I like Bob Johnson’s take on why we had our asses handed to us last night, but one thing most liberals won’t admit is that the Republicans deserve a lot of credit. I know that it’s hard to give credit to a party that decided to obstruct everything even before Obama was sworn in, and in the midst of an almost unprecedented economic collapse of their own making, no less. It’s hard to credit an underground smear campaign to question the president’s religious faith and U.S. citizenship. It’s hard to credit a near-uniform decision to oppose a stimulus bill to give the economy a heartbeat again. It’s hard to take seriously, let alone credit, their decision to talk about pulling the plug on grandma. Their astroturfing of townhall meetings with shouting loons is hard to credit. Their characterization of the Wall Street reforms as another bailout is hard to credit. Their freakout on ACORN over some doctored film footage is hard to credit. It’s hard to give credit for their refusal to allow up or down votes for weeks on bills that they wound up supporting overwhelmingly. I could go on for quite a while listing the cynical and dilatory and dishonest things the Republicans have done since Obama became president, none of which are easy to credit. But, it worked.
They knew the left would get dispirited and frustrated and start fighting amongst themselves. They knew their own base would love it and reward them for it. They knew the media wouldn’t be an honest referee. They knew that in a bad economy, white majority America would respond to their ACORN/Henry Louis Gates Jr./New Black Panther Party/Shirley Sherrod/Health-Care-is-for-minorities/Sharia Law/Ground Zero mosque/illegal immigration themes. And they knew that if they only stuck to the plan, there wouldn’t be a damn thing the Democrats could do about it. And there wasn’t. They went scorched Earth, and if you’re honest, we didn’t have the tools to combat them.
So, before you go blaming this policy or that decision, be honest. The Republicans deserve a lot of the credit for their victory. They can be proud of themselves.
So how do we fight back? You’re in ChesCo, too, right Boo? Do you ever attend meetings of ChesCo Dems? I think I’m going to start. Given what I’ve read about the results here in the county, what is the point of the Dems even having an office here?
does Barack Obama bear ANY responsibility for what happened yesterday? You seem prepared to blame anyone or anything except the President.
It is abundantly clear that many of those who voted in 2008 did not turn out this year because they feel they’ve been let down.
Yes he does. He made the mistake of getting elected President.
Feeling you’ve been let down and actually being let down are two different things. The biggest problem with those who feel let down is they discount the Republicans strategy and the fact that Obama essentially was not negotiating with Republicans (or himself), he was negotiating with the factions in the Democratic caucus. And he had the most problems with the very folks who lost in greater numbers last night.
Many folks who voted in 2008 also didn’t turn out because they don’t think that midterms are important to government. They think if they elect the top guy, he can dictate to the rest of the government.
And in WI and VA, voter suppression efforts were targeted at students in addition to African-Americans.
Not quite so simple. If you promise hope and then the results look too much like the guy before who delivered hopelessness, then you’ve got a problem.
In a lot of the country Dems have a significant voter registration advantage over Repubs. That should say something. When Dems underperform then Dem voters try something else or more likely stay home.
Obama has functioned like a DLC Dem, and as Harry Truman said, when voters get to choose between a Republican and a Democrat who acts like a Republican they go for the real deal.
The mainstream actually is to the left of Obama on the wars, the economy, healthcare. He didn’t deliver. He performed like Clinton, whom history will judge as the most effective Republican President of the 20th Century.
But as I’ve said before Left v. Right obscures people’s motives. Everyone should switch to Top v. Bottom. Follow the money.
The promises of hope were an attempt to change the tenor of political discussion, just like the Stewart/Colbert rally intended to do. That it has not succeeded is not entirely Barack Obama’s fault. The right-wing in this country and its media enablers don’t intend to change the tenor of political discussion; without anger and fear, they lose and lose big.
Obama functioned like a DLC Dem because that is where the centerpoint of Congressional Democrats was–in the New Dem caucus. That changed on Tuesday night; the centerpoint of the Congressional Democrats moved leftward.
If you follow the money, it moved decisively to Republicans because of the signature issues that Obama got passed and because the GOP is good at extorting funds from the monied. You heard about their threat to Wal-Mart, did you not?
The mainstream of the country on an issue-by-issue basis is to the left of what was actually passed by the Congress. But they have no way of knowing that because the media and the Republicans have lied about what was in the bills — death panels, government takeover of health care, keeping Wall Street from investing, bailouts. On every one of these items, the mainstream believes something that is not true.
If you are in purple or red Congressional Districts this would be very plain to you. Folks with the luxury of being in progressive strongholds really don’t understand the media Iron Curtain that exists in most of the geography of the country. One needs only look at how judges who ruled in favor of same-sex marraige in Iowa got unceremoniously dumped because of an out-of-state-financed campaign. And in spite of mainstream opinion in Iowa that was tolerant of or supported the judge’s decision.
Our base turned out in the usual numbers. The Republican base turned out in numbers that were halfway between midterm strength and Presidential election strength. This of course varied immensely depending on where you were. NC lost one New Democrat, no Blue Dogs, no unaffiliated (Kissell), and no progressives. Brad Miller was re-elected despite the fact that there was a Republican sweep in Wake County (Raleigh), driven by a neighborhood-schools campaign.
The fact is that the mainstream thinks that it is way to the right of Obama on all of the issues he has been addressing. Democratic messaging is not getting through except for those messages expressing compromise with Republicans.
Obama’s news conference yesterday would have been reported as a media hissy fit if he started talking tough and insisting on more liberal policies. And the New Democrats in the House, like Yarmuth (KY) or ConservaDems in the Senate like Nelson (NE), would immediately get air time to criticize the President’s tone.
Harry Truman was right. Just ask for confirmation from all of the Blue Dogs who lost. Of course in the process we lost some progressives in Republican districts who weren’t pretending to be Republicans.
Pardon me for jumping in.
This election was not primarily — IMO — about what supporters believed, not that their beliefs are irrelevant. I agree that Obama could have/perhaps should have stayed on a permanent campaign footing in order to sell his actions but actually governing is not a bad thing.
I see the situation as playing defense after playing offense for years. Wave elections are common when a number of factors come together, such as after gaining control of the executive and legislative branch or/and in conjunction with a severe economic downturn.
The Tea Party was ridiculed but it served an important priming function that elicited involvement by the Right in the process. The exit data show an interesting profile. The turnout was very old and white when compared to 08, even moreso than in a normal mid-term — apparently. The voter registration numbers are still high for Dems but that represents represents a bulked up number from 08 rather than an indication of their likeliness to vote. The rebound in Republican self-identification (not official registration) shows that the de-alignment by many Repubs was transient, which could be anticipated. However, the Tea Party movement itself is a sign of a growing fracture within the GOP even though it comes at a time of relative success rather than failure.
I can’t get excited about Dem registration advantages in many places because it’s a mirage. New Mexico has has had a Dem. advantage for years but that has never translated into an advantage under the left/right political spectrum or in voting behavior. My interpretation has always been that blue dog areas of the country bulk up numbers but don’t lead to the advantage that the registration numbers suggest.
The last factor I see is an evolving communications landscape in which low information voters are as susceptible as ever to false consciousness when faced with a concerted and very well funded negative branding campaign. The Obama coalition was a fragile coalition that existed in opposition to Bush. It lacked a true common purpose that would survive the obstruction and ongoing disinformation campaign that was leveled against its goals. I think criticism of Obama is quite fair but if this was the result of attempting to pass a reduced agenda then think of what an ambitious agenda would have brought.
My point here is that the attention to the internal dynamics of the Obama coalition misses much of the action. I don’t think the current Republican coalition compares with previous versions.
Sure. Obama wasted precious time on health care. He should have cut a deal early on once he knew his own caucus wouldn’t muscle it home with a public option. He could have gotten health care passed no later than late September, once Kirk was seated. Instead he dicked around letting everyone keep the illusion that we could get a proper health care bill passed while Grassley talked about killing grandma. The big mistake was letting it look like he didn’t give a shit about the economy for like eight months. But, other than that, I don’t have too much to fault him for. He couldn’t have gotten a significantly bigger stimulus, again, because of his own party, but also because Specter was forced out of the GOP for voting for the bill as it was. I agree with Duncan that more should have been done on foreclosures, but the problem is really bigger than our ability to wave some magic wand to fix it. One thing I am not a fan of is making yourself look impotent. Don’t demand what the opposition can effortlessly deny you. If you go all-in make sure you’ve got a straight flush. Because once you look impotent, you’re done as a president. It happened to Carter, but it didn’t happen to Reagan or Clinton. And the reason they survived is that they figured out a way to either split the opposition or to take credit for the accomplishments.
Obama’s agenda is effectively done unless he wins reelection and the Dems hold the Senate and retake the House. So, that’s what we’ve got to work toward.
I just don’t agree about the straight flush part. If you make bold proposals which are defeated by a “just say no” opposition you don’t look impotent – you make them look like obstructionists.
Unfortunately, it all depends on the media narrative. And who writes the media narrative? (Discuss.)
An important part of the equation.
May I suggest Christopher Simpson’s THE SCIENCE OF COERCION as required reading?
Thanks for the tip, Bob.
I’ll trade you:
PUBLIC OPINION (free on-line edition)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/897350/Public-Opinion-by-Walter-Lippmann
I wouldn’t think they didn’t vote because of being let down. They didn’t vote because they don’t usually vote, or have only voted once, for Barack Obama. And they don’t follow politics all that much. And nothing that happened inspired them to vote. There were MILLIONS of first time voters in 2008, and there could have been more who turned 18 in the 2 years since. But why would they go out to vote? It’s all been characterized as cartoonish and disgusting. And no one was inspiring to vote for in the way it was in 2008.
Those who were “disappointed” went out and voted anyhow, because to be disappointed you had to have paid attention. The others don’t pay attention.
Are you punching a hippie here? The Republicans didn’t “know” that the left would fight among themselves.
They knew they would have a fight and took it on.
That the establishment dems didn’t lift a finger to fight it but instead adopted a policy of compromise first and ask questions later and didn’t make Lieberman (et al) pay a price for not just not supporting the policy but actively subverting it I suggest might – just might mind you – have had something more to do with it than a bunch of leftists (read: bloggers) that a million percent of the electorate have no idea exist.
So yeah the GOP deserves credit.
I don’t know about “the left” but they certainly knew that the Democrats would fight amongst themselves once they had power. Or at least they had a high probability of believing that it would happen. Because that’s what Democrats do. That’s what they’ve always done – at least as far back as I’ve watched politics and I suspect longer. Otherwise Will Rogers quote about not belonging to any organized political party wouldn’t resonate so much.
That’s what Democrats do – they’d rather argue with each other most of the time than argue with Republicans. I think it’s at least partly because Democrats view politics as a form of debate while Republicans view politics as a form of brawling, but there could be other reasons.
Anyway there was a very high probability that Democrats would fall to infighting – as they always do – and the Republicans bet on it. And when it happened they were prepared to reap the benefits.
(Imagine for a moment if the preening jackasses in the Senate Democratic caucus had come together to push for a huge Depression-era style stimulus jobs program. And they all worked together to make it happen. The Republicans would have been taken completely by surprise – and so would I. Because Democrats don’t operate that way, and haven’t for as long as I’ve watched politics).
Just so everyone knows the quote:
~Will Rogers
Hippie punching? Maybe. But probably not in the way you mean.
The delaying tactics of the Republicans were extremely frustrating. Their decision to deny Obama any support for just basic procedural stuff was infuriating. It forced him to abandon efforts to get dozens of nominees confirmed. It made his efforts to find compromise look naive. It got Democrats bickering among themselves about who was to blame, and why not enforce discipline, and why aren’t we railroading these guys, and why isn’t this bill as good as it needs to be, and so on. This was all very predictable, and it was half the point of the Party of No strategy.
Human beings being human beings, it isn’t hard to predict how they’ll act when their goals are frustrated. Democrats always fight among themselves anyway, but why not stoke the fire?
That we fell for it isn’t really our fault. We’re flawed. We’re impatient. We want what we want and we don’t want to be told why we can’t have it. So, yeah, the ‘hippies,’ if you will, fell right into their trap. I warned against it for a year and a half, but I might as well try to fight the wind. We are who we are, and pretending otherwise won’t earn us a thing.
Have you read Digby’s latest? She basically says that the Democrats have to vote as a bloc(no strays basically) or we are screwed. That means the Jim Webbs of the world better get with the program.
Nothing against her, but Digby is not and never has been on my reading list.
I don’t know why you don’t read her, but you should. If nothing else, she’s good on history. She knew that the Republicans would be the Party of No while the campaign of ’08 was still going on. She was also one of the first to accurately describe the Teabaggers as the modern day Birchers.
No I won’t give much credit. If the people wanted real change they would have given the Republicans the Senate too. The real credit goes to Sarah Palin for giving us O’Donnell as a Republican candidate.
In the end the Republicans will now share the blame for a bad economy. I doubt giving the Rich another tax cut will get much traction as that will be difficult to do and cut the deficit too. So Republicans will want to cut Social Security, medicare and subsidy to Farmers to balance the Budget.
So the Dems lose for being too Centrist and appeasing the republican minority. Lesson learned? Where Howard Dean when you need him?
The Republican will want the President and the Democrats to do the heavy lifting of cutting spending and raising taxes while they sit back and carp.
And the Bush tax cut extension is going to come up in lame duck session anyway. And Democrats still have control of both Houses there, although not filibuster-proof control of the Senate.
Despite the Oh Noes, the best thing to do would to let it all expire from the Republicans’ obstruction and plan tax cuts for when the economy has strengthened.
The Republicans want the tax cut on the rich not only because it is for the rich but because it adds to the deficit putting additional pressure on cutting Social Security and Medicare–their real targets. And they do not want their fingerprints on cuts to Social Security and Medicare because they know that the third rail of politics is still there.
Because of the press’s dishonesty, Obama is politically in a tough place on his public statements about this. Maneuvering it to be a failure caused by Republican intransigence is going to be difficult in an environment of a dishonest press corps.
It seems pretty simple to me. They have a compelling image/message and we don’t. Crushing your weak opponents and obliterating them has been the norm through human history. It’s hard wired.
This is worth meditating on. The Republicans are not going to change–to give up a winning strategy.
Will the Democrats change–and give up losing strategies? Set aside the obvious losers–the strategies that the Democrats are using–and ask what strategy might win. What does a strategy need to do to counter the Republican methods?
Paul Wellstone types?
😀
Well put. They just have to be careful never to fly . . .
yeah fine, the gop gets credit for being good at winning. they’re “smarter” than the Dems when it comes to winning in the short term, and other short term pursuits. this point is most important as a message to the idiots on the left who think Barack Obama is their biggest problem.
mark my words: if the GOP maintains control of the Narrative over the next two years, all of the consequences for their obstruction and general idiocy will be dumped on Obama and the Dems. objective reality doesn’t matter in America any more, it’s all about the Narrative.
if the Dems can wrest control of the Narrative from the GOP, 2012 will be a great year for us politically. but unless they get off their f*cking asses and learn how to message, learn how to tout their many accomplishments, and learn how to portray the GOP leadership for the shitstains they truly are, we will be stuck in this downward spiral of recession, war, and eventually concentration camps for the muslims.
that’s what’s at stake here. based on the Tea Party rhetoric that seems to resonate with so many, i don’t think i’m being hyperbolic on any of those points.
The GOP structurally maintains control of the narrative by holding message control of the media. Not the opinion media but also the news reporting media.
The best thing Obama could do at this point is fire Gibbs and promote Burton.
Hmmm… well I guess you’re suggesting giving them credit like in a couple of guys robbing a bank? “Well, it was illegal and 3 people got shot and one little kid was kidnapped but give them credit, they did get off with $350,000.”
Yeah pretty much the same…
Yep, I must agree. I thought their strategy was horrible but it turned out to work to perfection. They didn’t give a rat’s ass about the country or people they represent, instead they had as their #1 goal to make Obama look bad. It was a high risk strategy, to be sure, but probably the only way they had to regain power only two years after losing it so badly.
On the other hand, we need to take a serious look at the Democratic leadership. When a CEO’s company tanks badly in the market he will be fired (granted, with a fat severance package). When the new coach of an NFL team inherits a super bowl winner and ends up 1-15, he too will be fired (ditto the fat severance package).
Well, we can’t fire Obama, and it looks like no one is blaming Reid (which is flat out ridiculous, but there you go). However, Obama’s entire policy- and message-setting staff should be on the street by the end of the week. It’s not like they weren’t warned by a lot of very smart people about the need to focus on the economy up front, about the inadequacy of the stimulus, about the risks of letting HCR drag on for 12 months while trying to get one GOP member to vote for it, about the political risks of the individual mandate, about the risks of not addressing the foreclosure crisis (from the homeowner p.o.v., not the bank p.o.v.), etc. It was all there for everyone to see, yet he basked in the glory of his early high approval ratings and his Nobel Peace Prize (can the Nobel committee possibly be any more embarrassed than they must be now over that award?).
No, we can’t fire him, but he needs to fire everyone else.
Hell, even Bush fired Rove and sidelined Cheney after 2006 (probably in response to strong pushing from his Dad, but still a good decision).
Don’t forget .. he fired Rumsfeld after the 2006 elections as well
Nah, I give no credit at all to those scoundrels. Credit is due the American Voter instead.
Present company excepted.
I prefer P.T. Barnum, “”There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Credit for executing their fearmongering plan? Maybe.
What really slaughtered us was the money.
I don’t credit the repugs much. The dems were battered by a horrible economy, period. The repugs did pretty much everything they could to lose, by pushing the most extreme candidates. If the economy had improved more, the whole party of no thing would have bitten them in the ass. They were lucky, not smart.
Great. Now “true progressives” are giving CREDIT to bigoted parties and their bigoted electorate.
And they say Obama is the problem.
(facepalm)
Irony is dead.
Headquarters 3d Div., 11th Corps,
New Baltimore, Va., Nov. 8, 1862.
Will you, after the great political defeat we have suffered, listen a moment to the words of a true friend who means to serve you faithfully, and in whose judgment you once, perhaps, reposed some confidence?
The defeat of the Administration is owing neither to your proclamations, nor to the financial policy of the Government, nor to a desire of the people to have peace at any price. I can speak openly, for you must know that I am your friend. The defeat of the Administration is the Administration’s own fault.
It admitted its professed opponents to its counsels. It placed the Army, now a great power in this Republic, into the hands of its enemies. In all personal questions to be hostile to the party of the Government seemed to be a title to consideration. It forgot the great rule, that, if you are true to your friends, your friends will be true to you, and that you make your enemies stronger by placing them upon an equality with your friends. Is it surprising that the opponents of the Administration should have got into their hands the government of the principal States after they have had for so long a time the principal management of the war, the great business of the National Government?
Great sacrifices and enormous efforts had been made and they had been rewarded only by small results. The people felt the necessity of a change. Many of your friends had no longer any heart for the Administration as soon as they felt justified in believing that the Administration had no heart for them. I do not speak of personal favors but of the general conduct of the war. A change was sought in the wrong direction. This was the true cause of the defeat of your Government.
You have now made a change. This evening the news reaches us that the command of the Army of the Potomac has passed into new hands. But the change of persons means little if it does not imply a change of system. Let us be commanded by generals whose heart is in the war, and only by such. Let every general who does not show himself strong enough to command success, be deposed at once. Let every trust of power be accompanied by a corresponding responsibility, and all may be well yet.
There is but one way in which you can sustain your Administration, and that is by success; and there is but one thing which will command success, and that is energy. In whatever hands the State governments may be, — as soon as you are victorious, they will be obliged to support you; and if they were all in the hands of your friends, — if you do not give them victories, they will after a while be obliged to oppose you. Therefore let us have energy without regard to anything that may stand in your way. Let not the Government be endangered by tender considerations. If West Point cannot do the business, let West Point go down. Who cares? It is better that a thousand generals should fall than that the Republic should be jeopardized a single moment.
To-day we are still strong enough to meet the difficulties that stand against us. We do not know what we shall be to-morrow.
Carl Schurz
Good advice if you are in combat. Not good advice if you are trying to pass a bill through Congress.
It stands to reason that those who like to fight will generally win fights against those who hope to achieve mutual understanding…
not convenint to point out, but via glenn greenwald’s twitter feed democrats were warned and chose not to listen
.
so no, I’m not giving credit to the GOP. It’s easy to say no when you have no ideas. I blame the democrats for not exercising power when they had it.
I am so tired of this crying, when bush didn’t have the majorities we had and still got his shitty policies rammed through.
That is so stupid. Bush did not get his policies pushed through. Other than No Child Left Behind and the Bankruptcy Bill what did he accomplish? On what law did he pass that was on entirely Republican terms, so that the Base could unreservedly applaud it?
bullshit:
he got his tax cut, he got his war, he got his medicare part d. he also got his military commission act of 2006. and he got his fisa amendments act too, over for the telecoms.he got what he wanted, and generally on his terms.
please. i know you’re sad today, but let’s have a little dose of reality here.
His tax cuts were passed using budget reconciliation and they are set to sunset. That was not on his terms. That is not what the GOP would do if they had their way. It was also in his first two years and his top priority that he campaigned on.
His war? Well if you want to call that a legislative accomplishment I guess you can. If Obama wants to start a random war he can probably do it, too.
And, yes, he was able to clean up a bit of the mess he created in the early years of the “War on Terror.” In his book, he admits ordering torture, so he assumes he’ll never be held accountable and he’s probably right.
But, you can see what the base of the Republican Party wants. And it isn’t more funding for education and more federal oversight of education. It isn’t subsidized prescription drugs for geezers. It’s eliminating the Department of Education and going back to when we bartered chickens for checkups. Other than pissing off liberals, appointing lunatics to the bench, and killing A-rabs, Bush didn’t do shit for his base.
His legislative accomplishments were incredibly slim and tended to help the short-term bottom line of Wall Street, not the bigger half of his base. Other than the tax cuts, his biggest accomplishments were in education, AIDS funding, and health care. Those are hardly priorities of the GOP’s base. The things he gave his base were temporary and largely reversed when Obama came into power, like stem cell research and the Mexico City rule.
As Bush himself once said, his real base is the “haves and the have – mores”. For them, he did very well indeed (see growth of income disparity during Bush years). In this sense, Bush was very successful in passing his real agenda. The rest of the base — the tea-party types, the social conservatives, the libertarians — were just useful idiots.
thank you, clearskies. Booman is in denial.
crediting the gop with a victory that they didn’t win is just the nadir of crybabyism.
they didn’t win shit: the democrats lost because no one’s lives got better over the past two years, and they were transparently sucking up to the same corporations everyone hates.
thank you for agreeing with me? That’s odd.
The Republicans won these elections, brendan. They had a strategy from the get-go, they stuck with that strategy, and they were rewarded for it. It was a multifaceted strategy. Say no to everything, delay, obstruct, and demonize. Piss off the liberals as much as possible by refusing to compromise on anything and forcing the Dems to fish in the middle. Racialize everything. And call into question the president’s faith and qualifications. Obstruct some more. Use fear to prevent any accountability. Throw out some real anger. Hint at violence. Sharia! Mosque! Immigrants! Beheadings! Death Panels! Terrorist trials in your back yard! Booga booga! More stalling. More delay. Viola.
Look, if you are going to go totally scorched earth, there’s no way the other side is going to come away with a list of accomplishments that are pleasing to their base. And there’s a good chance that the people will get the impression that your opposition in less than efficient at getting things done.
you know man, it takes two to tango.
i saw the republicans do all that. i did. I also saw the democrats play the typical capitulation role, and I saw the president playing mr. cool and not wading in until he absolutely couldn’t avoid it.
i also watched the democrats tell me over and over again that what i voted for was impossible. I’m sorry if your hero failed, but he did. Maybe he’ll pull a Prince Hal during the second half of his first term, and use the GOP as a foil. he should have done that during his first term, but placing blame is just so looking backward instead of forward.
or as first-draft said the other day:
“I’m tired of Obama’s false equivalence with his ‘on the left they want single payer and on the right they want deregulation.’ They’re not on equal footing, so why does he act like they have the same value!!!”
~Avg Lefty Blogger
“Why can Republicans push policies through without 60 votes but Democrats can’t!!! They’re just making excuses!!!”
~Avg Lefty Blogger
For all the crying about Obama’s false equivalence, the left sure does it far more than he does.
Republicans are like a slasher movie monster: yeah, he took buckshot in the gut and fell of a cliff, but that doesn’t mean he’s dead. You have to go down and decapitate him. You have to exterminate this monster.
So we were left with a situation where a black president couldn’t lead the charge because of his color, and the senate, controlled by unaccountable corporate peons, became the choke point for most action. Frankly the only strategy I could see really working was eliminating filibuster rules from the very beginning, and just telling the pukes and the media to suck it. But I don’t know what force on or beyond earth couldn’t have gotten senate democrats to do that. I’m not so much impressed by the republicans win this time as I’m impressed by this new iron law of politics in america, which is apparently a big taboo subject, that democrats, till the end of time apparently, can’t pass legislation without 60 or more votes. And the corollary that it will be sheer fantasy to imagine any comparable level of obstruction from the democrats when the pukes are in power. So its 51 for pukes, 60 for democrats.
I guess if I thought the Election was about anything other than 9.6% unemployment, I might agree with you.
But it wasn’t.
It wasn’t even about HCR. According to exit polls 48% wanted to repeal it, 47% wanted to keep it.
The key mistakes, in retrospect, were twofold:
Here is the simple truth: it is fricken amazing given the economic crisis that unemployment hasn’t gone higher than it has. Obama deserves enormous credit for that, and when Markos says the Administration has done “little” to address the economy, he is really full of it.
But preventing a disaster was never going to be enough politically. The Administration failed to prevent the political disaster when it failed to see how bad things were going to get.
Thank you, Larry Summers.
Sort of like saying Hitler deserved credit for walloping France.
But then maybe it helped that General Petain was on the losing side.
He does. He adopted tank strategy borrowed in the first place from French and English colonels developed between the wars based on their experience in the First World War. The French and English armies rejected the ideas of their own officers and stayed with the old strategy that had not worked in the previous war.
If we cannot recognize basic matters of strategy we might as well just pray to the Fluffy Sky Bunny for all the success we can expect.
Great—the end justifies the means. Or is that the other way around? The Regressives’ goals are not laudable. We can all walk in procession flagellating ourselves in Washington. Even so, the Regressives’ goals are not laudable nor their means to achieve them. They now set the rules. The Democrats will now only be able to win by beating the Regressives at their own game. That won’tbe nice but what else is their to do. Keep claiming the high road which leads to nowhere?
What happened and what’s still happening now…
Yes, the Republicans do some quite extraordinary things:
they consistently convince large numbers of Americans that “small government” is not only possible but desirable and they achieve this astounding feat among society’s poorer and more disadvantaged segments. That’s important because it shows that people can be consistently made to believe not just sheer nonsense but nonsense which is directly counter to both fact and their own personal best interests.
They also convince these same that social achievements are less worthy than personal individual striving for and attaining material success; that such success is and ought to be defined almost entirely by financial income and wealth and that people who do not succeed on those terms are not admirable nor deserving of others respect or sympathy or help–unless they are in certain particular occasions the victims of what are called “natural disasters”: flood, hurricane, earthquake, wildfires, etc. So, publicly managed universal health care is treated with the same suspicion as being against the individual prerogatives of each one to determine for himself–even if, amazingly enough, the plain and completely predictable facts show that large portions of society–which includes the Tea Party’s archetype–cannot and will not be able to adequately provide these things for themselves and their families in the system as it now operates (or shall should the half-baked Obama-care programs are reversed.)
Perhaps most amazing of all is that the Tea Party class has been consistently led to believe that it is government, not private corporate power, which they must most fear and distrust as a danger to them and their rights and liberties, when, in actual fact, of course, as part of society’s least privileged, it’s from the possibility of a fair and responsible government and the power that might be available through it, that their sole hope springs of any chance of defense from being crushed by overwhelming corporate power.
Want more? The Democrats have, for decades, if not generations, not only stood by and allowed this to happen over and over again, as though there is nothing they or anyone else can do about it, they’ve done much, much worse: they’ve simply and utterly sold out the entire spectrum of these people–whether they’re of the Right (as the Tea Partiers are) or of the Left and Democrats have done this by completely buying into and becoming virtually indistinguishable from the Right-wing members of the ruling technological elite (about which, see below).
What the Tea Party got (gets) right:
Tea Party activists are completely correct about one signal fact: the society in which they live, as well as their government and virtually everything most people would normally call “the Establishment” is utterly owned and ruled -selfishly, maliciously and viciously ruled–by an extremely adept, powerful and wealthy elite class of technocrats who understand as well as any group of people do how to organize and operate highly complex corporate, governmental and technological systems which includes, most notably, what’s often (erroneously) called `globalization’ and which I call the `system-world’ in its present-day form. They understand that these technocrats have nothing in common with them, society’s left-behind, and they are rabidly suspicious of anyone who is part of that cohort. This includes, virtually by definition, the entire class of “intelligentsia,” people with either university degrees and more especially degrees from the world’s most elite colleges and universities (the U.S. `Ivy League’ and, in the U.K., Oxford and Cambridge). The situation is full of paradoxes but they are certainly not all on the Tea Partier’s side of the divide. The disadvantaged of all stripes find much about modern technology extremely appealing–especially in the realms of entertainment, communications and all related matters. They enjoy or they aspire to one day enjoy as much as possible of the dazzling world of high-tech gadgetry. For them, these things and the underlying technopoly carry no particular political or ideological designs and implications for social or personal freedoms. Instead, they’re seen as independent articles which can be added and subtracted at will from one’s “life-style”. The deeper truth, which Democrats never bother to point out–when they recognize it at all themselves–is that the high-tech technopoly directly implies much and much that drives all that is worst about our political predicament, a social and political order which means everyone among society’s unprivileged and outcast shall and must remain permanently outcast and “outclassed” by the ruling technocrats, Republican and Democrat.
Thus, the socio-political system-world we have is one which has assured that nothing of real substance and importance changed in the election of Barack Obama even though from certain regards he was undeniably a better choice than John McCain and Sarah Palin, the real truth is that the election of Obama did not signal any actual gain in understanding on the part of the public. Nor did it imply any reparation in the still-completely broken political system (broken for all except in the view of the privileged technocratic elite, for whom it is in perfect working order).
Obama basically squandered two years in which, instead of patiently and methodically working at an all-important and sustained effort to inform and instruct the public–not least the mislead Tea Partiers—he remained confined in a technocrat’s self-delusional set of mistaken assumptions and everyone has suffered as a result.
Now, two years on, a priceless opportunity has been lost–wasted. For nothing.
What is not properly understood about Obama’s situation is that when Tea Party afficionados show up at Obama health care rallies in open carry states with weapons, the Secret Service want him not to leave the “bubble” and his aides want him not to stir up emotions, given how hostile folks already are. As a result, we have no candid idea of what his assumptions and expectations are, which is which speculation runs wild–from frothing Tea Party types asserting he wants socialism and fascism to progressives who assert he is nothing but a tool of corporate America or is a “Republican president”.
Every time I see the opinion that Obama should have “patiently and methodically working at an all-important and sustained effort to inform and instruct the public” or similar sentiments, I wonder if the writer truly understands the Iron Curtain media environment that currently exists in the US. Especially outside of progressive strongholds.
People criticizing Obama about lost opportunities are making too many assumptions about just how much power he has and how openly he can be seen to be using it.
“What is not properly understood about Obama’s situation is that when Tea Party afficionados show up at Obama health care rallies in open carry states with weapons, the Secret Service want him not to leave the “bubble” and his aides want him not to stir up emotions, given how hostile folks already are. As a result, we have no candid idea of what his assumptions and expectations are, which is which speculation runs wild–from frothing Tea Party types asserting he wants socialism and fascism to progressives who assert he is nothing but a tool of corporate America or is a “Republican president”.”
Utterly beside the point. The public meetings on health care–even taken together as a whole–and the particular peculiarities about TP members attending them bearing firearms amounts to nothing when considered against the enormous scale of the task of informing Americans. Suppose for a moment that no TP members attended at all. Nothning, but nothing, would have been any different in the general consequences.
You’re pointing out a tiny aspect of a much larger problem and complaining that in such a hostile environment the poor president of the United States can’t get his message through—why? Because some hostile-minded yahoos show up in force at some of his program’s public information sessions. That’s pathetic as an excuse for failing to make a respectable effort to achieve what I’m describing.
Nothing necessarily requires that the task is (or could be) resumed in public meetings such as those held over the health care program nor even that the work can or must be done primarily or exclusively by high-level national figures–though in my view it should have some significant participation from some of them.
The problem currently is not so much one of how to communicate as it is one of the failure to properly appreciate the importance, the primacy of this task in the first place. It simply doesn’t figure anywhere in the obvious priorities of this administration and, because of this, the Obama administration places itself literally at the mercy of the Right-wing propaganda machines which are awesome in their power and effectiveness and wholly without mercy.
If it were a football match, it would amount to the Right-wing being represented by one of the premier NFL teams while on the other hand, Obama’s side doesn’t even show up for the game.
As incredible as it may sound, by all appearances, Obama doesn’t seem to understand that present-day politcal life entails a virtual war and one in which there is never a truce, never a final victory; only uninterrupted combat. The opposition is in this fight with literally everything (which is immense) they have and they’re in it without a pause, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
The American “Left”–which only occasionally and slightly includes Barack Obama–is disorganized and takes a part-time attitude to the challenges which are before it; it has long believed, incredibly naïvely and with disastrous consequences, that it’s sufficient or should be sufficient merely to be correct, to have all or the preponderance of the facts on one’s side of the argument.
Against that, the Right-wing shows every day–every hour–that with expert organization, resources and stubborn determination, one needn’t either be correct or even honest in order to have a prevalent control over the terms of debate and through them largely dictate successfully the general direction of the outcomes for by far most of the time.
In my view, Obama hasn’t even made what I’d call a good-faith effort. He’s still lost in the notion that it’s very important how correct he is and how marvelous is his command of the facts. He doesn’t seem to understand that these make little difference when average Americans don’t themselves also possess these. The Right-wing seems to understand that wonderfully; the results certainly suggest they do. And they don’t complain about obstacles to their message’s getting through. They build and maintain an infrastructure to ensure it.
What a concept! With almost all the money in the world and much else going for them, they leave nothing to chance and spare no effort to take and hold every advantage. They don’t mind at all if they have to work up a sweat beating the shit out of the public-spirited good-government Left-wing.
They have the resources from vested interests to build an infrastructure. Hell, they own the media.
You really need to come live in one of Sarah Palin’s “Real America” places to have an understanding of what is going on. There are lots of full-time lefties working in Southern red states on this issue. The confusion in the blogosphere is not replicated in these areas.
The American President doesn’t have the monopoly on media resources that other heads of state have and certainly not the monopoly that existed in the US from FDR through George H. W. Bush’s term. It’s much easier for folks to tune out than it was when Eisenhower commanded three networks and all the radio stations carried his addresses out of civic duty and their FCC public service obligations.
“They went scorched Earth, and if you’re honest, we didn’t have the tools to combat them.”
i.e. Poor, poor pitiful us. Man! Those big right-wingers were hard and mean.
Here’s a ‘tool, and it’s an indispensible one:
Brutal honesty in introspection.
Without it, you can’t recognize how and where you’re mistaken and if you can’t do that, you’ve given your opponent an advantage he will use against you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYCvSntOI5s
That is very good analysis. In the South, what has undone the change made in the 1960s is the failure of the mainstream churches to continue down that road. And that is primarily a result of liberal pastors being afraid of the congregation, which even in episcopal systems has means of getting rid of an uncomfortable preacher. The consolidation of the press has brought uniformity and a conservative bias across the traditional Southern newspapers. The same consolidation has de-localized radio stations, which used to reflect the views of the community but now forcefeed views on the community. The universities have been cowed by charges of “political correctness”, witchhunts by legislatures, and the corruption of named chairs and buildings and corporate and federal funding. The medical schools have been one focus for the consolidation of healthcare into large healthcare systems that are not only expensive but disfunctional. Where there has been union organization it has been organized by blacks or Hispanics, and there are some successes there but they are hemmed in by state “right-to-work” laws. “Progressive” in the South has two meanings. The first and oldest applies to politicians who invested in infrastructure and schools. The recent is a euphemism for liberal.
I remarked in another thread (or on another blog) that the Democratic Party, which under FDR was the party of farmers and labor no longer has major support from the rank-and-file of either.
There is a growing local food movement in the South that is irrespective of politics. A resurgence of farmers markets.
Richard Nixon might have been the last liberal President, but the coalition he assembled used patriotism and cultural conservatism to strip out the labor movement and the Catholic church at the same time. The corruption of universities began with the federal military contracts during World War II and the growth in federal subsidies (and then loans) for students and universities.
The takeaway I get from this YouTube is that in order to change the political culture you have to change the local culture and that takes resistance to the non-local corporate forces that are deforming the local culture. And the vacuum in local communities is the institution that provides a moral focus in the community. Given the collapse of the liberal churches and the sectarianism of the remaining churches and the growth of functional agnostics and the diversity of religious belief that is transforming local communities, that is going to be a difficult institution to build.