I was watching MSNBC this morning and former Counselor to the President Dan Bartlett was on talking about the similarities between Bush’s failed effort to privatize Social Security and Obama’s current effort to pass health care reform. Bartlett said that in both instances the administrations made the mistake of focusing too much on the process of passing the legislation through Congress and not enough on winning the argument in the public square. I think I agree with that in a general sense. But it isn’t exactly easy to win an argument of the merits of legislation when the other side is forcing you to constantly work on process. As Alexander Bolton ably explains in The Hill, the Republicans have been very successful in getting the American people to attribute shared blame for the gridlock in Washington.
Failure to advance must-pass legislation has added to the Democrats’ problems when Congress is suffering from its lowest approval ratings in years.
Democrats claim they can blame Republican obstruction for the gridlock, but political experts and some Democratic allies say the majority party will also suffer because it controls Congress.
This is even true in the current case of Sen. Jim Bunning denying unanimous consent to extend unemployment insurance (among other things):
Democrats decried Bunning and the GOP in a flood of press releases Monday, but those feeling the pain may not make distinctions.
“I certainly think the majority leadership understands what a catastrophe this is. They overestimated the good will of the Senate as a whole,” said Jody Conti, federal advocacy coordinator for the National Employment Law Project, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for low- and middle-income workers.
“The calls and e-mails we’re already getting are turning rapidly to, ‘Democrats have a supermajority, why can’t they move this through?’ Workers are placing the blame on both sides of the aisle,” said Conti.
Democratic strategists say their candidates will blast the GOP for obstruction. “If Republicans are stopping something as basic as helping the unemployed, they’re going to take a hit on it,” said John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster…
…But he said gridlock would also hurt the party in control. “People are seeing that their lives are being played with because of party politics, and that’s bad for everyone,” he said.
The more people hate Congress, the more that feeds into the Republicans’ anti-government message. So, they have the luxury of using procedural moves to stall progress in Washington (even to the degree that it enrages a significant portion of the electorate) because the blame is spread out and hurts the party that wants to convince the people that the government can be a force for good.
There are obvious limits. The Republicans went too far in 1995 with the government shutdown and smoothed Clinton’s path to reelecton. But they enjoy a basic structural advantage in that the Democrats can’t really respond in kind when they are in the minority because they would catch nearly all the blame. In the case of Social Security privatization, it was a simple matter of the proposed legislation being incredibly unpopular. A less controversial bill proposed by a less unpopular president would not have been successfully stonewalled by the Democrats. It’s just not in their nature.
Getting back to the point at the top, the Obama administration certainly failed to communicate their strategy for passing health care reform in a way that would have made their friends comfortable with the compromises they were making, and this led to the narrative about backroom deals and selling out to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. But the kind of sordid deals that are required to pass reforms of this size are not the kind of things that look good in the light of day. It’s hard to win over a Ben Nelson to vote for your reforms if you are simultaneously telling your supporters that you cut something out of the reforms because Nelson is a whore to the insurance industry and it was the only way you could get his vote. And I don’t mean to single out Ben Nelson, because there were others who told the administration ‘no’ on a public option as far back as January.
It’s hard to be candid about the difficulties of passing reforms when you are reliant on the people who are creating those difficulties to help you in the end. And that’s what the GOP forced on the Obama administration with their unified opposition. Meanwhile, their use of procedural obstruction forced the administration to keep a constant eye on the congressional maze, which used up energy they needed to argue the case for reforms in the public square.
The Republicans really have been very effective. Even though they are incredibly unpopular, they’ve succeeded in making their opponents very unpopular, too. And the American people are wondering why the Democrats are having such a hard time passing their agenda, and giving them a healthy share of the blame.
I think many underestimate the level at which the media play in all this. How can Democrats talk about substance when finding a news report in DC that covers policy over politics is like finding a drop of freshwater in the ocean.
Thank you. This is my argument as well. None of this would be working if the media weren’t siding with the Republicans. And by media I’m excluding MSNBC, which gets the smallest market share (last I checked) of the major news networks. Fox had more viewers than the combined total of CNN and MSNBC viewers in the last data I saw.
That should be cause for alarm.
I wonder when the blogosphere will wake up and realize that the media owners control the debate to a frightening degree.
MSNBC is just as guilty as the rest of the networks. Don’t let KO, Ed, and Maddow fool you. Remember, that’s 3 hours of “liberal” programing…the same as Morning Joe gets every day. MSNBCs daytime lineup is only marginally better than most, and Chuck Todd ruins that fact all by himself, with his pathetic “please like me beltway media!” framing to every single story he covers.
Oh, I agree. And I’m often up for Willie’s Way too Early show, which takes on a new meaning when you’re watching from the West Coast. And even Keith Olbermann has had that CIA shill Gerald Posner on way too many times to be credible. I love Morning Joe though because Scarborough is more liberal than he realizes, and it’s hilarious when he catches himself not espousing the ‘correct’ talking points. Just as Tweety is more conservative than he thinks he is (and is also 100% wrong and just about anything related to the Kennedys, which is especially embarrassing or should be since he wrote a book about Kennedy and Nixon. His friends led him down false paths, and he followed.)
It’s because of how the debate is framed. It’s why I love Alan Grayson so much, even if I think his little Paul-lite obsession with the Fed and lack of understanding is an annoyance.
Although, even when the debate is framed by him, sometimes the Village pushes back. Tweety seemed obsessed with the fact that they couldn’t use reconciliation.
I really think that a lions share of the blame for this reality is the fact that the media in this country simply do not do their damn job! The dissonance in the minds of so many Americans could not possibly have happened without the continuing reinforcement of Republican narratives and memes on a round the clock basis, the endless pimping of vacuous GOP friendly stories like ACORN and perpetuation of the lie that the reason we have no bipartisanship in Washington is because Obama and the Democrats have not done enough to meet Republicans halfway. These things are, on a substantively provable basis, outright lies. Yet things such as these and, indeed, much more insane things, are harder to kill in our media than a zombie.
The media certainly has no compunction or hesitation in framing Democrats as liars and deceivers on the most flimsy of evidence, yet when a Republican says something which is an out and out lie, it is framed as “some Democrats disagree”.
The media is a convenient target for both sides of the political aisle. But the fact that they so easily slip, in an almost reflexive way, into the Republican frames is telling. They are hard wired for the Republican point of view.
When one side is doing most of the talking, it’s hard not to accept some of their arguments without even realizing it.
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
I think there a lot more Democrats talking than are being given an honest hearing. Democrats are routinely underrepresented in political discussion forums in our mainstream media. Is that because they just aren’t interested in publicly discussing their positions? Or might it be something else?
I’d disagree. It’s WHICH Democrats are allowed to speak on TV that causes the problem. Too many blue dogs, not enough progressives.
It doesn’t matter who is talking if it’s not on camera. That’s my point. If a tree falls in a forest, who cares if it makes a sound or not unless you’re near it.
Couldn’t have said it better. The only ratonal response is to change the rules. No one cares anyway, and if all movement on reform of senate rules serves to do is to get the GOP to stop with these tacticts, then its served its purpose.
Our legislative institutions are comprised of formal rules and informal norms. The GOP has completely rewritten the informal norms surrounding how a minority party interacts with the governing agenda of the majority party (ie, not WHETHER there is a filibuster, but HOW OFTEN the minority party uses the filibuster, or holds and other such obstructionist tactics for that matter). To recalibrate the senate so that its a functioning institution, we need to rewrite the formal rules since dems don’t have a ton of power to force the GOP to follow the previous set of informal norms.
In order to get the GOP to behave today, we need to credibly maek them think that when the new congress comes into session in 2011, it will be operating under a new set of foraml rules. We need to put that package of rule changes out there, sell it to the public and brand it as “political reform” and put everyone on notice that this will be the new set of rules. If the GOP starts behaving itself again, then there won’t be a need for the rule changes and the political reform will probably lose any elite or popular support it had. If the GOP fights it, then we get the benefit of having this inside baseball brought to light and made public. Shining a little bit of sunshine on the archaic 18th century institution known as the US Senate is win-win.
There seems to be a general consensus in much of the liberal blogosphere that changing of the rules is just the way to go.
Does anyone really think that any attempt by the Democrats to change any rules to break this Republican gridlock will be portrayed as anything less than a bloodless coup by Obama and the Democrats? All the people screaming tyranny and revolution for the last year will go batshit insane. And the GOP will encourage them at every turn, flood the airwaves with dogwhistles to take up arms against the government because the dictatorship in on the doorstep. And do you really think the media will do much to dispel this insanity?
I believe there is a significant likelihood that something like a rule change could be the tipping point for a significant anti-government backlash that would likely include violence. These people are all primed. They are just waiting for someone to tell them, “Let’s roll”.
Yes, in a sane and functioning governmental structure, a rule change would be in order so that the people who won the election can govern. But we are not in the most sane of times right now. A significant part of our political infrastructure is crumbling. This certainly is not a reason to stand idly by and let the Republicans continue to obstruct. But it might be wise to keep in mind the rule of unintended consequences that might apply. If they decide to change the rules, be prepared for nuts to come out of the woodwork and into the streets. And you can be damn sure they will have their guns and all the ammo close by that they have been stockpiling of the last 18 months.
I agree the messaging is important here. But Obama and the dems are already being labeled as extremists and maoists, etc so I’m not sure what the difference is.
But as Chris Bowers at Openleft argues repeatedly, most americans don’t understand arcane senate procedure and don’t care. There is a certain degree of insulation from blowback no matter what.
If we take this road, we need to get the framing right and lay the foundation so this doesn’t blow up in our face. Stage one is to have the entire democratic caucus on message about the need for “political reform” and “fixing gridlock.” At the same time, a few trial baloons are floated in the elite press for some minor tweaks (perhaps not abolishing the filibuster, but abolishing holds, for example), then the last stage is a package of legislative reforms that gets labeled “Political Reform.” Anytime anybody mentions it, they just say they are in favor of “Political Reform.” Those that attack it are against “Political Reform” and in favor of “Partisan Gridlock” and the “Status Quo.”
Unless the public can be sufficiently motivated here, the endgame of all this is Obama and the leadership back off pushing these reforms and the GOP just agrees to behave, ie use filibusters and holds, etc in the manners and amounts typical in the modern history of the Senate.
But Obama and the dems are already being labeled as extremists and maoists, etc so I’m not sure what the difference is.
I guess the major difference is that right now the words aren’t really coupled with overt actions. Right now it’s talk.
The incremental approach you describe makes sense. My fear is that the caucus remaining disciplined and on-message could be nothing more than wishful thinking. Though anything is possible I guess, even with Democrats. They are going to need a lot more steel in their spine for a fight like this than they have characteristically shown in the past.
I really don’t think they would ever get by with “trial balloons” to the press about “minor tweaks” without setting the scream machine in motion. And we know that when a Republican screams, the stenographers come running with their camera people in tow to dutifully transcribe and broadcast it verbatim.
This might be a lot easier venture if there was any kind of enthusiasm among the base. But without some kind of push from the bottom up, the tendency of many Dem reps to naturally drift to the right in the face of controversy would likely win out.
Good points. I doubt the caucus has the stomach for it either, just laying out how I think we could get there if we could somehow get 1/10th the party discipline of the GOP.
As for grassroots support, Im more optimistic on that front. Im confident that the netroots and labor will ultimately form a grassroots alliance which, beyond as far as national politics are concerned will have the following priorities, in order of importance:
Remember, the netroots have only been in existence since 2004 so its still evolving. Labor as well is finally finding new footing now that the neoliberal/Reagan approach has somewhat been discredited by the financial crisis.
What I think we have learned is that making a priority “electing more dems” is not that useful, given the paradoxes we’ve seen of having 60 votes in the senate. Moreover, I think there’s limits to the extent the netroots and labor can successfully influence the passage of legislation while our institutions are so inefficient and corrupt. Booman has done a great job making a case that all the activism from the netroots and outside groups on HCR has done more harm than good given the current makeup of our caucus and the current rules in place in the senate.
A bit off topic, I apologize, but certainly enjoy the back and forth.
What scares me about changing the rules is how quickly they will be used against us when the Republicans gain power again, which I think could happen as soon as 2012.
From TPM.
You can bet that when a Democrat finally calls it for what it is, they will be portrayed as “shrill” and “angry”. Just ask Anthony Weiner of NY.
Again, excellent.
The most frustrating thing is you know, you KNOW the Dems will not respond in kind when they lose the senate. They will compromise and prevaricate and capitulate.
I hate our side more than theirs. I understand their side. I do not understand ours.