I found a transcript of the proceedings at the Democratic Senate Conference today. I wanted to read it because Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh both used their opportunity to ask the president a question to bash their own party and its activists. Now, I want to set this up, so the context started when Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado asked the president what the Democrats should do differently since the Senate isn’t functioning properly. And as part of his response, Obama made the following tribute to Arthur Gilroy.
“You know what I think would actually make a difference, Michael — I think if everybody here — excuse all the members of the press who are here — if everybody here turned off your CNN, your Fox, your — just turn off the TV — MSNBC, blogs — and just go talk to folks out there, instead of being in this echo chamber where the topic is constantly politics — the topic is politics.”
Seems like a variation of NEWSTRIKE!!! MEDIASTRIKE!!! CULTURESTRIKE!!! to me, but why pick on the bloggers 😉
In any case, this led Harry Reid to remark that he’d been following the president’s advice. And then Blanche Lincoln got to ask her question. Now, presumably, Lincoln designed this question to make herself look good to the people back home in Arkansas. I say that not just because she’s a politician, but because she didn’t ask a real question. She just made a pitch for herself and asked the president to join her in some hippie punching.
She opened with a nice combo. She got to praise the first lady while plugging her campaign against childhood obesity and at the same time slip that ‘bipartisan’ word in there.
SENATOR LINCOLN: Me, neither, Mr. President. I stay away from the TVs and everything else. But thank you so much for being here with us today. And I want to thank you also — I had an opportunity with several of my colleagues from the House and Senate to have a bipartisan meeting yesterday with the First Lady on childhood obesity. It was a great meeting and we look forward to working with her and you and your administration to really tackle that problem on behalf of our children and the future of our country.
Then she segued into some biography that the president couldn’t give two shits about and called herself ‘independent-minded.’
Mr. President, I come from a seventh-generation Arkansas family. My dad was a good Democrat, and he was a great Arkansan, and he was very typical of Arkansans in that he was very independent-minded, as am I, and as most of my constituents. And he used to tell me early on when I ran for Congress, he said it’s really results that count.
Next, Sen. Lincoln divulged that she talked to a constituent who thinks no one in the Obama administration has ever had to meet a payroll (and she makes it sound like a credible accusation).
And as I look at what’s going on in my state and among my constituents — I visited with a constituent yesterday, good Democrat, small business owner, who was extremely frustrated — extremely frustrated because there was a lack of certainty and predictability from his government for him to be able to run his businesses. He’s — he and his father have worked hard, they’ve built three or four different small businesses, and he fears that there’s no one in your administration that understands what it means to go to work on Monday and have to make a payroll on Friday. He wants results. He wants predictability.
Who knows what the hell this is supposed to mean. From the greater context, it appears to mean that we aren’t getting results because dangerous extremists are demanding too much change. Obama obliterates this argument during his response to Lincoln.
And I think that you’re exactly right. People out there watching us, they see us nothing more than Democrats and Republicans up here fighting, fighting only to win a few political points, not to get the problem solved. And so I just — I want to echo I guess some of what my colleague, Michael Bennet from Colorado, mentioned, but also to ask you, in terms of where we are going, what can we tell the people in terms of predictability and certainty in getting this economy back on track? How are we going to do that?
She seriously just used her time to ask the president how to get more predictability in the wake of the biggest financial tsunami since 1929. How about passing the president’s agenda on health care and financial reform? How would that be?
And are we willing as Democrats not only to reach out to Republicans but to push back in our own party for people who want extremes, and look for the common ground that’s going to get us the success that we need not only for our constituents but for our country in this global community, in this global economy? Are we willing as Democrats to also push back on our own party and look for that common ground that we need to work with Republicans and to get the answers? And it’s really the results that are going to count to our constituents. And we appreciate the hard work that you put into it.
That’s it. That’s her entire question. How do we get more predictability and how do we push back on our own party’s extremists so we can reach out to the lunatics from the party that created this big fucking mess in the first place.
And she wonders why her reelect numbers are in the low-thirties!!!
Obama gave her an excellent response, but I want to move on to look at Evan Bayh’s stellar performance. This exchange started with the president busting Bayh’s chops for wearing sneakers with his suit.
THE PRESIDENT: We can get you a mic. Nice sneakers, by the way, Evan. (Laughter.)
SENATOR BAYH: Oh, thank you. You’ve got to stay light on your feet around here, right? (Laughter.) Mr. President, you’ve already addressed this in part, and several of the other questioners have raised this, but I’d like to present it in a little bit different way that I think is on the minds of people in my state, and perhaps in the minds of independents and moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats around the country — and that’s this issue of the deficit and rising debt, and restoring the fiscal health of this country to a position where it ought to be.
Right. No progressive or mainstream Democrats are concerned about the deficit and rising debt. Nice framing, asshole.
Bayh then goes on a meandering rant about people thinking Democrats just want to tax and spend and won’t give up their precious earmarks or make any sacrifices. I’ll pick him up again, here:
“Now, to your credit, you’ve called for some things that aren’t always popular in our party. The first thing I noticed when you put into effect that non-security discretionary spending freeze is you got kicked in the shins by some of the left-wing blogs. And you called for more restraint on earmarks. That’s not always popular among our group, but to your credit, you’ve called for those things.
So my question to you, Mr. President, is speaking to independents, conservative Democrats, moderate Republicans — people who know we have to do this — why should the Democratic Party be trusted? And are we willing to make some of the tough decisions to actually head this country in a better direction?”
It wasn’t only left-wing blogs who kicked the president in the shins for announcing his stupid non-military discretionary spending freeze. It was every reputable economist in the known universe. But, whatever. The point is that the Democratic Party can’t be trusted to govern the country the way that moderate Republicans would like. This is rocket science.
I think it’s safe to say that Blanche Lincoln’s father understood the problem better than his daughter or this foolish doughboy from the Hoosier State. People want results, not wasted time and failed efforts to pass badly needed reforms. And who killed health care and made it unpopular even on the left? Jackasses like Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh, that’s who. They’re the same idiots who are going to make it impossible to tackle climate change, and they’ll probably look to screw us on immigration, too. They think their constituents want unavailable bipartisan solutions more than they want solutions. There’s no helping them. They’re criminally stupid.
To survive as a Democrat you have to make the case for the president’s policies to your constituents. You aren’t going to win a midterm election by killing the president’s agenda, you morons. You don’t make your party more popular by buying into every canard spewed about it by the right. This is Politics 101.
