Mike Lofgren’s diatribe about the Republican Party ought to be required reading in all our high schools. It’s not only a fine example of a political polemic written in excellent English, it’s something everyone needs to internalize. Because Lofgren just retired after a 16-year career as a GOP staffer on the House and Senate budget committees, his criticism carries more weight than it would coming from a Democrat. It’s a long piece that will take some time to complete, but it will be well worth the time.
And the bottom line is that what Lofgren is saying is exactly what I’ve been saying to you, my audience, for the last two years. If you keep this always at the front of your mind, and never for a moment let it slip from the forefront of your concerns, your outlook on American politics will be quite different from the progressive agonizing you typically see. If you want to know why I’m different from Stoller or Hamsher or Greenwald or even most of the crew at Daily Kos, this article explains why. Read it.
Boo:
Did you read his first two paragraphs? He says HCR sucks for the same reason Hamsher has been saying all along?
Keep reading and consider what he says about the Republican party, the party’s goals,and the party’s methods.
It is an excellent discussion of the suckitudinality of the Repukeliscum.
However, is it possible to actually have a Democratic Party that is something more than “At least they are not Repukeliscum”.
I get real tired of working as I did in 2008 in order to get 3/4 of the Republican agenda. I could have saved my money, time, and effort, and only got a little worse off.
I can understand disappointment with this or that decision of Obama’s, even a passel of decisions. But 3/4 of the Republican agenda? Did you read the Lofgren piece at all?
I did read it. But he’s actually saying nothing new, if you read someone like Digby regularly.
Digby? Was that the guy who said there’s no difference between Obama’s budget proposal and the Republican budget proposal?
Digby is not a guy.
Ok. Was that the lady who said there’s no difference between the Republican budget and the Obama budget?
Do you think it is some great insight that single-payer would be better than private corporate insurance, or that a public option would be better than no public option? Or that negotiated drug prices are better than paying top dollar?
Tell that to Obama and Harry Reid. Or rather, you should have told them while they still controlled the House and Senate.
So why did Obama, since the buck stops with him, demand that price negotiation be taken out of HCR?
So the drug companies wouldn’t spend a billion dollars to kill any health care plan.
Which validates one of the critiques of the guy you praise. You are basically admitting most DC Democrats are afraid of their own shadow.
That’s how Washington works, though. I’m tired of the criticism over the health care bill. The only one that I will give is that it took too long to get through. That’s fair.
But there’s a difference between “he never wanted it in the first place,” and “he took the wind out of his opponents’ sails.”
Overall it was a net-plus for the American people, and when you have that many opponents for different reasons — doctors against cost controls, insurance companies against government insurance, pharma against drug negotiation and patent reform — it’s hard to get a framework through. Now in the future we take on each individual interest group one at a time.
It’s not a validation of the critique at all. As I’ve said, I don’t know what I would have done with the public option or drug renegotiation because I didn’t see behind closed doors, but I can prolly bet that I would have “sold them off” if it increased the odds of a bill passing by substantial percentages. If it made the odds go from 50/50 to 55/45, I probably wouldn’t. But 50-50 to 75/50? Hell yes.
You don’t have to look behind closed doors. It was Max Baucus who killed the public option. Hint: a chair of the Senate Finance Committee can sit on a health care bill they don’t like; just ask Hillary Clinton.
They (President, Senate Majority Leader, and House Speaker) traded the renegotiation for a 50% reduction in the donut hole. The key point there was some reluctant House members and a few PhRMA financed Dem Senators such as Kay Hagan (Sen-GSK). Or Robert Menendez (Sen-Pfizer). Or Evan Bayh (Sen-Lilly). Not to mention Mike Ross, who held up the House Energy and Commerce committee passage.
That still holds up my original point, though 😛
Fair point about Baucus. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, indeed.
And the President is blameless? Not on your life! Who enabled Holy Joe? Who gave a handjob to Ben Nelson after the Cornhusker Kickback(which wasn’t worth it in the end, was it?)? And how did that work out for Baucus? Have you seen any polls lately? Schweitzer would smoke Baucus in a primary, were he to run. And I mean smoke.
OK, OK, OK, we get it. The Repukeliscum are scum, and we need to do whatever it takes.
However, and this is where I have my concerns, why does Obama suck so badly? Why can’t he negotiate his way out of a wet paper bag? Why does he begin every controversy by giving away his points of leverage in return for a mess of pottage?
And why does he continue this bipartisanshit shit? IT DOESN’T WORK unless BOTH SIDES WANT IT TO WORK. Which the Repukeliscum DO NOT.
I suppose he continues to think that Americans care about bipartisanship, that in the end he’ll be seen as making government work, or being the only one who’s trying to. But the Dems/Obama have failed to communicate their case, so it’s all for naught, even if that’s his strategy and he’s potentially right in the long run.
I have now read it all. And IMO, it’s just as damning of the Democrats, especially the DLC/Blue Dog/Turd Way types.
It’s not news that a lifetime Republican does not like the Democrats – and sadly – it is no longer news that “progressives” line up to disagree with their standard complaints.
And it’s priceless that you, with your censorship, have to come on other blogs so people will hopefully pay attention to you. Is there any redeeming feature of the three groups I mention besides their vote for majority leader? There isn’t, and you know it. Try bringing something to the table next time besides nonsense about emoprogs. And try looking in the mirror, also, too.
But what about my feelings of disappointment and angst and stuff?
How can I care about a fascist/wacknut takeover in the midst of the bleak despair caused by knowing that Jane Hamsher and C. West have no access to the White House!?
HAH, snark. Wow, very clever indeed. Witty too.
You forgot “bully pulpit”, “arm-twisting”, and “leadership”. Oh and for extra cleverness, shout “bipartisanshit” and “catfood commission” a couple times.
I don’t think Hamsher or C. West care about having “access” to the WH. That’s called projection. Types like you care to have that access, which is why you deride the aforementioned people who fight for justice, not a seat at the table.
James Fallows should be part of ‘your assigned reading’ as well.
Sigh. A Republican himself can tell the world his side is pure, unrelenting evil, and even that isn’t enough to make internet douchebags stop bitching about the President for five whole minutes.
There’s no point to asking for perspective from these people, Booman. It’s beyond a lost cause.
Why should we stop bitching when the President makes a totally stupid unforced error(see: the EPA stuff Friday). Is the President’s giveaway going to get a clean EPA funding bill through the House? We all know the answer to that.
It’s like people are saying, “Chamberlain sucks so bad, we might as well have Hitler.”
(Oops, I used Hitler in a political discussion, so I automatically lose.)
you’re doing it wrong. Here (from the article) is how you call someone a Nazi and get away with it:
See? He didn’t lose the argument.
Ah! Clever man, that Lofgren. Observant, too.
The issue that Lofgren addresses is Republicans, not the President. You might find some details in that article that you didn’t know about Republicans and that only an insider could tell you. If you read it from that perspective.
Sorry teacher, we’re just dense…and not attentive to self-promotion. BTW, I was directed to the Lofgren article by a diary on Daily Kos. And posted it for my Facebook friends to read. Most likely they will not admit a response.
And BTW, there are two things worth reading on Firedoglake — Masaccio’s article “Labor and the Left”, and Glenn W. Smith’s “The Dangers of Political Resentment”. On the Daily Kos, Mark Sumner reprises his diary from earlier in the week about how increases in the marginal tax rate at the top is helpful to the economy.
I am increasingly seeing the blog war between “progressives” and “Democrats” as being nothing more as a marketing ploy by progressive bloggers who depend on blogging as a source of income. It’s like the talk show wars among conservatives in the late 1980s. I understand the need for eyeballs and income, but staking out hardline positions is not what progressives in this country need right now. We are fully capable of doing that on our own. What is needed is analysis that transcends those divisions and explains why it is that the progressive movement has come to this exactly and precisely before what might turn out to be a signficant (or depressing) election.
It’s not all self-promition. It’s a fundamental rift on the progressive left. It’s not even between progressives and Democrats. That exists, too, but it’s different in form.
The Democratic Party is part of the Establishment, and the Establishment has been rotting at its core for a long time now. The failures at the top of the power structure have mostly self-inflicted, but come down to courts decisions and laws that place too much power and wealth at the top. We’ve arrived at a Second Gilded Age, but with Fox News this time and two diametrically opposed and gridlocked parties. No one can fix this thing.
Some of us on the progressive left are too concerned to cannibalize the one thing we’ve got going for us, which is a sane, decent, and competent president.
You do understand that a fair number of repetitive attacks on the President on progressive left sites are from third party operatives with limited geographical reach imagining that that will open the way for a third party candidate.
The fact that this battle is going on the the comments does not mean that the high-profile owners have to get down to the personal level with opinions. Hamsher’s and Stoller’s opinions are not unique nor are they the most extreme of the front pagers on widely read progressive-left sites.
Regardless of the President’s re-election, the reform of Congress and the legislatures must occur if we are to have sensible policies again. And that has to occur through some elective structure or another. Which means either something that can influence a political parties actions or a political party itself. What else must the progressive left do besides re-elect President Obama? That’s the discussion that I am missing.
Thanks for the last sentence, because until I read that I was having a heck of a time trying to figure out what you meant by this in your main post:
If you want to know why I’m different from Stoller or Hamsher or Greenwald or even most of the crew at Daily Kos, this article explains why.
I don’t know much about Hamsher/FDL or Stoller, and Kos covers a wide variety of opinions, but I’m a big fan of Greenwald, Digby, and Krugman, all three of whom disagree with you on Obama. I’m sure that all three of them would endorse what is said in this article.
So let’s look at that last sentence again:
Some of us on the progressive left are too concerned to cannibalize the one thing we’ve got going for us, which is a sane, decent, and competent president.
Honestly, I’m not sure that Lofgren would agree with that. He talks disparagingly of “Democratic Leadership Council-style ‘centrist’ Democrats”, a category that certainly has to include Obama. He puts down the Obama White House for their positioning of the stimulus bill and HCR, and in general for their failure to stand up to the GOP (he even suggests in endnotes that the Democratic leadership is afraid of the GOP).
Most importantly, he notes in the endnotes that he is “not a supporter of Obama and object to a number of his foreign and domestic policies.” He doesn’t call them out specifically, but we can guess at several of his objections based on his earlier discussions of GOP policies such as: “…most Republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested in the effective repeal of Fourth Amendment protections by the Patriot Act, the weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public hysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the United States has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth.” We have to assume from this that he’s unhappy with Obama’s continuation of the same policies. Gee – just like Greenwald.
No, Boo, I suspect you may have been reading this article through your own filters. I doubt very much Mr. Lofgren would agree with you that Obama is “the one thing we’ve got going for us.”
It’s not exactly surprising that a former Republican staffer does not like Obama, whatever else he might say about his own party. Let’s not co-opt him to “our” side just to make a rhetorical point.
Everyone reads with filters, including you. I never meant to imply that the author of the piece, a lifelong Republican staffer, agrees with me about the merits of the president of the United States. He just quit a party that he openly compared to the Nazis during the Weimar Republic. That’s a chilling warning.
Imagine, if you will, Berlin in the late 1920’s, early 1930’s. The Republic is totally dysfunctional and the economy sucks. No one can make the government work. No one can govern. Now imagine that people on the left spent most of their energies attacking the best and most capable leader they had. Then imagine what they would have to say in 1933 or 1939 or 1945 about how they spent their time infighting when they still had a Republic to fight for.
The comparison to the Nazis is naturally over-the-top, but only because of the Holocaust. If you’re talking instead about the softer forms of fascism seen in Spain, Italy, Latin American countries, or even to an extent with the Baathists and Phalange of Lebanon, then the comparison is very apt. In fact, if you familiarize yourself with the rise of Italian Fascism, you’ll note that the current incarnation of the GOP is significantly to the right of where Mussolini started out. And many of the conditions are similar.
You’re right that it is natural to try something different. That’s what is so dangerous. And it matters what the left does. Especially the far left. In Italy, what enabled fascism to succeed in destroying the Republic was basically the following:
The result was one-party rule and the rise of the most loathsome and destructive political ideology in human history.
Our situation is arguably worse because we have the most powerful arsenal the planet has ever seen and we have a huge religious end-times component to our proto-fascist party.
Good response. Let’s assume that the threat from the GOP is on the order of Italian Fascism under Mussolini – something I’ll agree with. The question then becomes one of – what is the best way to head off this threat? Let’s suppose our (as the lefty blogosphere – a group we must admit is a pretty tiny part of the American electorate) options are:
Does (1) give us a better chance to stave off the fascist threat from the radical GOP? Or does (2)? Does it matter that Obama has, through word and deed, supported much of the radical GOP agenda, from supply-side economics to foreign policy to the War against the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments?
These are they key questions. I’ll tell you, if I thought the probability of success strongly favored (1), I’d be with you 100%. But when I see the Democratic President helping define the new “political normal” to include much of the radical GOP agenda, it gives me great pause.
And, most importantly, there is one issue that probably will soon supersede all others — global warming. Can it really be that America has no realistic option for pushing this issue for at least the next 5 years? That certainly appears to be the case, as neither Obama’s administration nor any GOP administration will take any action in this critical area.
I honestly don’t know the answer. But I can’t (yet) believe that Obama’s results are the best possible outcome given the situation.
And, lastly – of course I read with filters too.
Well, those aren’t your choices.
Your choice is whether you want to help the Democratic Party reelect Barack Obama and take over control of Congress or whether you want to sit on the sidelines barking criticism at them.
The alternative here is not Poppy. It’s Rick Perry. Even if Romney makes a comeback, he’s bad enough at the head of this pack of jackals.
And be honest. I criticize the president all the time, including on big things like whether to intervene in Libya. I have no problem with engaging in constructive and fair criticism. You’re setting up a false dichotomy where you either have to shut and applaud or advocate for your issues, but you can’t do both.
The retroactive debate about the stimulus vs. the contemporaneous debate about the stimulus is a case in point.
The former is not helpful and is usually waged with magical thinking. The latter was completely justified, even if what was needed was not possible.
Likewise with the public option, where it was never going to pass, but asking for it so aggressively created room for the overall bill to pass without it. You don’t have to call the president a sell-out over it though. You have to talk to Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson and the DLC-folks who had no interest in killing the private health insurance industry.
Now imagine that people on the left spent most of their energies attacking the best and most capable leader they had.
How capable is he? Unemployment, like rent, is still way too damn high. How capable is he that he keeps making stupid unforced errors(EPA and austerity for starters). He’s what we have right now, but that doesn’t mean he’s the best or most capable.
I’m also tired of this tainting of Obama as a DLC-centrist type.
The DLC has been regurgitated by the Democratic base.
Here’s a list of DLC chairmen:
Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri (1985-1986)
Gov. Chuck Robb of Virginia (1986-1988)
Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia (1988-1990)
Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas (1990-1991)
Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana (1991-1993)
Rep. Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma (1993-1995)
Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut (1995-2001)
Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana (2001-2005)
Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa (2005-2007)
Fmr. Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee (2007-2011)
Gephardt was replaced as the leader of the House Dems by San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi. His campaign for president flopped.
Chuck Robb was last scene working for Bush on some independent commission.
Sam Nunn does great work on non-proliferation, but he has no presence in the party at all.
John Breaux works with Trent Lott as a superhero lobbying tandem.
When was the last time you heard from Dave McCurdy?
Joe Lieberman is no longer even a Democrat.
Evan Bayh quit to be a lobbyist.
Harold Ford is a punch line without any role in the party’s affairs.
Only Tom Vilsack has a job in today’s party, and that’s as the Agriculture Secretary. He’s also the most decent of all the DLC chairs, and his wife is awesome.
As for Bill Clinton, his wife lost to a guy with hardly any experience who expressly denied that he supported the DLC and their policies.
Maybe you just think the DLC meant centrism or something, but they were far worse than that. They brought us financial deregulation and consensus on the forward-leaning NATO-expansionist move into Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
To be fair, Clinton did try to do positive things in his first two years. He did get a good economic plan passed and he scored big time with the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. The Brady Handgun bill is not something I would have been eager to support, but it was significant liberal priority than Clinton signed into law. The Assault Weapons ban was something I supported.
But he failed on health care, failed on gays in the military, and then he gave us DOMA, a shitty Welfare Reform bill, and then a plethora of crap:
October 31, 1998: Iraq Liberation Act
November 3, 1998: Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act
November 12, 1999: Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
December 21, 2000: Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000
That, my friend, is a DLC agenda right there.
Say what you want about the limitations of the Frank-Dodd regulations, but they’re regulations. You can’t say that about Clinton.
It’s an insult to compare Obama to the DLC. It’s completely inaccurate.
Triangulation is when you pass your opponents agenda because you want to, and then you take credit for it. Clinton campaigned on Welfare Reform and then delivered an epically bad bill. He deregulated Wall Street because he wanted their money, not because he was forced to.
Obama is trying to get shit done, not trying to pass half the GOP’s agenda.
When he drops his agenda (as on smog) it isn’t because he wants to. He isn’t lowering the smog standard.
There’s a big difference.
Boo:
You know damn well that the President is DLC. Why else would he hire DLC dipshits like Daley and Emanuel as CoS. Why would Biden hire Bruce Reed as CoS? Shall I go on?
And just because President Obama passed HCR means he’s not DLC? That’s so funny it’s making my sides hurt.
Yes. Ironically, HCR is based on the Republican alternative to the Clinton proposal back in 1993. Of course the Washington Overton Window has moved rightward since then, but even so I can’t see how HCR can be touted as non-DLC in any way, shape or form.
I am increasingly seeing the blog war between “progressives” and “Democrats” as being nothing more as a marketing ploy by progressive bloggers who depend on blogging as a source of income. It’s like the talk show wars among conservatives in the late 1980s.
Possibly – but there are a lot of people participating in these discussions, as evidenced by Kos’ posts (nee diaries) on any given day.
I suggest that there is a widespread frustration – and that is probably far too tame a word – amongst leftists at the lack of progress since the 2008 election, and we’re all trying to find a solution. Yes, we all know the Republican machine is …. impossible to describe accurately without sounding over-the-top. We all know that the media operates for the pleasure of the management of big corporations. We all know that the system – particularly the Senate – is set up in a way that allows for severe obstruction by a minority, and also that quite a number of elected Democrats hold viewpoints that make you question the basis of their choice of parties.
We all know that – where we disagree is on how much progress can be made despite this situation. We compare the current situation to the past trying to come up with answers — but there never has been a situation like this before.
In some, mostly superficial, ways this is like rooting for your home football team after a number of losing years, with maybe one pretty-good year squeezed in between. There are usually arguments between team fans that sound like the arguments in the left blogosphere today: “If this team keeps [current coach] one more year I’m done with them.” “Hey, it’s not {current coach’s] fault that the QB went down to injury the last three years. Anyone who quits on the coach isn’t a real fan.” Etc.
However, that similarity is only superficial. This is about real life – politics, policies, people. Unemployment is high, just about the only industry that continues to increase hiring in the US year-after-year is the military, and those two trends are causing dramatically negative impacts to millions of lives. If the best of the two parties can succeed only in making the situation deteriorate at a slower pace than the other party, then it is fair to seek other solutions.
The thing I don’t get about Stoller is that he seemed to get it back in 2007, when he wrote this:
http://www.openleft.com/diary/672/
Now he write’s posts that put all of the blame for what is happening on Obama’s shoulders. I know he was never sold on Obama, but he seemed to understand the idea of a “working Republican majority” (his words) even after Democrats won back the House and Senate.
I read this from Benen and posted it everywhere I could. I thought one of the best gems of truth was when he said he was “contemptuous of the Dems for their feckless, craven and half-hearted attempts to stop them [Republicans].” I think that is so true to the problem behind why Democrats can’t really “win”, that and the other he brought up, the inability of language framing. No these are not all the problem, but I think they are the reason Dems are not more acceptable in the psyche of American voters. I agree with you Booman, I think you should continue spreading the message and I think Firebaggers and others are misguided. But at the same time, what do we do? What do we do while faith in public education, public funding and our democratic government institutions crumble? the people we elected to protect them are not up to the task.
Keeping the article I just read in the forefront of my mind… But all it does is make Stoller/Hamsher/Greenwald/most of DKos seem even more justified in what they are doing.
Wait a second!!! Are you admitting that Glennzilla are possibly right?
I really liked the article. Yes it was long, but totally worth the time and effort. More Republican supporters (and alot of Democrats) need to read this. Maybe it will change some of the attitudes out there right now.