I like Charlie Cook and I think he’s an excellent analyst, but he does sometimes exhibit some blind spots that I attribute to being too much of a creature of Washington DC. It’s not his fault; I find that I begin to lose my compass after just a day or two in the capital.
When it comes to the government shutdown, Mr. Cook’s blind spot is that he has not correctly identified what the Democrats are trying to accomplish. He thinks that the Democrats are trying to avoid a default and reopen the government, and their main concern should be related to enticing the Republicans to stop punching themselves in the face.
But the Republicans will never intentionally default on our debts, and it was never much more than the remotest possibility that they would do so by accident. That was a hostage that wasn’t a hostage. The GOP leadership has already ceded this point. As to the government shutdown, it’s very unfortunate, but really no more unfortunate the sequester which has been grinding people down all year long and has been hurting the economy. For the Democrats, the shutdown is undermining the people’s faith in effective government, which is a big problem. But, in every other respect, it is working in the party’s favor.
What the Democrats are trying to do is not to end the shutdown for its own sake, but to break the cycle of crises governance, where they are constantly being asked to make absurd concessions merely to keep the government operating. They want to take away the Republicans’ ability to hold a gun to our country’s credit rating and take away their will to shut down the government. And, since this is the priority, helping the Republicans save face by giving them some reward, no matter how paltry, is entirely counterproductive.
To put it in parent/child terms, if you have a boy who throws a lot of tantrums, your problem isn’t the particular tantrum he is throwing right now, but the fact that he throws tantrums whenever he doesn’t get what he wants. When you bargain with the child, you ensure that he will continue the behavior in the future because it is effective.
It’s very important to understand that the GOP is not going to default on our debts. They do not, in fact, have a gallon of gasoline and a match that they will light if we don’t give in to their tantrum. We don’t have to worry about that. All we have to worry about is the government shutdown. And we can wait on that.
I remember that the singer Joe Cocker once answered a question about how he decided to stop using drugs and he said, “You can only hit yourself in the face for so long before it hurts.”
We’ll just sit here and see how long that takes.
Yeah, but that tantrum-throwing boy can be checked for Autism, and other issues, and receive treatment.
What can you do with adults who insist on doing the same thing?
Hopefully, the Democrats stand firm, and the old powers-that-be in the Republican Party can stage an intervention.
That’s where this is headed. Democrats lose nothing by standing back and watching the Republicans destroy themselves. So it’s those most vulnerable in their camp who are outraged and who must find the cajoles to stand up to guys like Ted Cruz. They had better get support from some of their friends with fat wallets. Of course, either way we’re looking at a GOP fracture and a major political realignment. The hour draws neigh. Michelle Bachman may get her rapture after all.
Just imagine having to fear someone like Ted Cruz. It would be so humiliating. One more reason I’m glad I’m not a Republican.
What parents did when I was a boy, beat the shit out of them and then lock them in a dark room until they learn self-control.
They do not, in fact, have a gallon of gasoline and a match that they will light if we don’t give in to their tantrum. We don’t have to worry about that.
But they could still light themselves on fire accidentally. Just look at that nut-job Sheriff(or what ever he is) up the road in Gilberton last night. His termination hearing was postponed because one of his own supporters couldn’t holster a damn gun properly and it dropped to the floor. Luckily it didn’t go off. And then the Sheriff’s lawyer had the gall to say he didn’t feel safe at the hearing last night.
Ha! Ha! Reminds of the South Philly gangbanger that I read about at dkos who shot himself in the groin twice trying to pull his gun out of his belt. Too bad he didn’t try a third time.
I feel that the Dems, Obama included, have not adequately and forcefully stated what they are fighting against—the endless manufactured Repub crises as “government”. You have explained it better than Dems have, including Obama, with his “members of Congress have to do their jobs, just like a bus driver!” and “you can’t say to your bank ‘I’ll pay my mortgage if you give me a new car loan!'”, etc, etc.
The sort of “common schmoe” explanation for what is really a systemic problem doesn’t address the real issue and falls flat as well, IMO.
One of the most effective reframes I’ve heard of late is that of a kid who kills his parents and then demands sympathy because he’s an orphan. That’s the kind of analogy a child could understand. Those are the types of narratives we need to employ. Democrats suck at keeping things simple.
Where I come from, that is well known as the classic definition of “chutzpah”.
‘Fighting for the end of crisis governance’ is hardly a banner cry. “Return to the traditional process of governance! To the barricades!”
They’re fighting for affirmative policy changes, we’re fighting for meta-policy retrenchment. I agree that the ‘common schmo’ explanations fall flat … but that’s part of a more pervasive problem, which is that our elite dreams very small.
That said, this appears to be playing out precisely as Boo predicted (thank frog), so I’m just keeping fingers crossed …
Eh, “messaging” only gets you so far, and can only help so much more when the situation is as clear-cut as this. There’s very little evidence that the GOP story is resonating with anybody but some particularly weak-minded Very Serious People.
Cook is a Republican. He can’t see things other than from a Republican analyst point of view. The fact that he’s more fact-oriented and reality-based than most Republican analysts notwithstanding.
As for the Democrats trying to break the crisis-of-government strategy, do you know that for a fact or are you assuming that to be the case? That’s the minimum position that I have. If you don’t break this syndrome of the Republican Party, you don’t have a prayer in 2014 taking back anything.
The GOP will default on our debts, but it will be because of their own inability to capitulate not because that is what they intended to do. Because they are betting that President Obama will capitulate rather than default of the US debts.
And the Republican position will be that in a year they can propagandize to hang the defaulting on the debts around Obama’s neck.
Individually some Republicans might be rational actors who know when to throw in the towel. Collectively in their caucus meetings, they are irrational and led by a drunk. That is how disasters happen.
We have ten days of waiting before we know whether the GOP will indeed regain enough sanity to pull back from default. But will Democrats have the smarts to disarm them for pulling this stunt again and again? That’s what we are waiting to see.
And the difficulty there is that Democrats have to extract punishment sufficient to deter another shutdown. This is necessary because shutdowns play to GOP delivering on their promises and play to GOP ideology about small government.
With 25% of true believers still in their corner, the GOP has nowhere near hit bottom yet.
That 25% will drop close to single digits when the first batch of SS checks are not in the mail.
No, they will blame Obama for that. And perhaps rightly so. AFAIK, the SS operation is paid from the salary tax not appropriated funds.
“Because they are betting that President Obama will capitulate rather than default of the US debts.”
No doubt a lot of them still are, but I think it finally got through to the big boys, as of yesterday, that it ain’t working. At all.
The leadership of the House and Senate have been motivated by putting the black President in his place. It is not about policy, it is about outmaneuvering the usurper, the illegitimate President. That’s a propaganda trope but it also speaks to the motivations of the leadership that has cultivated it so long. And it does not allow for negotiation. It only allows for feigned negotiation. The big boys have not shown yet that they are doing anything more than trying to wrangle out a win. And if they can’t, hey they are getting their a la carte government through. Can Senate Dems say no to border security?
And if they default, there goes Social Security. Mission accomplished. You can see it in Cruz’s and Rand Paul’s wild eyes. They think this is their moment. And McCain reining them in? A guy who could not bring himself to oppose torture and who capitulated to the stupid military commissions bill does to have the cojones to stop the GOP rush to default.
The GOP has lacked adults for at least a year. It’s going to take the business powers that be personally going to them and letting them know reality to get them to turn around. But too many of them are betting for a GOP victory as well. They know that public opinion doesn’t matter anymore. And with next year’s Supreme Court decision will matter even less.
So who exactly has the incentive to stop this madness?
And just remember this slick slide started with Lieberman, Kent Conrad, Evan Bayh, and Baucus. Not to mention Erskine Bowles. And some folks on the House side as well.
And just remember this slick slide started with Lieberman, Kent Conrad, Evan Bayh, and Baucus. Not to mention Erskine Bowles.
What exactly are you saying? The only one of these guys who’s currently in office is Baucus, and he’s retiring, so what’s the relevance? If you’re saying the Republicans are going to win, I would just note that one person who has a powerful incentive to stop the madness is that black President you mentioned, and he is not exactly powerless.
I am saying that Joe Lieberman force a “debt-deficit” rhetoric on the stimulus package, that Kent Conrad extracted the “catfood commission” from the President as the condition for allowing the ACA amendments to go through on reconciliation, that Evan Bayh and Max Baucus were part of the Senate Gang that steered the 2011 debt crisis to the disastrous supercommittee.
That we wouldn’t be in quite this mess had these guys not been undercutting Democratic policies from the start of the Obama administration. And now most of them have gone to grift their rewards.
Tarheel, none of the things you catalogue here resulted in policy losses for us. They were pains in the ass and brought some rhetorical and framing problems, but Obama and Congressional Dems resisted accepting cuts as a result of the commissions and committees.
Oddly, the effect of the sequestration cuts did bring what we view as policy losses, and you didn’t include them.
The sequestration idea was direct result of the Gang of….process.
And the legitimacy of the whole debt-deficit framing during a recession was the direct result of Lieberman and Conrad playing me-too with the Republicans and putting distance between themselves and the President.
No, sequestration was a direct result of the 2011 debt ceiling deal. The Gangs and Supercommittees have created framing problems, but no policy defeats.
Keep in mind that even as Obama was completing the stimulus deal in the first months of his Presidency, he spoke openly about the need to move to deficit reduction after the economy improved. The Republicans did not force that frame on the President, but they sure have tried to make the frame into a box.
I don’t want to sound overconfident, THD, but the fascist/racist wing of the GOP is really fucking up right now, and fucking up has its own dynamic. Things have been getting tougher for them since at least the November oof last year (hard to believe it’s not even a year yet), but I think they’ve crossed a new threshold with this latest fiasco.
One phenomenon I look forward to, and we’re already seeing, is fragmentation. They are splitting up and fighting with each other. Another dynamic is proving their faith by doubling down on failed strategies. Another is telling themselves only what they want to hear, etc., etc. so thy learn nothing from their mistakes.
So while you have accurately described their goals and moral failings let’s not assume that just because they want to do certain things, they are actually going to be able to do them. The worm turns occasionally.
The people who support the fascists have not changed, and few of them will change. But their hold on power is getting a bit shaky. SC is one of the most conservative states in the nation, so it will be interesting to see what happens there.
Are there any interesting SC races? Even if not, the way things are going some may get more interesting over the next few weeks.
Not seeing any cracks appearing with my SC Republican friends but those would be hidden until next year anyway.
Last thing I saw on ACA was some friend of their complaining about the deal they got on Obamacare. They put up their income info in the explanation. I pointed out that SC had rejected extended Medicaid, which would have subsidized his premiums. Someone else agreed that that was the reason. Crickets.
The problem is South Carolina is Democrats with name recognition. Even if you break the back of the GOP politically.
Same problem in Georgia which is why folks are, or rather, were gaga over Michelle Nunn. Maybe she’s out of the public eye because she wants to be or she’s hard at work constructing political bridges out of thin air. But in a normal two party state, not sure her candidacy would have ever gotten out of the gate. It’s not all that far out of it as it is.
It’s as Justic Ginsberg said in an interview a few days ago, “Democrats are good at winning Presidential races, but don’t seem to be able to turn out the vote in the off years.”(That comment was in response to the question of whether she planned to step down before Obama’s 2nd term ended.) That’s cause there has never been, and is not now a real GOTV effort by Democrats, at least not in the Southern Red States. No doubt there are enough votes to turn a few districts blue, but there must be viable candidates and there must be effective GOTV.
At this point I don’t think it’s even a question of whether the Democrats want to break the cycle of manufactured crises. Republican extremism has reached the point where the Democrats don’t even have an incentive to offer any concessions.
This is where the sequester comes in–they’ve already got that, and now they think they’re going to demand even more cuts as a condition for reopening the government? If you’re just going to reopen an empty shell of the government, why even bother?
“All we have to worry about is the government shutdown. And we can wait on that.”
While I mostly agree with your basic point, there’s going to be some blowback on dems as well as repubs if government offices are shut down for a long time. Gov’t workers may be getting (eventually) paid vacation so they may not mind, but private workers who depend on gov’t will not be so happy.
Scientific programs at NASA and NSF have already been irrevocably damaged– for instance, the Antarctic research season already has been lost for the entire year due to research stations closing, and launch windows at NASA have been missed.
(Not to mention the many many people who depend on various curtailed government services. )
You can let the kid have his tantrum for a while, but not if he is beating up his younger siblings or wrecking the house.
Where analogies fail.
What actually is done with kids who are beating up on younger siblings during a tantrum would amount to stepping outside the Constitution when applied to Congress.
At the analogy’s most gentlest, how do you put the Republican caucus in time out?
In a number of ways:
It didn’t take long for the defundng of air traffic controllers to be reversed – shamefully with Dem support.
Only the first doesn’t transgress the normal separation of powers understanding. A hissy fit over executive overreach is exactly what the House GOP want to set up.
On item 1, the fact that the story is Senate GOP figures writing a debt ceiling/continuing resolution combined bill tells me that the Senate is reluctant still to breach the filibuster. Which tells me the same old Democrats are blocking an actual solution to gridlock.
And the House just passed another mini-bill–this time Border Security. Can Senate Democrats oppose border security in the name of no mini-bills?
It’s not Obama or even Pelosi who can put these guys in Time Out. It’s Boehner.
Here’s the possible dynamic I see — but it’s hard to put a timeline on it.
The GOP has always known the Tea Party was crazy, but they are crazy in useful ways. There’s a little pain, but so much gain.
It’s just now dawning on them that there’s a lot of pain, and maybe not so much gain. Maybe even a lot of loss. With every passing day, the pain is growing and the gain is shrinking.
Remember those old horror movies where the mad scientist creates some kind of killer organism or monsters, and refers to them with the deepest affection as “My pretties” — ? And then they get out of control?
But old habits die hard, and the GOP has become accustomed to operating this way, so accustomed that they some have have forgotten and others never even learned any other way of operating.
So there will be a certain time lag, during which htye will continue doing the same thing, with less and less success. And this gets more and more people fed up with them.
The Democrats might, in theory at least, take the House back in 2014. But only the Republicans can clean up their own house. It’s only in the last few days that we have started seeing signs that some of them recognize this as a big problem for them. Whatever is done about it will come in the form of internecine warfare within the GOP. This will weaken the party.
This fight will not only affect the GOP in Washington, but perhaps it is even more crucial with the governors and state legislatures.
But the anti-Tea Party forces, if they are serious, can win, because they are actually more powerful by far than the Tea Party. On the other hand, the Tea Party will fight on to the bitter end, and their true believers will become totally alienated from the GOP.
This I think it inevitable that if the Tea Party is foiled in its goal of taking over the GOP lock, stock and barrel, they will have no choice in the end but to leave the GOP entirely. They hate the Republican “establishment”,they have their own, highly effective national/local infrastructure, and I’ve heard many of them say that their own goals are far more important to them than the Republican Party itself.
This piece by John Judis is right on target. “The Last Days of the GOP”.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115134/gop-death-watch-final-days-republican-party
That’s a start. Don’t know if 2 can be done by Executive order.
Pardons can. Obama should start pardoning criminals in certain districts and blaming the shutdown!
He doesn’t even have to pardon them. Close down all privately run prisons on the grounds that there is no money to pay the contractors and release all non-violent prisoners or those coming near the end of their term. But bracelets on them if you have to. Only re-imprison those who re=offend. The main thing is that the US prison population – the highest per capita in the world – needs to be radically reduced in any case. Doesn’t hurt that most of the contracting companies and many of their employees are rabidly Republican either.
What are the general terms of payment for Governmnet contractors? 30 days after invoice? Increase that to 90. The private sector will absolutely scream for an end to the shutdown and Obama will buy himself more time.
Did you see this
Mccain tells fox ws the way it is!!!
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mccain-to-fox-news-no-the-shutdown-is-the-gop-s-fault-video
John McCain — Truth to Power.
Talk is cheap. Show us the votes, John.
“I find that I begin to lose my compass after just a day or two in the capital.”
I very rarely go there, but I think I know what you mean. My impression is that everybody in DC thinks “politically”, even the bus drivers. People there are more focused on class, rank and status than anywhere I’ve ever been in the USA — and unlike in Britain, they aren’t subtle about it. And a lot of people in DC are very aggressive, way more so than my own town where people are supposedly so aggressive (New York).
The other side of it is that when people are friendly or helpful (and they certainly can be), they also have the expertise to guide you through the maze.
I’m a small town attorney who literally does not have a suit in my closet and, with a nice sport coat and tie am often complimented for my attire. When I was in D.C., Armanis were a dime a dozen. Men must have closets with three or four of ’em. Yes, Manhattan doesn’t come close. Maybe Milan.
I’m with you on that. I have some friends and relatives who live in Washington metro and there is a definite disconnect between their perception of what people are thinking and reality. This is true no matter where they are on the political spectrum.
Interestingly, when they move away over time you see their perceptions change – even if they aren’t aware of it changing.
I remember one conversation in particular with a slight conservative, a lifetime Republican who couldn’t stand her party any more but still bought into a lot of the memes. She commented: “It seems both sides have just gotten so extreme.” I asked her to name positions where the GOP had gotten extreme, and of course she had no problems doing that (especially being a professional woman with daughters). Then I asked her to name positions where the Democrats had become more extreme. Long silence. I’ll give her credit, that changed her perceptions. But she was so Washington that the both-sides-do-it meme was ingrained in her, even if she had no examples to show the Dems doing it.
Boo,
I agree with everything you say here. That’s why I’m puzzled by one of your recent replies to my reply to your reply, or whatever it was, in “Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth” (October 9).
You had said, of the Republicans, that ” … they actually have the right to expect some concessions. ” To which I replied,
“They have the right to expect some, but they don’t have the right to get any.” To which you replied,
“Actually, they do.”
What gives them the right to any concessions from the Democrats? You seem to be arguing here that they don’t deserve anything, and I couldn’t agree more. They deserve to go their room, is what they deserve.
That didn’t sound like Boo, so I went back. He said:
In the process, that is, of working out a budget deal as a part of governing (ie, normal, non-trantrum-based-governing) in a divided government.
OK, I misunderstood that.
To be more specific, BooMan’s saying that the GOP cannot be allowed to get anything in exchange for passing a Continuing Resolution and lifting the debt ceiling.
But after that, it is highly desirable for us to return to regular order, end the sequester and pass a yearly budget so we can kick the CR habit. When the conference committee is formed, the majority Senate Dems will have to accept concessions in order to get the House to pass the budget that comes back from conference.
The beauty that arises from these weeks of ugliness is that the House has now weakened its bargaining position tremendously. Also, the Senate’s budget is fairly close to the House’s in terms of total expenditures, and the President can wield a veto threat or veto pen. This needs to result in a final budget where the House is making more concessions than the Senate.
I’ve become persuaded by BooMan’s repeated point: we must get Republicans back to voting for reasonable revenue increases when it is appropriate. I think much of our fears about concessions from our side comes from our acceptance of the Norquist frame: No GOP’er votes for any revenue increases ever. It is important to acknowledge that Obama and Congressional Dems brought that decades-long rule to an end a few months ago; some Republicans voted for a tax hike on the top marginal rate. (Those Republicans also voted on a restoration of the payroll tax rate for FICA, but we all know that wasn’t as painful for them).
The revenues from that agreement are not enough to sustain the governance progressives want, though. We have to have this fight and win it. If tax policies remain as they are, we will not be able to sustain the New Deal and Great Society programs that we still have, and we’ll be further away from improving some of those programs as we should.
This piece of Republican rhetoric is actually true: we cannot sustain our current projected budget deficit levels. This does not mean the GOP’s deficit projections are factual; this does not mean that we should get to balanced budgets within the next 5-10 years. It also does not mean that the only path to reduced deficits are budget cuts. Revenues are needed as well, and that’s the big prize in the fight.
We’ll need Republican votes to increase Federal revenues, because we’re unlikely to get 60 Democratic Senators AND a House majority this decade. We have to gain a reliable group of Republicans who will be willing to do that. Democrats won’t get that by making no concessions in future negotiations.
200 billion is very close to sustainable.
What does $200 billion refer to?
I only partially agree with you about face saving. What matters here is whether the republicans end up judging their tactics as politically beneficial or not. If they do, they will do it again; if they don’t, they won’t. I think it’s pretty obvious to them that the shutdown has been a disaster, so they have learned their lesson, and this will remain the case even if they are given some kind of minor concession that allows them to save face in the short run.
That said, the closer we can push them to unconditional surrender, the better, although we cannot on our own push them the entire way. To use a war analogy, we can’t actually conquer them and occupy their country, but we can push them to the brink of civil war.
We’ll see if you’re right. Hope you are. But so far all I’ve seen is a lot of talk. Let’s see how close we come.