I hear a lot of lazy talk about how the president isn’t a fighter and doesn’t even try to get stronger bills. But we don’t know what goes on behind the scenes:
As a chairman who spent months shepherding both healthcare and energy legislation through his committee, [Henry] Waxman doesn’t express much sympathy for Democrats who took weeks, if not months, to decide how to vote on the high-profile bills.
He tells a story he heard about President Obama showing some tough love to a wavering Democrat, whom he did not identify. The member, Waxman said, told the president: “ ‘If I vote for what you want, I’m just going to lose.’
“And the president said, ‘Look at you, look how you’re reacting. It’s almost as if you’ve lost already. You’ve got to have fight. You’ve got to fight for what you want to do here, and then you’ve got to fight to get elected, and convince your constituents that this is what is in their interest and it’s important.’ ”
So did Obama get the lawmaker’s vote? “I’ll tell you after the election,” Waxman quipped.
Waxman shares my view of the administration.
Unlike many on the left, Waxman is “very pleased with this administration.”
Waxman has worked extensively with the White House during the 111th Congress. Phil Schiliro, Waxman’s longtime aide, now serves as Obama’s chief liaison to Congress.
“I give [the administration] high marks,” he said. Waxman lauded Obama’s skills both as a public spokesman for his ambitious agenda and his behind-the-scenes handling of Congress.
“My frustration,” Waxman said, “is more with members of Congress than with the administration.”Specifically, he is fed up with the Senate and what he calls “the tyranny of 60 votes.”
But it isn’t just the Senate that is annoying Waxman.
“I think a lot of the House seats we’re going to lose are those who have been the toughest for the Democrats to pull into line — the Democrats that have been the most difficult,” Waxman said…
…As Waxman sees it, the fractious coalition of Democrats that House leaders have cobbled together to pass sweeping healthcare and energy bills is not markedly different from the bipartisanship of the past, when Democrats partnered with centrist and liberal Republicans, whom Waxman says are “practically nonexistent at the moment.”
“We’ve been trying to get the Democratic conservatives together with the rest of the Democratic Party, so in effect we’ve gotten bipartisan support among Democrats in the House,” the chairman said with a laugh.
His idea, which I am not sold on, is that the Republicans will lose some of their cohesiveness by winning some marginal seats. And that will compel them to set vulnerable members free to cross the aisle. Essentially, under this theory, the ideological balance of Congress won’t actually change much even if a bunch of ‘D’s are swapped for ‘R’s. I see very few moderate Republicans winning primaries (or even running in them) so I doubt Waxman is right in his analysis. Maybe in the Senate we might see the moderate caucus grow by one or two members, but I don’t see it happening in the House at all. Some of our marginal Democrats don’t seem to understand the need to stimulate the economy by any means necessary, but they’re a far sight better than the Republicans who would replace them.
