One thing I find boring is the proclivity of people to do self-serving analysis. We joke about every thing that happens somehow being good news for Republicans because that is how our media tends to spin things. But we do the same thing all the time. If Martha Coakley loses, a bunch of progressives are going to blame the loss on insufficiently progressive policies. The moderates are going to blame overly progressive policies. The Republicans are going to blame Marxist/Leninist policies. You know what matters? What matters is how politicians react and vote. And, on that score, it doesn’t matter who wins, because the fact that the election was even close is enough to spook the hell out of the moderate Democrats in red and purple districts and states and make them oppose progressive policies. Obama’s agenda is going to take a hit even if Coakley wins.
A good question for progressives is why no one takes their claims seriously. If we argue that Obama hasn’t really pursued progressive policies and that our politicians would be polling better if he had, no one listens and no one believes it. I actually don’t believe it. Or, to be more accurate, I only believe it on a narrow scope of issues where he could have actually been successful in enacting more progressive policies. I don’t think he or the Democratic Caucus would be in a better place if he had tried and failed to enact a bolder stimulus package or a more robust health care bill. Failure would not be rewarded. Only if he had actually succeeded in doing those things would there be a potential reward, and I don’t see how he could have succeeded.
The Republicans have had successes with their delaying tactics. It’s the Democrats who are being punished for inaction. Sometimes, your opponent just outplays you. I remember some very good New York Knicks teams that couldn’t quite figure out how to beat Michael Jordan’s Bulls. When Jordan drops 60 points on you, it doesn’t matter how well you played. Of course, it’s kind of obscene to compare Mitch McConnell to Michael Jordan or Harry Reid to Patrick Ewing. But sometimes, if your opponent is willing to use the rules to obstruct and delay, and you can’t figure out how to get the ball back, you lose. Remember the old Dean Smith North Carolina four-corner offense they used to run to run out the clock before the advent of the shot-clock? It wasn’t sportsmanlike, but it worked.
Things will be even worse at 59 votes. If the Dems want to learn anything from today’s election (win or lose), they should learn how to make the Republicans pay for their tactics. If the rules need to be changed, then change them. But stop banging your head against a wall.
I don’t pretend to know what to do, but I do believe that the republicans have no interest in governing anything right now. They’d love to win more seats, but they don’t want to have a majority in any part of government. This was partly why I sort of wanted McCain to win: Obama has to deal with the multiple crippling global disasters that the Bush admin bequeathed to him. Republicans like Brown get to put out what I can only describe as psychedelic advertisements where recorded history began in January 09 and the solution is to magically return to tax-cutting, “fiscal responsibility,” and brutalizing detainees.
I can only say I agree with the criticism that Obama has failed to articulate a concise, memorable argument for his vision of governing, beyond the sort of “let’s all act like adults and treat each other with respect,” which is fine, but isn’t exactly a vision. When empty suits like Brown can get away with bottom of the barrel reaganisms in 2010, there’s still a lot of work to do.
I don’t understand why we are blaming the republicans here. We have HCR that sucks because of corporate dems and JL. Baucus wasted an entire summer with the WH staying out of it. I don’t see how this is the republican’s fault. At some point, we need to look at us and hold us accountable instead of just blaming republicans. Unless we do that, we won’t address the real issue at hand and will lose again in Nov.
I made 23 calls last night. One man asked me what the Dems have done in the last year to help ordinary Americans. He said he could no longer see the difference between the two parties. I also talked to two other people mad about the bailout and bonuses. People are aware of what’s happening in Washington.
The biggest unforced error was letting Baucus dither.
But, go back and look at the calendar and tell me how many days out of 2009 we actually had 60 votes handy to vote for cloture?
So long as we had no Republican votes, we couldn’t pass HCR last summer anyway.
It was the republican’s choice to use the cloture rules in the Senate to ensure that a 60 vote supermajority was required to pass any bill. This ensured that any HCR had to be satisfactory to the entire dem caucus, including its most conservative members such as Nelson and Lieberman.
This is the main problem with the supermajority requirement: it allows the minority party to block legislation, but the blame for the failure falls on the majority party. Once Brown gets in (which I expect), it will be impossible for the Dems to pass any legislation–a failure that will surely redound to the republican’s electoral benefit.
When you know the minority is going to force a filibuster vote on everything and you, as the majority, do not act accordingly with your super-majority it is not the minorities fault.
Even without a super-majority the fact that republicans steamrolled the bush agenda without ever having a super-majority mocks that entire thought process.
No matter how much anyone tries to spin this it is the fault of the Dems for not getting the job done on many things and for caving to the right wing to half-ass what little they did accomplish.
Exactly
“The republicans did not steamroll their entire agenda despite not having a supermajority (as Seabe notes below). The equivalent of HCR for republicans was social security privatization.”
Oh good God. He started an agressive war without even a simple senate majority. And that’s just for starters.
It also doesn’t help when the candidate doesn’t actually campaign and is not otherwise a strong candidate. Having a D next to your name shouldn’t get you elected even in MA.
And driving a truck shouldn’t get you elected either, but it will if all the opposition has to say is “anyone can buy a truck”. Well no, not with 10-17% unemployment.
The opposition just eats that up.
Why did the Democrats let the Republicans off the hook for the giant fiscal mess they created?
A Republican is about to take Ted Kennedy’s Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts. How could something like that ever happen?
This article by Bill Moyers & Thomas Frank tells how: How America’s Demented Politics Let the GOP Off the Hook for Their Giant Mess, may help explain.
Through our silence, Obama has essentially become the cause of our fiscal mess, the unemployment, and everything else that the Bush administration dealt him on leaving. Is he politically nuts? Or should we blame our Democratic orgs for the silence. Whatever, looks as if a two bit republican state senator is going to Washington…in Ted Kennedy’s place.
Last chance to straight out the world out will be at the State of the Union speech.
“Or, to be more accurate, I only believe it on a narrow scope of issues where he could have actually been successful in enacting more progressive policies.”
Aside from the stimulus package, what sorts of ‘jobs bills’ have gotten through Congress? Democrats should own this issue.
The script that blames political failure on an inadequate ideological rigor is as popular on the right as it is on the left. Consider the period following the 2008 election, when Rush Limbaugh and many others on the right were damning Dubya and the GOP for what they rather belatedly considered a failure to adhere to “conservative” principles.
Whether it comes from the right or the left, this mode of analysis is not rooted in reason but in the same mythic consciousness which drives so much of Greek Drama and the prophetic books of the Old Testament: If the king does not observe the pieties, he is punished and his kingdom with him.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Teabagger or a Hamsherite pushing this line. It’s an abandonment of reason in favor of a worldview where success and failure don’t depend on strategy and tactics and circumstance, but on purity and faith.
That’s not politics. That’s religion.
Well said. That worldview is also a great way to evade responsibility for a situation by blaming it all on the failure of the king’s magic. Seeing the magical thinking on the left and the right makes me understand better the logic of societies that assured good crops and favorable outcomes through human sacrifice.
I would point out that Obama led a goodly portion of the wall-banging.
“Sometimes, your opponent just outplays you… But sometimes, if your opponent is willing to use the rules to obstruct and delay, and you can’t figure out how to get the ball back, you lose.”
reminder: if the republicans didn’t send out an official announcement that they were going to obstruct everthing, they might as well have. THIS WAS OBVIOUS IN 2007. And it was evident in 2008 too. I mean, fucking DUH.
It’s not like the democrats didn’t know the GOP game plan and got “outplayed”, but more like when the Eagles get their asses handed to ’em because “they didn’t show up to play ball”.
that’s my take anyway. YMMV.
Josh Marshall:
Bush didn’t have the trouble the democrats are having, and he didn’t have the same majorities. just fucking do the job you were elected to do, and steamroll the republicans. the only senate democrat who seems to understand this is Arlen Specter, and THAT is PATHETIC.
Once again, you quote me something that, to my reading, entirely supports my point. Stalling works.
stalling only works if you allow the opposition to get away with it.
And how exactly do you prevent them from getting away with it? In the real world with a lieberman and a handful of turncoat Dem senators?
“Central to Johnson’s control was “The Treatment”, described by two journalists:
The Treatment could last ten minutes or four hours. It came, enveloping its target, at the Johnson Ranch swimming pool, in one of Johnson’s offices, in the Senate cloakroom, on the floor of the Senate itself — wherever Johnson might find a fellow Senator within his reach.
Its tone could be supplication, accusation, cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint and the hint of threat. It was all of these together. It ran the gamut of human emotions. Its velocity was breathtaking, and it was all in one direction. Interjections from the target were rare. Johnson anticipated them before they could be spoken. He moved in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics. Mimicry, humor, and the genius of analogy made The Treatment an almost hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless.“
Wikipedia.
But unfortunately, harry reid is no LBJ, and neither is barack obama. indeed, harry reid succumbed to the treatment, as delivered by that fanous progressive Rahm Emmanuel. But stuff could have been done.
“senator lieberman, if you fuck us on this, We will fuck you. Do you hear me? We will fuck yo. We will ruin you. Like no one has ever fucked you!”
Ah, of course. Stuff. Why didn’t I think of that?
If your point is that Reid is no LBJ I think everybody would agree. Nobody else is an LBJ.
How was Reid going to fuck Lieberman? Take away his committee chair? Maybe that’s what he did threaten, who knows? Lieberman has to know this is his last term. He’s already lined up some 7 figure lobbying job, and he can keep all the “campaign contributions” he can get. Whose bidding is he gonna do? Problem is, you’re making up fictional scenarios and then getting in a froth because they didn’t come true. You seem to forget where you live.
no, I’m not forgetting anything. And i’m not in a froth. if anything, i think the democratic disaster in Massachusetts is well deserved and high comedy.
but there are plenty of ways to fuck recalcitrant politicians.
There are a variety of tactics, but they require strength and a will to lead. These democrats don’t have that.
I think people overstate Bush’s case. He didn’t get social security, he didn’t get immigration, he barely got education. In fact, had there been the proper funding, I’d say he didn’t get education either.
All he really got were his tax cuts and his Iraq War. He didn’t campaign on starting a new war, so I’m not even sure you could count that.
And besides, conservatives have a lot more leverage by default because the belief that government should even be doing anything is the antithesis of conservative ideology; they could give a damn if no health bill passes.
In any case, sometimes I think we should challenge the blue dogs/Lieberman to actually go through with their threats and filibuster.
If there was such a thing as “the Democrats”, we’d obviously have no problem passing any legislation we wanted. That didn’t happen because we are saddled with the deadly mix of a structurally worthless Senate and a half-dozen or less turncoat Dem senators plus a lieberman.
That being the case, why was it so stupid to think that whatever “the Republicans” said, there was no chance that one or two of their senators would be gettable? Easy to say on Monday morning, but Reps HAVE crossed over on some issues in the past. They have been no more united than Dems historically. IOW, it didn’t matter that “the Republicans” showed their intention to obstruct because “the Republicans” didn’t necessarily exist.
The reality is that we got a “filibuster proof” majority by pursuing a 50-state strategy. That meant we got a bunch of Red state senators who remained more Red than Dem. What exactly would you have done differently? I can think of things they could have done differently, but nothing assured of working. That they didn’t follow my advice doesn’t mean they sat out the game. If we don’t end up losing what HCR we got because of MA crybabies, we got something instead of nothing. I guess you preferred nothing, unless you have a plausible scenario where they could have gotten Medicare For All or something, Given the circumstances, I don’t see it — not anything that could have been done in a year, at least — and if they’d waited to try and build momentum for a better plan the howls from the “left” would have been deafening.
So again, how exactly would you have played the game to get a better result this year?
The “Democrats” are a big tent party, which makes party unity problematic.
The Republicans are a puptent party, admission only to the conservative enough, which makes party unity both easy and mandatory.
But here’s a question about the 50-state strategy. If Republicans can in a Democratic stronghold and put up a candidate who might improbably win, why can progressives not do the same in Alabama or Idaho, Utah or Mississippi, or Kentucky or Texas (unfortunately it will have to be write-ins, filing date has passed)? If nothing proves the red state-blue state frame to be dead, this special election does.
They are all Red states now. Don’t be shocked by what happens here in Illinois. The state budget is only 50% funded. There are two choices, double taxes or cut services in half. Which do you think a cash strapped public is going to vote for?
Most states don’t have the option of doing anything with taxes.
In NC, the increased the marginal tax rate on upper income people, increased the liquor tax, increased the tobacco tax immensely (talk about when the shock doctrine helps), cut funds for counties, and dictated an across the board cut to school district funding.
I won’t be shocked about Illinois. Just when you start to clean up the state government, wham. At least you guys aren’t writing your license plate checks to Paul Powell, Secretary of State any more.
The rates are embedded in the Constitution? Legislatures can raise or lower them. One of the front running Republican candidates, a former state party chief, is actually promising to lower taxes and balance the budget. I guess he wants to turn Illinois into a Banana Republic. With state and teacher pensions in both party’s gunsights, I’m glad I’m not one of them. IIRC, McKenna, the aforementioned former party chief, wants to eliminate the pensions and put everyone on 401K’s (wouldn’t they be 403b’s?). I’m not sure. It’s hard to tell them apart since they haven’t evolved enough to walk upright.
Thanks for remembering Paul Powell! I used to belong to a chapter of the Air Force Association that included a pilot whom Powell sometimes chartered. He told some sordid stories about Powell.
BTW, all the (D) Senate candidates are pro gun control. That will play well outside of Chicago. /snark
Forgot this point. States with Republican governors and legislatures are hurting too. Which provides an opening for some sort of anti-incumbent.
I think you have put your finger on it. anti-incumbent.
The American Dream is dissolving. My own generation is probably the most upset. Young people are probably least upset. They never saw good times. We remember the ’50s and pre-war ’60s. So why would they vote Teabagger? Simply lashing out in rage against the System and everyone who’s a part of it. Come to think of it, one of my contemporaries came to work last week all excited about attending a Tea Party. He’s actually a rather liberal guy, concerned about the environment, not racist in any way, has an Asian wife, wants a European health and education system, believes pot should be legal, et cetera. But he is very cynical about the Democratic Party. More cynical than me, if you can believe it. He sees the Teabagger movement as a way to protest political and corporate corruption. He also belongs to our union, but thinks it is utterly corrupt and its officials self-serving.
I actually don’t think Obama is going to run into his bunker and spend the rest of his presidency “governing from the center” ala clinton. I think Obama is going to turn populist until 2010 and run on GOP obstructionism (to the extent they are successful in blocking those reforms). If he loses in 2010 he’ll go ahead and dust off the clinton playbook on how to get reelected.
I think the loss today is a huge referendum on the way Obama’s decided to govern. His incrementalist approach of accomodating the elite and making technocratic, center left policy moves just ceded a huge amount of political space to the far right. The democratic party is essentially the only party concerned with governing, hence you have policy debates that traditionally happen in american politics between liberals (dems) and conservatives (GOP) happening entirely within the democratic party.
I think Obama’s only play is to revamp the Democratic party and go populist.
I would argue for taking no lessons at all from this election.
The Republicans nominated a decent enough candidate (a little short on substance, but plays well on TV). The Democrats nominated an abysmal one. It happens.
There’s no lesson here. If the election WERE about which party the voters would rather see running the show, Coakley would win. It’s Massachusetts after all. The election is about two candidates, one of whom drives a truck and one of whom never heard of Curt Schilling.
I can think of a number of reasons why no one takes progressives’ claims seriously:
…I’m sure there are more.
I would add to this that the Dems spend too much time talking to themselves and not enough time talking to the general public.
For example, on many of the major newspaper sites, the comments on political articles can be majority hate comments, untrue comments etc. Dems should be spending some time correcting the untruths with facts. Otherwise, people who are not into politics enough to know the facts will read the comments and think that the untruths must be true because the majority of the comments are saying basically the same thing.
However much time you spend on sites like BooMan, NarcoNews etc, take at least a little of that time and refute the craziness wherever you see it.
We, local committeemen and others, tried to build such an organization here in suburban Chicago. An organization independent of the city’s corruption. We had all 80 townships on board. Then Rahm Emanuel destroyed it by threatening donors with retaliation and financing Republicans to run as Democrats. All the good that Howard Dean did, Rahm undid. He is another Lieberman. He is not a Democrat, he belongs to the Rahm Emanuel for Rahm Emanuel Party.
The weakness is to depend on the donors that the establishment can touch. You pretty much have to build it from scratch. If local committemen see value in allying with it, that is OK. But it must be self-sustaining in volunteers and finances. And organized well enough to vet candidates and make it stick. Then you fight it out with Rahm’s bunch in the primaries. And you set up to cover ever office open, which forces least cost guys like Rahm to have to choose where to put his resources. (That principle is why the 50-state strategy worked.)
And I think you are right about Rahm’s party affiliation. But that is the risk you take by having a big tent.
I’ve lived in Chicago (the city); I know exactly how difficult reform politics is there. You just have pick up and get going all over again and hope you get smart enough to see the shit coming.
Ah! Did you live here when manufacturing was alive? When Western Electric churned out the nation’s telephones? When Ford made cars (Mustangs?) on the South Side. When Motorola and Zenith and Admiral made millions of TV’s? It must have been millions. Our quota on our line was 800 sets a day and we were one line of fourteen in one plant. That was before Sony. I worked my way through private college in that Motorola plant. No one can even work their way through public college working in McDonald’s or Wal-Mart. You have to be at the top of the food chain and that’s in East China now, not MidWest USA.
Or North Carolina. Do you live in the Research Triangle? I’ve heard people are progressive there.
“The moderates are going to blame overly progressive policies. The Republicans are going to blame Marxist/Leninist policies.”
Nice spin on this yourself BooMan. You would have to have the mindset of a Joe Lieberman to claim they are overly progressive policies while simultaneously claiming to be moderate.
The Democrats did all of the stalling themselves. The same kind of Democrats that claim to be moderates.
Please explain why both the Public Option and Medicare for All are more popular than almost all of the politicians out there. Then if you are as pretzelled up in contortion as a Harold Ford or Rahm Emanuele supporter would have to be to justify “moderates” thinking things are too progressive, have a drink and rethink what you wrote there.
< /snark >
The ‘this legislation isn’t progressive enough’ argument breaks down when you can’t explain how it could have been passed into law.
Now, way back in February I thought Obama would probably be forced to use reconciliation because he would never get 60 votes. But that option kept getting more unpalatable as the political cost went up and up and up for doing health care all year while the unemployment rate kept rising. The Republicans are responsible for making this take all year. In retrospect, they should have used reconciliation in late October when it ripened. But they had 60 votes, and so they went for a watered down bill. The costs would be about the same, I think, with the bill suffering under both scenarios and the effort being deeply unpopular among independents and swing-voters. There wasn’t any magic trick that could overcome Republican obstinacy and delay.
“The ‘this legislation isn’t progressive enough’ argument breaks down when you can’t explain how it could have been passed into law.”
Your argument breaks down when there is the fact that it is the Dems that could have passed it, they could have passed it faster and they had the numbers, and they didn’t do it. We would not be having this discussion in the first place IF they had passed more progressive legislation to begin with and moved on it faster.
Claiming that “moderates” think it is too progressive is illogical. Impossible to believe given the still overwhelming support for the Public Option from Dem voters and moderate voters as Dem politician numbers plummeted. Only faux moderate politicians make that claim.
And I know that Dems would like to blame it on the GOP as well, but the numbers of Dems in the House, Senate and holding the White House at the same time support that idea about as well as using a jock strap for a bra.
This talking point is already being mocked, and deservedly so:
A dog that doesn’t hunt now and will not hunt after the special election.
Here’s the idea that hamstrings these discussions:
Democrats = progressives
Democrats, unlike Republicans are a big tent party with at least three major caucuses — progressive, New Democrat™, and Blue Dogs™. None of those three have a majority in the caucus of either House. So deals must be struck. Guess who came out on the short end of the stick in the bargaining?
Why? They had to have some results. The other two caucuses didn’t, or didn’t need as progressive a something.
That gets changed at the local and state level when there are more progressive elected officials in more states. It’s the way it happened in the 1930s.
when could they have passed it?
I mean, give me the date.
Prior to September, they never had 60 votes. Prior to October 15th, they couldn’t use reconciliation. And they never had 60 votes for a more progressive bill, ever.
So, when were they supposed to pass this imaginary bill?
When could Bush have passed tax cuts for the rich? When could he put neanderthals on the Supreme Court? He never had 60 Republicans.
I’ll answer for you: The mere threat of killing the filibuster was enough for Democrats to roll over and play dead.
A tremendous opportunity has been squandered. Do you realize how hard it was to get Joe Sixpack to vote for a black man over a white Vietnam war hero? Only total desperation in their lives could bring it about. They desperately wanted their lives to Change. Instead they got Trillion dollar bank bailouts, nine figure bonuses to the guys that cratered their IRA’s and home values and fucking TAXES on their health care plans. And you wonder why they don’t believe Democrats are on their side? When TV constantly reminds them that Democrats control the White House, the Senate, and the House?
When a Democratic Governor (Quinn) says the state’s problems are due to a too generous S-CHIP and free senior rides on public transportation. When he tells them that a massive tax increase is required and all eight Republican candidates say, “No, it isn’t. Just cut waste and corruption.” When the corruption trial of the ousted Democratic Governor is scheduled to start a few months before the election? When that ex-Governor is telling everyone that will listen that he is innocent and the victim of a palace coup staged by the very guy that wants to increase your taxes and take away your free rides?
The magical 60 number was and will be just an excuse to continue dodging responsibility. If we let them…
I don’t know – Harry Reid as Patrick Ewing may be appropriate. We’ll see…
Whatsa matter wid you folks?
D’intcha watch “Grey Gardens?”
The realone…??? The doc by the Maysles brothers? Featuring Edith ‘Little Edie’ Bouvier Beale?
Man!!!
The (unconsummated) Brides of Frankenstein.
Little Edie equals Christine Kennedy.
Caroline Kennedy equals Martha Coakley.
Space City.
The fruits of privilege. Female division thereof.
The fruitcakes of privilege.
Waiting for the help to serve dinner.
It must be awful to be a well-meaning working or middle-class DemRat these days.
Sure glad I’m not.
And the karma jes’ dribbles on down…
I knew what wuz gonna happen 24 hours into the Teddy media wake.
The working people HATE THESE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!
Bet on it.
Democrats.
Whadda buncha maroons!
Later…
AG