Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know: The Wall Street Journal, Scott Brown, and John McCain are all fretting that the payroll tax showdown is hurting the GOP politically. But tell me why I shouldn’t believe Dave Weigel’s theory that the GOP is going to win, as usual:
The cynic’s bet is that the story of GOP dysfunction won’t matter, so long as there’s eventually some compromise. Eyes on the prize: If the other side blinks, and it always does, what can Republicans get out of them?
Key phrase there: and it always does. When was the last time the Democratic Party didn’t blink?
…Yes, the Republicans are coming off as intransigent. But Democrats want to re-elect the president, so they’ll ultimately give up a lot to extend a tax cut and unemployment benefits. In the meantime, Republicans can figure out what leverage they have to weaken the welfare state. Despite how it looks right now, it doesn’t make sense to doubt them. After all, they’ve had a lot of practice at this.
I agree. Democrats don’t dare apply a domestic version of Nixon’s madman strategy — that is, they don’t dare say, “Well, we’re perfectly content to blow the whole thing up” — because they fear they’ll be blamed. And given the media’s relentlessly blame-everybody narrative — echoed on numerous occasions by President Obama — why should they have confidence that they’d avoid the blame?
So everyone will be called back between now and January and Republicans will start the hostage negotiations:
They want a few things. The House’s version of the one-year extension included reforms that Republicans plan to stick to. On unemployment, the GOP wanted to cut the maximum duration from 99 weeks to 59 weeks and add in some new requirements. Beneficiaries who didn’t have GEDs would have to try to get them. States implementing unemployment insurance could require drug tests….
Also among the House GOP’s demands: a hold on new EPA rules governing boilers, and an expedited decision of the Keystone XL pipeline….
Democrats aren’t going to play chicken successfully because playing chicken isn’t in their nature, because (unlike the snot-nosed teabag Republicans) they actually give a crap whether these benefits are extended, and because they’ve never spent any time building and communicating an Republicans-are-evil narrative that they can tap into right now. So, yeah, I think Weigel’s absolutely right about this.
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.).
My question is, what can the Democrats do to win 30 House seats and hold the Senate?
At this point, my only question is what can the Democrats do to win 30 House seats and hold the Senate?
They need to become a completely different party — one that clearly stands for certain things (they can even be centrist things once in a while, but just stand for something, and walk the walk after you talk the talk), and one that understands how the GOP wins (messaging, messaging, messaging).
Change the media environment in which the election takes place from one that uses Democratic payments to Wall Street Media, which then subsidizes Republican campaigns.
Put up some folks who don’t have longtime ties to lobbyists.
Run challengers in every race. If it’s an anti-incumbent year, the law of averages will get some of those folks elected.
Pray for the implosion of the GOP.
Depressed yet?
“Run challengers in every race.”
Yes!
National, state and local, all the way down to the 192,480 precincts you mention in your sig. I’ve been lucky enough to win 5 elections so far. 20 years to influence township and county policies. No, I don’t get everything I want, but have gotten some things on my wish list accomplished. (Its a nifty feeling to win a grant to pay for a new $300,000+ fire engine for your neighborhood). Also, if you’re on a county board, you often have influence on who gets appointed to other boards and committees, rather like a chain letter effect. You can make a difference – if anyone here is considering a run, don’t be afraid to try!
Hostage-taking can always recommence in January.
Yep, because of reduced revenues from the payroll tax cut, Social Security itself can become a hostage.
Bring.
It.
On.
Social Security isn’t a hostage; it’s the third rail. It isn’t accounting that keeps it bullet-proof, but its popularity.
Nah, once you’ve passed it once, you have to do it again. And again. Your path is chosen. Your leverage is gone. You’ll get nothing but trinkets.
Well, it’s easy enough to assume the Democrats will lose because they always lose, but as long as we’re predicting things over which we have minimal control, at best, we might as well at least consider some other possibilities.
For one thing, the “Democrats always lose” narrative obscures the fact that there are some other conflicts going on here. There’s a conflict between the House and Senate, for one thing, since most of the Senate Republicans voted for the bill, and of course that opens up a conflict between Republicans and other Republicans. I will grant that the Democrats are extraordinarily adept at losing political battles they don’t have to, but does that mean they will necessarily be the losers of a battle within the Republican party?
Next, I don’t think you really need a madman strategy here, since the ticking clock is working a little differently than it did with the debt ceiling fiasco last summer. Letting the payroll tax cut expire would be bad, but it wouldn’t be the kind of unprecedented global catastrophe that no one really wants to find out about that the debt ceiling situation created. So there’s not as much pressure on the Dems to make unacceptable compromises.
Finally, let’s posit that at least one Democrat, Barack Obama, has learned that there’s no point trying to compromise with Republicans. Maybe he hasn’t, but his actions since the debt ceiling suggest that he has changed his strategy, and is prepared to veto any bad deal and let Republicans take the blame.
Or not. Time will tell.
In the final decision-making, Obama is likely to do what is best for most people, the people who he believes are his (and the Democrats’) constituents — the working and middle class. He alone can do that because he has nothing to gain from the moneyed elite to do anything else. Either he wins or loses on the intelligence of the American people to see who is on their side.
The Republicans will try, I’m sure, to redefine the start of this problem. They have said (in the House) that they passed a bill, even though the Senate rejected it, twice if I recall. They will blame Harry Reid for not calling the Senate back. They will say, as they have, one year is better than 2 months (without saying what the costs will be in other ways). To the casual listener (and most people are casual listeners) this will make sense. Most people don’t follow the sausage making, remember. They hits bits and pieces, don’t listen to analysis and pundits, don’t read about these things avidly, and many wouldn’t understand even if they did. So it will boil down to a slogan war. And who seems more sincere?
So I don’t think the Dems will let the tax holiday expire. And if they don’t, there will be the usual hollering about “caving”. But remember 160,000,000 people who need this money and tell them — again and again — who made sure they got it.
From “The Hill” of December 7th:
Anyone wanna bet that Obama wont cave on this?
He caved on the civil liberties thing as usual, so I’m not taking that bet.
No, he didn’t. The Republicans caved on his demand, so he dropped the veto threat.
I’ll take that bet.
Barack Obama has not gone back on a single veto threat in his entire time in office. He’s accepted things he’s said he didn’t want, but there is not a single case in which he used the word “veto” or the phrase “will not sign” and gone back on it.
You have to pay close attention to his President’s verbiage. He chooses his words very, very carefully, and he means exactly what he says (even when he allows people who come away with a mistaken impression to keep to it).
what the meaning of the word “is” is.
This site’s main page has gotten wildly imbalanced with unreasonable Democrat bashing recently. To what motivation I can’t divine.
This is nonsensical. The GOP is imploding.
The House was right to recognize that the temp extension was a shitty deal that was going to leave them with none of their “goals” (such that they are) ever fulfilled. Scuttling it is justified only if they could turn around and show they could pass a full year extension on their own terms with or without conservative Democrats’ help.
They haven’t done that. They’ve passed nothing. They’re on tilt, and they’re getting obliterated.
Booman is one of the few bloggers I see taking a positive line on Dems/Obama in general, rightly or wrongly. Unless he boots the other front pagers off the front page, it’s going to continue.
Rightly.
Very, very rightly. You’re living in the dawn of the Next Great Progressive Age, even if you don’t accept it yet. At least until the travails of Europe and Japan finally reach our shores later this century.
The good old NGPA!
But you’re too pessimistic. The Great God Obama can undoubtedly turn back those nasty European and Japanese tides.
Obama uber alles comrades!
I don’t know if Joe is exactly right about the dawning of a new Progressive Age, but I think we are defimnitely witnesing the end of the age of reagan bullshit. Obama knows what the hell he’s doing, and so does Reid. That “caving” meme is so last year, give it a rest and try to see what’s actually happening.
What’s really happening? You mean when Obama did what progressives have been begging him to do and stand up to the GOP things have improved?
Regardless, we are not at the door of a new progressive age. The other side has too many guns, and that’s only when they have to bother with guns. Mostly they can just buy whatever laws they want.
What’s happening is that Obama and Reid are eating the Republicans’ lunch. Also the GOP is falling apart. But you don’t see that.
What. The. Hell?
How am I not seeing that the GOP’s fortunes are declining right now?
No, what you’re not seeing is that it has very little to do with Progressives’ demands. It has to do with Obama’s own long-term strategy of going for the jugular WHEN THE TIME WAS RIPE, i.e. when it was actually possible to do so. The time is ripe because the Republicans, through their own gross underestimation of the President — and the people of this country — maneuvered themselves into this trap.
And this is the same argument that’s been hashed out since the beginning.
The time MIGHT have been able to BE MADE RIPE earlier for certain issues had different actions been taken. This was not only not tried, but actively fought against. In my view this was a bug. In the view of others a feature.
The Great God Obama
Why don’t you just call him “the biggest celebrity in the world,” Mrs. Palin?
Bloggers who value dick-waving and high drama over results tend to come away with the impression that Obama loses these contests.
Three or so months later, it starts to dawn on them that he didn’t really, but by then, everyone has forgotten about the wailing and cries of betrayal, so they don’t feel it necessary to write a correction or update.
Remember when Obama “caved” and signed onto seven eight bazillionty dollars in cuts in April? Except he didn’t?
“Three or so months later, it starts to dawn on them that he didn’t really … ” Three months? Frankly, I don’t think it’s even dawned on many of them yet. But where it might apply — yes, you’re right.
You can tell it’s dawned on them when they stop citing one of those “betrayals” as evidence for their unchanging thesis that he’s going to betray them.
They don’t ever go back and admit they were wrong – hell, they still won’t admit to being wrong about Iraq withdrawal – but they take things they used to shout from the rooftops and shove them down the memory hole.