The story of the Minerals Management Service capture spans three Presidents and decades. It’s a long, familiar arc.
It begins with Reagan, George H.W. Bush walked back some of Reagan’s excess, Bill Clinton did his part under his favorite “partner with industry!” idea, and then George W. Bush dropped all pretense and just had the regulated industry write the rules.
It’s a good basic article with a time line, but that isn’t what I wanted to talk about.
The article made me think of James Carville, and his loud and long critique of Obama’s Gulf Spill response. I know Carville wasn’t responsible for policy during the Clinton years, but he was there, and he was the political guy who sold the “centrist” approach, part of which was private-public partnership. I also know Carville was objecting to the Obama response in the Gulf, not the Obama policy, so maybe that’s the distinction, because a Clinton-era Democrat doesn’t have much to brag about regarding that regulatory agency, as it turns out.
Still, it brought to mind something I’ve been wondering ever since Gibbs made the comment about the “Professional Left”. We’ve spent so much time and energy discussing the Professional Left’s role in critiquing Obama, maybe we’ve missed that the Professional Democrats have carped and second-guessed and parroted conservative critics of the President nearly constantly since he was elected.
It occurs to me that Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald don’t claim long-term membership in the Democratic Party, and don’t base their careers on membership in the Democratic Party.
They’re not “Democrats” so much as they are “liberals” and they don’t support a Party platform so much as they support individual issues. But that’s not true of Carville and Rendell and Reich and the rest. They’re Party people.
I wouldn’t expect individual liberals or issue advocates to rally ‘round Obama. Instead I would expect the people who identify as members of the Democratic Party to rally ‘round the Democratic President and broader Democratic platform, because that’s one of the roles of a political Party.
I know the general rap on Democrats, the herding cats and the inability to speak with one clear voice, and all of that is true. But, in my opinion, Obama, in particular, has gotten little support from the people who identify, professionally, as Democrats, and that doesn’t make sense to me.
So how did it become the job of the Professional Left to promote or defend the Democratic Party and Democratic President, and why isn’t anyone asking why the Professional Democrats haven’t done it, in Obama’s case? Is it maybe because lots of these problems he’s stuck with have a long arc, and if Professional Democrats defended Obama they might be forced to look at that?
The Moar You Know
You would expect that. And yet it didn’t happen with Carter, or Clinton, and it is not happening with Obama. No, I don’t know why. But we’d better fucking figure it out pretty quickly, or we’re going to see the drunk Republican get out of the handcuffs and start driving the car straight into the ditch again.
Alwhite
Well said! Thanks
Look at how the professional dems pissed all over Clinton – constantly supporting the hand-wringing over all the fake-gate issues.
Maude
You made good points. The Democrats that whine the loudest are Clinton suppoters like Carville. They didn’t get a seat at the table in the Obama Administration.
Obama got health care through.
Clinton did not.
Obama got Finacial Regulations passed.
Clinton did away with the firewall between commercial and investment banking. Also, he signed the commodities bill that was a true gift to the financial industry.
If Obama had done nothing so far, the Clinton supporters wouldn’t feel threatened.
The Clinton supporters are dinosaurs. Those days are over. I don’t think they like that.
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
I don’t know about Carter, but I do remember Clinton, and I think he got more Party support than Obama does, up until the ceiling caved in with Lewinsky. It’s true at the state and county Party level, too, in my (very) limited small-bore, personal “activist” observation,
AuldBlackJack
The ones first in line to answer why they failed to support Obama should be the Blue Dogs. The ‘Professional Left’ should be the last to answer.
Allan
That’s part of it, but it really boils down to the fact that Obama was never one of them. He didn’t need their machines and their institutional support to rise to national prominence, thus he’s never been reliably “in the fold,” so they don’t have his back.
Recall that Hillary Clinton was the inevitable institutional Democrat-anointed candidate.
There’s also some jealousy against the young (by Senate standards, an embryo) whippersnapper who appeared to simply float to the top over and ahead of others and obliterate any dreams they may have had themselves of higher aspirations.
Senyordave
I don’t expect the Jane Hamsher’s of the world to rally around Obama, but I also don’t expect her to find common cause with the likes of Grover Nordquist to attack Obama by going after Rahm Emmanuel.
I think Gibbs’ comment about the left was well-stated if not politcally questionable. If the GOP does take over the House (which I expect), I’m sure Hamsher and her like will the first ones to whine.
cleek
Carville and Reich were both Clinton employees. i wouldn’t expect them to be so big on the guy who beat Hillary.
Sarcastro
The problem is that the Democratic Party is unwilling to end the Republican Party. They need to annihilate the GOP and then split into two parties. Or, perhaps, in the opposite order; split the party, draw the sane Repubs into the Blue-Dog Party and relegate the GOP to regional relevance at best.
Kay
@Allan:
I think that’s true, but at the state and county level I have a more generous interpretation. They don’t “know” Obama, and they “knew” Hillary and Bill. He doesn’t have that long term “relationship” to trade on, when it gets rough.
Frank
Don’t forget about Ed Rendell and his ridiculous criticism of Obama regarding the Gulf.
Yes, Democrats and the concept of herding cats may go hand in hand. But if it is so damn difficult for people in the party to show loyalty to its leader, then they can only blame themselves when things don’t go their way policy wise. I wonder if they will keep whining if we lose the House. And this goes for everybody whether it is Carville/Rendell/Dean, the dailykos crowd, Ed Schultz/KO/TRMS or people like Harry Reid. We have so much to learn from the GOP on this. They know how to play politics and most people in our party seem clueless.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I don’t know about Carter, but I do remember Clinton, and I think he got more Party support than Obama does, up until the ceiling caved in with Lewinsky
I think a lot of them were just waiting to turn on Clinton, for a variety of reasons personal and political, principled and petty. and the same is true now, made worse by the increasing rightward drift of the Establishment media (CNN, the Washington Post), the growth of Blue Dogs and other factors that have aggravated the longer trend of timidity in Democrats. As for the ones you mentioned, you can get more specific:
Carville: Clintonista bordering on PUMA
Rendell: same as Carville, exacerbated by the nagging suspicion that he could do better than the guy who actually went for the job and won (Bob Kerrey, Bill Bradley and IIRC Mario Cuomo played this role under Clinton).
Reich: Hasn’t he said he regrets not having argued more strenuously against some of Clinton’s centrism–NAFTA, repeal of Glass-Stiegel? Isn’t he working out his own issues? If so, more power to him, but take the fight to where it belongs: Dianne Feinstein (Reich is in CA now) Kent Conrad, etc
ornery curmudgeon
Great point, Kay!
I think, rather tinfoilishly, that part of the payoff the Dems get as designated Party of the People is for working to portray themselves as weak, unprincipled, foolish etc., and for never standing up for themselves or against Republicans in any real way.
That sadly fits the facts I know, and I’ve followed it pretty well over the years. I’d like it not to be true, I just haven’t seen much proof the Dems are actually trying to win rather than just be the fallback team.
It was interesting how Nader was attacked the Democratic Party: they like corporatism and their role just fine. (Again, I’d love to be wrong, that’s just how it seems to me according to their actions and behavior.)
aimai
I don’t think Clinton got as much party support as he clearly needed. The big bulls in the Senate were out to get him, as I recall, and never supported him. The “Professional democrats” like Carville and Begala were young, dumb, and full of vigor in those days and they were inside the tent. But if we look back one of the issues is that the Democratic bench is/was incredibly weak for second and third tier support for the president. Both Carter and Clinton had to *bring their own people* and couldn’t rely on the paid support that Republicans seem to come with/get given. Professional dems like Shrum? were always incompetent. What Obama needs, and what he’s not getting, is tons of good surrogate help from powerful dems but either there aren’t any powerful dems or they are all like contract players not team players.
aimai
MikeJ
Particularly one who wrote a book called Stickin’: The Case for Loyalty.
Mary G
Sometimes, especially with Carville, I sense a whiff of PUMA l
and wonder if some of them still think Hillary shouId be Prez?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
It is easy to forget now, but Obama was not the candidate of the professional Democratic establishment. Remember how all those superdelegates stood back in Jan/Feb 2008? The Democratic establishment does not have his back because he is not their guy, and the iron law of institutions is particularly cruel to institutions staffed by people who suffer from very large doses of myopia.
Of couse the professional GOP establishment would never do anything so self-defeating. I chalk it up to the legacy of the long period of Democratic dominance from 1932 thru 1994. The Democratic party from FDR’s time on have had the idea of being the majority party buried deep in its cultural DNA, so Dems tend to ignore threats from outside and concentrate on fighting over power within the party. The GOP has been a minority party for most of its history going all the way back to the 1850s, so they are much more protective of their own and behave in a more Leninist fashion, making sure to protect their vanguard from being wounded by self-inflicted arrows in the back.
Of course it helps that for the last 100 years, if you wanted to be a GOP President, you had to get in line and wait your turn, so they aren’t used to dealing with mavericks inside the house. That could change with the next GOPer to reach the WH. The Dean/Obama internet based fundraising model is going to rewrite the rules for the next GOP nomination contest. That is one reason why I wouldn’t count Sister Sarah out. You can’t just doom an insurgent candidate and effectively cut them out of the picture by cutting off the money spigot any more.
arguingwithsignposts
Great post, Kay.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MikeJ:
To be fair, he’s always stuck by his wife, even as she engaged in some of the most poisonous Right Wing demagoguery since McCarthy. And when she asked him not criticize Bush/Cheney, he stuck with her. He’s a mensch, I tells ya.
hilzoy
I remember back in — 1993? — early in Clinton’s first term, at any rate, when he proposed a BTU tax and the Dem. leaders in the Senate killed it, since it didn’t adopt their preferred approach. I thought: oh hell, they truly do not understand that they are part of the governing party, the same party as the President, and should all be pulling together. They’re acting as though Reagan were still in charge, and they were still part of the opposition.
What explains it now is a mystery to me. I think it has to involve either a total indifference to actual policy, or the (bizarre) conviction that they personally are so essential to the Democratic Party that it’s worth trying to sabotage anyone else who gets in charge. For the common good, doncha know.
It makes me want to tear my hair out.
Violet
@Allan:
Yep. They think they should run things and Obama didn’t need them. And he beat one of them. There’s still some resentment.
@Kay:
The didn’t “know” Hillary and Bill back before they moved into the WH. Maybe some more local folks in Arkansas did, but he wasn’t the national mover and shaker that he became.
Is any of this lack of support due to the color the President’s skin? It’s okay to let the brown people into the tent, but letting them run things? Hmmm…..takes a little getting used to.
MikeJ
@hilzoy:
This was why I wasn’t the fan of St. Teddy that many were. He should have been dropped in the vineyard sound for what he did to Carter.
Violet
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
It’s going to be interesting to watch how the police their own with the Tea Party crowd coming to town. The teabagger candidates are mostly running as Republicans, but they’re not the standard Republican and their supporters don’t sit down and shut up.
Michael
OT.
In our new, nastier, meaner, more bitter version of America, the right to profit trumps all. More articles like this, please – let it be a lesson to all as to the potential consequences should somebody not be able to get his or her fair share of the ever-sanctified profit.
Money money money – MONEY!!!!!!!!!
Death Panel Truck
I guess I’m just old and confused, but it appears to me that a vast majority of Congressional Democrats have supported Obama’s agenda. Ben Nelson seems to be the only fly in the ointment. Carville, Rendell and Reich are not in the Senate, and have no influence anyway.
John Harrold
Is Glenn Greenwald a liberal? I was under the impression that, along with not belonging to a party, he also didn’t consider himself to be a liberal or a conservative.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Death Panel Truck:
Supported it after considerably weakening it, from the stimulus to closing Gitmo to HCR to FinReg
slag
You’re touching on my biggest gripe with the Democratic Party. I have no idea how it functions, but its structure always seems to fail on one critical point: Party unity. I’ll never understand why people expect more from the average lefty than they do from the professionals in the Party.
And to whatever extent the professionals in the Party are narcissistic pricks, it seems to me that the Party organizational structure needs to be able to address those issues. And it just can’t. So, those in charge (assuming that’s anyone) prefer to deflect criticism outward. Toward the loudest, stupidest target they can find rather than toward those who actually get paid to run things. Typical.
Steve
It was Newt Gingrich who basically convinced the Republican Party that they’d be better off if they all adopted the same talking points and functioned as a Borg. (The jury is still out on whether he was right.) Reagan had his Eleventh Commandment about not criticizing other Republicans, although it was hardly universally honored.
Functioning as a collective is not the natural order of things, particularly among the exceptionally self-interested creatures known as politicians. It takes a lot of leadership and discipline to impose this kind of order. It’s not something that just happens.
Kay
@Violet:
Right, it’s a good point, but Hillary ran against Obama.
It wasn’t generic, and they’re comparing.
plasticgoat
Excellent post.
Violet
@Steve:
As I said above, it’s going to be really interesting to see how well the Borg mentality holds together now that the Tea Party is gaining some candidates and possibly some seats. The people that elect those candidates aren’t going to be happy with business as usual and it definitely has the potential to pull the party apart.
BubbaDave
After ’94 a lot of the “Reagan Democrats” from the South had exited the House (voluntarily or not) and Newt and the batshits (hell of a band name, am I right?) had pissed off most of the Dems who were left; that’s part of the reason Clinton got so much support. The other was, that’s right, an economy on the upswing. If unemployment were 6% and shrinking (never mind kicking off an Internet boom that wasn’t looking bubbly yet) Obama would be getting a lot more love from the electorate and from Dems in the House and Senate.
Alwhite
@hilzoy:
The dems also abandoned Clinton on heath care and that opened the way for the R takeover of the legislative branch. It seems to me many commenters here have forgotten how little support Bill got.
Frank
@Michael:
For God’s sake! This Animal Hospital should be shut down. What the hell are they doing in the business of helping animals if they are basically going to kill them the second they don’t get payment? I am speechless at their behavior. How do they live with themselves?
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I see people like Tim Kaine and David Axelrod and Donna Brazile on my TV every day. Then there are the likes of Pelosi and Reid and Howard Dean, who don’t support Obama’s positions in lockstep but are with him the vast majority of the time. Other than Carville can you name anyone specifically who you think should be going on TV and defending the President but isn’t?
Midnight Marauder
First of all, phenomenal post, Kay. And this point is incredibly salient:
If, at the end of the day, we are allegedly attempting to advance the same goals and agenda, then there has to come a point where you defend you own side in the face of merciless and unrelenting attacks. Even if you do not personally agree with the individual being savaged at the time, if you care about ultimately enacting the ideals that individual professes–ideals you supposedly hold, as well–then it would behoove you to defend the legitimacy and viability of that position at all costs. And I think that is what’s missing from the Democratic side of the equation right now, which is what aimai gets at:
@aimai:
This is what I was saying in my comments yesterday about how terrible the Left is at messaging and (re)framing issues. Every time our side finds itself locked in an epic struggle, there is just one major advocate for the position actually on the front lines. It doesn’t matter if it’s Obama on (insert issue of the day here), Al Franken on holding corporate enablers of rape responsible, or Alan Grayson throwing bombs at the topic du jour; there is never a substantial support system of competent surrogates to assist those people as they embark on their crusade.
Not only do we not have a bullpen of surrogates, but we don’t even have a decent messaging blueprint to share with them, we don’t have any wordsmiths dreaming up blunt/eloquent/catchy phrases to attack the opposition and shift the debate and media framework to a more favorable position.
And yet, we keep acting stunned each August when the Right Wing Noise Machine stirs up shit once again.
James E. Powell
The Professional Democrats of the old school shredded Carter’s administration long before the hostages in Iran or the great inflation crisis. Hell, they organized an “Anybody but Carter” movement to try to sink his nomination. St. Ted Kennedy started running against Carter halfway through his term. The PDs hated Carter because he wasn’t one of them.
The Republicans do not have this problem because they effectively purged all dissenters. Just look at the people who got primaried out this year.
You would think that the current PDs, having lived through the nightmare of the Bush/Cheney Junta, would give their own party’s president at least one solid term of support in order to re-establish their party’s dominance. But you would be wrong.
Linda Featheringill
@Death Panel Truck:
Congressional support for Obama:
You are correct in that the House has supported the Prez rather well. The Senate is more problematic but some of them have been supportive, too.
The talking heads? Dunno. I don’t always understand them.
It is a fact that some people don’t know how to write a decent essay unless it is built on tearing someone or some idea down. If they run out of bad guys, they have to invent something, a straw man.
[Which reminds me of a discussion about unproductive workers being a burden on the rest of society . . . ]
Zandar
You would prefer Michael Steele, maybe?
The problem is the Professional Democrats got pretty well purged out of the media. Some became the Professional Left. Some became the Village. But nearly all of them walked away from the Democrat brand both during and after Clinton.
jazzgurl
@Kay – brilliant insights.
@ all the commenters – Much food for thought, but all of you summed up all the thoughts I feel and think
I always keep sane, (when I get angry with the attitude of the dems,liberals, progressives surrounding this President) by reminding myself of something a good friend of mine explained to me in that, the Democrats are really are a coalition, which means a cross current of voices and thoughts, whereas the Repugs stick together more through ideology.
Sue
This is why it has been so infuriating to see someone like Blanche Lincoln, who pretty actively worked against the President’s agenda on health care, getting lots and lots of help from the likes of Bill Clinton, up to and including publicly trashing unions in the effort to get her through her primary. Then the White House jumps in with an anonymous snipe at the unions for throwing money away instead of targeting races they’re told to. Then the White house officially snipes at people who disagree.
And the Republicans are willing to use it all, and they will.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Violet:
I don’t think they can, not that they won’t try. Social-media based politics are going to break down the old rules. We are in a very interesting place politically, right now. Regionally and culturally the parties have effectively switched places with each other over the last 110 years – the Dems today are similar to the GOP of McKinley and TR (including strong tensions between a conservative and progressive wing), and the GOP is similar to the post-1876 and pre-1912 Democratic party. Except that both parties still carry around a lot of their mid- to late-20th Cen. cultural inheritance – the GOP is extremely pro big business and anti-immigrant compared with the late 19th Cen party of the SE and rural West, while the Dems are more pro-immigrant and have a more ambivalent relationship with Wall St. than did the party of the Northeast in TR’s time. And while this mess is getting sorted out the old structures for maintaining intra-party discipline (especially on the GOP side) via control over money are breaking down and being replaced by new channels of influence and control running thru AM talk radio, cable news, and social media.
angler
I like this thread. It’s a reincarnation of the much missed firebagger screeds but with a twist: Demobaggers! Is the premise that Carville should shut his piehole because Clinton contributed to corrupting the MMS, or that party unity should outweigh particular moments of dissent especially if you identify as a partisan? The former is like saying Al Gore is fat, or Jacques Cousteau took a wiz in the ocean. The latter, may be true.
Cacti
Call me a cynic, but, I think Carville’s critique of Obama was about 99% motivated from him still having a case of the sore-ass over Hill and Bill losing in 2008.
Mia
@Michael:
Wow.. how long will it be before they are putting down your family members because you can’t pay the hospital bill? Because to some, that is what pets are: family members.
GaBuck
I feel ya. But in regards to Carville, I mean the guy is from Louisiana, and he was right about the administration’s initial response, and as I recall he wound up penning a rather glowing review of the administrations actions once they decided to act. I’d never try to defend the gratuitous old hack in most cases, but he at least had the decency to give credit where it was due.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@jazzgurl: reminding myself of something a good friend of mine explained to me in that, the Democrats are really are a coalition, which means a cross current of voices and thoughts, whereas the Repugs stick together more through ideology.
Apparently, Mark Halperin has wanked out a plaintive call for bipartisanship that is getting batted around in the blogosphere. As someone I can’t remember pointed out, if you’re head isn’t so far up your ass it comes back out again (which would explain Mitch McConnell), it’s pretty clear that any bill that has the support of Barbara Boxer, Sherrod Brown, Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln is pretty fucking “bipartisan”, whether or not it has the support of the Mormon Church, The Sons of the Condederacy and the caucuses of John McBurns and Waylon Graham and the two deluded New England “moderates”.
MikeJ
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
There’s a phenomenon I’ve seen in design of websites, and I’ve heard of it in Hollywood. Everyone wants to be a creative. Everyone wants to be able to point at something in the script and say, “I did that.” The people who do this often take a good design/script and make it worse.
Avoiding that was the idea behind Obama’s legislative strategy of letting Congress actually do the job they’re supposed to do and write the laws. Sadly, even when the White House stayed out of it, there were enough people who had to attach their names to something, anything, that the crappy changes piled up.
kay
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
I don’t think Dean has supported Obama in anything like lock-step. The last time I heard him, he was going on about how Vermont doesn’t have a health insurance mandated purchase, and that was prior to the mosque idiocy.
I would think high-profile governors, like Rendell, or really persuasive House members, like Wasserman-Schultz, who was an absolute bull dog on Hillary, or Claire McCaskill.
I think Harry Reid is an actual harm. I don’t know if it’s Senate egoism or what, but he’s practically “damning with faint praise”.
I think Pelosi is great, and so is Sherrod Brown, but Feingold is terrible. I think Begala is good at leaving personality or personal connections aside and defending Democratic policy and Shrum is horrible.
Michael
@Frank:
Nothing personal – it is just business. Under the new paradigm, nobody should start an enterprise, manage an enterprise or engage in a profession for the love of doing those tasks – one should do it just for the money. Unless, of course, it is a blue collar person at work in the trades or in the clerical supporting services, then they shouldn’t expect much, because they should get far more satisfaction from hard work that enriches their employer.
Happy in the knowledge that all of their invoices will now be paid on time, in full.
Don’t you love the new mindset of businesses in America?
Michael
@Mia:
Death panels are OK if they are privatized.
Profits > people, bitchez…
BTD
@cleek:
Reich endorsed Obama early in the process and his detesting of the Clintons is well known.
numbskull
@Michael: From the two stories I’ve read on this, it’s very hard to understand the reasoning of the veterinarian. The vet had a choice of two options, neither of which got him payment but one of which resulted in his killing the dogs. Killing the dogs didn’t get him payment. From the stories it appears that letting the dogs live one more day would have probably resulted in the rescue shelter raising the money for payment AND would have resulted in the dogs’ removal from his kennel. Even if the whole story is not being told, it certainly seems as though this was some sick form of punishment of the “dead-beat” family and a warning to those who in the future might want to be poor. Again, for me, it all comes back to the reported circumstance that at least one rescue shelter said that it would take the dogs immediately. Once that offer was made, I just don’t see how on any level the vet hasn’t breeched his profession’s ethics when he killed those dogs. He needs to lose his license and the county DA needs to see if any laws were broken. It’s not like he’s running a parking garage. Pets are not inanimate objects.
And all this because the family didn’t have enough money to pay the boarding fees because they couldn’t afford all the healthcare costs for their sick 4-yr-old daughter.
Cacti
@kay:
I truly hope that after November, Reid gets shit-canned and Dick Durbin becomes Majority Leader.
The POTUS needs a majority leader who is a loyal Dem from a solid blue State. Not a milquetoast conservadem from a purple State.
morzer
@Kay:
Follow the money. Eight years of being president gives you a lot of patronage to distribute, and the Clintons built up a solid client base. Obama didn’t have that advantage, and still doesn’t, which is why the “Democrats” often don’t go to bat for him the way they should.
Mike E
@angler: Or that Jesus was crucified anyway.
I threw in my Dem towel back in ’97, before the Lewinsky thing broke, because I felt my party had morphed into Repugs out of corporate expediency. Party planks be damned. My momma didn’t raise no Repugs, so I vowed to re-register ‘D’ when they came to their senses. 13 years later, and I’m still unaffiliated with no desire to rejoin the fold.
BTD
@morzer:
That’s insane.
Obama controls the DNC and, by virtue of being President, is the best fundraiser in the world by a factor of a million.
Perhpas he needs to crack the whip on the PRofessional Dems.
BTD
@Cacti:
If Reid loses, probably means you will be selecting a Minority Leader.
kay
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
I just think it’s ridiculous for Dean to bring up Vermont at this late date, or, really, to make a broad comparison between Vermont and the whole country.
It’s like Palin with the Alaska bullshit. Alaska isn’t representative of a lot of the country, and either is Vermont.
It seemed bitter and self-promoting to me, because it didn’t make sense in any other context.
MikeJ
@Mia:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3087387.html
Michael
@numbskull:
Ah, but he still gets to sue for the payment, plus, he’s reaped the PR bonanza of letting all of his potential customers know that they face draconian penalties when they fail to pay their bills.
Depending on how well-served that particular chunk of the Ft Myers area is in terms of veterinary services, it may result in an uptick in income. Only the sainted Market will know for sure.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
It seems to me that when it comes to Dem surrogates that there is a media bias at work in terms of selecting which Dems get to go on TV and when and regarding which issue, picking those who are not supportive of the President and his agenda, or for that matter supportive of the Dem Congressional leadership. You can’t get on TV unless you have something inflammatory to say about how the Dem leadership is wrong., from either the left or the right. It varies from issue to issue, e.g. Howard Dean can get on TV to speak regarding an issue where he dissents from the WH, but on issues where he supports the WH they call somebody else instead. And these rules did not apply to Republicans when W was in the WH – dissenting Republicans were like the ideal Victorian era children (neither seen nor heard), except for during the Harriet Myers fiasco.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@kay:
Right, as I said. My point about Dean is that he’s on TV a lot and spouts conventional Dem doctrine most of the time. My larger point is that I see plenty of Dems on TV every day trying to fight the good fight, at least I think I do. Maybe there aren’t as many of them as the other side has, I don’t know.
morzer
@BTD:
Fundraising isn’t the same thing as building a base of grateful clients who have been won over by patronage, which takes many forms, and takes time. Obama didn’t have a long political career in Illinois at a high level, so had a relatively limited circle of people to draw on when he entered the White House, and he hasn’t had much time to distribute patronage and win over former loyalists. Similarly, he’s only been in the White House for less than two years. It takes time to do these things, and it isn’t made any easier by speculation about whether he will just get one term. It’s not insane at all to look at the realities of how political bases and client groups are built. If anything, refusal to do so is willful ignorance.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@kay:
When you see Dean you see things that piss you off. When I see him I see someone whose positions are indistinguishable from Obama’s nine times out of ten.
Cacti
@BTD:
I’m sorry if I was unclear.
I mean shit-canned as Majority Leader. Better a conservadem than a repub, but Reid is a weak Majority Leader and needs to be replaced.
The Moar You Know
@Mia: That happens every day in this country. It’s called “murder by spreadsheet”, and it’s what happens when insurers decide that you’ve either hit your lifetime benefit cap, or that you have a condition that is too expensive to treat.
I like Kaiser Permanente – I’m young – but they are notorious for cutting off treatment to elderly patients, especially those with cancer.
PanAmerican
Aren’t all Democrats pretty much reflexively anti-authoritarian? I mean any of them that we shove into the White House just isn’t going to get off on it like Dick Cheney. It goes along way in explaining the cat herding, the drama and a House caucus that includes Dennis Kucinich and Gene Taylor.
Tom Q
A few things:
kay, I think you might be conflating the support Clinton had at the end of his administration with his overall treatment. At the start, the Dem majority (which had long predated him) challenged him on seemingly everything — gays in the military, the attempted stimulus, health care. One of the reasons for the ’94 debacle was the Dems dropped the ball on essentially everything. They just didn’t trust the guy had staying power, so they retreated to Reagan era posture. Now, of course, Bill is their bestest guy who ever lived. I compare it to the way Phillies’ fans treated Mike Schmidt: during his active career, he was a choker who never lived up to his talent; upon retirement, he was the greatest third baseman who ever lived.
Hidden in a Matt Bai article a month or so back was the tidbit that, while Obama and his folk argued from the start that the ’08 election (combined with ’06) meant a massive rejection of the Reagan-and-on USA/GOP consensus…but that a chunk of Dems (blue dogs in the lead) believed it was simply a bad economy that beat Bush, and, in every other way, the political picture remained unchanged. This accounts for the resistance Obama has encountered in Congress (and on television). These people honestly believe they are rescuing Obama from the suicide of being too much a Democrat. As mentioned above, these people aren’t great in number, but there are just enough of them — in a filibuster-ruled world — to water down almost all legislation from potential landmark status. And the press is always happy to present the Ben Nelson/Bart Stupak dissenter as the Most Important Democrat around.
With Carville, I think it was a combo of resentment over Hillary and frustration at seeing his home town get shafted a second time in 5 years. He did overrreact, which I think explains his hyperbolic retraction. Of course, his revisionist comments got about 1/10 the publicity of his “trash Obama” rant.
BTD
@Cacti:
He won’t be challenged if he wins.
gene108
I think the issue the Professional Dems have with the Left is Dems have done some heavy lifting by adopting unpopular or difficult liberal goals as part of the Party platform and only get pissed on when things go bad.
President Clinton started his tenure as President by trying to allow gays to openly serve in the military, which led to DADT as some sort of compromise. Liberals don’t give President Clinton credit for taking, what was at the time, a very politically risky move to start his Presidency that ultimately hurt his already shaky support from the military and other non-liberals. Same goes for President Clinton’s attempt and failure to get Healthcare Reform passed, which cost Democrats control of the House in 1994.
Personally, if I was writing the Democratic platform, I’d just kick health care out. It’s caused nothing but problems. Even when you do pass it, people on the left keep bitching because it wasn’t single payer.
Reich, Carville, etc. don’t have that much of a following. Some of these guys may have an agenda or goal to get back into politics, but by and large, they don’t have much real influence on political debates. The same way former Bushies have lost a lot of pull in the media, because the right-wing Republican base revolted against Bushism over immigration reform, Medicare Part D, and probably the fact his incompetence hurt them politically. There are plenty of former Reagan and a few former Bush officials (Ted Olson, for example), who take the modern Republican Party to task. They just get drowned out by Fox News and talk-radio.
The Democrats in Congress during Clinton’s first term believed they would continue to hold a majority in the House and maybe flip-flop small majority / minority swings with Republicans in the Senate. The route of Democrats in 1994 sent a shock waive through the Democratic party and the lesson Congressional Democrats got from it is sticking with your President, who maybe more liberal than you, will cost you dearly in your home district.
The “Assault Weapons Ban”, gays in the military, etc. are charged issues for a lot of folks and coupled with a lingering anti-incumbent mood from 1992 – remember Perot got 19% of the vote because he wasn’t a politician – and the Democrats got their assess handed to them in 1994. There probably were Democrats, who lost their seats because they voted for “Assault Weapons Ban”, for example, though the liberal base of the Party thought it was a winning idea.
As long as Democrats get elected from conservative states and districts like Nebraska, Alaska, NC-11, NJ-3, etc. don’t expect them to forget the fact that going all out with what their constituents consider a liberal agenda may cost them their job.
As far as Republican Party unity goes, just remember one of Bush, Jr’s tax cuts only passed in the Senate with Cheney casting the tie breaking vote and Medicare Part D passed in the House with some last minute arm twisting by Republicans on some Rep from Michigan.
Republicans and conservatives just don’t publicly exam their failures under a micro-scope the way liberals and Democrats end up doing.
I chalk it up to the loss of power after Watergate. The Republicans decided to go lock step behind anyone one of their guys, no matter what trouble he got in because Nixon’s wrong doing getting outed cost them dearly. This why you have the blind support for Ollie North by the conservative establishment and a refusal of Republicans to push for more inquiries on Iran-Contra.
drkrick
@Michael:
Doesn’t Texas already have a fairly new law allowing the hospital to discontinue life support over the objections of the family if they can’t pay? I seem to remember the case of a young boy who was the first victim.
kay
@Tom Q:
I don’t think that’s what happened. I don’t see things in such discrete chunks, where there were The Reagan Years, and then the Clinton Years. I don’t think that’s accurate, on trade and foreign policy and regulation, or any host of Big Arc Issues. Look at the Gulf spill. Reagan set up the table, Clinton set the table and Bush gorged himself.
I don’t think they “retreated” at all. I think they moderated, and continued. That’s part of my complaint.
It’s a big ship to turn around, and a lot of the Professional Dems seem to me to be pointing fingers rather than looking at what happened.
geg6
I haven’t read the rest of the thread (damn, that thing called work!), but I am compelled to say…
Glenn Greenwald IS NOT A LIBERAL. He is, at best, a left-leaning libertarian. And I’m not so convinced at all about the left-leaning part.
The Moar You Know
@gene108: Amen. Let the fucking Republicans deal with the questions.
Oh, that’s right, they don’t deal with questions about policy anymore, it’s just 24/7 “nigger, nigger, nigger”.
Oh well.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@gene108:
Good observation. Republicans have learned that in an era of mass media the President is your brand, and you go to the wall to protect your brand, come hell or high water.
It is worth remembering that thanks to help from Roger Ailes during the 1968 campaign, Nixon learned how to adapt to TV despite the handicap of being perhaps the least photogenic President of the TV era. Ever since then, with few exceptions, the GOP has been better at working the TV than the Dems. They stick to their talking points, they keep it clear, they keep it simple, and they keep it short. It seems like every time I hear somebody from the Dem leadership on TV they are trying to bring back a long winded, wandering and discursive way of speaking that may have worked in the Senate in 1957 but has been dead in the media for at least 40 years. Barney Frank for example can’t seem to get a single thought out of his head in the course of a 2 minute interview without having at least six other related ideas all try to crowd onto the same bus as it is leaving the station. Listening to him talk about financial reform leaves me looking for a window to jump out of, and I already understand and sympathize with the points he is trying to make.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@kay:
A lot of our dissatisfaction with the Dem leadership is IMHO a product of obstruction, gridlock and compromise in the Senate since the 08 election. If everything passed by the House under Pelosi had been signed into law by Obama by now, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.. It takes a bare minimum of 3 election cycles to turn over membership in the Senate (which means you have to win 3 elections in a row to constitute a true “wave” election), and in practice a lot longer than that due to the advantage of incumbency. The Senate is in effect the mechanism whereby our political climate of 10-20 years back continues to haunt us today.
Suffern Ace
Simpler story. The “Professional Democrats” who get face time in the media, like Carville and Reich, get that face time because they are particularly entertaining but also often unprepared to discuss the task at hand and know when to be quiet and not ruffle feathers. You get face time by being against Obama cause that is the quickest ticket to get on those shows so that folks can say “Even Carville says.”
Midnight Marauder
@BTD:
Completely disagree. I don’t see how Harry Reid stays on as the Majority Leader. I think the situation has a Durbin-Schumer death match written all over it.
KRK
@geg6:
Thank you. This is the second time in the past few days that a BJ front-pager has come up with that head-scratcher and nobody blinks an eye.
Alwhite
This may explain a lot more than needs to be pointed out:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=how_the_dlc_does_it
It seems that sitting on the board of the “centrist” Democratic Leadership Council is a major donor to that group, KOCH Industries. Blue Dog my ass, Republican whore in blue dog clothing more like it.
Allison W.
I’ve asked plenty of times. It is always my response to the professional left and some supporters who claim Obama isn’t pushing this or that enough. WHERE ARE THE DEMS to help him push his message? He’s out there giving speeches, giving the weekly addresses, getting shit done and all I here are the sound of crickets from Dems.
Oh and a comment on it not being the professional left’s job to back Obama? fine. but they need to stop acting like he owes them something and that they need to come first amongst all his other problems/constituents/real base.
Frank
@Michael:
The “funny” thing is that they will now get sued. Even if they win the verdict, they are going to spend far more on legal fees than the $2000 that they claimed was owed to them. Not to mention the loss of reputation etc.
ruemara
@MikeJ:
Black baby, if it was a snowflake baby, this could be important.
Elie
@Cacti:
So you want Sharon Angle in the Senate? That’s who goes to the Senate if Reid is voted out.
Sorry, don’t want that…no matter how milquetoast Reid is…
BTD
@Midnight Marauder:
That’s another reason why there won;t be a challenge. No need for that fight.
kay
@geg6:
I read Greenwald’s self-description not long ago and I know he said he wasn’t a “progressive”, and wasn’t a lot of other things.
I don’t know what he is. My point was he’s not now and has never been someone who identifies as a “Democrat”.
Democrats pointing to the “Professional Left”, or, individuals who are not self-described Democrats only accentuates the void. The question I ask is where are the Democrats, then?
Obama belongs to a political Party. He is a member of an organization that exists to promote elected Democrats and Democratic policy.
Weirdly, the now-Professional pundit members (and some of the elected members) of that same organization spend a lot of time undermining him, and we’re all looking at individuals who are not members of that organization to defend him. Why would they? That isn’t their role.
I don’t even think it’s smart politics, for elected Democrats. No one is going to listen to their nuanced differences on law they wrote after it’s passed. All they’re going to hear is “elected Democrats don’t like the law they drafted”.
Karen
@Mary G:
Sometimes, especially with Carville, I sense a whiff of PUMA l
and wonder if some of them still think Hillary shouId be Prez?
You think? I knew that the day after Hilary lost.
I figure that the Democratic party won’t help him again in 2012 because they’ve got to get their buddy Hilary in there.
And sorry, the race matters. Hilary proved it when she said that Obama was “unelectable” and that no white person would vote for him in Pennsylvania before the code word for white was “hard working people.”
Why else wouldn’t that mentality matter to Southern Democrats?