broder be on board with a plan that rolled the programs included in his conception of the U.S. welfare state "back" to the level that will exist in the U.K. after the current round of reforms?)

Update: More on the British budget cuts:

In a bid to streamline its armed forces and help reduce its daunting levels of national debt, the British government on Tuesday announced plans to cut its military personnel by 10 percent, scrap 40 percent of the army’s artillery and tanks, withdraw all of its troops from Germany within 10 years, and cut 25,000 civilian jobs in its Defense Ministry.

Can we expect Broder to push for similar budget cuts here, or doesn't that fit his notions of "bipartisanship"?

David Broder [Hearts] Rob Portman

David Broder concludes his hagiography of Rob Portman, a man he sees as conceivably "the Republican presidential nominee in 2016", with the statement,

[Democratic Lt. Gov. Lee] Fisher has tried repeatedly in this [U.S. Senate] campaign to portray Portman as the embodiment of everything wrong with the Republican Party -- a budgeter who created deficits and a trade czar who gave away jobs. Portman, thanks to his planning and his funding, appears to have won the argument with the public.

Is Broder still a journalist? Because if he is, I would have expected at least a nodding mention of the facts.

Also, given that this is Broder, where's the description of how Portman will bridge the ideological divide, reach across the aisle and usher in a new era of bipartisanship? Or is he quietly affirming that in his mind, bipartisanship actually means "Democrats making concessions."

Are the Democrats Trying to Lose?

From what they're doing, it would certainly appear so. Michael Tomasky comments on the party's idiotic decision not to vote on a middle class tax cut in advance of the election. He quotes a "senior Senate Democratic Aide" as arguing that it's a winning argument for the Democrats, "why muddy it up with a failed vote" based upon an expected Republican filibuster?

I suppose that aide could be right. But what he or she doesn't understand is that not having a vote just looks like surrender. It's not fighting for anything. Because everyone watching this debate understands that a vote after the elections is guaranteed to extend all the cuts and really embarrass Obama, because he's going to be put in a position of vetoing cuts for the middle class or signing a bill including all cuts, and he's obviously going to have to do the latter. It's short-sighted. It's selfish. It's weak. It's pathetic. And it's all too typical. Shall I go on?

All of that applies - selfish, weak, pathetic, typical. But I'm more cynical about this than Mr. Tomasky. I suspect that the real reason the Senate doesn't want the vote is because they fear that they actually might get one or two Republicans to vote for tax relief - and that they will be countered by having Senators like Joe Lieberman join the remaining Republicans in a filibuster. Yes, I know that when put on the spot Joe backed off of his prior suggestion that he would join a filibuster, but I can see him helping Republicans block or delay the vote, and I can see him breaking his word. And he's not the only unfaithful member of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

It sounds a lot better to offer excuses that make you seem selfish, weak, and pathetic, than to have to explain on the eve of an election why members of your own caucus blocked a tax bill that would otherwise have passed.

Seriously, Bill Clinton had to remind the Democratic Party that it should offer some ideas - a plan for what it might do in the upcoming term that will benefit the voting public. What are the party's ideas for improving the economy? Generating jobs? Anything? It's not enough to respond, "But the Republicans have no ideas". When people aren't happy with the status quo you don't need ideas as the opposition, because you'll naturally get the protest vote.

But there's not one single idea the Democrats can advance in anything but the cloudiest of terms without at least one of its Senators declaring, "No, I can't support that." This is more than a "big tent" problem - it's a problem of being beholden to special interests. The same thing is true in the House, but there it matters less because bills pass on a majority vote. In the Senate, a promised agenda can by stymied by a single Senator. Maybe the dissenters can be convinced to keep their mouths shut until after the election, although I doubt it. But what happens in the next election if every single item on the offered plan has been stymied with the active complicity of Democrats?

Tomasky appropriately comments,

It's just so incredibly lame. I'm close to thinking let 'em lose, serves 'em right. Then I see the Bedlam inmates running on the other side and I remember the stakes. But honestly.

Frankly, for the past two years we've seen the Democrats act like a party that wants to lose. (The problem extends beyond two years, but it's been manifest since President Obama took office and various Democrats have engaged in the systematic undermining of his agenda.) They're not acting like a party that's fit to govern. Tomasky motivates himself by contemplating what the Republicans might do with a legislative majority, but the enthusiasm gap can be explained in no small part by the fact that most voters are neither as attuned to the issues or as partisan as Tomasky. They see an ineffective Congress that is not willing to commit to anything, and... who wants to vote for that?

Update: Can I find a voice anywhere, excluding Democratic politicians and their employees, who believes this is a good idea for the Democratic Party? The operative word among the party's supporters seems to be "idiocy".

Update II: All this and the continued taxpayer financing of worthless degrees from crappy for-profit colleges?

The Democrats Are Doomed....

That's a pretty consistent theme among left-leaning pundits. Here's Eugene Robinson,

If the Democrats can't generate some real enthusiasm among the base, and fast, [for Republican candidates] the word "unelectable" may cease to have meaning.

You know what's a bit demoralizing to "the base"? Being consistently told over eighteen months that they're demoralized, have the right to be demoralized, and should remain demoralized unless something changes.

No, of course people should feel free to criticize legislation, to advocate for improvements. People like Glenn Greenwald should be free to launch scathing attacks on issues of privacy and national security, where the Administration is pretty much following the Bush model. And to the extent that the White House and its spokespeople resent the criticism, they should suck it up. It goes with the job. Or... wow... they can acknowledge it, explain why their actions fell short of the expectations of some, and discuss future plans and initiatives that might smooth some ruffled feathers.

The Democratic base has never seemed as easy to excite or ignite as the Republican base. There's less consistency on core issues, and it seems more of a tendency to get grumpy and gloomy and announce, "I'm not going to vote for anybody", as if the solution to being dissatisfied with a Democratic administration or Congress is to passively allow a Republican takeover. It's possible to recognize that both parties are pretty crappy, and that they're both far more focused on serving corporate interests than in serving the welfare of the non-fictitious people of the nation, while also recognizing that there are serious policy differences between the parties.

If the Democrats served up a nice set of reasons why people should vote for them, and be excited to do so, I fully expect that the critical pundits would respond either that "It's not enough" or that "It's too little, too late," and their reaction would become the story as opposed to the issues or substantive policy that's at stake.

You know what might be a better message than, "Voters won't show up unless they're excited about something"? The message that part of being a member of a functioning democracy is to take the time to vote in major elections, even if you think all of the candidates suck.

Update: An international, um... perspective.

I'm Starting To Like Christine O'Donnell

Not to say I would vote for her, but with every nutty thing she's ever said being pulled out of her past, I admit it. She has a certain charm. Seriously, check out her 'notorious' video:

Look at the smile she serves up in this "mice with human brains" article.

For the most part, her brand of "crazy" seems to be well-meaning, borne of limited experience and intellectual curiosity, not mean-spirited or truly insane.

At one time or another, and at one level or another, haven't we all had a friend like this? A person who has a strong opinion on everything and substantive knowledge about... next to nothing? But they're amusing. If O'Donnell smoked pot, odds are she would be what we call a "granola hippie". "Hey dude, did you know that the man... the man has developed mice with human brains? Really, dude. And all we have to do to eliminate poverty is raise minimum wage to $40 grand a year! Think about it...." All those visits to "Politically Incorrect" and Bill Maher never got her to take even a single toke? (No offense, Bill, even though she's not a blonde it's hard to believe you wouldn't have tried.)

Update:

Obama Debating Boehner

E.J. Dionne proposes that the President debate the House and Senate minority leaders.

Between now and November, President Obama should debate both John Boehner, the House Republican leader, and Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader in the Senate. Their confrontations, televised and during prime time, would certainly get the attention of voters and make clear what the stakes in the election are.

I disagree. Even between presidential candidates, debates often amount to little more than the exchange of talking points. Recall Sarah Palin, up-front, stated she felt free to ignore the questions posed to the candidates and talk about whatever she wanted. To allow people like Boehner and McConnell to debate the President would elevate their importance and allow them to spew nonsense in the President's face while granting legitimacy to that nonsense, while the President would be expected to respond with the decorum required of his office. Also, as if it needs to be said, Obama's not presently up for reelection.

If Dionne wants somebody to debate Boehner, the proper counterpart is Nancy Peolosi. And for McConnell, of course, Harry Reid.

Don't Look for Salvation in the Tea Party Movement

Reihan Salam is a smart guy, but I don't know what to make of this:

If large numbers of Republicans outside of the South and the Mountain West win seats in 2010, particularly suburban swing seats, there will be a built-in constituency for a more pragmatic brand of center-right politics. The Tea Party could pave the way for a more inclusive political movement that embraces the same fiscal conservatism while leaving aside more polarizing cultural messages, as seen in the Scott Brown campaign. This would parallel the evolution of the antiwar movement between 2003 to 2008, from a fringe movement that alienated moderates to a tendency that came to embrace a large majority of the public.

The Tea Party movement could help increase GOP turnout in the midterm elections, which of course could help the GOP win seats. Given that, statistically speaking, the opposition party should pick up seats in the upcoming election, and anti-incumbent sentiments are high, all's the better for the GOP.

But Scott Brown is not "the exception who proves the rule." Scott Brown got a lot of support because he was a Republican poised to win "Ted Kennedy's seat". If he were an incumbent in Arizona or Utah, the same Tea Partiers who sent him checks would be launching a primary challenge and calling for his head on a platter. The Tea Party movement is not about making the rest of the nation more like Massachusetts. For better or for worse, Scott Brown cares about being reelected, so you can expect that he will be playing to the larger population of Massachusetts voters as opposed to trying to meet Tea Party litmus tests.

Meanwhile, the Tea Party has not come out for one thing - not one thing - that would substantively improve the nation. When they were talking about protesting the auto industry bailout in Detroit, Motor City Tea Partiers objected. They're not for Medicare cuts - they're in the "Keep your government hands off my Medicare" camp. In fact, one of the things that seems to motivate them is the thought that healthcare reform might be funded in part by cuts to Medicare. They're not for Social Security reform. They're not for cuts in military spending. They're not for cuts in subsidies for agriculture or ethanol. They're not for ending the mortgage interest deduction. Sure, they're for cuts - but only cuts that affect other people. In that sense they're part of a grand American tradition, but....

Meanwhile, in Maine,

In Maine, the newly adopted GOP platform outlines various changes, although its ambiguous language leaves the meaning of many sections open to interpretation. There’s a call to restore “Constitutional Law as the basis for the judiciary,” to “reassert the principle that ‘Freedom of Religion’ does not mean ‘Freedom from Religion,’ ” to “return to the principles of Austrian Economics,” and to remove “obstacles created by government” to the private development of natural gas, oil, coal, and nuclear power.

Other parts are clearer: a rejection of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, elimination of the US Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, and a freeze and prohibition on stimulus spending. Healthcare is “not a right” but “a service” that can be addressed only by using “market based solutions.”

To the extent that the Tea Party is responsible for that platform, as is suggested by the article, what part of it sounds like a sensible, carefully crafted platform for the future, and what part of it sounds like reactionary populism? (For "more of the same," see also the "Contract From America".) Is that platform more likely to help or hinder the state's GOP candidates?

Reihan suggests that the Tea Party movement will allow the GOP to move away from "more polarizing cultural messages". Well, if the Contract From America signifies anything, that movement won't include religious tolerance. And if Arizona signifies anything, it won't be a greater tolerance toward immigrants. Whether or not it's mentioned, being pro-life will remain a central part of the GOP platform. So... when and how does the party shift back from cultural issues to the economic - freed by the Tea Party to cut any spending it wants, except for the military, Medicare, Social Security, and agricultural or energy subsidies?

Yes, the Tea Party may transform the Republican Party, and may help it gain seats. But really, what political ideology improves itself by harnessing itself to a populist movement, at best substituting one set of litmus tests for another - and more realistically, adding the Tea Party's litmus tests to those already adopted through years of similar dependence on the religious right.

In his final comment on the anti-war movement, Reihan confuses the message with the messenger and ends up with a bad analogy. Sure, some of the groups that organized anti-Iraq war protests were unpopular with the public, but before we went into Iraq the anti-war movement was winning the debate. As one would expect, once the war was launched the public got behind the war, the President, and the armed forces.

Upward, Not Forward

And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom....

Marc Thiessen is sad that Republicans are backing away from what he and Newt Gingrich believe to be a winner of an idea for the upcoming election - the repeal of healthcare reform. I realize that Thiessen's not particularly good with facts, but what's his idea of a campaign theme song? This? Because when it comes to alternative plans, the Republicans have consistently revealed that they have nothing to offer. Or perhaps I should say that, to the extent that they raise alternatives, there's no reason to take them seriously - either there's no follow-through or they're laughably bad. And there's no sign of any willingness to put their own money (or should I say "health") where their mouths are.

It's interesting to see Thiessen team up with Gingrich, given the techniques the Republicans used to try to defeat the reform bill. "People like their current plans. We can't have anything that takes away their current plans!" Congratulations, Republicans, you got that. So now you're going to run on Gingrich's "slash and burn the current system" proposals? We're going to sell people, many of whom ("hundreds of thousands" of whom) can't afford to pay their mortgages, on the idea of paying for their medical care out of their savings? Even before we consider how the Republicans anti-reform rhetoric would be turned back on them, good luck with that.

I know that when Gingrich claims that the Republicans can't just oppose reform and promise repeal, but must "explain how [they] would replace Democratic legislation with something better", he's talking about his own ideas. But if Thiessen is not, his sniveling about Republicans "losing their nerve" makes him part of his party's problem, as (like pretty much everybody but Newt, who merely lacks good ideas) he has nothing of substance to offer. Really, the time to have anted up would have been during negotiations, when even modest Republican cooperation could have made for a much better bill.

Update: Dan Larison takes a look at the supposed majority of Americans who desire the repeal of healthcare reform, expressing skepticism that the majority of those voters "will actually vote in such a way as to make repeal more likely". That's a fair point, but I suspect the phenomenon will be made worse by the fact that there's no offer of "something better" behind the call for repeal. Other than lies or misinformation, how does a candidate running on repeal answer questions about disqualifying children from health insurance due to pre-existing conditions, dropping college students back off their parents' policies, etc.?

Bringing in the Concern Trolls

After endless, surely well-intentioned Republican finger-wagging about how the passage of a healthcare reform bill would inevitably result in a Republican landslide in the fall, the obvious retort started to gain traction:

OK, Mr. Republican Senator, if you think that Democrats will suffer a stunning defeat if they pass health-care reform, why not end your filibuster? Then, instead of the House passing the Senate's version of HCR, the Senate could pass the House's version, and it would be done. You could await your stunning victories in 2010 and 2012, and then repeal the bill before most of the key provisions take effect in 2014 (or actually 2013, under the House's bill). Then you'd have your smashing political victory, and the dreaded socialist takeover would never have occurred. If you really believe what you're saying, wouldn't that be the best of all possible worlds? So how about it -- why not end your filibuster?

If it has to confront the obvious, what's an anti-reform editorial board like the Washington Post's to do? You guessed it - time to call in the concern trolls.
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Update: Paul Waldman at Tapped shares his thoughts on the flawed reasoning behind the Caddell & Schoen opinion piece.

A Lesson in Politics

With John McCain prevaricating that Obama bailed out GM and Chrysler last December, rather than letting those companies fail, and now insisting that some of the nation's biggest banks should be permitted to fail, it's easy to see the future they anticipate:

They picture the nation, eighteen months from now, continuing to struggle with a recession while GM, Chrysler and the big banks continue to falter.

They intend to premise the Republican Party's 2010 Congressional and Senate campaigns on the theory that Obama's "big government bailout plans" have prolonged the recession, while frittering away hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on protecting companies from the realities of the marketplace.

Does it matter that G.W. did the same thing? That some of them supported the same ideas when they were coming from G.W.? Not one little bit, as should be more than evident from McCain's misrepresentations on the auto industry bailout.

Obama can take the ground out from under that strategy by... succeeding. If his team of financial wizards haven't implemented successful policies on the auto makers and financial industry by the end of 2010, it will be a fair criticism.
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Update: David M. Smick explains why the current Geithner approach won't work and why, ultimately, this may cost taxpayers another $2 trillion or so, no doubt as bankers continue to snicker at us and take huge bonuses. Smick unnecessarily snipes, "Pity Barack Obama's economic advisers. The blogs are now demanding their scalps" - more correctly, bloggers (and I think here in a manner representative of the country) want to know Geithner's solution and how much he thinks the bailout will cost. His evasions are deserving of scorn. And even Atrios has noted that, although a lot of attention is presently directed at Geithner, nobody's forgotten who his boss is.