On days like this, I join my friend Chris Bowers in feeling a certain sense of despondency about how much can be accomplished just by electing more and better Democrats. We didn’t just do poorly on the Cramdown Amendment, we got our clock cleaned. We could see this coming in last night’s press conference when Obama said he had been most humbled so far in the White House by his inability to control the banks.
OBAMA: Humbled by the — humbled by the fact that the presidency is extraordinarily powerful but we are just part of a much broader tapestry of American life. And there are a lot of different power centers, and so I can’t just press a button and suddenly have the bankers do exactly what I want, or turn on a switch and suddenly Congress falls in line. And so what you do is to make your best arguments, listen hard to what other people have to say, and coax folks in the right direction.
On the campaign trail, Obama said he wanted Cramdown. In the Oval Office, he has to deal with twelve Democrats that put campaign contributions from the mortgage lending industry ahead of their own struggling constituents who are losing their homes.
I was concerned that I didn’t see more visible effort from the White House to fight for Cramdown, but now I know why. No Republicans supported it. Even a united Democratic Caucus could not have passed the amendment. So, the administration let members vote however they wanted to. And now we know who the real cowards are.
But we shouldn’t allow ourselves to get discouraged. These were votes taken by senators that knew the amendment couldn’t pass. If the amendment had had the support of even one Republican, every Democratic vote against would have been the decisive vote against. In that case, the White House might have whipped this vote. Even without any Republican support, if Al Franken had been seated as a U.S. Senator, every Democratic vote against would have been the decisive vote against. While it’s true that some Democrats actually enjoy putting on kneepads and bowing down to do the mortgage lenders favors, most of them are simply acting out of fear and a desire not to needlessly alienate powerful potential adversaries.
We can still turn these defeats into victories as long as we increase our numbers and we have the support of the President of the United States.
