One of the memes going around Washington is that Obama’s biggest political problem is that he doesn’t scare anybody (MY here; dickwhisperer here, for example). I think that’s true. Of course, it was also true of the last two Democratic presidents.
I wonder how possible it is for a Democratic president to scare anyone. It seems to me there’s a limited number of ways that a president can screw people: (1) he could sic the press on them, (2) he could deny them and their family Think Tank/K Street/Board of Directors jobs, (3) he could have some arm of the federal government (say the DOJ or the FBI) go after them, (4) he could deny funding for re-election campaigns, and (5) he could see that they were screwed out of earmarks. Have I left anything out?
Realistically, (5) and, to a limited extent (4) (you don’t really want to lose seats by screwing Democrats’ campaigns, obviously) are the only options available to Obama. There’s no segment of the press that the Obama White House controls and I don’t think they have as much sway in the Think Tank/K Street/Board of Directors world as Bush did. On (3) there’s no doubt that Bush used it a lot and that Obama could do the same if he wanted to, but I don’t think a Democratic president could get away with that the way Bush did (largely because of the aforementioned lack of control of the press).
Perhaps this is paranoid, but I think the claim that “Washington is wired for Republican control” runs pretty deep. Democrats, for all their political success, are still pretty institutionally weak. For a long time, Republicans have been more serious about controlling institutions — that’s what the K Street project is about and it’s what the 30 year LIBRUL MEDIA jihad is about too.
At this point, it’s not much of a stretch to say that Republicans mostly control the media and the Think Tank/K Street world (they probably have more power over Board of Directors positions too). And that puts a serious dent in Democratic presidents’ ability to scare anyone.
Napoleon
There is no doubt in my mind the meme is true.
And even if everything else you say is true, so what. Obama doesn’t even try. Unless people think he is willing to retaliate a good number of them will not give any weight to Obama’s opinions/plans.
ricky
Memes are pathogens spread by pundits who are momentarily distracted from bad predictions by the allure of propagating bad history.
Punchy
Every Bubba and hobo ninja has a radio. And conservatives completely pwn talk radio. I can count…..uh…..1….librul on the radio (Ed). And about 30 conservatives.
Thus the ease at which they relay their message and reinforce the groupthink. You can bitch about cable news and Faux all you want, but it’s on radio that Dems are completely trounced.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think this whole “fear” thing is way overdone. Comparisons to LBJ (much less FDR) annoy the hell out of me. The political structure of this country has hugely changed since the sixties, sometimes for the better (a lot less corruption) sometimes just social/demographic changes (less powerful unions, the dying out of liberal Republicanism, geographic realignment). LBJ had weapons no modern president could, and he still compromised and worked in/for incremental change. The ‘bagger left has a fantasy that Civil Rights and Medicare passed because Johnson grabbed Joe Lieberman by the collar and dangled him off the Truman balcony till he said Uncle.
Also, this article mentions Reagan as “feared”. I was just starting to follow politics in the eighties, but my recollection isn’t that Reagan was feared by politician as he was liked by voters (and the press). You didn’t want him campaigning for your opponent, if you were a Dem; you wanted him campaigning for you if you were an R. The same was true of Clinton, to some extent, and would’ve been a lot more true if he’d kept his zipper up. Bush was only useful as long as a plurality believed Saddam flew the planes on 9/11. Very few people wanted him around in ’06/’08. Obama will be “feared” as the economy gets stronger.
(and Blanche Lincoln has a primary challenge. Bye Blanche)
aimai
Well, washington isn’t wrong to despise Democratic presidents and democrats in general–look at last week’s failure to fuck the entire Republican party up by forcing Jim Bunning to run around shrieking on the Senate floor in his piss stained underwear? If your enemies hand you a cheap and easy way of humiliating *the entire party* and bringing *the entire party into disrepute* by tieing the policies to the erratic behavior of one member what kind of idiot ignores it? A Democratic party composed of idiots, that’s who.
Of course the talk shows and everyone else are “wired for republicans” but, on the other hand, we don’t see any Democrats except for Alan Grayson who are willing to go on TV and make enough incendiary comments and ugly accusations wrapped up around populist language to force coverage on our terms. Hell, to force any kind of coverage.
aimai
bago
DC is an insanely conservative town. Do you know how weird it is to live there for months and not see anyone with colored hair?
Comrade Dread
I’ve always been partial to option 6:
Schedule a few ‘fireside’ chats with recalcitrant Congressman and have your secretaries of waste management Vinnie and Tommy on hand to move the Congressman closer to the fire if he/she refuses your generous offer.
Or, if you’re more diabolical, option 7:
Reinstitute a civilian draft and let congressman know that you’re familiar with the Civil Service board and stuff gets lost pretty frequently, like that deferrment notice their son or daughter sent in. Though, if they do you a favor, you might be willing to give your friends down there a call to make sure their case gets special attention.
Brian J
Is it more about scaring the people he’s working with or scaring people that might vote for him? If it’s the former, it would be harder, but if it’s the latter, perhaps it could be somewhat easier.
Bill Maher made a similar point this past Friday about health care while discussing why Obama has had trouble. While part of it is certainly Republican resistance, a bigger part of it is the Democrats’ issues with not being able to sell the plan as effectively as they might have. It’s not that the public doesn’t support, in large measures, each of his proposals, if not all of them. It’s due in large part because they are confused about what he’s offering. Why? The Republicans have successfully scared the shit out of a lot of people that they will be at the mercy of government bureaucrats, their grandmothers will be killed, and they will be taxed into oblivion, among other things.
Could it have been different if, as Maher suggested, Obama emphasized the fact that those who are currently fine could be next in line to be at risk if they lose their jobs and thus health care or get a disease? I think so. If nothing else, it would have been true.
I could go on and on about this, but for right now, suffice it to say that while I don’t really like wrapping everything into some sort of questionable narrative, like the Republicans did with terrorism, it doesn’t hurt to establish a theme and then run with it.
J.W. Hamner
When did Bush scare Democrats… besides the time immediately following 9/11?
Did Bush even have iron fisted rule over the GOP? He certainly didn’t in regards to immigration reform or social security privatization.
My memory of the Clinton years is hazy and the Reagan years non-existent… but I tend to think this meme is overblown.
stevie314159
Blowing the shit out of brown people usually helps Republicans show their macho.
I’ll pass on that this time around, if it’s ok.
Boots Day
I think you’re missing the point a little bit: Scaring people is largely about demagoguing them into submission. Bush had a perfect issue with which to demagogue people, in terrorism, and he was able to use that to browbeat them into supporting his policies even when they had nothing to do with terrorism, like invading Iraq.
The way Obama can scare people is to talk up the economic/unemployment crisis we have, and constantly point out how the Republicans seem hellbent on keeping people out of work for as long as possible. He should describe their every move as one taken for the benefit of the GOP at the expense of the American working people. Are you with John Boehner and Lamar Alexander, or are you with that fellow in the unemployment line?
Brian J
I should also add that if Obama can make Republicans and their allies his “enemies,” he might have an easier run of it. I’m all for giving them a chance to make substantive contributions, but by now it should be clear that very few of them are going to fit that description. I’m not saying he needs to treat them like Cheney seemed to treat Democrats (like they were traitors), but would it kill him to drill into the public that the Republicans are on the side of the insurance companies, the doctors associations, big pharma–in other words, the status quo?
Mike in NC
Any casual perusal of the Sunday morning TV lineup would confirm this. Gregory? Schieffer? Remember how last year a certain ex-Clinton press secretary was going to Hannity for his talking points?
Recall also the stories in the dying days of the Bush/Cheney regime, about how so many of their hack political appointees were 'burrowing' into the federal bureaucracy to find permanent employment (and ensure agency dysfunction — a twofer!) no matter who occupied the White House. Nobody made a peep about that.
Corner Stone
I always thought that’s why a President had henchmen underlings.
It’s not so much that the President would kneecap you if you went against him, but his organization would take away what you cared about most.
And for some strange reason, in this WH that’s what I thought was the job of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
Osprey
Well there’s 2 different types of scared here (among the Republicans/Conservative Media etc.). They’re not scared one iota of the Dems themselves, but they are scared of them passing decent legislation.
I think they’re effin’ terrified of Obama and Democrats in the sense that if the general population knew the truth of things the Repubs wouldn’t win another Presidency and the Dem majorities in Congress would be staggering. They are going to try to block every single thing in Congress, and use the media to spin everything to their favor because if this administration passes popular legislation that even they can’t spin, they’re done.
On the other hand, the Democrats themselves instill no fear whatsoever in the opposition for obvious reasons. They’re totally inept at generating a consensus among their caucus and totally suck and presenting their agenda. For me, some of their ineptitude is intentional-either they’re scared to do what they were elected to do…just couldn’t give a shit, or are more beholden to corporate/wealthy interests than the Repubs are.
There is fear among them, paranoia for some, of what the Dems COULD POSSIBLY accomplish, but they realize it will most likely not come to fruition because of the Dem impotence.
The Grand Panjandrum
Stop watching the cable shows and reading the Post. Obama doesn’t have to be feared. He just has to get this health care legislation enacted and the economy needs to keep moving in the right direction and you’ll see the narrative change.
And this little tidbit about Bunning’s stupid little rant last week may be exactly what causes the narrative to begin shifting.
In other words, Bunning fucked over a lot of states who can ill afford any delay in funding from the feds for ongoing highway projects.
Obama will be fine. He ran for President, not Homecoming King.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Brian J:
Running through my head, thinking of friends, relatives and acquaintances most of whom are, with a few exceptions, living paycheck to paycheck. They may have savings and comfortably middle to upper middle class lives, but they have kids and mortgages and car payments and all the rest. The combination of a lay off plus a major illness would lead to bankruptcy. I haven’t discussed it in depth with most of them, but they must know that, intellectually. But for a good half of them, in their gut, that gnawing, nagging (uniquely?) American fear that somewhere, somehow, the undeserving poor are getting three cents out of their tax bill (“my money!“) trumps that knowledge.
Guster
Bully pulpit.
drillfork
Well, Obama could scare Lieberman by taking away his Homeland Security committee chairmanship.
But that’s right, JoeLie is
opportunisticallynobly backing DADT now.http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100301/us_time/08599196786800
geg6
I don’t think I even want a president who governs through fear. Seriously. I’m not thrilled with Obama’s ability to get his message out or with his fetish for bi-partisanship and/or moderation. But fear? No thanks.
What I do want is more how FDR governed and communicated. It’s not so much that people feared him (though they may have), but that he didn’t care if people didn’t like what he did.
So I guess, in the end, is that it’s not that I want a president who people fear so much as I want one who has no fear in presenting and going for his and his supporters’ agenda.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
I think this all boils down to the simple fact that the Republicans are better at working the refs.
A good example of this is the DKos article the other day about how the president started off with big approval ratings, and a year later the people were bummed about the economy and other things and his approval rating was headed into the 30’s.
The punchline was that the president being described was Reagan.
Now Reagan is supposedly due for a spot on Mount Rushmore. So how did this ineffective actor get himself that kind of star power? His team worked the refs relentlessly for all these years. That’s about it. Nobody GOP has to actually do anything or be anything worthwhile when the crowd and the refs are being constantly entertained the way they can do it.
And of course, the blogs just amplify the noise that does the work. Imagine that this was a rodeo … would sending in liberal rodeo clowns undo the work of the righty rodeo clowns? Or would it just look to the crowd like there were more clowns?
John Cole
I’ve just come to the decision that Democratic politicians are all jealous assholes. I’ve never seen Republicans undercut their President the way Democrats have to Obama (and I’ve been told the same was true with Clinton).
Napoleon
DougJ,
On reflection there is a number 6 that you missed which is Obama could use his e-mail list/political organization to put pressure on certain legislators to toe the line on his legislative agenda, and you may even recall that early in the HCR debate Obama’s people actually started doing that for about a nanosecond until the so called centrist complained and they stopped.
Even worse the centrist were even able to sic Rahm on outside groups that tried to put pressure on them. So not only is Obama completely unwilling to play hard ball with Dems blocking him he is so emasculated that he actually came to their aid when others tried to do it.
It would be like when Don Corleone sends his people to put a horse’s head in the bed of Jack Woltz, Jack somehow convinces Corleone’s boys to instead kill Corleone’s horse and put its head in Don’s bed.
Brian J
@The Grand Panjandrum:
That is definitely true.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This is also unfortunately true.
Kryptik
@John Cole:
Democrats aren’t as much of lemmings ideologically and politically as Republicans are, you have to remember that.
The depressing thing is that it’s effectively a flaw, not a virtue.
slag
@geg6: I want Obama to enforce party discipline. And fear is one component of that.
I hadn’t thought about the connection between institutional ownership and fear before, but DougJ’s analysis makes a lot of sense to me. Another issue is that Democrats who actually care about legislating are automatically hamstrung in Washington by virtue of the fact that everyone knows they care. Those who don’t care don’t have nearly as much to lose so they win almost by default. That is probably the biggest Republican house advantage in Washington–they don’t give a sh#t.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
Actually, Alan Grayson hasn’t been on TV for months. He had a couple of good appearances before the media realized that he was actually saying effective things, and then he magically disappeared. He’s probably still out there saying the exact same things, but you’d never know it if you watch cable news or the Sunday talk shows because he doesn’t get booked any more. Which is kinda what DougJ is talking about.
slag
@John Cole:
And you don’t think Republican politicians are jealous assholes?
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@slag:
That’s a great point.
Linda Featheringill
To stevie314159:
Your analysis [the Right blows up brown people to make them feel/appear macho] may be a little bit simplified but it is essentially correct. Remember “Make love, not war”?
And yes, there is the underlying feeling that brown people, to use your term, are untermenchen and therefore expendable.
I began my life, and indeed my adulthood, with the philosophy that evil does not exist. The longer I live, the more I doubt that proposition.
Brien Jackson
@aimai:
I swear, it’s like you guys are proud of being ignorant.
ellaesther
@The Grand Panjandrum: A) This.
B) From your mouth to the Grand Flying Spaghetti Monster’s Ears.
C) Homecoming King! Ha!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I give you Olympia Snowe. It’s slightly less true now than it was pre-Scotty Brown, but she’s still the keystone of the GOP obstructionist strategy. Somebody from Maine told me that, ideology aside, she simply hates Democrats. Maybe she’s like Uncle Broder, and it’s always 1973, with bra-burners, long-haired freaks and Negro Nationalists about to burn down…. something.
Nick
@aimai:
and what happened to Grayson after he said that and when was the last time you saw Grayson on TV?
…exactly.
Keith G
The power of the political party (the use of leadership and infrastructure) were the weapons that a Pres, or a Congr leader could use to scare others.
Those weapons just are not as useful, if even usable in these times. Folks who adopt that meme are likely to have their head up their ass.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
He could always have them killed. You know Cheney would probably do it.
On a more serious note, the way LBJ did it was with regular old blackmail. He knew all the Congresscritters’ habits, where they gambled, who their mistresses were, etc. He wasn’t above sending J. Edgar Hoover after people, either. He loved calling people up and talking about all the “interesting things” he’d noticed as he was going through their tax records.
It was vicious, but it worked. Make of it what you will.
Nick
@Brian J:
Since there are so many people who are in this situation and are teabaggers or think this will only exacerbate the problem, I find it highly unlikely.
See Arkansas.
Kryptik
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And like I said before, the sad thing is that not being a bait-and-switch artist with rigid political votes has become a flaw for Dems, while said rigidity of Republicans have become their greatest virtue. And more than likely, they’ll be rewarded by it, because the press just LOVES them some strong pols, even when they’re demonstrably wrong.
Oh wait, not demonstrably wrong, because you have to actually have someone who can demonstrate why they’re wrong, which the press would rather not do.
kid bitzer
also worth remembering that obama has made his political career on *not* being the scary black man tm.
i mean–clinton may have been tempted to scare people and just not had the levers of power at his hands.
by contrast, obama long ago learned that scaring people was the fastest way to lose access to the levers of power.
and yes, that is entirely a reflection of the residual racism of the american people.
still, you might wonder whether he should have gone for it anyhow. given that the republican response has always been “scary black man! chicago thugs! scary black chicago thugs!”, it’s not clear whether they would have screamed much louder if he had actually *done* something intimidating.
or is it that the republican hysterics were always going to misrepresent him, but there are median voters out there who respond more to his actual demeanor?
Brien Jackson
@John Cole:
I wrote about this last week, but I think the best way to understand it is that the Democrats, and the broader left, haven’t adaptded to politics in the digital, fast-paced, mass media age. Democratic office holders are using their individual leverage and institutional independence in a way arguably consistent with what the American system is designed for, and Democratic activists have a hyper-localized view of Congressional elections. Republicans have been much quicker to understand that all politics are parliamentary now.
Corner Stone
@slag: I think if you take what DougJ is saying in #2 to its logical conclusion then the main opportunity for graft a Democratic politician has is by defying his President and his party.
If a Republican stood against his party then he would be shut out of the most lucrative after-elected office positions.
If a Democrat stood with his party then he would be shut out of the most lucrative positions.
It’s only by pleasing the owners of the gravy train that a Democratic politician can get paid.
That’s the Republican advantage I believe we are discussing in the institutional and structural ownership Republicans seem to enjoy.
Mnemosyne
@slag:
Nope. Republicans are sycophantic assholes. They’ll suck up to whoever’s in power and trample their peers to try and work their way up. They were never going to challenge Bush or Cheney because the fact that Bush and Cheney were in power was proof that they should be leading and everyone else should follow.
Democrats are jealous assholes: all of them think that they should be president, not some one-term Senator/governor from Arkansas/peanut farmer from Georgia.
geg6
And I have been itching to make an OT observation, so I think I’ll do it right now.
For those real Merikins who were making fun of the Canuckistani Olympic closing ceremonies last night, I beg you to remember that the closing ceremony for the Salt Lake Olympics featured Donny and Marie as dinosaurs and KISS on an iceberg.
Giant inflatable beavers is a huge improvement over that.
ellaesther
I’m not sure that it’s that Washington is wired for Republican control so much as governments (and the towns in which they serve), generally, are wired for status quo maintenance, generally — and in our government town, the Republicans tend to represent (or successfully present themselves as representing) the status quo.
Any revolutionary movement that has ever swept into office has become the next preserver of the status quo — witness Iran, as just one example. The beauty of the American system is that the founders saw some of these dangers and provided protections against at least some of them, and over the years, we have expanded those protections.
But it’s we the people who have to make it work, because people in positions of power tend to like to stay in power, and maintain the conditions that allow them to stay in power.
kid bitzer
@43–
making fun of donny and marie is *always* on topic.
Brien Jackson
@slag:
There’s no way to do that.
Corner Stone
@geg6:
Speaking for myself, I’m going to say that having a giant inflatable beaver never improved anything.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
This.
But being a Dem, of couse I also have an on the other hand…
FDR had advantages Obama will never enjoy. Probably the most important are that:
(A) FDR took over from Hoover after the G.D. was already 3 years running, so there was no ambiguity about which party was to blame. And to add to that FDR let Hoover twist slowly in the wind (to use a Watergate era phrase) for months between the Nov ’32 election and the March ’33 inaguration, all the while the banking system was collapsing and things were getting worse on a weekly basis, while FDR refused to cooperate in any way with the outgoing administration in taking measures to try to stabilize the situation. Basically FDR sat on his hands while the US banking system burned to the ground, so he could have a clean slate to build on once he was in office.
(B) Obama and other current Presidents are term limited, unlike FDR. The fear factor won’t apply for any Dem President until the Dems can win 3 elections in a row. The folks in DC have to fear that the people in the current administration will be returned to power on a long enough time frame to ruin careers for the folks who are left out in the cold. Part of the wiring of DC for Republicans which we currently take for granted is a legacy of the 1988 election in which GHB was able to take the reigns from Reagan thereby freezing out the Dems from the WH for at least 12 years. This makes a difference because over a 12-16 year period you have folks on the losing side who end up with a huge gap in their resumes, when they could have been working in the West Wing. That translates to fewer TV appearances, book offers, etc. If you can hurt people in that way, then they will start to fear you. But Dems haven’t show they can keep up the full court press like that yet. If we can win both the 2012 and the 2016 election, that will change.
Brien Jackson
@Corner Stone:
This.
burnspbesq
Lincoln being primaried from the left? I must be a dumbshit, because I can’t seem to figure out how this advances progressives’ professed goal of electing more and better democrats. Does anyone really think that anyone to the left of Lincoln can actually be elected to statewide office in Arkansas this year?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@geg6:
I luvvved the magnificent tackiness of the closing ceremony. At my house we were laughing so hard we almost fell off the sofa. If it weren’t for the Canucks putting on such a great show, we would have missed out on such priceless moments as:
[me]: I don’t think those are real Mounties…
[my 13 year old son]: Why do you say that, dad?
[me]: Look at their legs!
Malron
I think its more precise to say the Democratic party doesn’t scare anybody. Remember when Joe Lieberman played the role of attack dog role for McCain in the election and Harry Reid had a chance to stick it to him by stripping him of his chairmanship? Sure, Obama played nice and asked him not to but Reid could have said fuck it and stripped him anyway. I know Reid lacks the balls to do this but the truth is there’s very little downside in either party to opposing a Democratic agenda.
Brien Jackson
@burnspbesq:
I think they’re looking to play Calvinball by picking someone who basically has no chance of winning either way. If Halter beats her and loses, it will be proof that Democrats have to worry about progressives. If Lincoln beats him and loses, it will be proof they have to worry, because if they don’t do what the netroots wants, then “the base” will stay home, and the apostate will lose.
Brian J
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Wasn’t she at one point, early on in her career, a Democrat? I remember reading something like that.
Anyway, if she really does hate Democrats, I guess the idea that she’d some day join the party for one reason or another is just nutty.
Brien Jackson
@Malron:
Of for fuck’s sake, Reid didn’t back down, the Democratic caucus voted overwhelmingly not to take away Lieberman’s seat. How many times does it have to be pointed out that the Majority Leader isn’t King of the Senate before it sinks in?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@burnspbesq:
Not so much from the left, maybe even a little from the right, from what I’ve read (ETA: Bold Progressives are doing a money bomb for Halter, whatever his politics). But she might be less vulnerable if she had shown some leadership and done the right thing. I think.
aimai
Yes, yes, of course, its stupid for me to want the Democrats to be able to put a face on Republican intransigence and make the Republican party own the ugly fall out of its policies. I mean, look, Bunning wanted to hold up the extremely popular monies for the unemployed and his filibustering led to 2000 workers being temporarily furloughed today but making a huge public fuss about it, talking about it on the talk shows, or trying to make Bunning’s name and actions synonymous with the Republican party would just have been mean and counterproductive.
The fact that it may be difficult to get certain information, or a pro-democratic narrative, onto the main stream media means we should definitely never try. Will someone write to Krugman and please let him know he shouldn’t agree to appear on the Sunday talk shows, since there’s no point even bringing up economic or political issues from a Democratic perspective?
aimai
someguy
@ Stevie314
True, but can’t we leave the sex lives of Vitter, Lindsey, Brownie and the rest of the Republicans out of this?
Jahill10
Obama is fighting against several different “traditions” in Washington now that make things very difficult. One is that the Democrats in Congress are used to not doing anything. They won the last two election cycles by pointing out all the horrible things that Republicans have done, but when it comes to manning up and passing real legislative initiatives they’d much rather hide in their shells and blame the President for not being able to “scare” people. As though having a Democratic majority in Congress were a good in itself, but not a means to improve American lives.
The other is the Washington media machine which likes political conflict and election horse races so much it makes everyday election day. Screw the facts and screw the people, what makes a good conflicty narrative? I think that’s part of their McCain/Darth Cheney fetish. Bitter old LOSERS always a surefire guarantee to come on and say something bitter and nasty. Ooooh! Conflict! Shiny! For the most part the Republican Party has coopted the Washington media management, but the minions (Gregory, Schmuck Todd, etc.) who carry out the orders are just lazy, untrained, incurious and comfortable SOBs who are more interested in keeping their cushy jobs than reporting the facts.
God willing, HCR and a decent set of jobs bills pass and the economy continues to climb out of this hole that Bush left us in, the narrative will change. But it will always be the narrative that these idiots follow, not the nuts and bolts of governance, because that would be actual work.
Sorry for the rant, but I used to be a newspaper woman and these assholes make me sick to my stomach. Personally I don’t want a president who scares people. I want one who freakin’ knows how to run a competent government. Obama knows.
Legalize
It’s probably true that the Democratic party does not scare anyone. However, it’s pretty clear that Obama scares the Village, the GOP, and his own party absolutely shitless. His very presence threatens to expose how useless all 3 are.
Deborah
Who was scared of W? Or Bush 1, or Reagan? Cheney I’ll grant.
And I second Jahill’s point that the Dems in Congress have largely (I except Pelosi) acted as though a majority was a good in and of itself, rather than a tool to pass legislation.
slag
@Corner Stone: I agree with that as far as it goes. But the point assumes that most Republicans aren’t very earnest. If Republicans were earnest in their positions, self-interestedness would have much less influence on their behaviors than it obviously does and they would behave much less homogeneously than they do. It’s my opinion that Democrats are, on average, more earnest, which inherently gives them less influence and less homogeneity.
former_friend
“I think this all boils down to the simple fact that the Republicans are better at working the refs.”
“I’ve just come to the decision that Democratic politicians are all jealous assholes.”
“Democrats, and the broader left, haven’t adapted to politics in the digital, fast-paced, mass media age. “
It is striking how the simple, observable fact that Big Biz owns our government is something so many self-proclaimed supporters of Democrats cannot keep in their minds from one day to the next.
Lots of people figured it out and can remember it from day to day, but so many don’t. For example, Cole is the energizer bunny of not-getting-it. Is it some kind of recoil from the horror, or is it just a shtick?
F’ing amazing. I blame Nader, of course.
Malron
@John Cole:
This.
Brien Jackson
@aimai:
Yes, it’s quite stupid. Democrats didn’t do that because Republicans were trying to get Bunning to lift his objection, which would have let the motion proceed to a vote right away. That’s important because the measure was up against a timeline, and while your way might have been decent theater, it would have required a parliamentary move that would include the timeline running out, and benefits lapsing for millions of people.
You might be able to win by being more psychopathic than the GOP, but I rather like actually giving a damn about other people’s lives. Silly me.
Brien Jackson
@former_friend:
Well I think I’ve said before that the problem with hardballing Blue Dogs is that they’re more worried about their next job than their current one.
Kristine Smith
The inside the Beltway folk flounder when expected to behave like reasoning and reasonable adults. They seem to prefer a certain level of threat and discipline, a stern daddy figure who will punish the bad children and reward the good. It’s another form of hierarchy, of keeping score, and it goes a long way toward explaining their conservative bent, no matter the letter attached to their names. They need to feel fear in order to function.
Zifnab
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: FDR let Hoover twist in the wind because he didn’t like Hoover’s “solutions”. By contrast, the Dems in ’06 rushed to bail out the banks and the economy with the first round of tax-cut fueled stimulus and the TARP program. The result was the political mess they find themselves in today, with Tea Baggers protesting Republican initiatives by blaming Democrats while the economy burns around us because – hey, these were shitty programs run by shitty people.
The Republicans stomp their feet and cry “Tax cuts! Deregulation!” and the Democrats capitulate in a vain attempt to win votes, when everyone knows full well that these initiatives won’t do fuck all to help the economy in the long run.
The bottom line is that this reconciliation approach simply isn’t going to work, because the programs it spawns simply don’t work. A $787 billion stimulus where a third of the money goes to tax cuts? Bad idea. A health care reform effort with dozens of loop holes for small businesses, and a thousand stop-gap measures to shore up health care until the bill can actually kick in some time after yet another election in 2013 – *SIGH*
It’s absolutely horrible politics all around.
slag
@Mnemosyne:
Kind of a semantic difference here. By this characterization, Democrats gain power by overthrowing their party and Republicans gain power by gaming their party. It doesn’t necessarily suggest that one group is less jealous than the other. It suggests that the ways in which they act on their jealousy are different.
Ash Can
The press. Forget the other legislators; the people who need scaring most of all are the ones who make up a lazy and low-quality news industry who manufacture controversy and equate objectivity to giving equal weight to opposing arguments, no matter how bugfuck insane those arguments are. Reporters were scared stiff of having their access to politicians and events limited under Bush. Maybe the same kind of thing needs to happen now. And it doesn’t need to be done exactly the same way; there are ways to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior without fucking with the freedom of the press. Publish or broadcast something blatantly skewed or inaccurate? Well, maybe the next news briefing will be open to bloggers only. Publish something that shows a lot of background work, or ask tough, insightful and fair questions? Maybe there’s a spot in the front row for you. Run an expose on extremists funding some GOP pol? We’ll make sure to call on you at the next presser. Give Nancy Pelosi air time to state, clearly and in detail, the Dem case for HCR? You’ll find that we’re returning your phone calls a lot more promptly than before.
I think this is already happening to a certain extent. But in this day and age, it needs to happen more. Dems can be counted on to have less message discipline than Republicans, especially nowadays. With a Republican party that currently has all the legislative ability of a 55-gallon drum full of concrete, the only functioning legislative opposition to the Dems in Congress is other Dems in Congress. On top of this, because the Dems aren’t fascist demagogues at heart, they’re not afraid to speak their minds lest the party bosses torch their houses or, worse, abandon them to the base. This results in the press wailing “Dems in disarray” any time disagreements emerge, and it makes the same three tired phrases du jour being repeated ad infinitum by the GOP stand out all the more in contrast.
Corner Stone
@slag:
IMO, the fact that Republicans typically already want to serve the interests of the status quo and big business may mask some of their actions.
What we see as a mix of behavior from nominal Democrats is a reaction to not only social forces but again, IMO, they know where their bread is buttered as well.
When someone like Waxman retires from office it will be curious to see what he pursues next. (just using him as an example of someone who agitates big business and is a fairly reliable D from what I have followed of him)
Barry
Brian J (re: Snowe)
“Anyway, if she really does hate Democrats, I guess the idea that she’d some day join the party for one reason or another is just nutty.”
Yes, at this point anybody who hates Democrats is not exactly a plausible convert. And if it’s due to something in the Horror Known as the 60’s, then she’d braindead.
Nick
@burnspbesq:
No, but anyone but Lincoln can win, meaning it’s possible another Democrat could win the seat…that said, either one of two things will happen, either Halter will win the primary and run to the right and disappoint progressives, or Halter will get creamed in either the primary or the general and progressives will learn that Lincoln was right and you basically need to be batshit crazy to win in her state nowadays.
FlipYrWhig
I don’t think it has anything to do with fearing Obama or not. The issue is that a large cohort of Democrats are explicitly dedicated to opposing the excesses of liberalism, or–like in Blanche Lincoln’s statement today on the Halter primary challenge–preening about how both sides’ extremists are out to get them. The Democratic party needs those people or they get nowhere, so they throw their weight around. It’s been true since the DLC/triangulation years, and it’s gotten worse since the Republicans started to purge their moderates. And it’d be true under _any_ Democratic president.
bemused
I’ll never understand why conservatives are so attracted to bullies. Even if Dems were better at delivering easily understandable talking points, we still have msm that turns every issue into Idiocracy Monday Night Rehabilitation bloodthirsty mob scenes.
DougJ
@Corner Stone:
It’s only by pleasing the owners of the gravy train that a Democratic politician can get paid.
Yes, exactly.
JD Rhoades
If Obama was strong-arming people like LBJ, the meme would be that he’s “tyrannical” and “power mad.”
It’s like they said about Clinton: if one day he walked on water, the headline the next day would be “Clinton Can’t Swim.”
Svensker
@The Grand Panjandrum:
This morning on NPR there was story about this, except it was “Lawmakers allow unemployment and highway funding to lapse” — NOTHING about Bunning. My hubster, who is very liberal, started screaming about the “fucking Dem do-nothings”. He was shocked when I told him about Bunning’s role.
Silver Owl
The republican technique of always scaring people is what I call the abusive drunk syndrome. Abusive drunks are always terrorizing people even when they are sober.
I grew up with an abusive drunk so the republicans are quite repulsive and disgusting to me these days. There is nothing they have said or can say that I have not heard. I think millions of people could write republican scripts based on their own experiences with an abusive personality.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“FDR let Hoover twist in the wind because he didn’t like Hoover’s “solutions”.”
I’m with K-thug on this. Washington is wired for Republican control because St. Ronnie convinced everyone that gubmint was the enemy and if we cut taxes supply side fairies will grow the economy so fast we won’t go into hock to China and Japan.
So a big chunk of the U.S. public believes that the 40-50% of government is wasted because the bits that aren’t given through the NEA to UnAmerican lesbian black illegal immigrant HIV+ welfare recipients for performance art projects are aid to furreigners. This meme is dug in deep into GOP and independent psyches. Obama needed to tackle Reagonomics and its anti-gubmint thinking from his inaugural speech onward.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
Well, let’s look at who was actually on the talkshows this weekend (via Atrios):
Dancing Dave has President John McCain, Cantor, Wasserman Schultz, and the president of the National Urban League.
This Week has Nancy Pelosi and Lamar!
Face the Nation has Hoyer, Marsha Blackburn, Creepy Coburn, and Kent Conrad.
Interesting. Not a single Democratic senator in the bunch but a whole lot of Republican senators. Almost like the Sunday talk shows deliberately didn’t invite anyone from the Democratic side of the Senate who could criticize Bunning. And then (again as documented in several places), This Week in particular used up a good chunk of time talking about how the White House party planner is quitting.
What was your plan, to have Harry Reid and John Kerry pound on the doors of the TV studios until they were allowed in to talk?
low-tech cyclist
I think the Democratic party could have some tools it could use to enforce greater party discipline – if it wanted to, that is.
1) Don’t just let seniority determine committee chairs and other assignments. Do something like what the GOP does – term-limit committee chairmanships, and decide chairs by caucus vote.
2) Ensure that the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC don’t fund candidates who vote against key Democratic initiatives. In 2010, for instance, if you didn’t vote for two out of three of (a) the stimulus bill, (b) (in the House) the House vote on the Senate HCR bill, or (in the Senate) the reconciliation fix to the Senate’s HCR bill, or (c) a cap-and-trade bill, then you’re on your own.
3) Primary challenges. What good is it to have a seat in the hands of Democrats who rarely vote Democratic on the close votes? If you’re only voting ‘yea’ on Dem bills when there are 250 other members of the House doing the same, we really don’t need you that badly. Even in deep red territory, there has to be some sort of minimum expectation that being a Democrat means something, and if you don’t meet that standard, the party will support a challenger that looks like they will.
But the thing is, the Dems don’t really want to play hardball. They’d just as soon bring a Nerf ball to a gunfight, and get mowed down.
FlipYrWhig
@low-tech cyclist:
I have sympathy for all of your goals, but this idea seems like it would conflict with some of the “50-State Strategy” imperatives. What do you do if Ben Nelson concludes it’s in his best re-election interests to vote against key Democratic initiatives? The gratifying thing to do is to turn off the money spigot. Say it works, and he loses, and now you have a Republican in his seat. Where does that leave us in terms of policy? That’s why those red-state Democrats have us in a vise, and why it’s so necessary to get blue-state Republicans like Snowe, Collins, Scott Brown, and just-about-Republican Joe Lieberman the hell out of there.
jayackroyd
What LBJ did was accumulate chits, and know the weak spots of everyone in the Senate. On civil rights, he knew whom he was dealing with, and how to cut their nuts off.
FDR also played hardball, in his case using populism and an extremely aggressive agenda.
The first is obviously out of the question for Obama. But there is no reason that he could not propose popular, effective legislation, like an infrastructure jobs bill and a real hcr bill, and then barnstorm the states of all the sitting 2010 Senators. Lieberman could be booted out of the caucus, primary opponents to insurance minions could be sponsored.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@jayackroyd:
On civil rights, LBJ had the luxury of dealing with an opposition party non-trivial segments of which were sympathetic to the goals he was pursuing with that legislation. After the near debacle of 1948, the chastened Dems only really began the process of becoming the party of civil rights for blacks which we associate to them today with Kennedy’s now famous phone call to MLK just before the 1960 election (which most of JFK’s advisors were very much against at the time, and which the Dems kept very quiet about outside the black community), and that only by a very thin margin. LBJ would never have gotten civil rights legislation passed in 1964-65 without the help of liberal Republicans from northern districts, and that within the context of a recently martyred Democratic President (and later in 1965 after the electoral landslide of the 1964 election campaign). So the arm twisting problem for LBJ was a very different one than what Obama faces.
aimai
Mnemosyne,
What’s your plan? I mean it. What is your plan? My plan is the same as Obama’s plan. That is to say, the “plan” to have Democrats try to stand up and publicize their own stands, objectives, goals and problems with the Republicans is the exact same plan that Obama tentatively embraced when he (briefly) demonized Rush Limbaugh as the head of the GOP. No one is saying it will be easy to break t hrough the “iron triangle” or the sargasso sea or the flotsam and jetsam of Republican/Conservative/idiocracy dominated right wing talk shows. Of course not. But it has to be done. And the Democrats know it has to be done. If they can’t figure out a way for it to be done against a strong headwind, well–we are all going to suffer continued dominance of right wing voices on all major media.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that *of course* this is hard, and the currents and realities and cost structures are against good democratic politicians and good democratic/populist, policies. Of course. That’s the struggle. I don’t see why it is necessary to carp at people: political activists, dems, leftists, other blog commenters for *wanting to try a lot of different strategies* to reformulate the public conversation about things. This is purely a difference of strategy–not of goals.
I say I want the Dems to create a little public theater out of a particular Republican (Bunning) and Brien accuses me, totally baselessly, of not caring about the people who were denied unemployment because of Bunning’s actions. What does that even mean? Did the Democrats actions, and their inability to publicize and personalize the problem, help a single unemployed person?
Right now we are fighting the battle of explaining to the American people why the filibuster is breaking the country. I’m arguing for a better use of whatever pulpits and organs of communication the Democrats have to make the problem clear to the American people. I don’t get why that is attacked as starry eyed, cruel, stupid, or anything else. Its *explicitly* the tack taken recently by the White House and its allies. Il ne faut pas etre plus royaliste que le roi, you know?
aimai
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
True, and LBJ was an old drinking buddy of many years’ standing with the southern Democrats who were his most ardent opposition.
He knew them, knew their weaknesses, and was willing to outwait a filibuster. His position made him uniquely suited to getting a civil rights bill enacted. It was sort of the Democratic equivalent of an “only Nixon could go to China” moment. He knew the price, too. He knew he was costing his party the South for over a generation. He knew the law was worth it.
jayackroyd
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ
All that is correct. Moreover,LBJ was one of them, while JFK was not. LBJ had accumulated debts, obligations and dirt on his fellow southern Democrats. There was a also a Nixon goes to China element that Kennedy would not have had the advantage of having. And the assassination was not irrelevant. But Johnson also pushed through a substantial expansion of the safety net, using his intimate knowledge of the Senate as a key tool. That Obama does not have, nor is the Senate as complicated now that all the segregationists have switched parties. Moreover I did say Obama cannot use LBJ’s methods in the original comment.
But he could have used FDR’s. He chose otherwise. It might not have worked; the combination of the GOP really not giving a fuck how much damage the country suffers, with their willingness to simply lie, lies a complicit media stenographs are daunting. But we can certainly say that trying to start from a compromise position that would mollify industry interests has not worked out well.
PTirebiter
@John Cole:
I couldn’t agree more. I don’t think the Democrat’s push-back on Gitmo detainees can’t be explained in any other terms.
Gene108
Stories of Republican’s ability to do what they wanted, while in power are greatly overstated.
The only part of Bush, Jr.’s domestic agenda, which got approved was Medicare Part D, with help from Sen. Kennedy, who also wanted to expand Medicare coverage. And I guess NCLB was also put into law, because it generally tended to fit with what some Democrats thought about education.
The rest of it – immigration reform, privatizing social security, hell even the TARP Bill – were either vehemently opposed by his own party or were not seriously embraced as important.
In 2005, you didn’t see many Republican Congressional types hitching their Party’s future to whether or not social security was privatized.
Other than tax cuts, Medicare Part D, and NCLB there wasn’t much Republicans did domestically, while in control other than try to line the pockets of themselves, their friends and their relatives. They didn’t particularly give a damn about Bush, Jr.’s agenda and when that agenda wasn’t going to help them win elections, they gave him the boot and didn’t do a damn thing he wanted them to do.
jayackroyd
I mean, why aren’t Joe Biden and the Sec of Transportation in Kentucky right now raising holy hell?
gex
It is very easy to find strong, wealthy institutional support if you espouse your fealty to trickle up economics. It is not just Washington that is wired that way, the world is wired that way. That is why the institutions that we have/had are/were important. I hope they withstand the onslaught by the Reagan generation of conservatives. I fear they have not.
Gene108
On LBJ, Democrats had something like 65 seats in the Senate versus 35 for Republicans, when the Civil Rights bill was coming up for a vote.
No Democratic President has had such large Congressional majorities, compared to what LBJ had after 1964. Plus you had a very active public civil rights movement, which was demanding change and was able to bring the public around to its point of view.
So far, there isn’t the same kind of majorities or movement going on to push for change.
Gene108
The best push back about Democrats being ineffective is to high light how little of President Bush’s domestic agenda actually was enacted by Republican controlled Congresses.
Democrats in Congress have passed a bunch of President Obama’s agenda and compared to the Republicans, at the start of the decade, aren’t nearly as ineffectual as they seem.
Plus Republicans never tried to tackle anything as large as a health care overhaul.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@jayackroyd:
I think Dems who look to either FDR or LBJ for a template are going to be disappointed in Obama. He doesn’t have the personality, nor is the political landscape all that similar. The political landscape to me looks at lot more like it was when TR took over after McKinley was killed – the Dems today resemble the deeply divided GOP of that era, with a powerful and deeply entrenched conservative pro-business faction and a growing progressive faction very much at each other’s throats. TR was able to get things thru Congress by playing both factions off of each other and off of the opposition party (the southern and western Dems). On his best days Obama appears to be doing the same thing. On his worst days he appears to be emulating William Howard Taft, without the bathtub and the waistline. And I also think the Dems face a peril very similar to what sank the GOP in 1912, which is the struggle between their conservative and progressive wings breaking out into an open split. Obama will probably keep the party together thru 2012, but look out in 2016.
Tony J
Apples and oranges, innit?
On the one hand you’ve got the Democratic Party; a nationwide political coalition with a multitude of competing factions in Congress, all representing different constituencies in a very big country of over 300 million people.
And on the other hand, you’ve got the Republican Party. A mostly regional extremist sect sworn to the worship of Mammon and Mars, and well known for indulging in ritual cannibalism at the slightest whiff of heresy.
One of these things is different from the other, and far, far scarier.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
It’s because this is the way you put it:
Of course the talk shows and everyone else are “wired for republicans” but, on the other hand, we don’t see any Democrats except for Alan Grayson who are willing to go on TV and make enough incendiary comments and ugly accusations wrapped up around populist language to force coverage on our terms. Hell, to force any kind of coverage.
I’m pointing out that you don’t see any Democrats on TV — including, at this point, Alan Grayson — because they aren’t invited. Any Democrat who grandstands the way that Grayson or Franken does gets shut out by the media. Even if they’re willing to go on TV, they’re shut out. We can drool over their YouTube videos all we like, but the fact remains that the media would rather talk about Desiree Rogers’ party planning failure than Bunning’s denial of unemployment benefits to thousands of Americans, and they will manipulate the coverage to disguise what the Republicans are actually up to.
You have Democrats on C-SPAN every day doing takedowns of Republican policies, but they never make it onto the news. Dick Durbin completely demolished the whole notion of “tort reform” on national fucking television, but now it’s like it never even happened. Even Democrats don’t remember that these things happen because they don’t make it into the national media.
Frankly, I don’t have a plan, but I at least know that screaming at the Democrats that they’re pussies for not storming the TV studio and demanding airtime while letting the media off the hook for their complicity isn’t going to do much good.
J. Michael Neal
@aimai: What sort of political theater did you want the Senate Dems to create on a Friday night, during the Olympics? Nobody would have paid it any attention. To call this production off-off-Broadway would overstate its public reception.
At the same time, the Republican leadership was trying to get Bunning to change his insistence on seasoning. This is not an instance in which there was unified GOP obstruction to highlight. If anyone had been paying attention, they’d have seen Mitch McConnell getting up and saying how badly he wanted to pass this bill right away. How, exactly, does that fit into your plans?
Instead, the Democrats opted not to provide McConnell that platform to pretend he actually cared. They let him work on Bunning to try to get him to relent. In the end, it didn’t do any good, since the ol’ Hall of Famer is utterly devoid of any sense of reality. However, it at least had the possibility of a positive outcome, whereas you are insisting on a path that would not only have guaranteed not passing the bill, but also backfired in terms of PR.
Mnemosyne
@Gene108:
Plus you had quite a few socially liberal Republicans who were willing to vote for a civil rights bill, which made it “bipartisan” and put more pressure on the Dixiecrats.
The entire landscape is totally different now than it was in 1964. Heck, the landscape had changed for Johnson only 4 years later.
aimai
J. Michael and Mnemosyne,
Oh, ok then:
Well, that’s nice. A blog post on a thread isn’t “screaming at the Democrats that they’re pussies” its just an observation as to the strategies that we are seeing, or not seeing, our hired political guns take.
To be less global–
We have a disagreement on whether it would or would not have backfired in terms of PR, and on whether the Dems are always as together or as effective when they do get on TV as they could be. If they’d done something with the Bunning situation would they have been in a better position if they had gotten on to TV to talk about it? Could they ever get on TV? What should they talk about if they do? These are all separate questions. I would like the Dems to do a bit more of all three.
I think that’s basically it. I happen to think, having been watching the Democrats, and listening to them, as a voter for a really long time now, that they are a mixture of good and bad in terms of their ability to clearly state their case for power, and to control their own image and their own marketing. Clinton was a political genius, and so is Obama, but the rest of them are really pretty bad. In comparison to the Republicans they are amateurs, and they have always prided themselves on that. The Republicans have always outsourced their marketing to profssionals, and tried to hold a hard and clear line on everything in order to sell their programs. That’s the function of Luntz, and of the Contract with America, and all Newt’s hard work (which paid off for a while) on language and message discipline.
The democrats never have had that, and never will. That’s not my fault. They do what they do without regard to my bitching. I’m just observing. For instance, I like Dick Durbin a whole lot. And have always supported him but he, generally speaking, doesn’t do a good job with soundbites. I listened to a recent interview with him on NPR when he blew several major soundbite moments and left the general listener thinking that Durbin had conceded major points to the Republicans. Part of that, no doubt, is bad cutting by the NPR crew, part of that was Durbin’s insistence on regarding the interview as anything other than a moment to make a five minute elevator speech telling the wavering listener exactly how to think about the issue at hand.
The one thing I respect about the Republicans, because it appears to be working very well for them in opposition, as it worked for them when they were in the majority, is that they are “always closing.” They *never* say “what’s the point” of making our point. What’s the point of doing X on an olympic evening? What’s the point of making waves? What’s the point of making sure that the American people know what we are doing–even if we are lying about what we are doing. Its working for them. And I’m worried for my party. I’m worried for my party because like lots of other people who have one foot in the ether and one foot in real, local, party politics I have to have the same damned conversations over and over and over again with undecided, “unenrolled” voters and nervous dems. And I’d like my party and its top level functionaries to be doing a better job of selling their own programs so that I can have an easier time of selling the same product at the local level.
aimai
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
But that’s a completely different issue than what your original complaint was. There’s a big difference between asking why the Democrats aren’t appearing on the Sunday talk shows and wanting to have better message control from the national party. One thing is something that is, frankly, out of our control and in the control of people who have an agenda to keep Democrats out of the national dialogue. The other is an internal matter that’s worth discussing, but bringing the Sunday talk shows into it is a distraction.
Again, there are lots and lots of Democrats in the Senate and House who are screaming about these exact things every single day but you never hear about them because they’re shut out by the national media. OFA would be a way to get the word out specifically to people who voted for Obama, but there we’re also trapped by the fact that we don’t have any party unity so the “centrists” were able to shut that venue down because they didn’t like OFA telling Democratic voters to call their offices and complain. Other than that, we can use blogs, but the blogs pride themselves on not being beholden to the national party, so you’re not going to be able to get your talking points from them, either.
Frankly, the problem is with the party infrastructure and the split in the party between social liberals and conservatives (aka “centrists”). No number of appearances on the Sunday talk shows is going to fix those problems. Like so many other problems we have right now, it’s going to take a huge amount of work over a long period of time because there are no quick fixes. I’d like a quick fix, too, but it ain’t gonna happen.
Brian J
@Nick:
Some, but not nearly all, fit that description. After all, if there were so many Teabaggers, Obama would not have been able to do so well in the 2008 election.
MTiffany
Might have something to do with Obama mostly holding WH meetings with the disloyal opposition, rather than his own constituencies. If liberal-leaning think tanks and institutions were invited to the WH half as often as teh Tea Party Terrorists and other like-minded organizations are, Obama might have some influence to wield over option 2.
brantl
Brien Jackson: “You might be able to win by being more psychopathic than the GOP, but I rather like actually giving a damn about other people’s lives. Silly me.”
Apparently you don’t know anything about Jim Bunning; he wasn’t going to vote for this anyway, or screw off, unless they shamed him off of his ready-made little stage. If they had made him go through the weekend, this would have been over for him. The PR would finally have been devastating.
Can I watch, as you sit down and let the Republicans cut your throat for you, with no resistance? Seriously, with wimps like you on our side, who needs enemies?
MJ
@John Cole:
This!
Redshirt
It seems many of us are coming to an agreement that it’s the media which is the biggest cause of current political dysfunction. If that’s the case, then clearly, some concrete steps can be taken, first and foremost among them would be rolling back the laws passed in the late 90’s regarding media ownership per metro area. It was this law that has greatly accelerated the wingularity.
MNPundit
I would be very happy if Obama campaigned against Dems who were to the right of their districts.
Mnemosyne
@MTiffany:
Link, please. I’d like to know exactly which Tea Party groups Obama has met with and when. Meeting with legislators from the US Congress, even ones from the opposite party, is not the same as meeting with Tea Party groups.
Mnemosyne
@brantl:
Bunning flipped off an ABC News reporter today on-camera and yet, oddly enough, has not yet backed down. So it looks like your “shaming” strategy isn’t working either.
Chuck Butcher
The best way to show power to Congress is to have the public behind you. Obama is personally popular and quite a speaker – it is my opinion that this strength has been neglected. The President doesn’t have to worry about being invited. This isn’t to indicate that the current mess is the fault of the Pres, but there sure is plenty of blame to go around.
Marshall
John Cole @22
It was much worse with Carter. I think that anti-Southern prejudice had something to do with it, but also simple prejudice against anyone not from the village.
LBJ was different – he had been a power in DC for a decade by the time he became President. Plus, he would give the recalcitrant the treatment.