I don’t understand why the House Democrats cannot make up their minds about whether or not to hold a vote on extending the income tax cuts for the middle class. Just do it, you morons. There is no help for the lunkheads in the Senate, but that’s no reason to emulate them. Make the Republicans vote against tax cuts on the eve of the election. Do it under a suspension of the rules (requiring two-thirds to pass) so that no amendments can be introduced. And then we’ll talk about which party is looking out for average folks and which party is looking out for millionaires and billionaires.
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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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Republicans are already talking about how the Democrats are raising taxes, such as Orrin Hatch. They’ll do it no matter what they do. No one could have predicted…
We are sacrificing principal to get Blue Dogs reelected then we act surprised when we were stabbed in the back.
I can’t understand why the Democrats aren’t putting out the message that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy were DESIGNED TO EXPIRE. The Republicans wrote the tax cut bill with the expiration provision included. So by letting the tax cuts expire, the Democrats would not be raising anyone’s taxes. They would simply be honoring the original intent of the bill drafted by the GOP.
The gossip seems to be that there is strife between Pelosi Dems and asshole coward Dems, leading to the appearance of indecisiveness. I still can’t believe that even Dems, at least in the House, could be stupid enough to pass on their best, maybe only, opportunity to turn this election around. The ads and speeches write themselves.
I think this sorry saga highlights the downside of the “more Democrats” mantra. Part of the problem is undoubtedly protecting asshole Dems from having to vote on an issue they’re afraid of either because they’re too terminally stupid to sell a winning message or simply because they’re too corrupt to turn on their paymasters. The leftblog sector has seriously underestimated the damage these moles do to the party’s prospects.
I think Pelosi is going to bring the tax bill to a vote before the election. Anybody have thoughts about what would happen with the Senate if the House went ahead? Would they be forced to do the same, or would they just go down not fighting as usual?
Right on. Good for Pelosi she is true blue.
This calls for some brutally enforced message discipline. Isn’t that what Emanuel and Axelrod are there to do? While I think the tide has turned–pressure on House members from constituents–and a vote will be happening in the House before the election, the fact that it hasn’t happened YET makes me wonder about two possibilities: that internal Dem polling is already showing significant momentum in our direction–possible–or that it’s revealing real problems getting enough votes in line. Either way, I agree that this is the downside of the 50-state strategy that dragged in some Blue Dogs, and it shows that the big “governing majorities” in both the House and Senate were never really that. We should never allowed that meme to sink in the way it did.
There were only 60 Democratic votes in the Senate for a brief period, remember. Frankin wasn’t seated for months, and Kennedy and Byrd were ailing before Kennedy passed away. Would that the majority of the progressive blogosphere could wrap their minds around that and get out there to help retain something for Obama to work with the next two years.
If only the soul-searching over the midterms could take place NOW rather than after a bad result. There is an urgent need to get on top of messaging–this is the one area where we should have learned long ago from the Republican example. There are countless examples of how they beat us like a drum simply with superior phrase making that gets adopted not only by the corporate media, but by Dems themselves. Pro-choice vs. Pro-life–bad formulation; raising taxes vs. tax “relief”; etc., etc. And then to have to see Dem leaders and spokesmen at press conferences or on cable rambling and struggling to explain things that need to be direct and visceral. Obama’s got his own problems with this, but he’s done a lot to get better. The ultimate blame for this failure is on all of us because it has been going on for decades now, and it must stop.
“More Dems” was a noble experiment pushed by liberals including Boo and Kos. It sounded reasonable, but now we’re seeing the hidden costs: when you incorporate the weak, corrupt, and incompetent, you’re saddled with protecting them. They become a roadblock to a winning agenda for the party as a whole. It’s time to learn from the failure and start applying some ideological triage, beginning with 2012.
Does anyone have any info on how much these tax cuts are going to cost? I read one tidbit that the middle class cut will cost over a trillion dollars.
Personally, I want all the cuts to expire with no exensions for anyone. Tax cuts are evil.
I read the middle class tax cuts will cost 3.3 trillion over 10 years. I do not know how much for just 2 years.
That’s pretty simplistic. To my mind, taxes are way to high on low incomes and way to low on high incomes. Tax cuts and tax increases are, in a sane society, simply means of achieving rational distribution of resources.
$1 trillion over what time period? 10 years? That’s the way the CBO usually scores it.
The middle class tax cut isn’t. It just avoids pulling the rug out from under growing demand as employment slowly every so slowly crawls out of the ditch.
The extension of the tax cut for the wealthy goes directly into Wall Street paper.
But…but…but…it would put Blue Dogs in a bind.</snark>
Can Nancy get a majority of Democrats to vote for the Obama tax cuts without the Bush tax cuts? Does Obama even want the Bush tax cuts to expire? He could have ignored this whole either or thing by announicing that the Bush cuts are set to expire and he was proposing new tax cuts. Period. Make the Republicans say “What about people making over $250,000?” Then there is only one bill. But Obama came up with this two bill bullshit.
My prediction is the tax tax rates will stay as they are or go down. The little guy will get it in the neck. Democrats are as much corporate whores as Republicans. A plague on both their houses.
Suspension of the rules takes 290 votes. Democrats, because of two open seats, have 253 votes.
Which 47 Republicans can be stampeded into voting to suspend the rules?
Because Republicans can complain about not being able to offer amendments to expand it to (cough) all taxpayers. Just as they have argued in the Senate. How does that entrap the Republicans without some very strong Democratic messaging?
And if you offer it without suspension of the rules, Blue Dogs will join with Republicans to send it back to committee to add the tax cuts for the rich.
The only way you can get it through is to have a unified front against Republican amendments under the Rule and then a unified front to pass just the middle class tax cuts. Somebody is going to have to kick Steny Hoyer in the butt and get him to twist some Blue Dog arms.
And it would help if it was not an extension but an Obama tax cut that does slightly more than just an extension. Like balancing it with a prohibition of tax deductions for shipping jobs overseas.
I have two words for you, BooMan: I agree.
What I was trying to articulate in a post above in this thread about ongoing messaging problems is outlined in great detail in George Lakoff’s post this morning on KOS:
<http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/9/27/905596/-Why-The-Democrats-Response-to-the-Pledge-Has-Been-Inadequate>
“… liberals should never use conservative language (e.g., “tax relief” and “entitlements”) because it activates conservative frames and weakens their own case. Liberals should not “move to the right” and adopt conservative positions since that will only make bi-conceptuals more likely to vote conservative. The reason is that conservative language and ideas just strengthen the conservative circuitry in their brains and weakens their liberal brain-circuitry….Many Democrats work with a major disadvantage: They tend to have an inadequate view of human reason. Human brains work via frames, metaphors, images, emotions, stereotypes and narratives, all of which have their own “logics.” Brains work by adjustment of baseline expectations upward in response to improvements, and by risk aversion. And brains use mutual inhibition, which allows them to hold contradictory moral views at once and apply them to different cases.”