If I could go back in a time machine, there are a lot of things I would consider doing. Choking Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot to death in their cribs. Moving the contents of the Ancient Library of Alexandria. And so on. But pretty high up the list would be making sure that the Senate never came into being:
Last month, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) announced that she would be blocking “the nomination of Office of Management and Budget [OMB] director Jack Lew until the Obama administration lifts its deepwater drilling moratorium,” singlehandedly hobbling the OMB.
Today, the Obama administration announced that it will be ending its deepwater drilling moratorium. “The policy position that we are articulating today is that we are open for business,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters at a news conference. Yet Landrieu said in a statement today that she still refuses to lift her hold on Lew’s nomination, and will continue to “evaluate if today’s lifting of the moratorium is actually putting people back to work” and “whether or not drilling activity in both shallow and deep water is resuming” over the next month before making a decision.
Can you imagine the progress we would have made the last two years with all the solid legislation passed by the Pelosi-led House that will never see the light of day because of the obstruction of the 100 preening assholes in the Senate? It is seriously getting to the point that I simply have to hear the word Senator and I reach for the prilosec.
Although I have been told that all Obama needs to do is pick up the phone and these guys will do what he wants!
Bullsmith
Almost all the Senators are preening jackasses, no question, but some are super duper specially awful. Landrieu’s right down there with some of the worst.
Xantar
Actually, I don’t mind the institution the Senate as it’s described in the Constitution (you know, the Constitution which doesn’t have the word “filibuster” in it). It’s a good idea to make sure small states have a disproportionate voice so that they don’t get run over roughshod by the more populous ones. It’s the antiquated Senate rules which don’t allow for simple majority rule which need to be done away with post haste.
Suck It Up!
Pick up the phone and take 10 minutes to use the bully pulpit! why is this so hard?
She claimed that the moratorium killed jobs now she wants to see if the lift will create jobs? Since the ban has lifted isn’t it now up to the oil companies to decide whether or not to resume drilling?
Did you mention the DADT ruling yet? they are taking bets over at GOS on how long Obama will take before he files an appeal.
Mudge
The Senate was the brainchild of men who distrusted the electorate and larger states. It was a necessary compromise in 1787. Intrinsically, as constructed, it is bad, but not paralyzing. Senate rules, which are not in the constitution, that allow holds and filibusters have allowed a party that aschews policy and compromise to cripple it.
Suck It Up!
@Bullsmith:
Gillibrand is cool. Hope she doesn’t act up after she wins the election.
GambitRF
Wasn’t it established that the moratorium hadn’t really put all that many people out of work in the first place?
General Stuck
The only category where Obama is both worse than Bush, and better at the same time.
dmsilev
Nah, you don’t need to kill the Senate. You just need to insure that the concept of unanimous consent never comes to dominate the rules of order there. That way, a single preening jackass can’t bring everything to a screeching halt.
dms
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Isn’t it 97 preening jackasses? I don’t think Feingold, Al Franken and Bernie Sanders are preeners.
Bullsmith
@Suck It Up!:
I agree there are a few good Senators, but they’re on the endangered species list these days. edit- I see The 13th apostle named my own 3 personal faves.
joe from Lowell
If you could go back in time, rather than murdering a baby, why not just bribe the admissions officer at the art school that rejected Hitler’s application to let him enroll?
dm9871
I really like this blog, but for the life of me I don’t understand the “obama is powerless” thing. No one is saying that it’s as simple as picking up the phone. But the idea that the president doesn’t have a lot of carrots and sticks at his disposal to try to move senators is just wrong. Your notions of power are so formalistic. I get it that you like to make fun of those on the left who are unhappy with Obama. Gotcha. Good one. But the idea that Obama is powerless is stupider than anything that anyone on the left is saying.
trollhattan
Landrieu will not relent until the Saints are declared winners of the next seven Superbowls(tm). She likewise wants a pony. One that’s nice, and not too expensive.
cat48
I looked at Nola’s unemployment rate a couple months ago and it was 6 1/2%!!
I want Diamond & the Judge nominees out of that morass. They’re actually shorthanded in a lot of the lower courts. It’s truly criminal.
Juicebagger
dm9871: You’re not from around here, are you?
BGinCHI
Recess appoint everyone. Fuck it. Just do it and tell them if they want to play hardball, good luck.
Pretty bad when you have to recess appoint because of your OWN party….
gerry
No, what Obama needs to do is get on Teevee and explain the the public about what’s going on…over and over again. It might not work but it’s worth a try if he wants to carry out his promises. A successful businessman once told me that when you are sick and tired of seeing your advertisements is when they are really starting to have their best effect. Obama’s messaging has been weak, weak, weak.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
This is the price we pay for the bullshit and propaganda that passes for the teaching of history in this country. The US Constitution was drafted to a very large degree by men who for the most part wanted the country run as a vast plantation organized for the profit of themselves and their fellows, and governed by a semi-democratic oligarchy of wealth. By today’s standards they were incredibly and offensively reactionary.
Yet by elevating them into a pantheon of the immortals and fetishizing and then worshipping the very flawed document they signed without the least bit of attention to any of its warts (even warts so severe that within a mere 2+ generations they provoked a civil war), we have saddled ourselves with all the deep flaws of their era and their outlook. It is as if it was demanded of us that the business of the world’s largest govt. be conducted using only quill pens, while wearing powdered wigs and traveling by horse and carriage.
Faulkner was right about the past, but even he didn’t go far enough. It isn’t a ghost which haunts us, it is a monster which stalks us in our homes and devours our children.
John Cole
@BGinCHI: Can’t do recess appointments. The Senate Democrats agreed with the GOP to pro forma sessions so they are not essentially in recess.
This, too, is Obama’s fault.
celticdragonchick
Is that too tea baggerish?
General Stuck
@Mudge:
It is a built in sedition machine, if one party wants to make it that. They can wage a civil war without firing a shot. But there is a failsafe point to that, of course, when the real thing cannot be denied. The cloture rule is a cock block between two groups of peoples occupying the same space that have been at war with each other, or sorts, to varying degrees, since before the founding. Getting rid of it, would only hasten the country’s collapse, keeping it as is, will see that collapse in slow motion. Where at least some time can be bought to maybe bridge the great divide a little while longer. Mell of a Hess.
Juicebagger
Also, John were you such a relentless whiner as a Republican? Did you cry when JG Ballard made fun of Reagan?
celticdragonchick
@BGinCHI:
As John pointed out, recess appts are not an option.
Welcome to the era of no appointees at all due to Senate chicanery.
Hope you liked having Federal judges. They are starting to vanish as well.
The Framers of the Constitution did not anticipate this level of nihilistic absolutism in the government since it was socially unthinkable in their time. We managed to break our own founding document.
Hooray for us!
Citizen_X
@celticdragonchick: Mission of Burmaish. And, OK, Goering-ish, if you insist.
Suck It Up!
@dm9871:
You’re right, it is stupid and that’s why no one here or anywhere has said he was powerless. The issue (at least for me) is that people keep throwing out generic terms like “bully pulpit” and “carrots and sticks” as if the president never tried or never thought of it. The president gave Landrieu what she wanted and she didn’t budge. Now what? Please tell us or the president how to specifically handle senators like Landrieu, Nelson, Lieberman, Collins, and the usual hard heads. What is the conversation that you would have with each of them?
No one ever really answers those questions other than to say use the bully pulpit or pick up a phone or some such. Are you willing to accept some backroom deals? Are you okay with a president who makes threats to members of his own party whenever he doesn’t get what he wants? Are you okay with a president who will publicly shame members of his own party (by name) when he doesn’t get what he wants? Now before you answer let me point out that if you think these things are okay when he does it to blue dogs, then you should be okay with it if he does it to someone like Feingold or Kucinich.
Davis X. Machina
The bully pulpit isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, people.
dm9871
Seriously, after all the ways Blanche Lincoln has given the party the middle finger, Obama affirmatively supported her in the primary (even though based on polls she was LESS likely to win the general election than her Democratic primary opponent.)
If I were him, I would have called Lincoln into the Oval Office on day one of the administration and told her to shut the hell up and get with the party program or otherwise would actively find and support a primary opponent, she would get none of her pet projects funded, etc.
Same with Landrieu. Considering how he’s enabled all of these preening assholes, it’s no wonder that they continue to act that way.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@dm9871:
Part of Obama’s political weakness is that he appears unwilling to reward or threaten members of Congress with decisions that are suboptimal from the standpoint of objective policy in order to put political pressure on them. It is almost impossible to imagine him using DOD base closures as a political weapon for example, in ways that FDR, Truman, JFK or LBJ (not to mention Republicans like say Nixon) would have had no compunction in doing. I can see both pros and cons to that.
On the other hand, the tools of intraparty patronage and power which earlier Dem presidents enjoyed are for the most part no longer available to Obama. That is the fruit of the changes in party nomination and primary contest rules, and in the mechanisms of fundraising and intraparty dispersement of funds, which began during the 1972 campaign and ironically help Obama to get the nomination in 2008. If the President today still had the levers of power with which to threaten other Dems that were available in say LBJ’s time, then right now we’d be complaining about why President Hillary wasn’t doing a better job.
Bob Loblaw
Actually, John we just need to elect more Joe Manchins of the world, and the problem should sort itself it out quick right.
More Democrats! We’ll deal with the “better” part never…ahem, I mean later. But in the meantime we’ll cry and cry and cry about what rank corporatism has done to our honorable caucus and pretend that we had nothing to do with it. That’s the Balloon Juice way!
BGinCHI
@John Cole: We need to take back our freedoms and our delicious Belgian fries.
At least if we got the fries we’d have something worth fighting for. And the aioli. Don’t forget that.
Davis X. Machina
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Base closure commission precisely created to close that door.
New Yorker
Letting the Confederacy go. It would have saved 600,000 lives, and we wouldn’t have Mary Landrieu, Richard Shelby, Jim DeMint or a whole gaggle of other assorted assholes to deal with.
dm9871
For example, when Stupak pulled that shit, I would have gone to Michigan and campaigned for his primary opponent. And I would have urged Nancy Pelosi to take him off his favored committee. I would have found every piece of pork that Stupak wanted in every appropriations bill and made it a priority to strip it from the bill during negotiations.
Rather than letting the DNC and DCCC give money to asshole bluedogs like Lincoln Davis – to help reelect the people who constantly stymie the party’s will – I would, as president and leader of the party, give them nothing.
I’m not claiming to have a definitive list of ways that this could be done – but that’s because there are countless. Congresspeople depend upon the party in countless ways. Obama as leader of the party can either support them or make their lives difficult. He can’t “just pick up the phone” but he can do lots and lots of things.
chrismealy
I think if Obama played chicken with the Senate he’d win. Tell them they have seven days to come up with a workaround for the filibuster (google “constitutional hardball”) or he’s turning into Malcolm X. It’d be fun to watch to watch his goatee come in.
celticdragonchick
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
What. The. Fuck.
There are so many things unbelievably wrong in that your rant that I cannot see where to even begin.
First off, modern political mores and social standards are useless for looking at past events. You might as well use your notion of moral propriety to judge a polyandrous family in Nepal.
Second, while the Founders had restrictive notions of who should and could vote, the country was not run to profit them personally in any way. Hamilton was accused of both marital indiscretion and abusing the public trust for personal gain, and the latter charge he considered far more damaging and reprehensible.
Washington and his peers were of the (quaint by our standards) notion that public service was the purview of accomplished men who had amassed their fortune and were in a position to put their affairs aside and serve their fellow citizens. The notion of using the public trust for personal gain was so alien to this mode of thought that Washington very nearly refused the Presidency out of fear that he might be seen as taking advantage of his military reputation for greed. He wrote a number of interminable letters on this to a great many people over several months before finally being persuaded to become President.
A book I highly recommend on this is here.
You may argue that the country was run in such a way as to benefit their class as a whole, but that is true of virtually every government in human history. The top social class benefits the most.
John Cole
@Bob Loblaw: One more time, so this sinks in. Although I doubt it.
The option for me in a few weeks is not between Joe Manchin and the ultimate most awesome Democrat of my dream who will vote the way I want 100% of the time.
The choice is between Joe Manchin, a flawed candidate who will piss me off, and John Raese, who is a teabagger corporatist.
The choice you want, to opt out and just say fuck it, isn’t the responsible option.
T.F. Gumby
If hippy-punching, realist pragmatism is really the only solution, then anyone supporting someone else besides Snowe, Lincoln, Landrieu or Nelson for Democratic POTUS is just being unrealistic.
Obama should just replace Biden with Snowe now and we can all move on to our pragmatic future. I mean, really, what’s the point of having a president who can’t get one appointment through? Sure, not his fault, rah-rah, whatever, this guy is done.
celticdragonchick
@Citizen_X:
Not getting that reference, beyond an old Errol Flynn WW II movie called Objective Burma.
cat48
The NYT had a great article on Peter Diamond/his Nobel/and how he was nominated in April & the Senate sent the nomination back & then Obama renominated him the next day & no hearings & then they even named Shelby as putting a hold on him & saying he’s not qualified…..Excellent work for a change but tiring to read.
General Stuck
And who can blame the wingnuts, at least as a political strategy. They pay no price for absolute obstruction, and put all the onus on the majority to fish one of theirs to be the 60th vote, and exact a ransom, or, make the democrats keep all their votes in line. Which is nearly impossible for democrats to do on anything less important than a signature issue like HCR.
So when one of the blue dogs get their knickers in a twist, which is most of the time, the wingers just sit back with popcorn as dems bash their own. Of course, that will change next Jan, when the wingnuts will increase their numbers, at a minimum, and can’t simply count on dems to defeat themselves. They will have to do it themselves, and we can all rejoice in the true bipartisanship when school uniforms pass into law . Obama will get tagged now for being pro business due to passing only wingnut welfare bills, his popularity will soar from independents feeling all warm and fuzzy. We can again be treated to Obama being investigated and impeached, and then his popularity soars even more unto reelection, and we all get to do funky chicken as the country continues to unravel as corporate bottom lines are again on meth, and new schemes are hatched, and new bailouts proposed. Happy times just around the corner, so a little patience please. Things will be back to normal in no time.
Zifnab
@Bob Loblaw:
Manchain is, sadly, the best West Virginia is going to get. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be primaried, but given your choices he’s the smart bet.
By contrast, Blanche Lincoln was IN A PRIMARY and Obama still insisted on upholding the incumbency racket. For what, God only knows. Because Lincoln sure as hell wasn’t interested in voting with the President.
I’d say the singular virtue of the ’10 election season will be watching the blue dogs slowly file out stage left. But if we lose Boxer, Feingold, or Patty Murray along with Lincoln, Bayh, and Reid it’s going to be cold comfort.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Davis X. Machina:
Yeah, but LBJ would have found a backdoor to subordinate the commission and manipulate their recommendations, using bribery (in his day it was literally big fat envelopes stuffed with cash), blackmail, cajolery, whatever it took. He had literally no moral limits, at all. Obama is the opposite.
In some sense there is a deep irony about this. For at least 100+ years progressives have been attempting as one of their principle objectives to get good government, in the sense of banishing political bosses, closed nominating processes, smoke filled rooms, corrupt patronage politics, etc. And yet now some our biggest hurdles in enacting the policy outcomes we want come from the fact they we’ve made some progress in that direction, but the job is only about half done. And the lair of the beast that remains is in the Senate.
Comrade Dread
Well, he could.
He could pick up the phone to the CIA and report that a Taliban training camp has set up shop next door to the Senate chamber.
Bob Loblaw
@John Cole:
Then own your fucking choice for the next six years, and don’t shed one tear when he fucks over the party because Massey Energy tells him to.
You want him in office for one solitary vote at the opening of the next Congress? Fine, but you own the next six years all the same. You don’t get to blame “the Senate” on this one. Because it isn’t the institution’s fault this time. It’s voters like you.
JPL
@dm9871: At that point Landrieu would switch parties. If she doesn’t bring home port, she loses. LA is a republican state.
gwangung
@Bob Loblaw: And you think John doesn’t know that? And you really think someone more progressive can be elected from West Virginia at this time? I thought red states became blue on a more gradual basis….
dm9871
@JPL. Landrieu would never switch parties because it would be the end of her career. She would have absolutely no chance of winning a Republican primary. Remember the teapartiers? Murkowski lost the primary in Alaska. Bennett in Utah. Don’t tell me a life-long moderate Democrat, from a prominent Democratic family, is gonna win the Republican nomination in Louisiana. Not a chance.
Just Some Fuckhead
@chrismealy: Actually, the easiest way to bring about filibuster reform is for a handful of Democrats to join with Republicans to filibuster everything, all the time.
Then they’ll have no choice.
General Stuck
@gwangung: Loblaw is just acting out his own personal Fight Club here on BJ. Pretty soon, he will be seen dragging himself away into the night.
cat48
@chrismealy:
I love Malcom X videos. Please turn to Malcom, Obama. TNC had an excellent video posted the other day. Actually, I was young when he was alive but he didn’t get a lot of airtime.
Nellcote
@gerry:
He’s been doing that. The question is how do you force teevee to carry it. On cable if they cover it at all the talking heads just talk over him.
joe from Lowell
@Bob Loblaw:
But that doesn’t make any sense. If John does what you want, and stays home, and the Republican wins, that will do absolutely nothing to have made it more likely that the votes will go the right way over the next six years; similarly, if he does vote for Manchin, that will do absolutely nothing to make it more likely that the votes will go the wrong way. In fact, it will make it more likely that some of them will go well.
Jamie
Well we get our normal choice in politics ineffective democrats or crazy republicans
Nick
@gerry:
What was the businessman successful at?
BGinCHI
@General Stuck: I assume that’s also a euphemism for masturbation.
Nick
@dm9871:
and this has worked…when?
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
No, it’s voters like the rest of West Virginia. I’m pretty sure if the state was like John, Joe Manchin wouldn’t be an issue.
cat48
He’s asked for 50B for an infrastructure bank 3 x now. He got more buzz last time though…..must have been all those rethugs he brought out with him.
The Other Chuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
For anything of substance at all, this is exactly what is occurring right now. They just manage to pass a bunch of small potatoes crap on occasion to make it look like they’re doing work, but otherwise the only way anything happens in the Senate is if you do everything the Republicans say — because they’ll be joined in by Dems in the “spirit of bipartisanship”. Now there’s a word that makes me reach for my revolver.
The electorate simply DOES NOT CARE. Because hitlerbamasocialistmuslim that’s why.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Roosevelt’s senate seems to have been well behaved. So instead of using your time machine to go back and berate the Founding Fathers maybe you could use it to figure out what’s gone wrong in the last 70 or so years. Or maybe you think the problem is the 17th Amendment. Are you a 17ther?
Bob Loblaw
@joe from Lowell:
No, if your asking price for representation is one single vote for Speaker or Majority Leader, and nothing else, then you get exactly what you pay for. Caveat emptor.
If you want to silence the non-voters of the world as a result of their irresponsibility, then do the honest thing and apply the same principles from the other side. You elect somebody you know to act in bad faith, then you lose the right to complain when they prove you right. Again and again and again.
I think it’s really funny to see self-described “legislative incrementalists” insist that every single race in every single election is do-or-die for this country’s progressive future. We can survive without Senator Manchin just fine, and if more people were willing to let scum like him drown in his own sea of internal contradictions, then maybe the Democratic Party might find itself worth more than a warm bucket of spit someday.
dm9871
Gingrich et al used to do all sorts of similar stuff. They gave committee chairmanships to those who they trusted and who supported the party rather than those who were next in line in terms of seniority.
In most cases you don’t have to do things as drastic as campaigning for the primary opponent, because the mere threat is more than enough to get people to fall into line. That threat – express or more often implied – is how the Republican party operates all the time everyday. Did you ever hear Snowe talk about how much pressure she got from her party at the beginning of this Congress to not compromise with Obama.
The point is, a little deterrence goes a long way. But so does ongoing indulgence. It communicates the message: “you are powerful and I am not.”
Uncle Clarence Thomas
> Although I have been told that all Obama needs to
> do is pick up the phone and these guys will do what
> he wants!
No, you’ve been told repeatedly that he needs to play political hardball with these motherfuckers. Yes, that includes using every lever of power legally available and being mean. There, I’ve said it. Mean.
gwangung
@Bob Loblaw:
I think it’s really funny that you actually think it will go down that way.
You may survive without Manchin; I’m not so sure that anyone more progressive than Manchin is currently electable at this time.
Joel
I wonder if killing future tyrants before they manifest would actually prevent atrocities.. After all, the conditions in Germany, China and Russia were ripe for such events and there were tons of perfectly willing perpetrators.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
It’s funny because you think we’re upset at what we got, as if we weren’t expecting Ben Nelson to vote like a Republican and Joe Lieberman to be an asshole. Of course we did, and Senator Manchin will also be a jerk on occasion, and sometimes he won’t be, but that’s fucking reality. We deal with it, you don’t.
The people of West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana or North Dakota are not going to suddenly become progressive because we rejected their Blue Dogs. To think so is off the charts ridiculous. They’re assholes because their states want them to be. Why is this difficult to understand?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@celticdragonchick:
You are misconstruing my rant. I’m not casting moral aspersions (by contemporary standards) on the events and personalities of the late 18th Cen. US, but on the structure which we have inherited from that period, structure which has persisted without sufficient adaptation to the changing economic and class structure of the country today. The House of Lords in the British Parliament has gone thru more change in the role which it plays in their system of govt over the last 200 years than has the US Senate. The US Senate is an oligarchic body by design and practice. That design, and the class interests which it protects, has passed its sell-by date IMHO.
This was something obvious in 1902 when TR struggled to get anything past the Senate of Nelson Aldrich, et. al., and whatever gains we made in democratizing that body via direct election of Senators have by now been given back via the influence of our contemporary mass media and the money used to pay for it in our elections courtesy of the Citizens United decision, which has now brought us back full circle to the 1880s and 1890s. When a single Senator can hold the rest of the country hostage, our system is broken.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@Suck It Up!:
MY GOD, YES. I am completely OK with all of the above. Why wouldn’t any sane person be so? What? You don’t think there are “backroom deals” being made every day in D.C.? Sometimes I get the feeling that the BJ cool kids are all frustrated Senate wannabees who want these arcane niceties of “tradition” and “comity” left in place, so that when they finally make it into office no one will be mean to them there.
NR
John, read this and tell me you still think everything is fine and dandy with the Obama administration:
Axelrod hopes for more bipartisanship after the election
Believe me, if this is Obama’s attitude, some grumbling on the left is the least of your worries.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
Seconded, with the fervor of a thousand white hot suns.
Bob Loblaw
@gwangung:
Then don’t whine about Mary Landrieu! Then don’t whine about Ben Nelson! You want to define them as the best option available? Then don’t try to have it both ways!
If you want to draw the lines where they are, then take full ownership of that action. And don’t tell me how hard Harry Reid’s or Barack Obama’s jobs are. Because Blue Dog voters have every bit as much to do with the rules of the road as anybody else.
ruemara
@dm9871:
So now he’s enabled them, instead of oblique supporting someone he has to work with-as opposed to outright pissing them off when he needed something done.
Well, at least you’re done claiming we said he’s powerless.
Svensker
@Bob Loblaw:
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on whether you’re completely obtuse or just nuts.
gwangung
@Bob Loblaw: Obviously you’re going for an all or nothing approach.
So don’t whine when you get nothing.
gwangung
@Svensker: I’m going for the more progressive equivalent of Tea Partyist; ideological purity over all and unwilling to work in a coalition.
John Cole
@Bob Loblaw: Two years. He’s filling Byrd’s term. I know it is too much for you to know even the basics about things you are arguing, but I thought I would tell you anyway.
And I’m sure you’ll be out there helping to educate voters and finding someone in WV better than Manchin and electable in the next two years, right?
Nope. I’m not. You’ll be sitting around wanking about how both parties are the same so we should all just do nothing and let the Republicans win.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
This in a thread crying about Mary Landrieu being Mary Landrieu. You’ll notice that I’m not the one shedding tears over p-p-poor Obama nn-n-not be-being able to f-fi-fill his OMB position because of that oil slut. Go on and be proud of your big tent.
Svensker
@John Cole:
But Cole, if you vote for someone, that means that you’re not allowed to criticize that someone, ever! Cuz we only can elect perfeck peeple. And if they’re not perfect, you shouldn’t vote for them. Makes life simpler, dunnit?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@joe from Lowell:
The problem with Bob is he lives in a dream world where his candidates would actually get elected in WV. He can’t believe that he is a minority. That he has to compromise with moderates to receive even a tiny piece of what he wants.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
You’re the one whining about them. We’re not.
Wile E. Quixote
I’d like to see President Obama fuck Olympia Snowe hard in 2012. He should praise her to the high heavens as a moderate who is willing to work with Democrats and as an example of the kind of senator that Republicans in Maine should elect. Then watch the fun as the teabaggers do to Snowe what they did to Lisa Murkowski, Robert Bennett and Mike Castle. It’s a real pity that he didn’t do this sort of thing this year to John McCain. Praise McCain as a moderate, point out his achievements in campaign finance reform, his willingness to normalize relations with Vietnam (one of McCain’s few real achievements) and his record as a maverick who was willing to go against his party to do what was right for the country. If he had done something like this J.D. Hayworth would have absolutely crushed McCain in the primaries.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
no, this is a thread about the Senate being the Senate and Louisiana being a state full of hypocrite whores for oil.
Keep up.
dm9871
This whole Manchin thing is so silly. Of course we should all support him like crazy at this point. But if he wins – and I certainly hope he does – Obama should reach out to him from day one and strategize about how he can stray from the party on certain issues that are central to his independence (guns and environmental stuff would be good examples). At the same time, Obama should make clear to him that he’s expected to be a loyal soldier on other issues that are core party goals – that is, if he wants good committee assignments and pork for WV and invitation to White House dinners and all that shit. At minimum, Obama should make clear that when Manchin bucks the party, he should try to do so quietly and discretely rather than publicly and flamboyantly. He should also feel free to be more independent on substantive votes, but do so very infrequently on procedural votes.
We can both fight to elect Manchin because he’s the best we can elect AND fight to make him better, using the levers of power that are at the president and majority leader’s disposal. Why not both?
Nick
@Svensker:
Unless that person is Barack Obama, then you must only criticizes…always also too.
JR
Welcome to the land of the unicameralists. We’re a hardy but obscure breed.
Kifaru1
Is it just me or is it really sad that my first thought was to wonder how many people know about the Library in Alexandria….or any of the historical references for that matter
Nick
@dm9871:
Except President Obama doesn’t do that, Harry Reid does
gwangung
@dm9871: Agreed. But don’t be surprised if Manchin goes off, as well, if there’s a political gain to be made at home (because, after all, the first priority is to get elected).
Just Some Fuckhead
@Joel: Röhm
Tlaloc
Of course not because of stupid shit like this. once again Obama trades away something for nothing when it comes to cherished liberal goals (and yes a well functioning economy is very much a liberal goal). And yet when it comes to what he wants (killing the public option, preserving rendition, protecting war criminals) he has no problem pushing recalcitrant dems to support him.
The last 2 years make perfect sense if we assume 2 things:
1) Virtually 100% of all Obama promises during the campaign were flat out lies, AND
2) Obama is quite capable as a political operator
On the contrary the last 2 years make absolutely no sense if we asusme either of these cases is false. Obama has gotten a ton of what he wanted done, it’s just that what he really wanted was to be a crypto-republican douchebag.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@dm9871:
…by calling him a preening asshole and fantasizing about altering history. That always works.
dm9871
@ Nick. The White House participates in the drafting of bills and in the conference committees that work out differences between the houses. They also administer, through the federal agencies, the awarding of billions of dollars of grants to thousands of projects.
The mere fact that something isn’t literally done by the president doesn’t mean that the president can’t influence how it’s done.
This is the same gripe that I have with John’s depiction of Obama. It’s as if he’s unaware of soft power. In a world where only formal power exists, the presidency is a relatively powerless office. But soft power does exist.
Bob Loblaw
@gwangung:
I don’t. Nothing isn’t always a bad option in the short run. It’s about maintaining leverage. Once people like Manchin and Landrieu get in, people like you and me, we lose all leverage. And the only way the Manchins of the world ever leave office is by death, indictment, or Republicans, which ever comes first. So in the grand scheme of things, it’s not some cosmic disaster if they never get in power in the first place. There’ll always be another candidate down the line. Let Raese have his cup of coffee and try to find somebody who, at minimum, doesn’t think it’s good politics to shoot fake legislation on television.
Why don’t we let Manchin call Obama a nigger a few times on tv next. That’d probably sell well with his hick-ass state, bump his poll numbers and whatnot. All in the game, right? Anybody who thinks otherwise is an ideological purist who hates the thoughtful moderate majority that makes this country so great.
I look forward to seeing what sort of “better Democrat” y’all come up with in two years then. Or should we just pencil you down for Manchin 2012 and get on with this charade?
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Wile E. Quixote:
Um, no. He never really had any shot, despite the national media hype over the race, and despite McCain’s panicky response to that hype.
Aside from the several compelling reasons why Hayworth has worn out his welcome here, and from the long list of enemies he made here back in the day when he was just a boorish local sports anchor on tv, the fact is, he just doesn’t have a base of support any more. In his 2006 reelection bid ….
Slightly edited for clarity.
Hayworth is pretty much a joke here.
Tlaloc
@John Cole:
in other words “I’m John Cole and I always support (the lesser) evil.”
Congratufuckyoulations. People like you are why we’re here.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
Well at least you admit it’s about YOU and how much attention YOU get.
FlipYrWhig
@Zifnab:
Maybe because she really didn’t want to vote for any form of health care reform whatsoever, thinking that it would doom her reelection chances, but she relented, against her better judgment, after extracting a promise for electoral help?
@dm9871:
OK, so now she says, “Fuck you, Arkansas voters don’t even like you, so do your worst, because the more you try to mess with me the less cooperative I get and the stronger I become.” Look at Manchin, specifically, openly running by saying he wants to give Obama the finger. That is a _winning_ strategy in many elections. And, frankly, I bet Lincoln wakes up every day thinking, “Stupid fucking Obama health care bill, if we hadn’t done that I could’ve held my seat.”
I don’t understand why you and people like you think that these cartoon LBJ tactics would ever result in the dissident Democrats ever actually getting with the program. They don’t want to get with the program. They think their political futures are tied to taking an axe to that program in order to prove they aren’t Big! Spending! Washington! Liberals! Thus they scream and moan whenever they’re asked to do anything. And threatening them would almost certainly make them act WORSE.
Nick
@dm9871:
They do not decide where the money goes, Congress does that.
Nick
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t understand why these people think these LBJ tactics worked for LBJ when they clearly did not.
AhabTRuler
@Tlaloc:
Actually, no. For most of his life he went whole-hog for the greater evil, and called it ice cream and rainbows.
John’s still got his being-on-the-side-the-lesser-evil-training-wheels on.
gwangung
Why do you think you have leverage? You don’t live in West Virginia, you know.
That’s kind of a key fact. And it’s something you keep ignoring.
General Stuck
@John Cole:
Loblaw is having a hard time articulating his position, but it is essentially the purity of essence one, that perceives such purity as moving the Overton Window in the long run. I might could buy in to this approach, if we weren’t in something like an existential battle for the country’s survival in real time, with opponents who want to bring us back to the 1850’s, and if not, into anarchic dystopia where they figure to have the upper hand with weaponry and seeming control of the security apparatus.
Where even a single senate seat lost to impurity, could mean the diff between holding on and advancing a few battles our way, or losing the war altogether. Overton Windows, are fine, and moving them cool, unless the house is on fire and you need to put it out as first things first.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Tlaloc: In defense of John, compared to the Republican he actually supported with his money and votes, even the most corrupt Democrat looks pretty fucking stellar. Baby steps.
dm9871
@FlipYrWhig. In some situations you may be right about the dynamics, but not with Lincoln. She came close to being *primaried from her left* in Arkansas by a Democrat who was polling ahead of her in the general election.
In some cases Blue Dogs vote the way they do because of political necessity. But in many cases that’s not true. In most cases it’s true on some issues (guns, for example), but not other issues.
Lincoln could have responded to a stern talking-to from Obama by giving him the middle finger, but that would have doomed her reelection chances. No money from the DNC or DSCC. No pork for her district. A president campaigning for a primary opponent. That would have been it for her. As it is, it is only because Obama swooped in and saved her that she won the primary. Why he swooped in and saved her – when he could have had a more like-minded Dem who had a better chance of winning the general is beyond me.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
No, I think it’s fantastic. I can’t wait to see what happens when we finally cross that Rubicon and the Senate turns to open insurrection. We had the Imperial Presidency, now let’s have the Imperial Senate. It just makes perfect sense that the Grand Olde Slave Institution herself would finally reach its destined nadir during the first black Presidency. If you’re going to utterly fail to govern, you might as well do it in the most theatrical way possible. It’ll make for better history books.
General Stuck
@Tlaloc: oH looky, it’s the prototype PUMA pea brain raised from the dead end.
dm9871
@ Nick. That’s true about money that is earmarked in bills – Congress decides – although they do so with ongoing input from the executive. But there are billions of dollars that Congress gives to federal agencies on certain issues – reentry programs for those leaving prison is one of tens of thousands of examples – for the agency to dole out as they see fit. The agency accepts proposals and then decides who gets the money.
Nick
@dm9871:
He was barely polling ahead of her in a general election where both were behind by 20 points where the only two polls were Rasmussen and Research 2000, both since discredited. R2000 showed Halter doing worse than Lincoln at one point.
nancydarling
@Kifaru1: I know that it was sacked and all the books burned, but my history knowledge fails me, Who did it and in what war?
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
Hasn’t this already happened?
Look, the difference between us and you is that we accept that the Senate elected is the Senate the people wanted to see. it would nice for West Virginia to elect a progressive reformer. It’s not going to happen because there’s a black man in the White House. It would be nice if Louisiana would stop sucking big oil cock, but they do, so Landrieu (who today signed a petition asking the DOJ NOT to appeal the DADT decision) obliges. Deal with it and adjust accordingly.
Pangloss
You know who else was a left-handed point guard with a sweet little running jumper on his high school state champion basketball team? That’s right, Hitler.
FlipYrWhig
@dm9871:
And the thing that doomed him was being identified as the candidate preferred by out-of-state liberals.
First of all, what happens if Lincoln survives the Obama-backed primary challenge? What incentive does she then have to be at all constructive?
Second of all, what if Obama helped Lincoln — and this was my conjecture above — because of her vote in favor of the final health care bill? Yes, we all know she was strutting and preening about how she wouldn’t support the public option and whatnot. Still, she supported the final bill. _Which she probably didn’t want to do_. So Obama coaxed her to vote the right way by offering a carrot instead of a stick. And, whaddya know, she voted the right way! There’s this theory that Obama doesn’t do enough to nail down the last few votes. But what the theory really is is that Obama isn’t enough of a dick to get the last few votes, because unless it happens by stick, it shows weakness and doesn’t count. That’s one fucked-up theory of legislative strategy.
FlipYrWhig
@dm9871:
It also would have doomed the hope to have any kind of Democrat, even a sucktastic one, from hostile red-state territory. Just game it out. Obama says, “We’ll turn against you and doom your reelection chances.” Lincoln says, “The way I see it, being able to run against you only _helps_ my reelection chances. And in any event, if I lose, so do you, because you’ll just have cost yourself a vote when you didn’t exactly have a lot to spare. Do your worst.”
And, frankly, I don’t think Halter was set up to be any better than Manchin or Jack Conway on the liberal/conservative axis. They’re economic populists, so that’s nice, and a shitload better than the alternative, but they ain’t liberals.
Kifaru1
@nancydarling: I vaguely remember that it was Caesar who burned his ships and caught the library on fire, but even I forgot the rest of it….Apparently it was all Pompey’s fault because he ran away to Egypt in the first place (thank you wikipedia!) :) At least I know where Alexandria is….Maybe my brain is atrophying at a young age…..If you want to know anything at all about the Chesapeake Bay Act/EPA mess, though, I’m your girl!
nancydarling
@Kifaru1: I just looked it up. It was accidentally set on fire by Julius Caesar. There was a sister library near by which was burned by the Coptic Christian Bishop of Alexandria a few hundred years later. It was Christians trying to stamp out paganism.
gwangung
That’s just the brain dead left’s version of picking up a Third World nation and slamming it against a wall.
(Note: there are leftists who are not brain-dead–just saying that dick waving happens all across the political spectrum).
b-psycho
@celticdragonchick:
…and this is why some people argue against government as an institution entirely.
Nathanael
What are assassination orders and drone strikes good for, if we still have the Senate? (he asks rhetorically, being in a very depressed mood)
Nathanael
@Nick: The Senate the people wanted to see?!?!
Well, if you ignore the staggered terms and the gross malapportionment….. and the crazy supermajority rules….
No, this isn’t the Senate the *majority of Americans* wanted to see. That would be, perhaps, a Senate with an effective majority voted in by, uh, the majority of Americans, rather than a minority….