A prominent Republican senator said Thursday that President Obama is seeking to spark “class warfare” with increasingly populist rhetoric and a series of regulatory measures aimed at Wall Street.
“I think they think if they can create enough animosity toward Wall Street and corporate America, they get into this traditional sort of Democrat rhetoric and tap into the populist anger out there,” Sen. John Thune, South Dakota Republican, told The Daily Caller. “For Democrats to be successful they’ve got to create a sense of class warfare and an us versus them mindset.”
They are so eager to defend Wall Street they are doing it pre-emptively. Unemployment is at 10%. People are angry. People are pissed about the bonuses and the bailout.
Even Bob Shrum could figure this out.
And, as a side note, this merely confirms what we already know- whenever the Republicans accuse someone of something, they are already doing it. Class warfare? Has he watched the GOP the last twenty years?
arguingwithsignposts
Oh, the irony of the Senator from South freakin’ Dakota (.26 percent of the U.S. population – yes, that is a decimal point) lecturing us on class warfare and Wall Street.
Dave Fud
Considering that Thune is already running for President, it would be good to slap his ass down now. Putting the hurt on Thune might be the beginning of a very good thing.
edmund dantes
What about the White House’s stupidity?
If you wait for the parameters to be defined, they will be defined for you. These guys are idiots.
You should have had your best path forward planned for this contingency, not making it up as you go along as each and every new crisis pops up to derail your plans.
Glocksman
Can we break out the piano wire now, plz?
geg6
Well, the only hope for Dems at this point is for the GOP to be even more stupid. And pretty boy Thune, rumored to be the new presidential level golden boy, is signaling that they just may be.
Go on ahead, Thune and the GOPers. Get the back of your banker buddies. Please. Nothing could make me happier.
PinkPig
Very true.
It also never ceases to amaze me that Democrats don’t deduce whatever it is Republicans are scared they’ll do (it’s usually pretty easy – in this case, wage class warfare) and then DO THAT.
Nick
@edmund dantes: Not sure losing a Senate seat in Massachusetts was even on the list of possibilities two weeks ago.
wilfred
Opening for what? Are you suggesting, or think it possible, that Obama will start waving the bloody shirt?
I’m all for class struggle – to me, it’s the only politics – but it’s a bit silly to imagine Obama suddenly having a Eugene Debs or Huey Long moment. I think the Republicans know damned well what they’re doing here.
Econwatcher
Absolutely right. Obama should fly out to somewhere in the Midwest, right in Thune’s neighborhood. And he should give a speech about how GS was saved by US taxpayers just last year through a $60 billion bailout of AIG, and now wants to hand out multimillion dollar bonuses to its people because they’ve earned it and, as their spokesman literally said, they’re doing God’s work. And Republicans don’t want banker bonuses touched because of their dedication to the free market.
How can he NOT do this? How is it possible that he’s not even tried? It’s so OBVIOUS. I remember one offhand remark about not protecting fat cats, but otherwise nothing. I think Obama is a decent man, but his political negligence is approaching criminal levels.
Glocksman
Did anyone read some of the comments on this article over at the Daily Caller?
One guy was seriously proposing that the corporate tax rate should be dropped to zero and that any revenue losses would be more than made up through income and sales taxes.
Looks like there are still idiots who believe in the Laffer Curve despite the last 30 years proving that Arthur Laffer was full of shit.
geg6
Personally, I’m liking this noise from my senator (warning: subscription required):
http://www.rollcall.com/news/42507-1.html?ET=rollcall:e6455:80065226a:&st=email
Me likey:
debbie
The unbelievable part is that the Republicans are using “class warfare” to entice the very people their policies are destroying. The “bitter whites” don’t understand what the phrase really means — they think it’s code for race. Maybe Obama ought to start out by defining how it’s really defined.
arguingwithsignposts
In an earlier thread, someone commented that they thought most of the teabaggers would side with Wall Street against the government. I’m not so sure. Even the right-wing populist anger has some banker-specific aspects. It’ll be hard to spin that away, no matter how hard Limbaugh works at it.
Tell them that the banks are taking their hard-earned dollars, that the U.S. citizen bailed the banksters out just like GM.
ETA: I loves me some banker schadenfreude: Several executives said Thursday that they regretted their support for — and campaign donations to — Obama.
“I wish I could take my vote back,” said one executive at a large bank. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because his firm barred public comments on the matter. “
edmund dantes
@Nick: Nick losing any Senate seat should have been on the radar. If losing a 60th vote was going to be this detrimental to their plans, they should have been planning for an elephant deciding to take a seat on the spot where a Democratic Senator decided to take a nap, a meteor striking a Senator’s house, a cardiac event, etc.
El Cid
I certainly hope Obama’s going to grasp such a clear offer. I’m willing to see how this develops over the next couple of weeks, though I fear that the mere fact that we point out a clear line Obama etc could take to politically plant Democrats on the side of the vast majority of Americans versus the corporate super-elite means that he’ll immediately want to find a center ground on which we can all coalesce around, etc., etc., etc. Fingers crossed, though.
El Cid
@edmund dantes: Also, Democratic Senators should be banned from flying on any small planes. Just sayin’.
nepat
But this will cripple their ability to start lending again and lead to economic devastation! Fight Al Queda not the economy! Taxes! ACORN!
We are in the snake pit.
dr. bloor
@Nick:
Coakley’s best numbers were never more than a smidgen over 50%, and they had been trending downward for a long while. Given the stakes, the national party should have been all over that campaign long before they got into the action.
Econwatcher
@arguingwithsignposts:
Your’re right, teabaggers will NOT defend Wall Street (at least not for the most part). Most people in red states HATE Wall Street (not always for the right reasons, and sometimes for ugly reasons, but still).
There is no conceivable political downside to going after Wall Street loudly and aggressively. It’s all upside. And it’s the right thing to do. Arrrgggghhhh!!!! How can we have gone a year without doing this?
Cat Lady
Isn’t it time now to gather and show ourselves collectively? The tiny little teatard peabrains got their teatard fat asses to get off the couch, make poorly spelled signs and leave the trailer park, and yet here we all are bitching and moaning with each other in pixelated comfort. Phone calls are one thing, but showing up en masse, in support of Obama, would change the conversation. No big puppets though.
The Grand Panjandrum
You’ll need to provide video evidence, otherwise I call bullshit.
@Nick:
. They knew at least weeks before the election it was a possibility. AND they had no Plan B. Shame on them.
edmund dantes
@El Cid: Definitely. I mean shouldn’t they all be hermetically sealed away until such time as we need their vote? /sarcasm I’m going over the top for effect of course.
If losing a seat was going to be this detrimental to their plans, how did they not plan for it? Why are they sitting around waiting for the dust to settle before they make their move? You know who wins at the bottom of a scrum for the football? Not the guy sitting there waiting for the dust to settle. It’s the guy that fighting, scratching, clawing, and giving his all to get the damn ball before the dust settles.
The White House’s big plan on their signature issue is to wait for the dust to settle and hope the referee (the American People) can figure out what happened while the dust was settling. Idiots.
Nick
@edmund dantes: If we set our agendas based on the most unlikely of scenarios, then we’d never get anything done.
There are 22 Democratic Senators in states with Republican governors. What happens tomorrow if, God forbid, they all died?
The GOP would have a supermajority. What are our plans in that situation, cause until about Jan 7, that scenario seemed more likely that the popular Attorney General of Massachusetts losing Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.
Morbo
@Glocksman: Well, after yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, we have to drop corporate taxes to 0. If we don’t it’ll be a restriction of their speech and a violation of the First Amendment, mm-hmm.
wilfred
Not so fast! When did Obama say he would ever do that. Show me. Go ahead.
jrg
No question this is class warfare. Who does this latte sipping, elitist, intellectual, ACORN thug think he is?
Sly
Congress certainly has the ability to push a legislative agenda that will make the traditional GOP support base shudder. They’ve been doing it somewhat already (credit card reform, unemployment benefits, etc), they just haven’t been promoting it heavily enough. HCR would be a huge feather in their cap, which is why the House Progressive Caucus is being staggering inept (along with misnamed, since they’re walking away from any chance at reform for the forseeable future and they well fucking know it…. Progressive my ass).
The Republican money effort for 2010 is already pressed pretty thin, with only the Brown win to show them some sign that the GOP hasn’t confined itself to minority status for more than a decade. All the advertising against HCR has been from the insurance industry funneling money through the Chamber of Commerce, just so they can give everyone the appearance that they’re not interfering. The other two opponents to HCR, the AMA and PhRMA, are doing all their stuff in actual negotiations, doing everything they can behind the scenes to get things like the Medicare Expansion and drug reimportantion off the table.
The DNC, on the other hand, is still awash with cash. The only thing preventing them from doing a full court press for 2010, since the respective campaign committees in Congress have three times the amount of money as their GOP counterparts, is a lot of nervous people in the Democratic establishment (think Bayh but with less charisma… I know its tough) trying to slam their foot on the breaks to “save the middle”.
Col. Klink
Rush has figured it out too though, which is why he claims Obama is “showing his anti-Semitism” by going after Wall Street. This is how the right rolls baby!
They pit groups against each other. Nixon was the master of it, and nothing would please the GOP more than to create a wedge where the ‘angry black man’ is going after ‘innocent Jewish bankers’. It’s a recipe for social disaster and GOP would love it if it could pit the Democrats most loyal constituencies against each other. It’s a mine field out there. I don’t think people realize how carefully this president needs to tread it all.
vtr
I understood that we were angry and frustrated because the Administration hadn’t done enough to punish Wall Street for stealing our money, and for doing so little to enact regulation to prevent a recurrence. Now Senator Thune tells me nothing should be done to punish or regulate Wall Street because it would be class warfare. Would the Democrats please buy about $20 million worth of airtime on FNC, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingram, Boorts, O’Reilly, et al, showing Thune’s argument? And ask how doing nothing to Wall Street is going to help me get my money back? “Conservatives” deregulated banks, slashed capital gains and income taxes, among other things, solely on behalf of the wealthy. “Class warfare” is a label reserved for Democrats or anyone else who does something to threaten the wealthy.
Trinity
Matt Taibbi just posted this.
edmund dantes
@Nick: I was being over the top for effect. A cardiac event is not unheard of event for a Senator nor is a stroke considering the age of that body. If 60 was the magic number, what was their plan if they lost that 60th vote? We just found out. They had no plan.
Look, I’ve done Risk Assesment planning. A Dem Senator having a cardiac event reducing their numbers in the Senate below apparently the magic 60 should have had a plan ready to go. Go run the actuary tables on the Senate body. Losing that 60th vote was actually a very real possibility.
Nope. Their plan is to wait for the dust to settle. It’s a failure to plan for a very real possibility.
arguingwithsignposts
@Col. Klink:
Funny, I didn’t know Ken Lewis and John Thain were Jewish. I’m not surprised Limbaugh is dipping into the “Elders of Zion” playbook, though.
@Cat Lady: I’m not going if there aren’t giant puppet heads. (TMBG)
madmatt
After the SC ruling yesterday you are going to see a lot more sucking up to our new corporate overlords! Be respectful!
Nick
@Econwatcher:
There is, IMO, and Thune is walking that line. For many people ignorant of economics, they judge the economy based on the Dow. Yesterday it was down 213 points…and yesterday I interviewed an investment banker for my job who flat out said “If Obama is going to do this, we’ll tank the market and he’ll be sorry”
So when the Dow is back at 8500, we may find ourselves on defense again.
Osprey
I think some people still don’t get this. The one thing I will always praise the Repubs for is their conviction. We know they want to defend Wall Street, corporations, and big business. What people need to understand is that Democrats are the exact fucking same for 1 huge caveat-the Dems pretend to give a shit about financial reform (and other things…cough/HCR) to garner votes. I’ll guarantee you financial reform will be just like HCR and the stimulus-the Dems will start at the low end before anybody has even had a chance to cut the bill up, and we’ll wind up with a loophole laden piece of shit that doesn’t fix anything, because that’s what they want. Throw shit at the wall, call it a bill, get O to sign it, and declare victory. Like winning the special olympics.
You’re 100% correct on the latter part-that if the Republicans accuse you of something, they’re already doing it. That is the lynchpin of how Karl Rove ran everything. The second it looked like something could be pinned on the Republicans, they would immediately attack the Democrats with it, even if it was complete bullshit, because they knew it would put Dems on the defensive (the cowering pussies they are), and soften any attack against the Repubs on the same issue.
Glocksman
@Trinity:
Tabbi’s got a way of driving the point home, doesn’t he?
dr. bloor
@Nick:
You weren’t paying very close attention to this election, were you?
arguingwithsignposts
@Nick:
On behalf of millions of Americans, I would like for you to call that banker and tell him that if they do that, he should be prepared for the rusty pitchforks.*
*Rusty Pitchfork(tm) is a registered trademark of AsiangrrlMN.
Nick
@arguingwithsignposts: yeah good luck with that, we all know Obama is gonna get the blame for the market tanking, not the bankers.
Trinity
@Glocksman: Indeed. I think Taibbi sums the situation up well.
Bobby Thomson
Class warfare works. That’s why Republicans always scream that Democrats are engaging in it.
Look, the Democrats have owned the “little guy” label throughout the history of the Republic, for better or worse. If they somehow manage to allow the Republicans to out-demagogue them on this they are screwed good and proper. Even given the popular perception that Democrats have ignored unemployment and wasted a year bickering over intractable problems, they can still at least avert complete disaster.
The problem is that it would require some good old fashioned partisan politicking, and everything I know about this president suggests that he will never, ever go there.
Col. Klink
@ 31 # arguewithsigns –
It doesn’t matter if Ken Lewis and John Thain are Leprechauns. That’s not the case the GOP is going to build. “They create reality” remember. That’s the meme they are going to roll with – class war and anti-Semitism. The actual truth doesn’t matter one bit.
Look at their ‘class war’ meme for example. The GOP gives all of its power to a small economic elite and does their corporate bidding and then they turn around and say the Democrats are engaging in “class war” whenever they try and undo those excesses.
Look at Rush’s comments yesterday and you can see the case they are going to build. Reality has no bearing – with Roger Ailes and the GOP everything is about framing and they are masters at it.
arguingwithsignposts
@Nick: Again, I’m not so sure. Bush didn’t get the blame for the market tanking under his leadership. The economy as a whole, perhaps, but the market aspect was pretty clearly focused on the banks.
And as long as they’re handing out multi-million dollar bonuses and making fat cat profits (even while the Dow tanks), there’s an easy target. I don’t think that investment banker realizes the amount of anger there is out there for these pampered executives. He needs to get out more.
ETA: I don’t know. Maybe I’m being too optimistic about our citizenry. But I do know that the income distribution in our country is as wacked as it was in the 1920s. And that’s got to have a lot of people realizing that the top 1 percent really don’t give a sh*t about the working stiff. Class warfare? you bet. But there’s a lot more in 99 percent than there is in 1 percent, no matter how much money you have. And if the bankers work hard enough to make it worse, they’ll find out that the rope can only be stretched so far before it breaks.
General Winfield Stuck
@madmatt:
yes, very much so. The Supremes breathed new life into the “permanent republican majority” and the wingnuts will not be able to stop themselves from slobbering their new sugar daddies that no longer have limits in greasing the mighty wurlitzer and stuffing wingnut pockets with cash.
And Obama took the first correct step with the Volcker Rule to set the coming class war like no other. or at least since the Robber Barons and Gilded Age. We will see if he has the stamina and conviction to fight it to win. He doesn’t have to be a wind bag Huey Long firebrand to do it, in fact that would be highly counterproductive.
But he does have to take up the populist sword and use it surgically when it’s time. I think the SCOTUS decision may have lit a fire under his ass, but we will see if wilfred is right.
GregB
President Obama had better toughen up quickly and start mounting a few metaphorical heads over the fireplace.
He’s being seen as a total pushover.
The time to run this anti-Wall Street stuff up the flag pole was when they were down and out and needed the help.
Now they’ve gotten a nice nap and a good breakfast and are ready to fight.
Now he’s lost the support of a lot of the people.
He’d better work double time.
Oh yeah and fire Geithner as quick as a wink.
-G
Hiram Taine
“It’s class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn’t be.”
Warren Buffett – CNN Interview, May 25 2005, in arguing the need to raise taxes on the rich.
Nick
@arguingwithsignposts: The two were interconnected. The first thing that needs to happen is some sort of change in the mentality that the Dow is a barometer of the larger economy.
As long as people think green arrow and red arrows on TV represent the economy, Wall Street can easily manipulate people into thinking this is gonna cause another ecession
General Winfield Stuck
@Trinity: Taibi is a self congratulating polemic twerp, whether he is right or not.
arguingwithsignposts
@Nick:
As long as people on TV keep putting up a shiny fever chart as a representation of the health of the economy, that’s not going to change. More and better journalists, that’s my motto.
Bobby Thomson
@Nick:
Oh, really?
On January 5, 2010, Josh Marshall wrote:
And forget Coakley for a minute. Robert Byrd, who serves in a state with a Republican governor, had to be wheeled into the chamber for the pre-Christmas vote. You had Republicans openly praying for his death. And you think 59 Senators hasn’t been a very real possibility at all times?
Whoever failed to develop contingency plans should be sacked, along with whoever bigfooted Capuano and convinced MA Democrats to nominate someone who made John Kerry look like Alan Grayson.
Captain Haddock
Right – and perhaps one day the Washington Generals will try some new plays against the Globetrotters…
Jiggins
Sure, it’ll feel good to go after the banksters, but how will that help the unemployed? If you look at who’s unemployed it’s largely the less educated set, particularly minorities. A lot of these folks who were previously employed were working in construction. You also have some people in niche roles (lawyers, architects, engineers tied to the construction industry, state employees hurt by declining tax revenue) that have been hit. Anyway, it’s hard for me to see how many of these people will be able to go back to doing what they were doing before the crash. I don’t think the building boom and suburban sprawl that fueled much of the construction industry is going to come back, and a few public works projects isn’t going to cut it. In other words, even the most ambitious stimulus programs tend to rely on the idea that we’ll be able to turn the clock back and and go back to doing what we were doing before the downturn.
I think we should tax the banks, and penalize them for their role in triggering the downturn, but we also need to drop the sense of entitlement. No one is owed a job making POS cars, and no one is owed a job building POS houses on the outskirts of town. I used to be a pretty engaged progressive, but the constant and righteous pleading for entitlements is starting to get to me. The right is even worse – their sense of entitlement is tied to bullshit traditional social mores. Anyway, fuck the government. If they can penalize the banksters, more power to them. But I’m not counting on them for much else. Better to find a good job or employer, or if you’re an entrepreneur to make your payroll and take care of your folks. The govt. isn’t going to do it. And class warfare isn’t going to help anyone’s bottom line (again, I do think it’s a worthy endeavor b/c it will feel so good).
shortstop
Class warfare is not doggedly pursuing laws and policies that eliminate the middle class and create a superclass of poor under a miniature, ultrawealthy plutocracy. Class warfare is having the poor taste to point out that someone is doing this.
Nick
@Bobby Thomson:
The Governor of West Virginia is a Democrat, Joe Manchin.
and from that article is seems like Josh came up with the obvious idea that Congress is now rejecting. They HAD a plan, pass the Senate bill, but the House doesn’t want to do that.
Max
I saw this diary at Kos and it really seems to speak for me.
Liberals give Obama a test no mortal could pass
Trinity
@General Winfield Stuck: I was only pointing out my agreement with Taibbi’s assessment. No more. No less.
Bobby Thomson
Oops – my apologies to Governor Manchin. Still, it would have taken time to fill that seat, and there are plenty of other senators who are very old or otherwise not in the best of health.
General Winfield Stuck
@Trinity: OK fair enough
Bobby Thomson
@Nick: “They” didn’t have a plan. Josh Marshall had a plan. Obviously no one in a position to do anything about it ever discussed with Democrats in the House, or we wouldn’t have had the spectacle of panicking Democrats running everywhere like headless chickens and delivering contradictory messages, while
Rahmthe White House ran up the white flag and said, “Just pass something, damn it!”Nick
@arguingwithsignposts: My point is, we Democrats have done this class warfare thing before and it failed. It fails because we always think our arguments are obviously right and that the American people side with us, and time and time again we are blindslighted by the face that they fall for the right wing crap.
geg6
@Col. Klink:
Oh, please. I don’t know a Jew who would fall for that bullshit. I don’t even begin to think Rush is trying to rally his vast Jewish listernership, just his typical hit ’em with anything and the Dittoheads will cheer crap. But that you could begin to think the American Jewish community, as a whole, is that stupid is mind-boggling. I don’t know if you’re Jewish or if you even know any Jews, but the ones I know would laugh in your face upon hearing that theory.
General Winfield Stuck
@Sly:
Not any more
Glocksman
@arguingwithsignposts:
Or find a remedy for Excedrin Headache #.357, perhaps.
All kidding aside, we’re not at the point of widescale violence yet, but we aren’t as far away from that point as I’d like to be.
jayjaybear
@shortstop:
That’s the Republican MO.
“Yes, we’re not supposed to be torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib…that would be bad. But the real criminal here is the man who gave those photos to the press. And the news outlet that published them.”
Morbo
He’s going to take the political fire no matter what, so he might as well go for something with teeth. I won’t hold my breath, but more Volcker less Geithner is a good sign.
nepat
@Cat Lady:
This.
Sly
@geg6:
You’re assuming that the comment is aimed at chipping away Jewish support.
arguingwithsignposts
@Nick:
It succeeded once before – 1930s, see Franklin D. Roosevelt. The oligarchs plotted to have him assassinated.
And I think an argument could be made that the American Revolution was an instance of class warfare.
Glocksman
@geg6:
All five of them?
Snark aside, every single Jew I know despises Limbaugh and that includes the few right wing (libertarian, not neocon) ones I know.
WereBear
This is a driveby: just want to cheer everyone up with this video.
arguingwithsignposts
@geg6:
And another thought on the anti-semitism front, does Limbaugh actually believe that will sell with red-staters? Hell, a lot of his audience probably already thinks teh Jooz run the world. Glocksman is probably right, it’s a trial balloon. I can’t see it changing his audience’s idea of Obama that much, and I damned sure can’t see it working on progressives. Do real independents listen to that gasbag? Maybe there’s his opening.
metricpenny
I don’t know where Sen. Thune has been, but the “class warfare spark” in my neck of the woods (metro-Atlanta) occurred in the fall of 2008 and has been a raging inferno since. Just seems that President Obama has finally gotten around to turning the “populist rhetoric” hoses on those flames.
Obama really needs the Democrats in Congress to stop acting like they’re a volunteer brigade and do the full-time job we elected them, and pay them, to do. Be it on HCR, regulatory reform or any other issues.
We can denigrate the Congressional Republicans, but can we honestly not paint the Democrats with the same brush?
I thought that having Obama in office would help change the way things are done in Washington. Little did I realize that sensible and compassionate leadership by example doesn’t work for the folks in Congress. For the majority of them it seems it’s still all about their personal needs and those of their friends and major donors.
And the MA senate race, dang it! Where was Gov. Tim Kaine and the DNC? Is President Obama expected to do everything?
geg6
@Sly:
So now you’re trying to tell me that Rush now has a large African American or Hispanic listenership?
Again, I think it’s simply another club for Rush to use and his overwhelmingly white, male, and uneducated listener will cheer anything he says, no matter how much it contradicts his usual racist rhetoric or their actual racist attitudes.
GregB
The Democrats should easily pick up the class warfare challenge and declare that they are on the side of the middle class and the GOP is on the side of the overclass.
-G
Glocksman
@geg6:
Personally I think it’s the typical Rove MO.
In other words Rush is accusing the Democrats of holding the same noxious beliefs that he (not so) secretly believes in.
Kinda like when Rush rails against drug use while being a Hillbilly Heroin and boner pill addict himself.
El Cid
@wilfred: I never said Obama said he would do that. I just said I hoped he might. Maybe you didn’t read the 2nd sentence.
Trinity
@nepat: Agreed.
Barry
Nick
“@edmund dantes: Not sure losing a Senate seat in Massachusetts was even on the list of possibilities two weeks ago.”
However, Obama has been running with the theoretical minimum (and that’s assuming the non-existant ideal Democratic Senator, who doesn’t backstab the president) for the last year. In addition, GOP strategy of 100% obstructionism was known since Jan ’09 at the latest.
Considering that that minimum assumed that Joe ‘backstabing b*stard’ Lyingberman would play nice, Obama et al. should have had plenty of practice by now.
geg6:
“Well, the only hope for Dems at this point is for the GOP to be even more stupid. And pretty boy Thune, rumored to be the new presidential level golden boy, is signaling that they just may be.
Go on ahead, Thune and the GOPers. Get the back of your banker buddies. Please. Nothing could make me happier.”
Do you remember healthcare reform? They were able to mobilize ~half of Americans to support their insurance companies.
The GOP would have to be scr*w-a-dog-in-daylight-in-front-of-TV-cameras stupid to phrase it was ‘we luv Wall St’. What they’ll do is define it as opposing Obama Evul Librul Job-Destroy Social(african muslim n*gger)ism.
Econwatcher
“There is no conceivable political downside to going after Wall Street loudly and aggressively. It’s all upside. And it’s the right thing to do. ”
And the day that Obama does that, he’ll surprise the living crap out of me. And by doing that, I don’t mean proposing a pre-castrated (and Wall St approved) set of reforms, submitting them to Congress, and hoping that the GOP will do the right thing.
By doing that, I mean using the presidential pulpit, making it a core issue, keeping the heat on 24/7/31 until election day, using investigations by the DoJ to the ethical and legal max, and publicly tracing connections from Wall St to senators.
In short, manning up and acting like this matters – even if just for his benefit.
Mike from Philly
I’m not so sure the teabagging crowd is going to turn on Wall Street. I see their protests not so much as populist rage as much as “but our team was supposed to be in charge!” whining. Their arguments lack any sort of coherence. They were protesting tax increases last April that were non existent. They protested the stimulus which ostensibly would have helped them out. They protested health care reform by parading around mis-spelled posters of Hitler.
You think these guys are going to act against the interests of the Republican party now? No way. Their goal is to get Republicans elected to office again so they can be told how awful fags are and how Mexicans are taking their jobs. They need to know the people they’ve been trained to hate are not in charge. They couldn’t care less about actually governing. Their idea of policy begins and ends with cutting taxes. Any nuance beyond that eludes them.
Col. Klink
@ geg6
I don’t think you were listening to what I was saying even in the slightest, but then down thread go say pretty much exactly what I’m saying with your comments @ 71.
What I am saying, and all I am saying, is that Rush & Fox are exceedingly good at stirring the hate pot. Rush listeners will here him blabber on and say, “Yeah, Obama hates Wall Street because is a NAZI. Rush is right.” The GOP has played that way since 1968. I don’t think you can really deny that?
georgia pig
@General Winfield Stuck: The SCOTUS ruling changes the playing field. This is the worst SC ruling since Dred Scott, assuming you rule out Bush v. Gore as an aberration. This gets at the real root of the problem in the US, i.e., forty years of Reaganism has reduced everything to money. The SC ruling essentially enshrines the concept that constitutional rights are denominated in dollars.
Obama now has next to zero leverage on the money guys, which is why Geithner, Summers and, perhaps, Rahm, will become expendable. Before, the money guys had to at least pretend to play along because they needed Obama to save their assess and because of his ability to raise tons of campaign cash from small donors. I think Obama was trying to thread the needle, relying on this popularity leverage and some (misguided) hope that these guys had some sense of enlightened self interest and were sufficiently scared by the financial crisis to play along. It was worth a try, I guess, but I think the levels of bad faith, short term thinking and simple avarice have gotten so high it may have become pointless to take this route.
The question is whether he has the desire or the fortitude to go to war. For all those excited by the prospect, it will be very difficult with no guarantee of success. You have adversaries with national media outlets, paid off politicians and tons of cash, opposed by weak labor unions and a confused and ill-informed public. Good luck.
Thoughcrime
Problem is, Obama is much more comfortable driving to the right.
Kind of odd for a lefty.
Stefan
Not sure losing a Senate seat in Massachusetts was even on the list of possibilities two weeks ago.
They knew there was an election, didn’t they? Therefore losing that Senate seat damn sure had to be on the list of possibilities. Sure, maybe they thought it would be improbable, maybe they thought the odds of losing were less than one percent, but plans have to take into account the improbable as well as the probable — that’s why you have a *$%!@#!! plan in the first place.
They’ve been so busy doing tactics that they’ve ignored the strategy.
Col. Klink
I think Sly @ 65 gets what I am saying. Again, I repeat my thoughts @ 78.
Barry
arguingwithsignposts
“And another thought on the anti-semitism front, does Limbaugh actually believe that will sell with red-staters? Hell, a lot of his audience probably already thinks teh Jooz run the world. Glocksman is probably right, it’s a trial balloon. I can’t see it changing his audience’s idea of Obama that much, and I damned sure can’t see it working on progressives. Do real independents listen to that gasbag? Maybe there’s his opening.”
Remember that the right has this bizarre love-hate relationship with Judaism. On the one hand, they hate it. On the other hand, they’re supposed to support Israel. On the third hand, they’re supposed to support Israel to get the rest of the Jews there, so that Jesus will come back and perform the final final solution.
New Yorker
When I read things like this, I think it’s tragic that we executed the Beltway Sniper. How I’d love to let him loose in Manhattan right now with orders to start picking off random investment bankers.
mds
We’re not talking Jews, or African Americans, or Hispanics. Rush is aiming it at the “Christian Zionists” who are a substantial part of his audience. He wants to make sure they think of this as part and parcel of the Socialist Muslim Negro’s desire to enact another Holocaust, rather than consider this a rare good move by the Manchurian Kenyan. You need to have teabagging fuckwits out in force shrieking against bank regulation in the name of populism, not nodding their heads in agreement with it.
Nick
@arguingwithsignposts: yeah I was thinking back that far, I was thinking post-WW II.
The Moar You Know
@arguingwithsignposts: Of course it will. Anything Limbaugh says sells with his audience, even if it directly contradicts what he said a day before. He could tell his army of zombie hate addicts that Maoism was the next logical step in conservative thinking, and the next day you’d have half of America in black jackets quoting from the Little Red Book.
I think that most Dems cannot understand the very fundamental need of these people to have someone to follow and obey. Most of the time, the best thing you can hope for out of them is that:
A. You outnumber them.
B. They are following someone relatively benign.
Neither A nor B applies at this point in history, unfortunately.
cmorenc
@ElCid
This time a year ago, for Obama to seek as much as possible a “center ground” path that appeal to and bring aboard as many Republicans with at least some moderate instincts – was still a bona fide sound inclination and approach to attempt.
HOWEVER, by sometime late last spring, it should have been obvious to even an average-smart political bear that not just GOP/conservative activists, but the entire GOP congressional/Senate delegation had bought into the notion that to the extent they facilitated any success whatever by Obama, they facilitated the future failure of the GOP and conservatism, and that they had adopted as their strategy for returning to power an attempted repeat of the monkey-wrench sabotage strategy of 92-94. In other words, it was obvious that no member of the GOP congressional delegation could be trusted from that point on to be dealing in good faith – Charles Grassley’s conduct should have been an obvious “read” to anyone with even modest political savvy. We haven’t even gotten around to discussing why it was obvious Lieberman couldn’t be trusted, even that far back.
And so, it is astounding, stupid even, for Obama at this point to attempt to place ANY hope on finding acceptable “common” ground, when your opponents’ stragegy is to negate any possibility there is any, and even where there’s the appearance of flowers of mutual agreement blooming among part of the GOP delegation, for the leadership and activists to quickly spray it with industrial-grade Roundup before they can take root.
DO WHAT YOU WERE ELECTED TO DO DAMMIT – change the corrupt status quo, rather than simply try to oil the existing machinery to try to quiet the rattles and squeaks.
El Cid
@cmorenc: I don’t agree. A year ago we still had the experience of 30 years of Reaganism. I agree that it would have been correct to make all sorts of stylistic and surface level political overtures to make it look like you believed in reaching out to Republican elected leaders, but no one should have been foolish enough to make their collaboration a serious part of your plans. Yeah, make the outreach, make nice noises, etc., but, seriously? A grown up expected Republicans to help work on policies with Obama for the good of the nation? Please.
Michael
I’m too depressed to look, but has anybody done any comparison of bank earnings to those of the largest companies that actually make stuff?
General Winfield Stuck
@georgia pig:
Absolutely true, and when the SCOTUS likely shitcans soft money limits later in a ruling to come maybe this summer, all pretense to regulating money in politics will be gone. I don’t know what will happen, nor whether Obama will rise to the challenge, though the Volcker Rule thing and putting Gheitner in the background is a positive sign, but at this point, that is all it is.
The opening of the money spickets will throw the current dynamics in our politics to the wind and shake things up in ways we can’t imagine right now. As it will give a huge advantage to wingers, it will also start a backlash among the populace against it. The wingers will be brazen and over reach and be obnoxious in their playing to big money corps.
We don’t know how things will go yet. But one thing I think we can count on is per the backlash, dem voters, independents and some moderate goopers, not only DFH’s will be more willing to elect liberal counter punching candidates and class warriors. In what numbers, I haven’t a clue.
wilfred
@El Cid:
I know. I was foreshadowing the defensive posture of the Obama-treuen when he doesn’t go populist.
Because he can’t, of course. I’m certainly no Obamabot but I doubt he’s stupid enough to fall for this sucker punch. The sheer absurdity of Obama wrapping himself in a red flag after establishing his credentials as a corporatist will have the Republican attack machine in high gear within minutes.
It won’t be Thune who points out this absurdity – look at the White House visitor logs, Obama’s golfing buddies, et al. – but a dutiful minion in the press corps.
Hell, I’d help out if I saw him try this – it’d be like Bush clearing brush from this ranch.
Best for him to ignore this one.
arguingwithsignposts
@The Moar You Know:
We do outnumber them. Unfortunately, the rules are gamed in their favor because they’re blind followers who will do what their dear leaders tell them to do, and that means vote in off-year elections.
I would be remiss if I didn’t remind everyone that a majority of Americans favor HCR, and the public option. Representative democracy, my ass.
And, re: anti-semitism, I did not factor in the rabid apocalyptic fundamentalists. But they are a minority as well, no matter what Jerry Falwell said.
arguingwithsignposts
@General Winfield Stuck:
not to be persnickety, but the generally accepted spelling is “spigot.” Dictionaries list “spicket” as a regional variation. What region would that be? I’m curious.
General Winfield Stuck
@arguingwithsignposts: I am a hillbilly, albeit an educated one, but still a hillbilly:>)
The Moar You Know
@arguingwithsignposts: Define “we”. That’s the root of the problem.
Blue Dogs?
Progressives?
Moderates?
Left-leaning Independents?
Liberals?
Hamsherite/Norquist PUMAs?
You can only define “we” right now as “not Republicans”. If you split the “not Republicans” group into their constituent parts, no single part outnumbers those who still are chugging down the Republican Kool-Aid.
We really don’t outnumber them in any way that allows us to bring meaningful, single-message political pressure on our representatives.
I would not want to be Obama.
General Winfield Stuck
@wilfred: Sometimes the level of your cynicism reaches right around and shakes your own hand
The Moar You Know
@The Moar You Know: Addendum: I might want to cite for comparison a country where the liberal majority is in exactly the same bind as we are: Canada.
Liberals vastly outnumber conservatives, but they’re too busy trying to kill each other for control of their party to bring any effective political action, and so Harper remains in office and the Conservatives are running the show.
We’re in the same boat, save that our winner-take-all political model insures that we have a “liberal” as the supposed head of government, while the reality is that our liberals have no effective hold on the levers of power.
Barry
@georgia pig:
“The question is whether he has the desire or the fortitude to go to war. For all those excited by the prospect, it will be very difficult with no guarantee of success. You have adversaries with national media outlets, paid off politicians and tons of cash, opposed by weak labor unions and a confused and ill-informed public. Good luck.”
I’d much prefer a peaceful Obama administration, with him peeling off a half-dozen GOP senators on a daily basis, with the MSM trashing Wall St, many Wall St people even agreeing to reforms out of sheer self-preservation, and many, many right-wing tea-baggers saying instead that as much as they hate to say it, Obama is right on HCR and financial reform……………………..
We don’t have that world.
gopher2b
If Obama doesn’t pick a fight on this one, I’m moving to Australia. I’m done.
Annie
Obama may as well go after Wall Street because as Pat Buchanan asks today, “Has Obama lost white America?” Now we know that Buchanan doesn’t care about going after the Jews, but now he has confirmed that Obama has lost Wall Street anyway.
batgirl
@Glocksman: The ADL agrees. They have accused Rush of using anti-Semitic tropes in his attempt to attack Obama for anti-Semitism and have called for an apology.
batgirl
@Mike from Philly: Bingo. I can’t tell you how many teabaggers have told me that we have to get the deficit under control while cutting taxes and making sure the government doesn’t touch theirMedicare and social security. Somehow they are under the impression that the vast amount of our decifit is the result of those poor black and hispanic people looting the treasury and once we stop that they can have their magic pony.
debbie
@ Col. Klink:
I listened to Glenn Beck for a few minutes this morning. He’s pushing this documentary of his that will be running on Fox today at 5pm and all next week. He specifically said he’d be proving that Hitler was a liberal.
Double whammy.
Uriel
@mds:
Well, this, but also it’s probably a prophylactic measure for ’10 as well. They know someone’s going to screw up and say something racist in at least a half a dozen of those house races down south, and they remember exactly how embarrassing it was watching there former golden boy Allen go down in flames after “macaca,” despite their best attempts to circle the wagons.
If they can get the “Obama is a secret anti-semite” meme going strong enough now, then when some mouth breather slips up and says something about “that boy in washington” it will make it that much easier to do the one thing they do best, race-relations-wise: Sputter, turn bright read with rage, and shout “Racist! No, you’re the one who’s racist!” until the electorate just gets sick of the whole thing and forgets it ever happened.
Corner Stone
@Nick:
In case no one else has said this yet – Nick, you are an idiot.
Corner Stone
@edmund dantes:
And further, what is their plan if Byrd passes? What if Coakley actually won that Senate race and then Byrd dropped face first?
No one was thinking about this?
Glocksman
@Uriel:
Exactly.
Limbaugh doesn’t give a damn about antisemitism itself, but does see the charge as ‘vaccination’ so to speak the next time some asshole on the right can’t help himself and uses ‘nigger’ or ‘boy’ when discussing POTUS.
Of course the classic fallback defense for Limbaugh fans is that he was just being ‘sarcastic’, and that if we really listened to him a lot, we’d know that he wasn’t being serious.
Yes, I’ve actually had several of my wingnut coworkers tell me that after I sent them transcripts of Rush’s bullshit.
Glocksman
What’s the difference between Rush Limbaugh and the Hindenburg?
One is a flaming Nazi gasbag and the other is a dirigible.
cmorenc
@ElCid
I think we actually have more or less the same idea here – from the get-go Obama certainly shouldn’t have even formulated, let alone relied upon, any legislative strategies that depended on any quantum of GOP cooperation to pass.
However, past history had been that more often than not, there proved in the end on most measures (except maybe to e.g. finance an abortion clinic) anywhere from a three or four to a dozen GOP Senators and anywhere from ten to twenty or so GOP Reps who could be successfully coopted, with some give and take, even while not committing to get on-board until the very end. I don’t think it was unreasonable the first three (or maybe even much of four) months of Obama’s administration to see whether it was possible to make this dynamic work, even assuming 2/3 of the GOP Reps and Senators were petulantly digging into unalterable resistance – if only because the cosmetics do indeed look much better to the bulk of the non-wingnut electorate when there is at least some visible pool of support from both parties, even a relatively small pool. But again, they should have been actively ready from the get-go on EVERY measure with an active plan B that depended not at all on getting any votes outside the democratic caucus, and not allowed any measure to linger long should no GOPers be willing to firmly commit to get on board, even if it meant not getting as much enchilada as they could have had plan A worked.
All I’m saying is that mid-April was the time past when even average-smart democratic politicians should have obviously realized that substantive cooperation with ANY of the republicans had become a non-starter, that the whole party had unified around the “monkey wrench” strategy, and that even Olympia Snowe was acting as a duplitious seductress trying to drag things out to give the GOP as much time as possible to sow disinformation and discontent. THAT’S when Reid and Obama needed to kick Baucus’s butt into moving the HCR bill, any bill quickly through his committee.
IMHO, a couple of successful major bills passed by the democrats by mid-summer WITHOUT any concessions to the GOP would have eventually peeled off enough of the less hard-enders among them that it wouldn’t be anywhere remotely so difficult from then on to get things done as has developed. Allowing the monkey-wrench tactics to succeed in stalling things OTOH has only reinforced the seeming soundness of every GOP rep and Senator stubbornly sticking to that strategy, to make Obama FAIL.
Corner Stone
When did this happen? What is Taibbi referring to?
cgregor
general winfield stuck @ 93– There is a way to clean up campaign financing about 90%, removing the influence the major donors have over winning candidates and identifying and prosecuting violations immediately, all courtesy of the so-called “free market.” Contact me at rrtl at sover dot net about “vendor-based oversight.” I think you’ll find it worth a shot.
Citizen Alan
@edmund dantes:
Hell, we saw during the Christmas Eve votes that the Repukes were literally out in the streets praying loudly for the death of 97-year-old Robert Byrd. Are they saying now that if Byrd had passed away at any point prior to the bill being signed, it would have ended health care? I’m beginning to think that I’m insulting Jimmy Carter when I draw comparisons between him and Obama.
Citizen Alan
@Thoughcrime:
I assume this is irony, because
CarterObama has never been a lefty in his whole damned life.Citizen Alan
@Barry:
This is pretty much the only hand that matters. The teabaggers would probably favor the outright extermination of the Jews but, for superstitious reasons, need them to move to Israel first in order to fulfill prophecy and summon Jesus back to earth to start off his 1000 year reign with a few genocides. Presumably, they will also need an 18th-level cleric to pull off that spell, which is why they keep Pat Robertson on life support
SiubhanDuinne
But . . . but . . .
Bobo said so.
The Fool
Yep, there’s his opening. Wanna bet whether he takes it?
I’m giving 5:1 odds but I get the “no” side of the bet.
The Fool
You’re damn right its class warfare. The Republicans declared it in 1980 and have been the aggressors ever since.
But the Democrats are so weak that they succumb to a Republican-generated asymmetrical taboo about “waging class warfare” which includes a taboo on pointing out that the Republicans are in fact waging class warfare.
So they get to wage a very successful class war and gag any mention thereof on the part of the Democrats. But the truly sick thing? While the Republicans have the pussified Democrats bent over chairs with ball gags in their mouths, this leaves the field wide open for the Republicans to use class war rhetoric. After all, you never hear the Democrats say the Republicans are doing it, so the Republican charges against the Democrats are not contradicted by anything else average people have heard recently. And that’s how the Republicans get to have it both ways.
The Democrats better grow some balls or this country is going to be El alvador in about 10-20 years. Draw a 30 year trendline and tell me I’m wrong.
bison
debbie
Funny how Republicans are always accusing Democrats of class warfare — aren’t they the ones always referring to “San Francisco liberals” or “Massachusetts liberals”?
Duckman GR
Everybody can see it, except for the idiot frogs in the pot.
Hey Dems, TAX THE RICH!
Insurance Companies are the Enemy, DO ’em like they’ve never been done before!!
TAX THE RICH, ROB THE BANKS! (pssst… it’s where all the money is)
Yes, I’m sure Harry Reid and Friends are ju-jitsoing that very plan.