2009 was a year of political battles in America. It is a very safe bet that 2010 will be one as well. In fact, almost every year of my life was a year of political battles in America.
The funny thing is that almost all those battles—at their core—have been about the role of Government in American life. When I was a young man almost everybody agreed that Government was important and that it could and should be involved in the solution. In fact on issue after issue Republicans and Democrats competed to be the party offering the voters the best ideas for how Government could help.
That started to change with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Nixon’s Southern Strategy and Ronald Reagan created a new meme/frame to flip the debate on its head when he argues that Government was never the solution and instead that it was always the problem. That transformation took root thirty years ago and today it is taken as common wisdom in American Politics that Government is the problem. In the 1990s and most of the Zeros it was common to find both Parties offering voters ideas on how to keep Government in check and new ways to free the magical Markets from any oversight and/or regulation. As I recall, we were all going to get unicorns, stardust and free money out of the deal, but somehow it didn’t work out that way. (I’m told that some folks even are beginning to think that Markets are not actually magic. Who knew!)
In 2009 this battle about the value of Government went into overdrive for two reasons. One was the fact that the financial meltdown was a direct result of the Government-is-Bad-and-Markets-are-Magic school of thought. That crisis made a lot of folks suddenly turn to the Government for help and Wing-nuts were (and are) very worried about what might happen if Government proves that it can actually be part of the solution.
Wing-nut fears were compounded by the election of President Obama. He was the first Democrat elected in decades who might be able to flip conventional wisdom back to a pro-Government footing and away from Reagan’s myth.
It was war from day one. And the Republicans and the wing-nuts have been focused on this battle 100% ever since it was clear that Barack Obama would beat John McCain. They know this is the only battle that matters and so they are throwing everything they’ve got at blocking the idea that Government can be part of the solution from taking root.
As I’ve observed President Obama over the last year, it is clear that he is focused on this battle as well. I think it is the core battle of his Presidency and that he knows it. Just as he was focused in 2007 and 2008 on getting elected, he is now focused on winning this fight. He can see past the daily clutter and keeps his eyes on the actual fight at hand and the prize of victory. That is why he has my full support.
It is also why I’ve been having some concerns with Democrats and folks who have traditionally been my allies in this long political battle over the role of Government. Far too many on my side have lost sight of the larger battle and now spend their time and energy on fights, that while they have important aspects, are just not worth the focus, energy and effort they pull away from the larger battle.
Politics in America has always been about the layering of battles and victory in any era usually goes to the side that keeps their eyes on the prize. From 1932 through 1976 Democrats were pretty good at keeping focused on the larger fight. Since 1976, it has been the Conservatives, wing-nuts and the GOP who have had the discipline to keep their eyes on the prize. That began to change in 2006 and 2008, but the 2010 cycle will tell us a lot about which side is paying attention to the core battle these days.
The fact that all their policies have led to ruin does not matter for these wing-nuts, if they can unite to win on the big fight they’re pretty sure that they will be able to defeat Obama and the Democrats (yet again).
And it looks like they are on to something. While President Obama tried to keep the focus on this larger fight over the role of Government, folks in his coalition (left, right and center) quickly decided to choose this moment as an opportunity to engage in other battles. As a result, the HCR debate quickly devolved into a series of these smaller battles. And in just a few months many folks had elevated these smaller battles above everything else, including the larger fight about changing the way folks think about the role of Government.
And so in the HCR debate, the public option was morphed into a MacGuffin to catalyze a long simmering fight between progressives, moderates and conservative Democrats over power in Democratic Party and Obama’s Washington.
Of course, this quickly became a pissing match and the most important thing ever for those folks who had invested themselves in that pissing match. For progressives, defeating the BlueDogs and the Conservadems became the most important political battle of 2009. For the BlueDogs defeating the progressives became the most important thing. And as the fight heated up, both sides began to do whatever was necessary to win the battle in any given news cycle regardless of the long-term impact on passing HCR, a larger Democratic agenda and the big fight over the role of Government.
Oddly, the folks most involved in the pissing match were always the ones who were most surprised when President Obama did not seem to care about which faction could pee the farthest in this fight. Instead, he was focused on moving the legislation to passage and counting votes in the House and Senate. And when Obama and his team suggested that these smaller battles were not that important, the folks invested in these fights decided that he needed to be attack to force him to care about the pissing match.
And so they did. And to do so, they embraced core wing-nut frames and meme like “Your can not trust Government”, “Government is the problem”, “taxes are always eeevviil” and so on. And after a year of this accidental capitulation to the GOP, these folks are surprise that the Republican Party won a Senate seat in MA and are doing well in the polls for November.
So now we start another year and folks on the Democratic side of the aisle will have to decide quickly which battle is the most important one to fight this year.
For me, it is still the fight over the role of Government. That trumps, defines and informs all the other battles (IMHO). If we unify I think things will work out. If we don’t, the wing-nuts will exploit our divisions as they have most of my life. Each of us has a choice to make.
It is time to get past the inflated battles of 2009. It is time to focus on the main event: the role of Government in American life. The wing-nuts are focused 100% on winning this battle and so is the President. I think we should join him.
It is time to PTDB. Call your Senators. Call your Member of Congress. Call the DNC, the DCCC and the DSCC. Give them each the message that it is time to pass HCR and move onto the other things.
Did you make your calls today? The Senate switchboard: 202-224-3121. That would be a great place to start.
Cheers
dengre
HeartlandLiberal
I called Evan Bayh’s Washington office. No human being has answered the phone there for at least the past year. You just have to leave a recorded message.
Which I did.
I told Mr. Bayh he is a disgrace to the citizens of Indiana for opposing reconciliation, and thus responsible for not fixing our broken health care system, which insures that 50 million or more Americans have no insurance or access to adequate health care.
I assured him I would be donating to and voting for his primary opponent, and that Heck would be freezing over before I ever voted for his sorry neo-conservative, Republican-Lite carcass again.
Gene108
Need to cross post this on liberal blogs. Some of those guys need a wake up call about the bigger issues at hand.
aimai
You know, I disagree with this point that somehow the progressives have always had it in for the Blue Dogs or that HCR became some kind of proxy pissing match. The Blue Dogs in the House and Senate have always tried to benefit from membership in the Democratic party while preserving, for a variety of good local political reasons, a kind of plausible deniability on a variety of core democratic party platform issues: social spending, care for the poor, women’s rights. That was absolutely fine and dandy with me, qua progressive, as long as the party as a whole didn’t let them set the agenda for us.
While we were out of power the point was moot. If Evan Bayh wanted to break ranks with the party over every little thing and appear on tv toe-ing the GOP line that really didn’t surprise me. But once the Dems got back *into* power I objected to letting the fringe members of the caucus define our goals or hamper our ability to deliver for our voters. This entire problem, vis a vis HCR, arises out of our inability to deliver on basic party discipline with the filibuster. We see that when the blue dogs want to vote on party lines we get fifty votes for Bernanke, when they want to destroy key democratic initiatives they use cloture as the means to do it. In a well run party, with a big tent, local politicians have to have the ability to please their constitutents and vote against party initiatives in a pro forma way. But to let them destroy party goals and legislation at the cloture stage is insane. This has nothing to do with “destroying” the Blue Dogs. I think Kos et al have, on the whole, been very clear that the original goal was “more and better democrats” all over the country. But when “more democrats” produces a weaker caucus that can’t get its legislation through as a party we’ve got to figure out what to do. Getting rid of the blue dogs may not be a good option, but continuing to allow them to destroy legislation is also not an option.
aimai
Gene108
@Heartland Liberal: If Democrats didn’t have the majority, HCR wouldn’t see the light of day. I get frustrated with Bayh, my own Rep. Adler (NJ-3), but they help push the generally liberal Dem agenda forward.
We need Democratic majorities in Congress, even if they are annoying “bad” Democrats.
artem1s
The government has already been the solution. the government saved the stock markets ass and already got back most of the money they invested in the effort. The hated Fed put another $43B into the treasury to boot cause the government was actually providing for the common welfare instead of sitting on its hands. The anti-gov asses now want it to end there instead of another stimulus for individuals and an actual banking reform bill. they don’t hate government that helps corporations, they only hate government that gives power to workers and consumers.
b-psycho
To call the Right anti-government is terribly inaccurate. They’re just fine with government, they just want it to do different things. And those things consist of war, corporate welfare, & holding down minorities (whether ethnic or cultural).
I disagree with the mainstream Left on the means, as I see the concept of representative democracy as a falsehood (politicians will always represent their own interests first, and those interest rarely, if ever, come close to yours, plain & simple), but at least their ends are understandable.
Michael
The markets ate the seed corn of government boosted infrastructure. While benefitting from the government constructed roads, government augmented waterways, a stable, regulatorily assisted energy grid, a government educated populace and stable, government established justice system, the markets purchased and propagated the message that government didn’t contribute materially to these things.
danimal
Thanks for the post, it explains so much in a concise and readable manner. Way too much energy has been wasted on posturing and power games by the Democratic factions. It’s a terrible distraction.
edmund dantes
@aimai: This is it pretty much.
It became the Blue Dogs purpose? No it didn’t. It’s always been the purpose of the Blue Dogs. I hope this is just bad writing on your part. The Blue Dogs have always been that way. It didn’t suddenly appear this year.
aimai
Gene108,
I agree that we need Democratic Majorities in both House and Senate to even begin to get our legislative priorities on the table. But that being said there is absolutely a place for the ordinary voter, and constituent of a blue dog, or democratic donor to call up individual representatives and make a huge fuss. Specter moved all the way into the Democratic fold because he didn’t think he could get re-elected as a Republican. And he moved left when he was challenged from the left by Sestak. Every seat is different, of course, and some seats are secure (through history, nepotism, and corporate donations) while others are not. But there’s no reason not to try. And every reason *to* try, that’s the success of the teabaggers around the fringes (to the extent they’ve had any success). They didn’t limit themselves to calling up their “own” reps, they called up the dems and hammered them.
My mother is a huge donor to Claire McCaskill–do you think people like that shouldn’t call up McCaskill’s office and bitch to her about how she’s failed to live up to the promises she made her donors when she took their money? We don’t put the Democratic Majority in danger every time we try to push our reps in the direction we want. But threatening, individually, to refuse to donate to them or to vote or work for them is the only tool the ordinary voter has. It would be nice if we could rely on party loyalty, whipping, and DSCC and DCCC money and force to do the work for us, but apparently that’s not in the Democratic party DNA.
aimai
Dr. I. F. Stone
Give it up, already! At least nine Democratic Senators have told the White House that they will under no circumstance support further action on health care along the lines contained in either the current House or Senate bills. This is dead meat! And it’s begun to stink.
Evinfuilt
Really want to say that was an excellent write up. Focusing on the large battle is very important. Its a lot like people who gave up on Gore in 2000 for little things, and allowed us to lose the Supreme Court, one of the few areas were Democrats seem to all agree on and work hard on protecting.
liberty60
There was a time in Eisenhower’s day, when Republicans agreed on the basic New Deal framework, and merely wanted government to be more efficient, less bloated.
Today’s GOP is a radicalized version, more extreme even than Reagan would have dared. When you review the wingut blogs, you don’t see anyone wanting public schools to be made more effective; they want public school dead.
Their agenda is the Third Worlding of America; separating us into a place of extreme wealth and poverty where the government serves the iterests of the oligarchy, not the citizens.
We need to hit this theme, that we are the populists and they are the benefactors of Wall Street. More important, we need to make it clear we are the patriots, and they are not.
Wannabe Speechwriter
On that point, Obama just handed the folks who oppose government a big victory. By stating we needed a spending freeze, he just agreed to the notion there are greater things than expanding the role of government.
This is the first time I’ve been pissed at Obama. The rest of the mistakes made by the administration and the Dems (gutting the public option, not closing GITMO on time, slow pace on gay rights, etc.) I chalked up to bigger interests at play and the slowness of the American political system. I always felt the Hamsher/Greenwald critiques felt more like personal attacks than anything substantive and always told myself to look to the long view: any victory will be huge because it will lead us on the path to accepting a greater role for government in the economic sphere.
However, this was a self-inflicted wound. No-drama Obama panicked over what should have been a relatively small event: special election in Massachusetts. So, I called my congresswoman and I’m going to call my senators and tell them to support health care and I’m telling everyone I know to do the same. I probably with give money and/or make phone calls for a House or Senate race this November. However, I do feel Obama really dropped the ball on this and I am very disappointed in him.
cintibud
Excellent post. I haven’t seen as good an explanation of keeping one’s eyes on the long term goals as this. This should be spread around.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Dr. I. F. Stone: Nancy Pelosi begs to differ. Maybe you should set her straight?
danimal
@Dr. I. F. Stone: Cite please.
I don’t believe this is the case, if for no other reason than 9 senators wouldn’t go on record as killing HCR.
El Cid
I really, really would feel better if I really believed the ‘pissing match’ analogy over the ‘fundamental disagreements’ and ‘fundamental unwillingness to do the very long-term struggle you claim is necessary’ analogy.
Lisa K.
We may need to keep our eyes on the larger prize, but currently that larger prize cannot be accomplished within the confines of the two-party system or by the current bodies duly elected to ostensibly represent out interests but are much better at representing their own.
Yes, this is a nicely written piece, but it does noting to address the reality of the unfathomable suicide pact the Democratic Congress and White House seem to have entered into with each other. And until Democrats can prove they can do more than generate ideas, that they can actually govern-first proof of which would be passing a health care bill-none of them will have my support, “bigger prize” or no.
aimai
Dennis,
I’m a huge fan of your writing generally but I think this part of your piece is really incorrect, factually speaking, and it calls into question your focus on what the left bloggosphere is doing, rather than a hard squint at what the democratic caucus is failing to do.
Basically, you argue (I think) that democratic constituencies lost faith in Obama/the big picture and then embraced right wing frames as a way of gaining back ground with Dems in power:
That is a complete misreading of the Coakley/Brown debacle. The democrats lost that race because they had a really bad candidate. What made her really bad? She failed to realize that the electorate couldn’t be taken for granted–not Obama’s voters and not the Republican/Independent vote. People ended up voting for Brown *in the absence* of a strong, coherent, believable message from the national democratic party, and from its temporary figurehead in Coakley. The MA dems didn’t lose because progressives in MA, or progressives outside of MA, took on or accepted right wing frames–they lost because weak/fragile/new Obama voters on the potential left (that is new voters, immigrants, young voters) didn’t see how voting for Coakley would improve their lives. On the other side older Obama voters who voted for him because they didn’t like McCain crossed over and voted for Brown because they thought he was more likeable and more independent than Coakley. Independent from what? From a disorganized national democratic party that had been unable to get a clear story out about health care or jobs. Not that we didn’t have a good story, but we simply hadn’t sold it successfully.
This had nothing to do with left wing/progressive voters screwing the pooch by taking their eye of the prize. All the left wing/progressive voters I know turned out for Martha Coakley in droves. But we couldn’t combat the sheer disinterest and disgust of the centrist/middle of the road voter with what they saw as washington gridlock and democratic party disorganization.
aimai
Pam C./femlaw
This is something I’ve been trying to articulate for awhile and haven’t done it nearly as well as this. So thank you.
For me, one of the challenges right now is how we can plausibly convince Americans that government is no longer the enemy when it seems like all sides are attacking the government. If you beat up on the President and Congress constantly in public it undercuts your argument that you want government to have a bigger role in health care. Because you have just told voters not to trust the very entity who would carry out your policy scheme. In the meantime, the other party is talking “socialized medicine.” How do we possibly win under those circumstances?
I agree that this is the core fight, I thought so during the campaign and it is the ONLY fight I care about winning.
Rick Taylor
While you’re post gives me a lot to think about, and I agree with the overarching point we need to focus on the battle, I don’t agree with the ‘pox on both your houses’ spirit. As I remember progressives were willing to compromise, again, and again, and again. They bargained in good faith, only to repeatedly have the rug pulled out of them by blue dog senators wielding the filibuster (Joe Lieberman especially). The bill’s difficulty now is largely because of the objection of unions, not idealistic progressives. Yes, I think FDL has gone off the deep end, but I don’t think that’s why the bill is in trouble. Also, I think the unpopularity of the bill is not a result of progressives not clapping loud enough, but the rightward shift of the bill: the public option polled well, and unions abhorred the excise tax.
cat48
@aimai:
A cloture vote is only to stop debate which takes 60. After debate is terminated, then you only need 51 or majority for the final vote itself. That article at HuffPost misinformed which is becoming more common for them.
low-tech cyclist
What Wannabe Speechwriter said. The one problem with Dennis G.’s otherwise brilliant post is Obama’s call for a spending freeze. But it’s a fundamental problem: it totally undercuts Dennis’ claim that the President is “focused 100% on winning this battle.”
acallidryas
I agree with the general theme of your post, but disagree on the your details. Firstly, I do agree that the larger battle is over whether or not government can be Good or if government is always Evil. For a long time I’ve seen that idea that a government can never be helpful as one of the great narratives that needed to be changed in our current culture, and I’m glad to see someone who lays it out. (I’ve spent a decent amount of time in developing countries, and have often remarked to friends I’d like to send libertarians to live for 6 months in a place with no infrastructure and a weak state.) And @b-psycho, while you may be right that the Right supports lots of government interventions, their overwhelming story, and the one they propagate, is that government can never be helpful.
Where I disagree is that the little turf war over Blue Dogs and progressives is distracting us from this larger battle. In a very real way, anger at and fighting against the Blue Dogs has been a large part of this fight. The Blue Dogs and the “fiscally conservative unless it’s for the military or directly benefits my state” mindset are part of the Government is Evil fight. So is this ridiculous spending freeze Obama has put forth-whether or not it does anything, it’s still supporting the argument that we need to shrink government. We need to be pushing unapologetically for strong, well structured, helpful, government programs. The fight between Blue Dogs and progressives isn’t just an intraparty pissing contest- it’s one front of the very battle which you’re describing.
Rick Taylor
__
Coakley was a wretched candidate; I’m not sure I could have voted for her. As a prosecutor, and as attorney general, she worked to imprison people based on accusations of abuse based on recovered memories from childhood; it was literally a modern day witch hunt. You can read about it at this blog.
El Cid
I’d also like to start seeing some empirical evidence that the activities and rhetoric of the elected Democratic leadership are closely tied to liberal and leftist blog commentary. Apparently this connection is assumed.
low-tech cyclist
aimai: I wasn’t following the action on the ground in MA that closely, but I heard multiple reports that Coakley wound up being defensive in the face of criticisms from her left about the health care reform bill, and that those criticisms pretty much took away her room to give it her full-throated support.
So unless that reading is wrong, I’d say the Firebaggers may have played their part in doing in the Coakley candidacy.
Mike E
It’s simple–$$$. When conservadems noticed the money trough was fuller on the other side of the aisle, they did what any self-respecting millionaire would do–they sold out the middle class for their own gain, and became secret Repubs (DINOs). This was cemented during the Cult of Clinton, err, the halcyon days of the DLC. You don’t have to get mugged to become ‘R’, you just have to develop that exquisite taste for easy money.
Mournin’ Joe will call me a Class Warrior–that’s okay, he’s a professional, a regular Tony Soprano when it comes to the money game. Like the Bush Family, he and the rest of the Movement Conservatives make the Dems look like two-bit amateurs. And they’ll never pass up an opportunity to defer to the real pros.
aimai
I was on the ground in MA–Coakley was hampered by the fact that the National Dems had’nt, in fact, passed a single bill that she could defend. And the national dems weren’t showing a united front on health care. The criticisms of the bill were probably pretty fair–they are the same ones that the house dems are making when they demand the senate make some concessions. The only way criticisms of the bill from the left were’nt going to be made *by voters* and potential voters is if the entire thing had already been put to bed by the Senate Dems and the House Dems actually working together. They weren’t willing to do that and they left Coakley holding the bag.
I guess what I’m saying is that the national party refused to act like a national party and get things done in a public, coherent, defensible way. We can’t be surprised that coakley, who was a sub par candidate with an authoritarian streak a mile wide was unable to reach out to the voters and thread the needle.
Voters: health care sounds really important to the democrats–Obama even showed up to tell us Coakley would help us pass it. So what’s it like?
Coakley and the dems: I dunno. Its a patchwork of stuff, really. And at the moment the only people who seem really satisfied are Lieberman and Nelson. And Nelson is saying he hates it now.
This is not the firebaggers fault. They just don’t begin to have that kind of reach.
aimai
Zifnab
@aimai:
A lot of the problem Dems – Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein – aren’t folks that were elected recently. These folks go back twenty or thirty years in the party and have always been Third Way DLC types.
The newer folks – the Sherrod Browns and John Testers and Sheldon Whitehouses – have been much better about getting in line behind the party. Even the two most difficult – Jim Webb and Claire McCaskill – are shadows of the problem that Laundrie and Lincoln represent.
This used to be the case among the Republicans too. But they’ve done a very admirable job of purging their party of moderates. The Democrats are lagging behind on party discipline. But as ranking Democrats retire and power consolidates itself, I expect that we’ll see authority line up.
low-tech cyclist
Going back to Dennis G.’s post, I think that even while keeping one’s eyes on the prize, one has to be able to make good tactical decisions. Maybe events will prove me wrong, but Obama’s going MIA last week strikes me as an obvious and colossal blunder.
Just from the panicked reaction of Dem officeholders in the first hours after Brown’s win, I was expecting our no-drama President to quickly meet with the House and Senate Democrats to contain the panic, and chart a course for passing HCR without 60 votes in the Senate. The House and Senate Dems already had a deal more or less in place; the less time allowed for it to unravel, the greater the likelihood that it would still be there.
But after a few days had gone by, it was clear that the sense of the Senate Dems was that there was no longer a deal. So now instead of the House and Senate Dems having their eyes on the prize, we’ve got them essentially bickering over whether the House can expect anything in return if it passes the Senate bill, and the whole thing appears more likely than not to come crashing down in flames over that.
It’s one thing for Obama to keep his eyes on the prize. But he’s got to remember that, when it comes to moments like this, he’s got to keep the eyes of the other big players there too. In this, he has blown his first surprise crisis.
valdivia
You have put your finger on something that has been bothering me all along but could not articulate as clearly and eloquently as you have. So: this, a thousand times.
gypsy howell
I’m curious to know what you’ve seen in terms of substance from the WH that backs up your statement.
aimai
cat48,
I don’t get what this is in reference to? I know what a cloture vote is. This has nothing to do with any Huffpost reporting. The cloture vote has become identical to the filibuster because formal cloture votes become necessary in the absence of a united consent agreement to bypass the cloture vote and get to the real vote. When the Republicans threaten to filibuster the dems must call for a cloture vote to cut off debate. We need the sixty votes at that point *because* of the threat of the filibuster and the refusal of the republicans to agree to a pro forma consent motion. If we had party loyalty from all democrats *or heads of democratic committees* like Lieberman to vote for cloture every time we would still have arcane problems like the next thirty hours of debate crap that held up the final Senate Health Care bills until christmas. But we would proceed to the meat of the vote for which we need only 51 votes to get our legislation. This is why in addition for calling for a change in the filibuster numbers people also just call for cracking the whip on party discipline–or we did until we lost the MA house seat and rendered the point moot.
aimai
Frank/churchofbruce
First, yes, Coakley was a wretched candidate. (I’m in MA).
Second, yes, she was attacked from the left on HCR, especially when she wavered on the Stupak amendment.
Third, and most importantly, Brown absolutely, positively used Firebagger rhetoric in his advertising. I almost drove off the road when I heard a Brown ad reference “giveaways to Big Pharma!” Did the Firebaggers cost Coakley the election? Mostly no; she did most of it all on her own. (And she, at first, refused help from the DNC so you can’t blame them, either.) However, the Firebaggers contributed, certainly. Brown clearly borrowed their talking points to cloak himself as a Faux Populist.
jrg
Not passing HCR because of a stance on abortion is like letting your house burn down because you didn’t much like the kitchen table to begin with.
…and with respect to the “government’s always wrong” crowd, they should keep that in mind when the GOP runs on improving the economy. Or the next time the RNC demagogues threats to Social Security or Medicare, while refusing to raise taxes.
Where the fuck do these people thing money for SS and Medicare come from? How can you expect the government to always fail, then blame the people running it when the situation does not improve quickly enough? If it’s always going to fail, what does it matter who’s running it? How can you support “small government” yet believe that it’s the government’s job to support a particular religion, or a specific sexual orientation?
If the Dems had any discipline, the GOP would be forced to answer these questions. Instead, we get to watch the country go down the toilet because the people who should be united against this garbage cannot stop preening themselves.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Suppose you were inventing a board game called American Government, and you framed the game as a contest between two factions, one of which stood for using the power of government to get things done and make things better, and the other of which stood for opposing the expansion of government power and involvement in the lives of the people, as a way to keep taxes low and government small.
Suppose that you had to pick a side, just as a player in the game (forgetting your own ideology) with an eye toward winning the game. Which side would you pick?
I’d pick the latter, small government side. I’d figure that even if the flow of the game made me the minority power in the government, all things considered, it would be easier for me to gum up the works and prevent the government-lovers from having their way, than it would be to be a government lover and constantly have to implement bigger and better ways to be a government.
Never mind the taxation issues, and all the rest of the ideological underpinnings. Just see it as a board game and as a player, and figure out which side has the best chance of prevailing over time, with or without majority power in the government.
In the contest as currently framed, the Small Government faction has the advantages, not necessarily at the voting booth, but in the halls of congress. Therefore, we have created a disconnect between the will of the people, whatever that might be at any given time, and the will of the government.
I think this is why the GOP can take the Hell No We Won’t Go Along posture whenever it wants to, and get away with it. The strategy does not have to be popular in order to succeed. The legislative body that is not tied to population in districts or states can essentially force the government to act out the will of the minority, and nothing can stop them.
For the first time in my adult life, I am not sure that the American Experiment will succeed, in light of this development. I think it can, but only if the majority of voters who want government to be effective and useful to them can get its act together and repel the efforts of the minority who want to stop that from happening.
If the blogs are any indicator, that majority — that’s us, not the people in congress — can’t get its act together well enough to get that done right now.
We have met the enemy and he is us. Apologies to Pogo, but that is the way it is. As long as Dems are more interested in winning pissing contests with each other than they are in having a progressive, effective government, then the other side will have the advantage. And, if you don’t believe me, just ask the other side. They say this in one fashion or another almost every day. They laugh as Dems fight with each other over HCR.
People, the guy who “runs” the most visible lefty blog on earth started lobbying to Kill The Bill back before Christmas. The guy who claims to want to build a new kind of progressive coalition has built a tool for breaking apart the only coalition we had.
Last year we all stocked up on popcorn to watch the GOP come apart at the seams. Ha ha ha. Who is eating the popcorn and watching the other side come apart at the seams now?
And what role do the blogs play in this tragicomedy? You be the judge.
Frank/churchofbruce
As for Dengre’s article, I agree with every word.
What frustrates me most about politics is people don’t realize that there are two sides; not three, not seventeen, *two*. It’s like the Super Bowl. You have three, and only three, choices: root for the Saints, root for the Colts, or don’t watch the game. That’s it. I can moan all day that I’m a Patriots fan (which I am), but the Pats aren’t there.
There are three choices: Dem, Repub, or staying home. That’s it. Or, as Dengre put it, you’re either for government as the solution, or you’re not, or you don’t care. If you are for it, and you don’t support the Dems, well, then you’re watching the Super Bowl and cheering for the Lions. Good luck with that.
liberal
@b-psycho:
As opposed to what, direct democracy? That’s worked out real well—see California for an empirical example.
liberal
@gypsy howell:
Agreed. And in terms of rhetoric, not substance, Krugman points out that Obama has a history of praising Reagan.
One can argue that it was politic for him to do so, but it makes it pretty difficult for him to draw bright lines on this topic.
valdivia
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
couldn’t agree more. Because to some being right and pure matters more than actually getting this stuff done. Ugh.
taylormattd
Thanks dengre. This is exactly correct.
brantl
Batshit. Tell me when any Democrat said, “You can’t trust government.” I like some of what you write Dennis, but don’t write out and out bullshit like this.
And the real problem is that the Democrats aren’t doing what a majority of each of them promised to do. The majority isn’t ruling, because many Senate Democrats haven’t had the balls to say, “The majority should have their say, whether we agree with it or not.”, and that’s where they’re losing ground. Not on what they are trying to do, but that they won’t stand together and let a majority of Senators vote on it.
low-tech cyclist
Voters: health care sounds really important to the democrats—Obama even showed up to tell us Coakley would help us pass it. So what’s it like?
Coakley and the dems: I dunno. Its a patchwork of stuff, really.
aimai: I agree that the Dems have been bad about explaining their own damn bill, but only about 5% of the fault lies in the fact that there isn’t one bill yet. The other 95% is that they don’t understand it themselves. Which is the only reason anyone could be talking about passing it in pieces.
Here’s the main pieces of what either bill would do:
1) Prevent discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions. Starting immediately.
2) It’ll require that everyone buy health insurance, because otherwise #1 would enable people to get insured only after they got sick.
3) It’ll provide a lot of subsidies to help people in the individual market who are of limited means afford insurance. (And the House bill would offer them a public option, so they didn’t have to buy that insurance from the insurance companies, but that’s not gonna be in the ultimate bill, so no need really to even mention that.)
4) To pay for the subsidies, both bills get rid of a bunch of Medicare subsidies to insurance companies, and tax either rich people (House) or ‘Cadillac health insurance plans’ (Senate) to finance the rest.
5) But because the real problem is that health care costs grow way faster than our economy, the Senate bill has a bunch of programs that attempt to bring costs under control. Those would mostly be in any final bill that passes.
There’s other stuff, but that’s the essence.
That’s really not that hard. There are lots of reasons why people are confused about what’s in the bill. The differences between the House and Senate bills aren’t really a big part of that.
Of course, given that the majority of Democratic Congresscritters couldn’t tell you that much after having theoretically spent most of the past year working on these bills, it would be hard to blame Coakley for not being able to be clear on that.
brantl
I will bet you that the President’s strong backing of a bill is worth 5-10 Senate votes, even in this Congress. I’d like to get the chance to test that theory, but Obama won’t show any strong backing, will he? That’s the end point of my criticism of Obama. The start of it is, had he made his strong wishes known at the outset (even if it was in private, to the Senate/House Democrats) he would have been much more likely to keep the votes he needed for a coherent package and have it passed by now. Instead, he didn’t seem willing to risk his cache’.
cfaller96
Wait a minute. I don’t like how you dismiss the Public Option as somehow not a key part of the argument in the role of government. Precisely what was the aim of the public option again?
It was to provide an alternative to the abusive for-profit free market. The Public Option was supposed to be a demonstration of how a government program can provide an alternative to the magical free market and also a positive influence on people’s health care (which I think we can all agree is pretty personal and important).
Yes, it was a pissing match, but that doesn’t automatically mean the argument had no substance or role in the larger debate about government’s role in our lives. Both can exist, it’s not either/or.
Dengre, it got crazy, and I know you’re probably a little burnt out from everything (which is why you wrote that Goodbye For Now Diary on DailyKos), but please…don’t pretend that the Public Option didn’t actually mean anything in the larger fight. It did and still does.
tazistanjen
I would like to believe that this thesis is true. It would restore my faith in multi-dimensional chess. But I am not seeing it. The things Obama is doing and saying aren’t consistently supporting the idea that government can be the solution rather than the problem. Krugman went nonlinear over the “spending freeze,” as he is prone to do, but he has a good point: advocating a spending freeze is buying into – and strengthening – the teabagger world view.
gypsy howell
Have you seen Steve Clemons’ latest at TWN?
Obama’s losing people like Krugman and Clemons. Not good.
He might well be a one-term president. But as it’s shaping up right now, he won’t be remembered as a good one.
cfaller96
Also, I don’t know how proposing a spending freeze supports this assertion. Come to think of it, Dennis provides ZERO links, examples, facts, etc. to support this assertion.
And as yet, he has not engaged with the commentariat on their substantive critiques of his thesis. Did Dennis just do a drive-by post? If so, not cool man, not cool at all. (John and the other Balloon Juice FPers ought to know better than to allow this BTW.)
Wallace
In my case, HCR has been a huge victory for Republicans, in that it has caused me to completely give up any optimism for what the government can accomplish. Maybe they’ll occasionally do something positive – get rid of the marriage tax penalty, or give family’s like mine a child tax credit. Maybe one of these days they’ll surprise me and de-criminalize marijuana. But on a large scale (Medicare drug benefit, HCR, financial market regulation), I’ve given up on the idea that you can expect anything too productive or helpful out of the government. Too many bad faith actors, and too little control over who people in other parts of the country elect into office.
I’ve turned into a small government liberal. What I want is a well run bureaucracy. I want the people in the government to be smart and good at what they do. But I want to get away from any hint that we are subjects of our government, or that the president is our leader. And I’ve gotten away from believing the government should be in the business of trying to solve our big problems, mostly because it seems like a con. Even the ones we elect aren’t on our side. I want them to be effective at tending to the things we’ve decided we want them tending to, but I, otherwise, want them to be invisible and out of the way. The less presence they have in my life, the better.
gypsy howell
@cfaller96: @tazistanjen: @liberal:
Yes, still waiting for some actual facts from Dennis to back up his assertion that this is Obama’s focus over the last year. If it has been, I guess I’ve missed it. But I’m sure Dennis is compiling the list as we speak.
Maybe I’ll be surprised at how much Obama has done. Emphasis on the word done, as opposed to said.
Although come to think of it, what has he actually said lately? I know we have to freeze spending because… ummm… yeah, well whatever.
gypsy howell
@Wallace:
I’m holding out hope for a well run corporatocracy. Where do I sign up?
Elie
For me, it is still the fight over the role of Government. That trumps, defines and informs all the other battles (IMHO). If we unify I think things will work out. If we don’t, the wing-nuts will exploit our divisions as they have most of my life. Each of us has a choice to make.
This says it all to me and I am seeing it played out strongly here on a local as well as national level and in ways that are absolutely almost comical if it wasnt so absurd. Case in point, tea baggers filled with emotion and antigovernment gravitas filled our County Council chamber last night to oppose the (local) government from checking on their septic systems — ya know, their home poop management systems. These stupid fucks would rather be literally swimming in their own shit, and having it run into and pollute our rivers and streams rather than have standards applied by the government and those standards inspected…this is a health and safety as well as just plain esthetic issue, but Lord knows, the Cascade Hillbilly’s (as I call them) have to LIVE FREE OR DIE!
Cerberus
I think that’s only half of it. Yes, there’s the big political fight for the role of government. Whether it is there to aid the corporations who will use the raw power of capitalism to make everything shiny or whether it is there to aid the individual and provide a meaningful safety net and protections from predations both personal and financial.
But, I think that’s not the only big battle going on.
Racists and minorities are having a big battle on whether or not minorities must be admitted to be human beings and allowed to fully participate in the system including getting equal treatment by its institutions both private and public. Also whether or not minorities should be openly killed and arrested simply for being minorities.
Women and sexists are having a giant battle on consent and bodily autonomy and whether or not a woman’s body and life are hers to control or are the possessions of the nearest male of high authority.
Queers and the religious right are having a giant battle on the acknowledgment of sexual desire and the rights to diversity versus forced conformity into one correct sexual way of living one’s life and one correct way of presenting oneself. Also whether or not sex and sexuality should even be acknowledged either publicly or privately.
Liberals and conservatives are having a giant battle on whether we acknowledge we are a diverse population and seek to address that and accommodate that or whether we seek to create a system in which rewards and punishments try and solely reward living one’s life in a very specific manner.
All of these big political, unending battles are going on, many have been going on for centuries longer than the rather modern battle over the role of government. There’s even the battle that’s about whether or not we should have a democracy at all. Whether the populace should be allowed a say or whether an unelected elite should rule over them.
The “little” battles often occur when a crafty nutjob who wants to sabotage a potential victory for one giant battle or several giant battles tries and twist it so it will only come at the expense of another giant battle. It’s a strategy perfected since the days when they got women and blacks to fight each other for their shared battles for equal rights and demonstrated beautifully in the HRC debate.
Trying to derail one big victory by trying to make it come at the expense of women’s giant battles and union’s giant battles and etc…
That’s why it’s been so fucked up.
Elie
@Wallace:
I guess that though I can see why you have come to such a sad place (to me), I have always had a basic construct underlying my notion of what “government” means and is. To me it has always meant the will of the people made manifest. Using that context, it is difficult to renounce what is at the heart of the meanning “We the People”.
In your world, through what vehicle do we make our collective desires, priorities and values made manifest to live together as some sort of nation?
We are, to my mind, more than a basket of individuals plying our own independent and non-aligned way through the world. As a collective WE, we become something else (at least in theory) — a community that while diverse, also has shared values and interests. It is those shared values and interests that become manifest as the activities and the power of government.
I really don’t understand conceptually how you make government into a separate entity from our common values and goals and into some other “thing”.
As I said, I can understand distrust of bad, corrupt or rogue government run by a few that twist its purpose or its underlying connection to all the people. That has been an eternal struggle and concern for anyone who actually believes in government as tied to the will of the people. But I do not fundamentally understand your concept of government as somehow something that can be done without. To me, that is like saying I like breathing except for the air…
gypsy howell
Have you ever had to deal with local code inspectors and engineers? It can be a nightmare, and a very, very expensive nightmare at that. I think I might side with the teabaggers on this one. Unless there is a specific complaint about my septic system, they can bugger off.
cfaller96
I think this actually makes you an independent, or perhaps a libertarian (if that means anything anymore).
IMO, you can’t call yourself a liberal unless you accept the premise that we have a moral obligation to provide a safety net (social, economic, cultural, etc.) to those less fortunate than ourselves. And if you’re for small government, than you’re basically against funding and providing this safety net. I’m open to clarification here, but I don’t see how you can provide a safety net on the one hand while also claiming it’s the act of small government on the other. It doesn’t work like that, you have to choose.
We are “subjects of our government” in the sense that we are subject to those moral obligations. To me, that’s what liberalism is- funding/supporting/”obeying” the government, in order to provide a moral minimum to all of us.
Elie
@gypsy howell:
Well you would have fit right in!
I am aware that these rules can be implemented pretty poorly, resulting in excessive expense.
That said, do you really want poop and other toxins resulting from failed or systems with some problems, rolling into your drinking water or into places where people can be exposed to disease? This isnt about esthetics — there is a true public health issue that underlies this.
In our community, failed or poor septic systems have closed almost all of our recreational shellfish opportunities along the coastline. Septic failures have closed lake recreational areas as well and sometimes polluted ground water and wells that people drink from.
How much do we owe you as a tradeoff for your freedom to live in your own shit? (don’t mean that personally to you, but generally to those who would not maintain their systems or cannot afford to – in which case they should be helped — but not allowed to contaminate our water and other public space)
inkadu
This is the only website I’ve been to that thinks FDL represents the progressive base.
Too bad nobody sponsored a Resolution Stating That Government is The Solution. All we had was a stupid health care bill. But I think the same people that voted against HCR would have voted against Government is the Solution… which makes the entire second half of this post moot.
MNPundit
This is an unbelievably stupid post.
Let me ask you this, this bill as even its backers concede is not perfect. Do you think people will see the results of this, not the uninsured who wish to be, but the middle class who will pay for this and say “Yes! Government is working for me!” Very little. And making the bill shittier? Will that get them to say “Yes! Government is working for me!”
Every single compromise Obama has made to pass something, anything has made it more and more likely that the middle-class will look at this bill and say “I am paying for something that didn’t make things better.” So I ask YOU. Tell me why you think this bill will make the middle class believe government works for them.
inkadu
@MNPundit: Well, MNPundit, that’s an excellent question, however since the middle class is rapidly disappearing this issue will resolve itself.
I also thought this post was stupid on several levels, but show deference to new front pagers; I also thought the first half was decent enough. But, yeah, not sure how one can frame HCR as a Dem pissing match when prog’s only real plank was a public option (which is a homeopathic remedy of real progressive HCR dilutes 1000x) and when the blue dogs aren’t really government-friendly when you get right down to it.
scarshapedstar
Perhaps not, but the Blue Dogs have always had it in for us! We’ve never done shit to the Blue Dogs. How could we? Their only principle is fucking over whatever their own party wants to do. They’re the Caucus of No.
ksmiami
READ THE FALLOWS ARTICLE… Basically, our government, in the name of durability, has become sclerotic and unable to solve the challenges of our time. I rest most of the blame on the 30 year Republican mantra of government can’t work,. but I also say that the Dems need to show how good government is necessary unless you want to be Somalia… This cannot go on.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@gypsy howell:
Amway?
gypsy howell
@Elie:
Well that’s a bit of a different case. As I said, if there are specific complaints… and it sounds like there are. In my case, sometimes the local yokels are just trying to find ways to justify their existence (or the engineering firms hired by the local municipalities are looking for ways to generate some income), and they come up with brilliant ideas that include things like “hey, wouldn’t it be great if we could make sure everyone is up to code” on stuff that isn’t in fact a public health issue.
As in all things, balance and common sense are required.
BT
Well written article and IMHO a good self-evaluation of the problems the democrats are experiencing.
However, as a conservative I challenge your core position of More/Big Government being the solution vs the Reagan doctrine.
Looking at your statement of: “From 1932 through 1976 Democrats were pretty good at keeping focused on the larger fight. ”
I ask: Just how much of our completely unsustainable nation debt is directly attributable to the Big Government programs of 1932 – 1976? Specifically, look at the TRILLIONS of unfunded requirements of SS, Medicare and Medicate coming from the New Deal and Great Societies.
Elie
@ksmiami:
Absolutely. But the cure may be as painful as the disease.
In reading some of the comments upstring, we have real difficulty dealing with the costs and other externalities of programs with complex and uncertain content and long time frames. Reading MNPundit upstring, I cannot help but shudder that the whole process of working anything in a huge, diverse and broadly dispersed national community such as ours would be virtually impossible if you could not tolerate less than a perfect outcome — a 100% perfectly implemented program with costs and benefits equally experienced and borne by all…. it is just impossible to do anything and get it that right overnight and if that is his and others’ benchmark for what “works”, than I am afraid we are in a failure that is imposed more by our intolerance of anything other than quick and easy…the political corollary of the “next quarter profit” mentality that has served our corporate sector so well…
Elie
@gypsy howell:
“As in all things, balance and common sense are required.”
Agreed but not always, alas, possible
Mnemosyne
@inkadu:
I think a lot of people are misreading what dengre was saying and personalizing it to the battles we’ve been undergoing the last couple of weeks.
I think he’s saying that the reason we’ve been undergoing all of these battles is that we have two opposing views of the role of government that have been crammed into a single party because the Republicans have gone batshit insane. Prior to Nixon, there were a lot of socially liberal Republicans who wanted small government, and they helped get civil rights legislation passed over the protests of the Dixiecrats.
Now those same people who are social liberals and fiscal conservatives have been forced to move into the Democratic Party because of the aforementioned batshit insanity of the other party. So what ought to be battles between two different parties turn into nasty internecine battles within the party — civil war instead of war between two opposing factions.
Even within this comments section you can see that some of us are big-government liberals and some of us are small-government liberals. That’s the kind of tension that’s almost impossible to resolve within a single political party, but that’s what we’re having to do because the Republicans have abdicated their responsibility to act like adults.
Elie
@BT:
If none of the benefits accrued to millions of people, the cost would not be worth it. However, all those social programs from social security to Medicare have improved the lives and livelihoods of millions, either directly or as a multiplier.
Contrast that instead with the Republican war machine that has only helped a few contractors make billions and taken thousands of American lives along with millions of other “brown people”..
I realize that I am way oversimplifying many programs on both sides, but you only counted one side of a very complex leger that bears both explicit and non explicit costs and benefits to individuals, groups and our society as a whole.
Don’t have time to be accurate or comprehensive? Then don’t make your lame assed argument.
Mnemosyne
@BT:
Very little. Social entitlement programs are generally funded out of special taxes like the FICA tax and the Medicare tax and do not come out of general tax revenues like, say, the Department of Defense.
The problem is that Reagan and Bush II took the money that was supposed to go towards pre-paid things like Social Security and blew it on shiny new defense systems and unnecessary wars. If you remove social programs from the budget, you also remove the revenue that comes in to fund them and you’re right back where you started, blowing money you don’t have on things you don’t need.
Without the money rolling in from Social Security taxes and other social program taxes, we would have collapsed long ago. Don’t blame Social Security for 30 years of embezzlement by Republicans.
Elie
@Mnemosyne:
Thanks for an even more comprehensive and accurate answer than my own…
BT
With all due respect Mnemosyne, I suggest you dig into the history books a bit deeper before tossing out those broad brush statements.
SS funds, for example, were long ago sucked into the General fund and not by Reagan and Bush II.
Very little. Social entitlement programs are generally funded out of special taxes like the FICA tax and the Medicare tax and do not come out of general tax revenues like, say, the Department of Defense.
The problem is that Reagan and Bush II took the money that was supposed to go towards pre-paid things like Social Security and blew it on shiny new defense systems and unnecessary wars. If you remove social programs from the budget, you also remove the revenue that comes in to fund them and you’re right back where you started, blowing money you don’t have on things you don’t need.
Without the money rolling in from Social Security taxes and other social program taxes, we would have collapsed long ago. Don’t blame Social Security for 30 years of embezzlement by Republicans.
Elie
@gypsy howell:
Still I have a problem with the situation that you introduce that is a real barrier to needed social and regulatory policy: almost anyone can describe some bad story related to a regulatory or other similar intiative that resulted in undue cost or was unfair or unequally implemented. This whole, what I call “denominator of one” type story telling has undermined and continues to devastate the ability to make any social policy for the good of the many. We get peppered with these single case study type experiences that though may be the exception, still have undue power to influence a nation led around by celebrity and disaster stories. We have allowed our whole nation of children for example to become fat, couch potatoes addicted to teevee and computers to avoid the exaggerated fear and lightening strike incidence of being molested by some stranger.
Your case study IS important — but how do we calibrate how to interpret and weigh it appropriately when we are trying to do what is best for the larger population? If you are so far along the libertarian track that only your single experience and narrative can mean what is best for everyone else as well? If so, well, we are headed for ungovernable insanity..
Elie
@BT:
But your response to Mnemosyne does not address my comment to you about the benefits and costs and where they accrue to the larger population…and that is the most important issue…You are hung up on the technicality of who paid without weighting the accurate value and scope in our society and economy of the benefit
Mnemosyne
@BT:
How big was the deficit before Reagan took office and how big was it after he left?
I’ll wait here while you look it up.
Like it or not, Reagan spent money we didn’t have on his programs and blamed social programs for the resulting deficit. Look at the numbers if you don’t believe me. He even raised the payroll tax and still couldn’t get the numbers to match up, because he was spending that money like a drunken sailor on payday.
b-psycho
@liberal: Obviously direct democracy can’t work on that scale, or within the framework of a state as we think of it. They just took a bad system and made it worse.
Elie
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
Absolutely…absolutely — I agree — sadly.
BT
@Mnemosyne
Please don’t deflect. The SS amendments put in place during the Reagan administration actually helped in extending its viability. Please read your history.
To provide some additional history, it was LBJ who moved SS from the ‘trust fund’ status via the 1965 amendment creating Medicare. Prior “bastardizations” of SS that added to the ponzi scheme were in 1939 by FDR.
Yes, Reagan spend money and created deficits. However, those deficits are minute in relation to the GDP that this administration is incurring. Please do the research.
HCR is just another Big Government program like SS and Medicare that will cost 100x more than is being promised/sold to us.
b-psycho
@cfaller96: Even if you accept the social safety net concept there’s still very little for a liberal to be pleased with about the U.S. government. It seems vastly more effective at violence than at helping anybody that actually needs help.
BTW: Those moral obligations can’t be held without being “subjects”? What incentive is there for people trusted with that kind of power to not abuse it? Hell, who in their right mind wants that kind of power that isn’t a sociopath?
b-psycho
@acallidryas:
I’m going by their actions, not their words. Their words get them elected because people are generally in the dark about how much intervention they’re writing off as “not really big government” because it’s the kind their backers like.
BT
@Elie
If none of the benefits accrued to millions of people, the cost would not be worth it. However, all those social programs from social security to Medicare have improved the lives and livelihoods of millions, either directly or as a multiplier.
Contrast that instead with the Republican war machine that has only helped a few contractors make billions and taken thousands of American lives along with millions of other “brown people”..
I realize that I am way oversimplifying many programs on both sides, but you only counted one side of a very complex leger that bears both explicit and non explicit costs and benefits to individuals, groups and our society as a whole.
Don’t have time to be accurate or comprehensive? Then don’t make your lame assed argument.
Apologies, I missed your post.
First, I am a strong Constitutionalist. Social programs are not a “power” granted to the Federal government. The General Welfare clause is the most abused portion of the Constitution under the guise of Big Government.
Remember, the Constitution SPECIFICALLY LIMITS the roll and power of the Federal government, it doesn’t empower it carte blanc.
Now, I am not a hard hearted, let them dye in the streets conservative but Big Government social engineering has never worked both in functional results or in fiscal responsibility.
As to your Republican war machine/mongering, please list the wars the US has conducted and which party initially put us into those countries. Hint, it has not been an overreaching Republican monopoly.
Elie
@b-psycho:
You must be without elderly relatives, disabled relatives or friends…
Without Medicare, many elderly would be even more destitute than they are..
Did you know, also that Medicaid, the govt program that pays for the poor to receive health care, is the single largest payer for long term care for the elderly or severely disabled in our country? Most people cannot afford the ususal tab of approx 24k per year for institutional care. Presumably they would just die, and I guess some would consider that a “savings”
Then we have all the providers who provide those services to the elderly, both insitutuional and at home and the people they hire and the services and goods and families that those people support — get my drift?
That little social security check pays for lots of goods and services that stimulate our economy and lifts a lot of boats.
Do you get it now?
Dennis G.
@edmund dantes:
I will always admit to a bit of sloppy prose on my part. Yeah, the Blue Dogs have always bought into the “Government is the problem” meme. It didn’t start last year, but the conflict heated up in ways that it has not in some previous years.
Regardless, there is a larger fight about the role of Government that I think is the root conflict.
Cheers
cfaller96
Agreed, although this displeasure was mostly muted up until the Reagan Administration. Safety net progress moved forward (albeit erratically), and government was always the source of that movement. This post points out that Reagan changed the whole conversation and put liberalism/safety net governance on the defensive. Since then it’s been a nonstop strategic retreat for liberals.
IMO, no. Liberalism implies a mandated obligation to the safety net, via government taxation, regulation, etc. Thus, we agree to be “subject” to those taxes, regulations, etc. in exchange for a minimum standard of living, opportunity, education, etc. for everyone. It’s essentially a redistribution argument.
If you don’t believe we should be “subject” to that, then I think you’re essentially making a conservative argument- that the safety net should be provided through voluntary means (e.g. charities), which IMO is just a dressed up anti-tax argument. Besides, we have plenty of historical and empirical evidence that shows charities are not capable of sufficiently providing this safety net, so pragmatism demands that if you truly believe in the safety net then you must accept that government is the only vehicle to adequately provide it. This gets back to my point about there being no such thing as a “small government liberal”- either you believe in the safety net and thus reject the notion of “small government,” or you’re not a liberal because you don’t really believe in the safety net to begin with.
Good question. First, as an aside, go back to the post:
With your question in mind, how valid is Dennis’s assertion that progressives adopted “wing-nut frames” when questioning the validity of government? IMO, it looks like liberals are questioning the validity of Government not because of a philosophical hostility to Government, but rather a practical suspicion of Government based on its recent history. Dennis has this wrong, IMO.
Now, to answer your question: this is why lowering the barriers to challengers (primary or general) is extremely important for the long run health of our government and our nation. When Congress has in excess of a 97% incumbency success rate, your question becomes rhetorical (and depressing).
Without regular, viable, and credible threats to their job security, I don’t see any way to keep abusive and sociopathic people out of powerful government positions. This is why I support public financing of elections. This is also why the Citizens United case may doom us all regardless.
Dennis G.
@aimai:
I agree with you about Coakley. I made a lot of calls to MA and even her supporters sounded pretty uninspired by her. The point I’m making gets lost sometimes when the prose gets sloppy, but then there is a bit of that in every post.
I point out that folks use right wing frames to make their arguments. It is really hard to avoid them, because they have become the CW in DC and among the bobble-heads. To make a progressive case on an issue that does holds the Republicans accountable and also Democrats from the President on down is not that easy. Often folks with the best intentions embrace these frames. I guess my point is that we should doublecheck our talking points every now and then to see just what we are supporting in the larger fight.
Thanks for your comments.
Cheers
dengre
Elie
@BT:
It is not social engineering to apply resources to support members of our national community who have difficulty managing and who have in turn, provided assets to us as a nation. Grandma and Granps who raised their kids to be good citizens and now cannot afford their long term care are a pay back situation — not social engineering. Now if their children made enough money to completely support them, then we would be ok. But the majority of incomes in this country do not support the effort and money required to do this. As I said in my response to b-psycho — you must be very young, very rich or without middle class or lower class relations — and these are most of what comprise the US now..
The Constitution was not created to support the corporists notions of who are the deserving of the benefits of our society. The concept that drove it respected private property, but also the obligations of government to the safety and wellbeing of the many. You, being a literalist, believe that if taking care of granny was not specifically mentioned, it does not pertain — even though many of the Founding Fathers had no desire to make the Constitution a frozen document that did not reflect the larger changes in the evolution of the American people as a society.
So yeah, I hear your point but do not agree with it and dont think that while you don’t want to let people “dye” as you term it, in the streets, you dont mind setting up the situation that they will just die quietly in their homes, destitute and alone but quietly and out of sight and protection of the Constitution.
Dennis G.
@Rick Taylor:
If it came off as a “pox on both house”, I must apologize for the sloppy prose.
My point is that there is a big battle about the role of government and each of us needs to decide how we want to engage in that fight. I thing the Reagan myth that we need to fear Government is wrong and needs to be fought. A second point is that you can not do not using the anti-government rhetoric of the Wing-nuts even if the use of it might help to win a news cycle or a sub-battle.
Thanks for the feedback.
Cheers
dengre
Dennis G.
@Pam C./femlaw:
Great to here from you. Thanks.
BT
@Elie
Quiz me this. How did Grandmas and Grandpas survive prior to SS and Medicare/Medicaid? The answer is in your own comments – Family.
Family wages were not greater then than now in relation to the cost of living. The only difference being the “profitizing” of the health care industry. That profitizing is the direct result of govt involvement via social programs. Remove the huge Keynesian spigot of govt health care monies and the massive costs disappear as they cannot be supported in the marketplace. That is the social engineering to which I refer, a pure cause and effect scenario.
b-psycho
@BT:
How can this be true when inflation-adjusted wages have been going down?
BT
@b-pyscho
The wages have not taken that significant of a hit.
If that were the case, there would be far far fewer 50″ flat screens, cell phones, etc. as part of the family chattels, er, I mean necessities of daily life.
Dennis G.
@Frank/churchofbruce:
A much shorter, and perhaps clearer, version of my post.
Cheers
dengre
b-psycho
@cfaller96:
I get the redistribution argument. What I don’t get is this argument for a willing subordination to a political elite in order to administer things for the alleged benefit of everyone. What you see as a social contract I see as signing our lives away to forces we will never have full understanding or control of.
It may be more accurate to say that I don’t think society organized by involuntary means accomplishes more positive than negative. To put it brief as possible, I think how our economic system was built is a large part of why so many people need help in the first place. For one example, as much as the Right gripes about unions I wish organized labor was waaaaay more radical than they actually are, to the point of embracing syndicalism to an extent.
Frank/churchofbruce
Not very well. Check a life expectancy chart. Someone born 45 years before SS had a life expectancy of 42. Someone born 5 years before SS? That had jumped to 59. Only some of that is due to medical advances.
Mnemosyne
@BT:
That’s how it was sold, yes. But the reason we needed those amendments was Reagan’s free-spending ways. How many billions went down the drain of missile defense that, 30 years later, can’t even run a test on a rainy day? It’s very odd to me that you admit that Social Security funds went into the general fund and yet you see absolutely no connection between Reagan’s defense spending and Social Security’s sudden deficit.
You do realize that this sentence makes no sense, right? Hint: an increasing GDP is a good thing.
Frankly, a lot of them didn’t. That’s why SS and Medicare/Medicaid were enacted in the first place — it became a national scandal that old people whose families couldn’t or wouldn’t care for them were living on dog food because human food was too expensive. They were putting their life savings with private pension plans that robbed them of everything they had. The government stepped in because people decided that old and sick people needed to have something stable to depend on, not a private pension plan that could shut down and take all of their money with it.
I know that conservatives have it as an article of faith that social programs don’t work, but Germany has had Social Security since the late 1800s and yet, oddly, the country hasn’t been bankrupted by it.
BT
@ Frank/churchofbruce
45 years before SS Come on, that would have been in the 1800s. Penicillin wasn’t discovered until 1928.
A jump from 42 to 59 is what ~30% increase?
Please don’t tell me you believe that SS and Medicare have been the reasons life expectancies have increased.
Mnemosyne
@BT:
Consumer goods — yes, even 50″ flat screens — are far less expensive today than they were 50 years ago if you account for inflation. You can’t just look at gross dollar amounts and say, “Well, a TV was $300 in the 1950s and they cost the same amount of money today as they did in the 1950s, so it’s the same thing.”
Wage stagnation in the face of inflation has been a problem for 30 years. You know, right about the time Reagan got into office. Funny how all of these financial problems trace back to him, isn’t it?
Frank/churchofbruce
@bt
It’s surely part of it. As I said, medical advances help. But old people died of abject poverty and nothing else prior to SS.
Mnemosyne
@BT:
I give up. This is like trying to convince someone from the Flat Earth Society that the Earth really is round.
Hopefully your fantasy world will give you some comfort, BT. Buh-bye.
BT
@Mnemosyne
Your narrow focus and comparison of Reagan spending and SS deficits are not borne out by fact or history. Sorry. Go research the 1939 and 1965 SS amendments – there is where the answers lay. While there also look at the expansion of SS benefits under Democrats resulting in massive expenditures never intended for the SS program. Let’s stick with comparing apples to apples.
You miss my point on GDP. Yes, a healthy GDP (which by the way is produced by the PRIVATE sector not govt) is a great thing. All boats are lifted by a healthy GDP. What is not healthy is a high govt spending percentage of any GDP rate. Sort of the concept of this discussion – Big Govt vs Small Govt.
You bemoan supposed private pensions robbing those involved of their life savings yet happily whistle past the graveyard of SS and Medicare bankrupting future generations. Sounds like a race to the bottom strategy.
Dennis G.
@cfaller96:
It is not that the PO did not matter. It did and it does, but it was a tactical mistake to market and promote the idea that any Bill without a PO was “not reform”, “a sell-out”, “not worth doing”, etc., etc.
That marketing campaign did win some news cycles, but it also underscored the idea that one could not trust government to fix this problem and the Democrats are useless. I think the case for reform and a PO could have been made without embracing that tactical choice, which put short term gains over a long view.
I think this was a result of passion and the very real difficulty of prioritizing so many important and overlapping battles. I think the conflict about the role of Government is the root battle and that there is always the risk that tactics employed to make gains in one battle could do more harm than good. I think that has been the impact of the tactic used to support a PO. This is not a critique of the PO, but rather of a set of tactics embraced to support it.
One of the problems with criticizing tactics is that folks always assume that your attacking the goals that the folks using the tactic were tyring to accomplish. One does not follow the other.
thanks for your feedback. I’ll try and improve the clarity of the prose.
Cheers
dengre
BT
I give up. This is like trying to convince someone from the Flat Earth Society that the Earth really is round.
Hopefully your fantasy world will give you some comfort, BT. Buh-bye.
See ya! Maybe you can seek some professional help regarding your RDS.
acallidryas
@b-psycho
But those words are the problem. Because we have people who are arguing that government is always the problem, encouraging that attitude, and not educating people that government is doing things that they want as well, we have people who are relexively opposed and scared of any new government program, and reflexively supportive of any attempt to dismantle a government program, to deregulate, and to lower taxes. Reagan’s hypocrisy and enormous extension of the national debt are a separate problem. His statement that the scariest words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” emobdies the type of attitude that has gotten us into the political mess we’re in today.
@BT
It also might have something to do with the fact that we have lots more health care than we did then. That’s a pretty big difference. By necessity, you have to charge more for biopsies, surgeries, chemo or radiation and lots of follow-ups than just giving someone some pills for the pain and hoping for the best. But NIH grants and university funding helps with lots of those breakthroughs, so I guess the government does share some of the blame.
cfaller96
Um, they didn’t. A lot of old people lived on cat food, charity, or didn’t live at all. Or did you think that the moral consensus that created momentum for SS, Medicare, and Medicaid just magically appeared?
Something tells me you’re not very intellectually curious.
Dennis G.
@b-psycho:
Will Rogers used to say of Republicans that they had a plan and that was the problem, because it was always the same plan and it went a little like this: “Come on in boys, take anything you want, my back’s a turned and I ain’t gonna look…”
It was true in 1933. It is still true and it is still the same plan.
Cheers
mclaren
Elie
@BT:
CREDIT cards and loose credit is how we got flat screens –ot growth in real wages
Elie
@Elie:
cant get edit to work Grrrrr
arguingwithsignposts
@mclaren:
I’d say it goes back even farther to the founding of the nation. Remember the articles of confederation?
cfaller96
Ah, I totally agree with this sentiment. However, you’ve just undercut one of the pillars of your post, because liberals and progressives were NOT the ones that created or initially supported the Public Option- President Obama was. He championed the PO as a (paraphrase) “fundamental reform” and a “necessary step” towards a more equitable and efficient health care financing system. It was, in a sense, his “Third Way.”
To ascribe the Public Option as a product of the liberals is disingenuous, because they fought for it only after President Obama first proposed it. If you think the Public Option was a tactical victory but a strategic mistake in The War, then you need to revisit your assertion that President Obama “is focused on this battle [over the role of Government]”. The PO was his baby, not the liberals’.
BT
@Elie
CREDIT cards and loose credit is how we got flat screens—ot growth in real wages
Hmmm, don’t think those were commonly available during the post WWII housing boom of the 1950s. You know, before the Great Society and before the bastardization of SS.
Grandmas and Grandpas weren’t dying in the streets then but a large majority of Americans were owning their own homes and had a new Chevrolet parked in the driveway – without a credit card to their name.
BT
@cfaller96
During this pre-SS/Medicare timeframe you reference, was this the canned or pouch types of cat food? Or was it the archaic dried type?
Do you have any links to support your statements?
SS, Medicare and Medicaid “magically” appeared based on liberal leaders (FDR and LBJ) forcing their agenda on the country. The same history is attempting to be repeated today with HCR. The long term costs will be the same.
I try to be more intellectually honest instead of ignoring facts and history.
Um, they didn’t. A lot of old people lived on cat food, charity, or didn’t live at all. Or did you think that the moral consensus that created momentum for SS, Medicare, and Medicaid just magically appeared?
Something tells me you’re not very intellectually curious.
inkadu
@Mnemosyne: He’s overstating the split in the Democratic party; it’s only because we have to get to 60 votes in the Senate that this is even an issue. The number of truly conservative goons in the Democratic party is relatively small; but they are also bad faith actors, like Lieberman and Nelson and Bayh, who go out of their way to undermine the process… I think most of the Democratic party got together in good faith and came up with a decent bill; it’s just that 10% of them can jerk us around carelessly that it seems like a battle.
Second, I’m not sure who he is talking about for the “right wing capitulation.” If Joe Lieberman says, “Taxes are eeeviillll,” it’s not because he’s buying into right wing frames; it’s what he actually believes. It’s not a tactical error forced by a internecine conflict. HCR did not fail because of intra-party conflicts. It failed because a small segment of the party did not want it to happen, among other things. To blame it on intraparty squabbling is stupid and naive — any major legislation will have a similar measure of fighting.
Third, if we’re taking a larger look at this, health care reform requires active government intervention of one sort or another; anyone who thinks differently is just as batshit insane as Republicans. I haven’t seen a “small government liberal” really get behind any of them; mostly they’ve negotiated to a position, but it’s not something they would have proposed themselves.
But, yeah, I agree. I initially liked the idea that one party had gone completely nutso; but I overestimated the American public’s ability to recognize it. So it goes.
Mnemosyne
@inkadu:
Isn’t the fact that a small segment of the party didn’t want something to happen an intra-party conflict?
Again, I think people are reading this way, way, way too broadly. He’s not saying the progressives should STFU. He’s not casting blame. He’s saying that there is a genuine split in the party that we can usually paper over, but the split remains and it comes out in moments of stress like this one. The split has been there since at least Clinton’s day, if not before.
b-psycho
@cfaller96: Speaking of challengers, I found out earlier that this guy is challenging Chuck Schumer.
BT
@ ALL Progressives
Kudos for sticking with your beliefs.
The fact of the matter is that your policies just don’t and won’t “Play in Peoria”.
In full disclosure: I am not in lock step with the Republican party nor some of its past actions. However, you guys are in the deep end without water wings if you think the currently proposed big govt HCR has any chance of survival.
Mnemosyne
@cfaller96:
Don’t bother. Someone who doesn’t understand that an anomalous demographic event is causing the Social Security problem and not some huge failure of a social safety net as a concept isn’t worth the electrons.
BT
@Mnemosyne
Your veiled insults are noted.
Pray tell, what “right” do you defend with this obligated “social safety net”?
What right do you have to take from one who has earned to give to one that has not?
I’m all ears.
Elie
@BT:
Those are what has destroyed our economic security — we became consumers beyond our ability to support ourselves with extended credit to buy shit. Lots of people are in major debt and financial distress — which is WHY in part they can’t shoulder Granny and Grandpa.
Coming up ahead is another catastrophe. Though wages etc have been declining, the remaining WWII generatioin passed a fair amount of resources to my generation. We as their beneficiaries are the last to be able to have enough spare income to benefit our children in the way that our parents benefitted us. Real incomes and wages are being dragged down by global and other issues and the young folks coming up now will have a much less bright economic future. These kids will not be feeling generous about any transfer of money to us oldsters, so we had better be able to carry our own weight. Without government programs like Medicare, social security, things would transition even more roughly.
Look, you just don’t believe in a community with shared investment in all our outcomes. To you, we are very much cave men, living with the brutality of animals who know that we only have to run faster than the zebra next to us. If the lion catches the other zebra, we are ok for now. In your world, we would never work together to keep the lions at bay and make sure we have enough to eat.
I think we are more in your world model now and that is not a good place to my mind
cfaller96
Sigh.
You could also go here for more visual stimulation. Money passage:
It took me 10 minutes to find this, and I suck at Google research. 10 minutes, a pittance for those who value being informed and learning something new every day. And that’s my point- if you were genuinely interested in the facts and history, you would have done this yourself. But you didn’t. Dick.
BT
Can someone please tell me the correct “quoting” tag needed for this site? I would like to address specific comments by others in context but so far have not mastered the correct tagging syntax.
TIA
Elie
@cfaller96:
I think that arguing with the troll brings diminishing returns as is demonstrated for both of us in our attempts at communicating. It is pointless. It is about deep beliefs and values that don’t seem reacheable in his brain — at least not yet. Lets not waste even more time on it…
BT
@ ALL Progressives here
Why does your side have to regress to name calling?
With the exception of responding to Elie with my RDS comment, I believe my comments have been on the issue.
Is this an adult conversation or not?
Come on people, we’re all Americans even if we have political differences.
mclaren
@BT:
Absolutely. That’s why we need to ditch this “progressive” crap and get with a hard-let extreme radical agenda. That’s what plays in Peoria. Polls show overwhelming support among the average American voters for public option health care, higher taxes on the wealthy, lower military spending.
And of course nowadays those are today considered “extreme radical far left” planks.
So let’s get extreme and radical and far left. Eat the rich. Tax ’em into oblivion. Anyone who supports torture, deport the sonofoabitch — it’s our constitution: love it or leave it.
Mnemosyne
@BT:
Here’s the thing: we are telling you that the Earth is round. You keep saying, “No, it’s not, it’s flat.” We point you to evidence that the Earth is round. You ignore the evidence and insist that the Earth is flat.
You have the right to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. When you ignore the facts in favor of your opinion, there’s no point in continuing the conversation because you are not operating in the real world.
The commenting tools are right above the comments box. b is bold, i is italics, b-quote is blockquote, etc.
mclaren
@arguingwithsignposts:
Heh. Indeed.