For the first time in years I am going to direct you to an article at The New Republic. Jonathan Cohn has something to say that you should hear. Here’s a teaser:
…consider what happened after the climate change vote in the House last year. When Democrats went back to their districts, conservatives pummeled them–in person and on the air–while liberals just shrugged. And consider what happened after the health care bill passed: Conservatives went into overdrive about socialized medicine, while liberals kept talking about what a lousy bill it was.
It needs to be repeated. So, I’ll keep repeating it. We’re in a brutal brawl, but, ironically, the left and the right are largely on the same side of the fight.
If Obama had fought for something worthwhile all the shrugging liberals would have more passion for brutal brawls.
tell it to Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson.
were able to neuter the bill, they did it with Barack Obama handing them the surgical tools.
People don’t follow unless somebody leads.
Some people follow the almighty dollar, Ed. Some people will follow it straight into toxic water in their home states.
And who expended money and reputation in support of Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln?
And still, you folks of this disgruntled set denounce Obama’s lack of fight, yet can produce no evidence – whatsoever – that he could have gotten a better health care, a better stimulus, better financial reform out of the Senate. None. Your knee-jerk arguments on this score reek of petulance and self-aggrandizement, and are about as legitimate as Sarah Palin’s death panels.
That’s pretty strong language, isn’t it?
Maybe – maybe it is too strong. But I’m tired of seeing people throw out out these arguments about Obama’s weak performance, based on very abstract readings of recent history and their notions about Presidential power. And then fail to back up their arguments with hard evidence. How different is that from death panels? And yes, I do feel that many of the people offering these kinds of criticisms are being extremely petulant and self-aggrandizing. The Republicans are on the march and insane, and they’re acting like sullen little kids.
“self-aggrandizing” means? It certainly doesn’t apply to my comment. As to petulance – rude in speech or behavior – see your comments.
I’ll leave others to decide that. But notice: you make no attempt to address the substance of my comment. I assume that’s because your argument doesn’t carry water, and you know it.
Yet he was able to get 3/4 of the House to vote for more war. I wonder why? Yes, we have tons of evidence. Do you think Rahm lies when he says that he doesn’t give a shit what passes as long as something does? That’s not a recipe for good outcomes. We should we clap louder for an increased MIC/Surveillance state? Why should we clap louder for 1990’s Heritage Foundation RomneyCare?
You’re totally avoiding what I wrote. On health care; on the stimulus; on financial reform. Show us how Obama, as President, could have succesfully brought stronger bills out of the Senate. Who’s arm could he have twisted, and how? What, exactly, were his mistakes? Not abstractions, not angry rhetorical questions, but real evidence. Prove me wrong. Given how worked up you people are about Obama’s supposed failures I wouldn’t think this kind of evidence would be that hard to find.
Can you find me the quote where Rahm says he doesn’t give a shit about policy?
That NYT Sunday magazine article a few months back. I’ll have to find the link.
I found it ..
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/magazine/14emanuel-t.html
If he cares about policy, why was he always trying to get Republicans to run as Democrats when he was at the DCCC?
Right.
So you give me an eight page profile on Emanuel that Emanuel refused to participate in in any way and ask me to go find the quote. The quote doesn’t actually exist. He didn’t say it. A couple of other people described him as a take-what-you-can-get kind of guy. But the reporter acknowledged that he was a wonk.
In any case, this is what matters.
not sure what you’re getting at about voting for more war. congresscritters love to vote for more war, they think it shows they’re “strong on national security.” voting for something big corporations [read: donors] oppose is another matter.
Not that your pot calling the kettle black post deserves a reply, but do you have evidence that he couldn’t? Is there any reason at all to look for evidence that he couldn’t have won as easy a battle as the death panels provided? Really?
I won’t go so far as to say that he couldn’t have gotten slightly better bills on those three issues, but there is plenty of evidence that he couldn’t go much larger on stimulus, that the health care bill only passed in a two-step process and was lucky to pass at all, and that the Wall Street Reforms were about as strong as he could hope for.
The Stimulus Bill passed pre-Al Franken, and without the benefit of Teddy Kennedy’s vote. It got 60 votes because then-Republican Specter, Snowe, and Collins voted for it. Those three were not going higher, nor would have Ben Nelson and a handful of other Democrats.
The Health Care bill [passed http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&sessio
n=1&vote=00396 in] two stages. The first stage was on Christmas Eve 2009 when we had 60 members of our caucus. No Republicans voted for it. The second was several months later when we only had 59 members of our caucus. On the second vote, we only got 56 votes, but that didn’t matter because it was a reconciliation bill that couldn’t be filibustered. Blanche Lincoln, Mark Pryor, and Ben Nelson voted against the bill, and no Republicans supported it. Efforts to stengthen the bill by putting a public option in the base bill were beaten back by Democratic moderates, and Lieberman spiked the idea of an expansion of Medicare because it something that Anthony Weiner and the blogosphere thought was a good idea.
The Wall Street Reforms passed with 59 votes (including Grassley, Snowe, and Collins, but not including Feingold or Cantwell). Specter voted for cloture but not for the bill because he was still smarting from losing his job the night before.
So, there are the numbers. Not a lot of wiggle room. With the exception of the Christmas Eve vote and the reconciliation vote, we needed Republicans for all of them. So, getting something more required convincing one-to-three Republicans to side with us. Is that evidence compelling to you at all, or was their magic pixie-dust that Obama could have waived around to scare his political enemies and corporate Democrats to give him more?
It is a partial bill. The fight is not over. And I suspect without a way to know that Obama carries on his fights outside of the public eye.
It’s time to say that it needs to be fixed in this, this, and this way instead focusing so much on the past. Laws can be amended, but only if you have folks elected to Congress who want to amend instead of repeal the bill.
What is strange is that liberals/progressives/left have not figured out that the Republican tactics have left every Republican exposed — just as they were in 2006 and 2008. That means that it is possible with sufficient effort to bring some symbolic Republicans down: John Boehner, Michelle Bachmann, Virginia Foxx, Sue Myrick, Joe “You Lie” Wilson, Chuck Grassley,…all of these have credible Democratic opponents who could use some support.
Instead folks are focused on feeding the Blue Dogs to the wolves, an admirable project in the right time. This is not the right time. First, you get a progressive majority and then you primary out the Blue Dogs. One would think no one has a sense of the political history of how the GOP conservatives gained power. If Reagan was the un-FDR, Obama is the un-Reagan. The progressive wave is just beginning. A GOP victory in November cuts the legs right out from under it. That is why is it amazing that liberals are so willing to allow the GOP to win in November.
When Obama announced Guantanmo would close: yawn.
When the Senate voted 98/2 or whatever to prevent it: yawn
Lesson to Obama: left sux
When Obama diverted $60B of TARP money to save auto companies and stomped the bondholders in a way not seen in 50 years: yawn, whine.
When Obama appointed Van Jones to be Green Jobs czar: yawn
When RW attacked: yawn
When Obama caved: bitch bitch bitch
Obama would have to be dumb as a post to give a shit about the fickle, whiny, stab in the back, passive netroots. They are about as useful as a conscience on a republican.
When Obama appointed Van Jones to be Green Jobs czar: yawn
When RW attacked: yawn
They did? Do you have proof of that?
point me to the articles about demonstrations or even the strong defenses in the blogs.
You made a point first and I am asking you to prove it. You don’t get to come back then and tell me I need to prove my point. That’s just plain silly. It tells me you have nothing.
You want an article on something that didn’t happen. I’ve looked and don’t see any evidence of any action or even attempted action.
You’re slightly off on this one. Van Jones was the keynote speaker at the 2008 Netroots Nation conference, and his appointment and confirmation were met with applause by many in the blogosphere. It was a minor position compared to State, Defense, etc, but people noticed.
Bingo!! And people celebrated the fact that he appointed Jones and Hilda Solis.
BFD. It was unnoticed on Atrios, FDL, DKOS. And when he was attacked, I don’t recall any uproar in the netroots.
Harry Reid speaks at NN – it doesn’t carry much beyond that.
My point stands: the netroots have NEVER had Obama’s back for anything.
Hilda Solis is invisible in the netroots world.
http://www.broowaha.com/articles/5092/van-jones-the-green-collar-economy-czar-part-1
http://www.alternet.org/environment/142310/glenn_beck%27s_crazy_lies_about_van_jones/
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-07-30-van-jones-is-a-communist-intent-on-creating-private-sector-j
obs/
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=08&year=2009&base_name=glenn_becks_s
ources
Oh come on – how about a single A-list blog in netroots. And tapped is hardly a netroots blog. “Broowaha” ?!! These are all “I watched glen beck”. BFD.
Atrios, Dkos, FDL, etc.
I’m looking for a surge of activity either defending the administration under attack or supporting it for a progressive action that compares even partially with any number of tantrums.
Compare the level of activity on Van Jones appointment (ignored) or when he came under attack to the level of activity when Huffpo posted a story with an anonymous source claiming Timmy hates Elizabeth or to the Rahm “fucking stupid” line. Nobody A list said shit until Jones was fired and they could trot out their “craven” narrative.
That’s all your heralding? I rest my case
Maybe you are a Republican, you don’t seem to understand that we have 3 branches of government.
Exactly.
You know what’s a problem? That people want Obama to be a bruiser. They have some notion of what “fight” means and if he doesn’t fit that idea, then he isn’t really fighting. It doesn’t seem to be about outcomes but about style.
My sense is that he knows full well that if he is a “fighter” in a belligerent sense, that people will back away. It has never been his style. Those of you who think he needs to fight in public just don’t understand him or his background.
Don’t you remember how folks were wanting him to “fight back” against Hillary Clinton? They wanted more “spine”, or whatever language they used to define “fight.”
But what we have is someone who fights shrewd. He’s quiet. He uses his opponents power against themselves (a very aikido move). He fights only fights he really needs to fight.
So what I keep hearing is that some people here (and on TV and in the blogosphere) think that more open verbal sparring will bring greater progressive (or desired) outcomes. I just don’t see the evidence for that. Or do people want him to be a bully or arm-twister, like Bush or LBJ? It’s not who you elected.
Who you elected was a thoughtful, careful man who believes in incremental progressive change, who believes that comity trumps conflict, who believes that the electorate is intelligent enough to know the difference between results and obstruction, and so on. I think he believes that his good manners and quiet strength (ie., fighting argument by argument), will bring more and more people around in the long run — and he’s a big believer in the long run. Is that naive? Perhaps so. But the alternative is all-out warfare, all the time, and total gridlock, instead of the progress that has been made so far in 18 months, in terrible economic and political times, even if that progress isn’t every last iota of what the most leftist lefty wants.
Very well said, anegadagino.
Half the people who voted for Obama in November two years ago left the polling booth saying to themselves ‘Good. That’s done. Now we’ve got our Bush. Son-of-a-bitch better start breaking shit…” — and sat down to watch.
If they were paying attention, they knew he wasn’t going to break shit. And if they sat down to watch, they didn’t deserve to have shit broken for them.
I feel more sympathy for the people like my mom who steeled themselves to vote for The Negro, checked off the little box labeled ‘Reconciliation; Justice’ on their bucket lists and collapsed exhausted from the effort. If anything the latter are less of an irritant, because their motives were good, even if their vision was very limited.
“Half the people who voted for Obama in November two years ago left the polling booth saying to themselves ‘Good. That’s done. Now we’ve got our Bush. Son-of-a-bitch better start breaking shit…” — and sat down to watch.”
I hope you don’t really believe that crap.
I think Dems get the whole concept of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, but do you get that that doesn’t have to mean ceding the debate so that whats possible is less than it was when the debate started? Do you get that it now sounds more like an excuse than a strategy? They freaking lost easy battles because they wouldn’t speak out or even be bothered to get someone who would. They let the Death Panels spin work! How can one fail that bad?
And its not only that. You can mention each bill passed, but if you don’t count the losses in those bills than you are missing the point. Couldn’t somebody just throw us a freaking bone? Just one? I don’t care if they had put up a fight against the death panels lie and lost that battle. I just don’t want them to fall back on some excuse about the perfect and the good being enemies.
I don’t feel like voting for these guys for that and a dozen other reasons including not holding the last administration accountable for torture. These bills are really just the icing on the cake. That said, I also know the current stack of repugnicons are not going to do any better so vote for them I probably will. But until then they need to know that I am not beholden to them. I’ve given them a chance and so far I’m not so happy about what they did with that chance. Not because I don’t appreciate what they did pass but because I don’t appreciate not trying for the low hanging fruit. If they couldn’t see they were depressing their base–if they didn’t know that would be a problem–they need to go back to history class.
Just to be clear, the them in “so vote for them I probably will” is the Democrats.
I do believe that crap. Very much so. And you’re making it easier to believe it.
Then there is a nice white coat with arms that tie in the back with your name on it.
I don’t think you understand. We don’t want him to “start breaking shit” as another commenter replied to you. What I am looking for, and not just from him, is a defense of what should be Democratic party positions. What’s funny is that the Republicans(and even stupid business leaders) call him anti-business when he’s too much of the opposite. Like now, why hasn’t be pressed more for the Senate to do stuff about jobs?
Argh – this drives me up the fucking wall. What are the “Democratic Party Positions” that you’re talking about?
The Democratic Party is a fucking ruling class party. It is not a liberal party, it is not a labor party, it is not a green party. It has liberal members, it has labor member and it has green members but none of those are the priority for the party and if you’ve been watching politics for the last fucking century you would realize that the only position of the Democratic Party is to maintain the fucking status quo to a level that we don’t collapse into seething mass of chaos. And to fix the fuck-ups of the Republican Party when they get into power – mostly to try to reset things back to a level of status quo that keeps the nation from collapsing into a seething mess of chaos.
It’s what drove FDR to revamp the Democratic Party and push a very limited socialist agenda back in the 30s – preservation of the status quo so that he and his elite friends didn’t find themselves in the middle of a re-enactment of the French Revolution. It’s what drove LBJ to sign Civil Rights – stopping the South from devolving the country into a second Civil War. It’s what drove Bill Clinton’s entire agenda – fixing all the crap that Reagan broke while he was in office and trying to put the status quo back together again. And now it’s driving Obama’s agenda – fixing all the crap that W broke and trying to put together a stable status quo. yeah, it sucks. But that’s all that Democrats do when they’re in power – find ways to preserve the status quo.
People continue to make a mistake of thinking there’s such a thing as “Democratic Values” – there AREN’T. The Democratic Party does not have any values beyond “don’t break things, and try to fix things that Republicans broke”. The party reacts to social unrest – it doesn’t act. That’s not the kind of entity it is. It is not the fucking Republican Party – the Republican Party is an activist party that is out to disrupt the status quo. It has a purity of ideology and mission that the Democratic Party doesn’t have.
If you want the Democratic Party to do shit you have to organize outside of the Democratic Party and then push them to do it – electing people only gets you so far because even when individuals in the party want change the party apparatus itself holds them back. You have to force change onto the party from the outside. That’s how the labor movement got its way, that’s how the civil rights movement got its way, and that’s how the gay rights movement has been making strides for these last decades. As a party, the Democratic Party has next to nothing to do with those gains – it was all about people outside the party organizing and forcing the party to accept a change to the status quo.
If you want a liberal agenda enacted, electing Democrats is only half of the solution – you have to make your agenda items so popular that NOT enacting them is political suicide and threatens to disrupt the status quo. That’s the only thing that the Democratic Party as a whole responds to, and that’s the only thing it has responded to for the last century. (And the reason why electing Democrats is even in the equation is because Republicans don’t give a rat’s ass about the status quo and would be quite happy to blow the whole thing to hell and go to a neo-feudalism ruled by a king if it meant their taxes would go down in the process. So Democrats are in the equation because one of our political parties is bugfuck insane.)
But it’s really unpleasant to understand that the choice is between psychos and centrists who might be pushable with enough popular pressure. This also puts too much responsibility on the consumer, er, citizen.
What Atrios Said
by digby
I have often wondered about this myself:
I … don’t think the fortunes of Obama and Democrats depend much on how loudly I clap. More than that, if the volume of my clapping is that important then people should be spending a bit more time and money ensuring that I’ve got an adequate supply of hand lotion to keep my hands in peak clapping form.
I would certainly think that if liberal cheerleading is valuable they would at least refrain from using liberals as a doormat every time they want to appease some conservadem princeling. Depending on supporters’ masochism probably isn’t a great strategy.
Fight on principles, for main street not wall street, reverse the civil liberties violations that have only gotten worse, don’t appoint the former Well point CEO to run the debacle of a health insurance reform policy, ETC … And, we are with you. If not, don’t expect us to act like the blind Bush supporters. To me, that’s the hypocritical mindset of some here and with the democratic establishment. Amen
Krugman’s Friday column is out, and I am sure Boo is not going to be happy.:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/opinion/30krugman.html
During the campaign, Obama ran a technically competent campaign … but he also inspired people with a vision for ‘hope and change’.
As President, he’s running a technically competent administration … but he doesn’t seem to know how to promote these achievements in a manner that connects with his supporters.
Is a lot of this the corporate media’s fault? The right-wing going far, far to the right and unifying behind this nuttiness? A left-wing that complains about everything? Yes, yes and yes.
But I get the sense that they don’t really understand the severity of this disconnect, they’re a bit too sheltered inside the beltway bubble.
…far better than I.
Goldman Sachs and the Liberal Funk
And so I remain cold.
It’s been a learning experience for me, after decades of considering myself a “leftist” to learn during the primaries that Hillary Clinton was a left activist, and then to find out that Paul Volcker was a left economist, “market valuation” was a leftist fundamental principle, and that Keven Drum was a spokesman for the left. Who knew?
My number 1 goal before the financial collapse was a stop to Bush’s establishment of a permanent Republican fascist state. Check! Although the new kind of “leftists” seem anxious to reverse this.
Second level goals:
A. revive manufacturing/green energy. Drum and “real” leftists may not give a damn about unionized manufacturing, but I do – being a newly minted center-rightist or something. Plus DOE energy investments. Good start.
B. Justice Department to act against out of control racist cops. Great start.
C. Health care reform: Excellent start.
Things like big farm labor wins are great too.
I’m happy.
I’ve considered myself a “leftist” since I first registered to vote in the late ’80’s. I fought against Reagan, Gingrich, and then W. Hell, I almost voted for Nader in 2000! It sucks being a sellout corporate Republican lite lackey.