How would Obama be doing if he hadn’t locked in some establishment support by naming Hillary Clinton to his cabinet and bringing in some moderate Republicans, too?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Replacing them with who? I think the better question is why so many Goldman flunkies at Treasury. Or do you think Atrios is full of it?
Those Goldman flunkies are nominal Democrats.
You mean like Ben Nelson? Great friends they are!!
Treasury is always full of Goldman flunkies. The US Treasury is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.
We wouldn’t have a Secretary of Defense talking about budget cuts as necessary to lower the deficit and not be shouted down by the GOP.
We wouldn’t have a rail program as far along.
We wouldn’t have been able to put a Democrat in the Commerce Department.
We wouldn’t have turned some Congressional seats blue.
We would have been hearing about rifts between Clinton and Obama nonstop in the media.
Congress would have had information about the numbers on healthcare reform only from the lobbyists.
We wouldn’t have gotten rid of McChrystal and had Petraeus actually have to do something instead of lobbying Congress for promotions.
There is an old saying:
I do believe that Obama understands this, even if it is hard for impatient progressives to grasp.
TarheelDem, if you don’t stop making so much sense, I’m going to have stop blaming Obama for everything and start blaming YOU! 🙂
We wouldn’t have a Secretary of Defense talking about budget cuts as necessary to lower the deficit and not be shouted down by the GOP.
I don’t know. Do we have any idea who the next SecDef would be? I know Spencer Ackerman thinks he knows but I don’t hear anyone else talking about it.
We wouldn’t have a rail program as far along.
Really? Just because Ray LaHood is running things?
We wouldn’t have been able to put a Democrat in the Commerce Department.
Does this even matter? Look at this recent history of this Department. DLC Democrats usually get this position. So, I could care less about this.
We wouldn’t have turned some Congressional seats blue.
And we lost the chance to turn some Senate seats(Kansas, Arizona) blue. So it’s a double edged sword.
We would have been hearing about rifts between Clinton and Obama nonstop in the media.
They’d be easily ignored. This would be one area I am sure the Obama press shop would ignore the TradMed on.
Congress would have had information about the numbers on health care reform only from the lobbyists.
What? I am not sure I understand what you are getting at here.
We wouldn’t have gotten rid of McChrystal and had Petraeus actually have to do something instead of lobbying Congress for promotions.
What higher promotion could have Petraeus lobbied for? Isn’t he already a 4-star? I don’t see what’s the point of this either. I’m not sure either guy could/can make chicken salad out of chicken shit
Let me go over this. A Democratic Secretary of Defense could not ask for cuts in the Defense budget without there being a major political firestorm.
LaHood is as committed to rail as Joe Biden. Someone else would probably be trying to keep building highways.
The Commerce department has some interesting responsibilities (NOAA, the Census, Bureau of Economic Analysis, economic development assistance–a major source of pork for Congress, Patent and Trademark office, and more). Having an ex-governor in there instead of a business executive or Judd Gregg makes a difference.
You have a point about the Senate seats but those appointments were worth it to the nation. There is a reason that the GOP has tried to smear Janet Napolitano. And Kathleen Sibelius is an excellent choice to oversee the writing of the regulations for the healthcare reform act. And lightning could strike in either of those states, given the GOP primaries.
I’m not sure that Obama could get away ignoring media reports about a rift between him and Hillary Clinton. It would be a continuing theme, just as it was in the primary.
On healthcare, there would not have been the extensive data that Orszag developed feeding into the numbers process. Congresscritters could make claims and not have another source that disputed them. The problem in the Baucus committee is that he was disinclined to use this data, preferring instead the data that his Wellpoint VP aide who drafted the bill brought in.
On Petraeus and McChrystal. McChrystal definitely would not have retired after failing to do what he said he could do. And now Petraeus is being given the same task and he very well might be failing; it’s a put-up-or-shut-up moment for Petraeus. One in which chair of the Joint Chiefs is on the line. Or the Presidency.
How would our chances of holding the senate look if Obama didn’t choose a half dozen sitting senators to be his running mate/ cabinet secretaries?
I agree on Gates- that was a shrewd move, but Clinton was just about co-opting a potential enemy- don’t think it was done with an eye towards locking in establisment support.
I hate the what-if game, but I’m not entirely positive things would be worse off if Obama had just attempted to govern as an unapologetic progressive from day one and gotten tough with any of the conservadems that got in his way. You always say that Nelson, Lincoln and Lieberman would just bolt the party and caucus with the GOP, but I’m not so sure- no one’s ever called their bluff.
How would our chances of holding the senate look if Obama didn’t choose a half dozen sitting senators to be his running mate/ cabinet secretaries?
We’d be at 61 if we held serve. Kansas(Seriously!) and Arizona(Yes .. she was polling even with McCain .. and this was when he was running for Prez) were good chances to switch.
While I’m 100% behind Booman’s efforts to constantly remind the world of Obama’s policy accomplishments, I still think its important to keep in mind that Obama has made some political missteps that are coming back to haunt him, one of which was raiding our Senate caucus for administration jobs. If the Senate was never really in play (and do the math, if Biden and Salazar were still in the Senate to lock down DE and CO, with Kansas and Arizona possible pick ups, the potential for a GOP takeover would have been zero) the party of no strategy may never have gotten off the ground. Hindsight 20/20 and all, but I still don’t understand why he did what he did.
The Colorado GOP appears to be imploding, so it looks like we lucked out there. Delaware is still dicey, but you are right … to use Biden’s famous words .. 😉
frankly, given his past voting record, gang of 14, wtc, we’re better off without salazar. bennet hasn’t been that bad, and contrary to some of the pollsters and pundits who would like you tobelieve co’s in play, l see very little chance that the seat will turn republican in november.
the biggest question right nowis who the dem candidate will be; bennet or romanoff.
the republican bench here is very weak. norton and buck are both batshit crazies. and the governor’s race will, l think, drive up the democratic gotv numbers substantially. especially now that tancredo’s in it.
talk about a circus, mcginnis, maes and tancredo…it’s certainly been interesting so far.
here’s coloradopols latest lines on the races.
better off without Ken “hey BP, wanna run MMS? Hey have a lease!” Salazar in the senate?
well, i’d agree with that… but not with putting him in charge of the interiorm, which he promised to clean up but didn’t.
sure we may defend DE and CO, and maybe we never would have won AZ with Napolitano or KS with Sebelius. But I’d argue that the perception is really all that matters, at least when it comes to trying to break filibusters. The party of no strategy has been devastating to the prospect of passing progressive legislation and a key component of that strategy is the hope that it works well enough to take back at least one of the houses of congress. Back in January or so when Scott Brown won and everyone started thinking the dems may actually lose the Senate, it made it that much easier for McConnell to get his caucus to hold the line because taking back the senate was in reach! If the Senate was never even conceivably in reach, maybe the 5 or so sane members of the republican caucus may have just put the politics of the party of no strategy aside and focused on passing watered down legislation.
jcbhan, opinions differ (and rightly so) on whether Obama should have plucked so many Senators for Cabinet posts. As to why he did, I can think of at least two reasons:
As an aside, an under-reported reason for the collapse of the Republican moderates is Obama’s quick co-opting of many of them, e.g., LaHood to transportation, McHugh to Secretary of the Army, keeping Gates at Defense to wind down the Iraq War.
thanks for the well-thought out response. all good points- Obama certainly had a lot of good reasons for recruiting some of the best and brightest in the senate (or on their way to the senate) to serve in the executive. and admittedly, sebelius was his back up thanks to daschle’s sketchy ways.
And your final point is very well taken- a lot of the “good-faith” moderate republicans did join get pulled into the Obama administration as well, and the moderate republicans in the senate lost in the 2006 and 2008 dem wave elections, leaving a huge vacuum that the far right part of the caucus filled.
BUT those actions, whether foreseeable or not, whether “worth” the added benefits of having qualified, diverse members of his cabinet, had some serious adverse effects on the prospect of passing progressive legislation. Maybe that’s unfair to dump on Obama, maybe its not.
Booman picks a lot of constructive fights with progressive bloggers who do more harm than good by trashing on Obama and I think he’s fighting the good fight with that approach. However, I don’t think he acknowledges often enough that the progressives were the ones who saw the Party of No strategy coming from a mile away – they would have surely advised Obama that he needed all the padding he could get in the Senate given the MO of McConnel, Demint, Coburn et al. The progressives do sometimes get the politics right, even if guys like Booman and Al Giordano thinks we’re a bunch of babies.
jcbhan, thanks for the post. I think you’re right that Obama, and many others (including me), underestimated the willingness and ability of the Senate Republicans to make the “party of no” strategy work.
Speaking just for myself, the NAACP’s resolution calling for tea party movement to separate themselves from the racists is a good recent example of how progressives can focus our frustration and anger at the slow (to us) pace of change.
Obama is not our enemy. Neither is Rahm Emmanuel, nor Harry Reid. We should be figuring out how to pick fights with Mitch McConnell, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, BP, Bank of America, etc., that force them on the defensive, and that create more space for Obama to operate effectively in the center-left position he’s consistently favored.
We would not be at 61 until this fall. We would not have had the advantages of those seats during the past two years.
Exactly the same. Hillary was a non-entity in the Senate and the idea that she would have been a mover after the 2008 election is pretty silly IMO.
On a related note, there has been a movement in the netroots lately to try to undermine Obama by saying Hillary would have been a better president or that she is actually responsible for Obama’s achievements. Both are absurd ideas.
Re Hillary, I don’t think there was ever an option for the newly elected Obama not to offer her a major post, particularly after not picking her for VP. Offering her SoS completed the healing process begun as the primaries formally ended in the spring, and not offering it or similar would have meant the new admin would have started out with one major part of its political support structure in shaky status.
Re bringing in moderate Repubs vs Dems holding those slots, a respected ex-military type like Gen Wesley Clark would have cred with the public in implementing substantial Pentagon cuts, particularly in the economic crisis situation post-election, and also today. Also, if it could have been worked out carefully in advance with agreement from both sides on downsizing the Defense Dept, a bipartisanly-respected establishment guy like Sam Nunn could have brought about change. Probably a few others out there too.
Generally, in the defense/nat’l security areas, Obama went surprisingly strong towards appeasing the mod-conservative political establishment, and has largely governed accordingly, maintaining the status quo from the previous admin to an alarming, and unnecessary, degree. People voted for a type of meaningful Change that Obama loudly advertised — not BushLite.
As for the rest, overall Obama has governed far too much with an eye to pleasing mod Repubs or getting their senate votes in a low-risk/don’t lose game of modest legislating, instead of focusing on a bolder reform vision, backed by a more prominent bully pulpit approach that passionately engaged the majority that voted for him, and that also allowed for the occasional principled and well-played loss.
From here on out, he needs to stop worrying about what the Establishment or Repubs or Fox News will say, and begin to stand up for the things we voted him to office to get done.