Over the past few weeks, there’s been a lot of discussion of Obama becoming a “triangulator” a la Clinton. I get a bit sick of buzzwords like that, but I do wonder if the next 6 years will be nothing but school uniforms and Vchips and “welfare reform”, punctuated by government shutdowns and impeachment proceedings.
FWIW, I do think there may be one difference (besides a much worse economy): Steve Benen points out that Obama still says that keeping the tax rates so low for the wealthy is a bad idea, but that he had to go along with it to get a deal from Republicans.
I don’t remember Clinton saying things like that, I remember him being enthusiastic about whatever legislation he was signing.
I’m not sure this is an important stylistic difference, but it seems to me that it is a genuine stylistic difference.
fourlegsgood
I’d say it’s not just a stylistic difference, it’s an actual substantive difference.
azlib
Saying I agreed to a compromise with “hostage takers” is not my idea of a statement made by a strong leader.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Well, it feels more honest, at any rate. Greater levels of honesty is a good thing, all told.
Sigh.
Meanwhile: Bernie Sanders has entered hour 7 of his march to be the Jimmy Stewart of the US Senate. And he looks far fresher than I feel.
c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN2.aspx
DougJ
@azlib:
Reagan never made any deals for hostages, for example.
ThatPirateGuy
@azlib:
Depends on how much you prioritize keeping the hostage alive and well doesn’t it?
Cat
@DougJ:
Thats the yardstick? Reagan???
BGinCHI
Wake me up when Obama dons Wayfarers and plays the sax.
beltane
Tactics and policies that seemed harmless enough in the ’90s will be disastrous in today’s economy. That is what is most alarming about all of this. Plus, Clinton was better at selling conservative policies to liberals.
TJ
6 years of anything is not the way to bet with 10% unemployment.
mnpundit
It fits with what we know of him. He doesn’t show emotion in a legislative battle. He never tries to make it a “win” not really, he likes to let the legislation speak for itself instead of making emotional appeals because he doesn’t respond to them himself.
Sometimes it hurts him, sometimes it helps.
BGinCHI
This is boring.
Where’s Jeffrey with pictures of stuff he’s eating today?
hells littlest angel
This is bizarre. I am watching a White House press conference at which the president is defending the tax cuts deal. And when I say “president,” I’m talking about … Bill Clinton?
DaddyJ
@Cat: Um, I think Doug J is being ironical. Cf., bible-shaped birthday cakes and profits from arms sales to Iranians funding illegal CIA operations.
DaddyJ
@Cat: Um, I think Doug J is being ironical. Cf., bible-shaped birthday cakes and profits from arms sales to Iranians funding illegal CIA operations.
DaddyJ
The record’s stuck! The record’s stuck!
geg6
Oh, well. Always go for style over substance, I guess.
And that’s why I’ll never be stylish, I guess. Anyone who is getting wet panties over Bernie Sanders cannot, by definition, be stylish.
FWIW, Doug, my answer to your question is that yes, yes, it will be nothing but school uniforms and Social Security reform and show trials of foreign journalists. Obama is now officially Bill Clinton, Jr. without the empathy and dick jokes.
srv
@mnpundit: Next up, Broder and Krauthammer: “Is Obama Nixon, Reagan or Spock?”
What we need is for Obama to trade some missiles for those hikers in Iran. Now that would make for an entertaining impeachment. If only Obama did a good impersonation of Ronnie.
J.W. Hamner
@geg6:
Uhm… what Bernie Sanders is doing is the very definition of style over substance. Not that I disprove of it… but him getting up and doing a “real” filibuster has no practical significance.
BGinCHI
Somebody tell me what would be wrong with Obama just slapping Mitch McConnell in the face when they have that Congress-President meeting in the new year.
A hard, open-handed slap, and then a shoulder squeeze that says “there now, you don’t want me to have to do that again, do you?”
Otherwise, I’m out of ideas.
NR
What does this do to Obama’s message for 2012? “The Republicans want to pass policy that fucks over the country. I only do it when Republicans threaten me!”
There’s a winning message!
Noonan
Two years of false filibuster promises by the GOP and now Bernie Sanders is the one up there actually putting in the time to block legislation. It’s a shame.
Mike from Philly
I also don’t remember Clinton going on TV and telling the people that voted for him that they’re whiny assholes. So that’s another substantive difference rigth there.
Southern Beale
On a completely unrelated note, here’s a video of a Baptist church Christmas pageant fail.
I’m hoping the camel was OK. The people in the pews look like young kids and will no doubt recover quickly in the way of young kids.
agrippa
I am watching to see what happens. With the new Congress, I want to see what game the GOP is playing; and, how the Dems react.
If The GOP is aggressive, it could get ugly. Especially, if the Dems respond in kind. If the GOP is low key, there won’t be so much ugliness.
I think it will be gridlock; either very ugly or more quiet.
The economy is very important. If it remains bad, …
Bullsmith
“I strongly oppose what I am doing, but I am too weak to stop it.” Has any President ever taken a weaker political stand than this?
Also, my question is how can he triangulate unless he starts to include, say, some actual Democrats in negotiations?
Noonan
Also, I suddenly feel the urge to listen to Candlebox. #BigDogintheWhiteHouse
dr. bloor
@DougJ:
Ergo, it must be OK?
sukabi
talk is cheap and it’s all talk until he actually does something to increase the rates on the rich.
geg6
@J.W. Hamner:
Oh, get a life. This is what our senators should be doing, fighting for what’s right and educating the American people, if they would quit playing WoW or whatever stupid shit they do for a few hours and learn a fucking thing about the reality of politics in this country.
I suppose Obama hauling Bubba out in front of the cameras as if to say “hey, you like Bubba, so you’ll love my capitulation to the GOPers!” is just the very definition of substance.
Meanwhile, so many people are watching Bernie that this is now the second time that the Senate’s servers have crashed.
DougJ
@Mike from Philly:
Is that true? I wasn’t paying as much attention then as now, but was the “Sister Souljah” moment so different from what you’re describing?
Tom Q
I think you need to distinguish between what you expect for two years and what you expect for six — and much will ride on the election that comes in-between.
The next two years will be useless; voters have guaranteed that. The Obama folk are going to play small ball in general, except in what can be done through executive orders, and hope that what’s baked in already will be enough to grant them re-election, while the GOP lets it freak flag fly. For what it’s worth, the Keys to the Presidency method suggests, whatever narrow-focused punditry says, re-election’s quite likely — and not just because the GOP has crap candidates, but because Obama’s achievements meet the standard, which will be more apparent if the economy pulls out of the depths of its trough. (If it stays right here or gets worse, then clearly all bets are off)
The reason Clintons’s last six years were so flat was, Democrats were never able to offset the Congressional losses of ’94, based as they were upon realignment and redistricting. Democrats in ’12 are far more likely to gain back alot of lost seats — again, if Obama’s re-elected — because 1) the environment will be less anti-incumbent party (which is always the White House) and 2) a far larger young/minority turnout will shift a significant number of seats (I believe enough the GOP won enough seats by 1-2% margins that they alone could shift control).
If Obama has full Congressional control behind him again, I doubt he’ll be passive — and I have (perhaps misplaced) confidence Senate Dems would figure some way of making the filibuster less determinative than it’s been over the past two years.
So…to finally answer directly: something along the order of V-chip is about all to expect over the next two years, but, depending on the ’12 results, the four after that could be quite different.
HansSolo
I think it is an important stylistic difference.
And I also think the way Obama is framing the debate is important. Obama says he doesn’t want to do this, but has no choice because the holy grail to the GOP is tax cuts for the super rich. That, imo, is much more important politically than most pundits will admit.
For one thing it plays into a pre-existing narrative about the GOP, and therefore is something America’s easily confused media can comprehend. For another thing, it is completely true.
Democrats, and left leaning political junkies/pundits, need to attempt some long term political planning. The Republicans did this decades ago; they turned the word “liberal” into an insult and framed Lefty priorities as somehow foreign and unfair. The Democrats should reciprocate by pointing out that “Conservatives” like Reagan (tripled the national debt) and Dubya (doubled the national debt) are fiscally irresponsible blowhards who live to “Spend and Borrow” so millionaires can afford additional Bentleys. Go ahead and show the long term effect of “Trickle Down” economics on the middle class. We now have decades of data, and guess what, trickle down tends to trickle on the middle class, while greatly enriching the already rich.
In an odd way the hyperventilating from Congressional Democrats (who balked at holding a vote before the election, and in some cases actually voted FOR the Bush tax cut when first passed by W) actually helps frame the debate. The more upset they become (even if much of what they are upset about is largely their fault) the more clear the difference in party priorities become.
Oh, and any long term political planning should turn political pandering about tax cuts into a giant red flag to the American people. For too many decades Republicans have told us that tax cuts are the cure for everything from athletes foot to gout. Those of us on the left need to point out the promises made in years past about what effect tax cuts would have and what effects those tax cuts actually had.
Jewish Steel
@DougJ:
The Auld Triangle. I liked that song so much my band used to cover it. It’s about masturbation but not a lot of people pick up on that since the verb “to jangle” is not a term that has crossed the pond.
In the women’s prison
There are seventy women
And I wish it was with them
That I did dwell
TJ
Also remember Clinton was triangulating between actual semi-liberal Democratic politicians and non-bugfuck Republicans like Dole. Obama’s going for the space between batshit GOP and useless DLC. Not a lot of room there.
dr. bloor
@Tom Q:
This is way too complicated. If unemployment is at 9+% in 2012, Obama’s going home, even if he cures cancer in the meantime.
beltane
@DougJ: I remember Clinton being quite dickish to Democratic activists on a regular basis, thus the excitement some years later when Howard Dean claimed to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party. However, during the Clinton administration gas was cheap and unemployment was very low so none of this really mattered. Now it matters.
Suck It Up!
@DougJ:
Its the whitewashing of the Clinton presidency now. His time has come.
Martin
OT, but it looks like Formula 1 is continuing to go all practical applications for the industry. They’re going to move to non-turbocharged 1.6L 4 cyl engines in 3 seasons. They think they can still get 700-800 hp (effective) out of them, and limit teams to 5 engines per season, so they’ll have to be fairly durable (RPM limits drop from 18,000 now to 12,000). They won’t get the full 700 from the engine so energy recovery systems are part of the plan, not to extend mileage but to increase peak hp when needed.
Right now, F1 engines are among the most efficient for their size at converting fuel to work (larger engines are naturally more efficient, so this has meaningful benefits for consumer use). The energy recovery stuff will be particularly applicable.
People may not realize just how bad US engines are right now. Mercedes and BMW and Volkswagon consistently get 30% more HP out of their engines for a given displacement or mileage rating. There have been bright spots here in the US – Cadillac for example – but overall we’re getting our engineering clock cleaned. We’re losing manufacturing not just because of cheap overseas labor, but because other nations are simply producing better designed products that are therefore in higher demand.
Sentient Puddle
@geg6:
I’d just say this is more evidence of style over substance. Us politicos know the issue decently enough, so we don’t really have anything to gain from watching him go on for seven hours.
That and the substantive part of the whole thing is the fact that cloture still takes 60 affirmative votes regardless of how long anybody decides to talk.
Bullsmith
@HansSolo:
3/4 of a trillion dollars in tax cuts funded entirely with borrowed money as the price of a 50 billions dollar extension of the already shitty unemployment situation is not a good way to make the argument that Republican trickle-down policies are what failed, because aside from the Unemployment bit, the ENTIRE package is Republican trickle-down economics.
By the same token giving the rich not only the Bush Tax Cuts people have heard of (because you opposed them) BUT ALSO a shiny new estate tax lower than any in history that as far as the public understands is your own brilliant idea because it came out of fucking nowhere is a funny way of setting up the frame that only the Republicans are in the pockets of the rich.
Voters voted for change in 06, 08 and 10. They ain’t getting it, and the incumbent President ain’t going to be rewarded for that. His entire strategy seems to be that the Repubs will nominate a crazy person, which is clearly possible. Taking on the rich (or the banksters) has been an obvious winner for years, one the White House makes damn sure isn’t going to happen.
Paris
I’m good with school uniforms as long as they include black berets ala Black Panther Party.
J.W. Hamner
@geg6:
I’m not saying it was, but it’s fairly comical for you to pooh pooh style and then praise kabuki.
Personally I don’t care about any of the political theater or optics or how weak Obama looks or how mean he was to his base… I just care about what bills get passed… and what Bernie Sanders is doing has nothing to do with that.
And on that note, I guess I better start looking for a life. Toodles.
Suck It Up!
@HansSolo:
Thank YOOOUUU!!!! THIS, in my opinion, was the most important part of the press conference that very few people are talking about. He made this point more than once and its a damn good talking point.
Mnemosyne
This may not be a good sign for what Doug’s talking about:
Obama seeks ex-President Clinton’s “candid advice”
Going in a Clinton direction would be pretty disastrous, IMO.
Martin
@DougJ: And let’s not forget that not that many people voted for him. 43% of the electorate. He had to win supporters, so he didn’t start out in anywhere near the same position as Obama, or with anywhere near the same kinds of (often) unrealistic expectations.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@BGinCHI:
.
.
I unanimously approve of your fantasy role reversal proposal.
.
.
beltane
@Mnemosyne: Someone said that Mark Penn is on Hardball right now pushing this tax bill. God help us.
Martin
@Sentient Puddle: People aren’t watching because they care about the issue. They care because something interesting is happening. That’s the benefit of the old-school filibuster – it was designed to draw attention to your argument, or at least to the issue. Bernie is demonstrating why the minority would benefit from a reasonable reform.
Suck It Up!
@Mnemosyne:
he’s met with Clinton before, I don’t think this means anything. maybe to get to Clinton loyalists on board, but I don’t think it means anything else.
FlipYrWhig
@beltane:
He famously yelled at William Greider inside the White House, and I feel like I also remember him yelling at an AIDS activist at a rope-line event.
dr. bloor
@Suck It Up!:
The reason very few people are talking about it is because Obama then went on to crush his message by slapping down his sanctimonious base, and everyone knows punching hippies in the neck is much better teevee.
BGinCHI
@beltane: Oh no. Seriously.
If Caddel and Schoen are for it I say we riot.
TimmyB
If Obama is going to follow Clinton then he needs to let the tax rates of the super rich rise back up to where Clinton put them.
BTW-I get that we live in such a completely corrupt country that we need to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at the super-rich just so the rest of Americans can get some crumbs, but Jeez, we need to draw the line somewhere.
FlipYrWhig
@dr. bloor: He only slapped down his “sanctimonious base” if you believe that the sanctimonious purity-trolls he slapped at _are_ the base. They’re not. They’re a loud but narrow wedge. People should stop wrapping themselves in the mantle of “the base” just so they can make an argument about disrespect for the base, rather than disrespect for purists. That’s who he takes exception to.
Suck It Up!
@dr. bloor:
Well, the actual liberal media should know better and if they were adults they would be talking about that instead of trying to soothe their bruised egos. All those Democrats who have woken up out of their naps could also help focus on that message, but yeah drama is more interesting.
Punchy
I heard Sullivan has some stylistic differences.
dr. bloor
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t really disagree with that, and I don’t take anything he says personally, but my point was that any work he did to frame the Republicans as “hostage takers” and champions for the rich was lost in his tantrum. And make no mistake, whether he’s right or wrong, that’s what it was.
jl
I really do not give a damn about whether Obama is a triangulator, or not, or what his flavor of stylistic nuance is.
What difference does it make? In my view he is making bad decisions in economics, and the best thing to do is to oppose his bad decisions with some good arguments and good evidence, and hope that he listens. Just like FDR started with some bad ideas and knew less than he thought he did, but listened to arguments and considered evidence after his initial First New Deal failed to deliver.
So, rather than argue about triangulation, I would support Sanders, and the House Democrats who are demanding a change in the bad deal Obama made on (not) ending the failed Bush tax cuts for the rich, and on estate taxes.
joe from Lowell
Correct.
Clinton didn’t “go along with Republicans” on the deregulation of the financial industry, for instance. That wasn’t a deal he cut – that was what he, and Rubin, and Summers wanted to do.
Another difference: the Democratic Party is a great deal more popular, and the Republican Party a great deal less popular, today than they were at this point after 1994. The Democrats have an excellent chance of taking back the House in 2 years, while they didn’t after 1994.
joe from Lowell
@azlib:
Depends on what you like more: actions sequences or the hostages.
Mnemosyne
@dr. bloor:
This is kind of the thing we Obots are talking about, though. Obama spent 20 minutes talking about how the Republicans are holding the country hostage with their demands and 8 minutes talking about purists on the left, and blogs on the left went APESHIT over the “purists” thing and completely ignored that Obama spent the majority of that time bashing the Republicans.
So, yes, now the story is that Obama dissed the “base,” because that’s what the blogs turned it into. It didn’t have to be that way, but that’s what they chose to do.
FlipYrWhig
@dr. bloor: Well, it could have played out as “Obama bashes both sides,” but the media — especially MSNBC — really wants to have the story be about contempt for liberals.
Martin
@FlipYrWhig:
joe from Lowell
@Mike from Philly:
So, were you an infant in 1993, or did you spend the decade in a coma?
Seriously? Really? You don’t remember Clinton doing this to the left-lefties?
Okay.
agrippa
It is the economy, which is bad. It is not just unemployment. It is, also, the private and business debt; which is largely uncollectable. The society has to process, one way or another, that debt.
That may be quite unpleasant. It could get pretty rough. The politics, I think, will turn on the economy.
A lot will depend upon the behavior of the GOP in Congress. If they go wild and crazy, trying to put on a show, the Dems may react.
BGinCHI
@FlipYrWhig: Generally I like Olbermann’s show. It has ups and downs for sure. Rachel is better.
But last night KO had a segment in which this former Hilary supporter bashed hell out of Obama for being “weak against the GOP.” The point was that this guy had “warned us during the primary campaign.”
The fucking bullshit here is that KO’s show would have trashed this guy at the time for saying this about Obama, who they vociferously supported. Plus the assumption, implied, that Hilary could do what Barack can’t is fucking silly.
This kind of self-inflicted wounding will NOT get us what we want against GOP obstruction. Call out Obama on his mistakes, but stick to the fucking subject.
Dennis SGMM
The UI extension (If it passes) will expire in 13 months. Barring a miracle, unemployment will still be high and another extension will be needed. What will Obama have to give up then? A few months after the UI extension expires the tax cuts will sunset. And what else will Obama have to give up then?
As one of Civil War generals said, “A few more victories like this and we’re done for.”
ruemara
@dr. bloor:
8 minutes vs 24 minutes. Rachel Maddow, god love her, spent most of her show focused on those 8 minutes, then closed by basically calling Obama someone to be ignored or at least heading towards being ignorable. 8 minutes and somehow that’s the important takeaway? Liberal pundits should leave you smarter than when you listen to conservative pundits, they shouldn’t leave you being just as ignorant of process and facts as the other guys. You can’t tell me that those 8 minutes meant that much.
Culture of Truth
Did Clinton not say that about DADT?
joe from Lowell
@Suck It Up!:
I don’t think the phrase “Party Unity My Ass” has ever described anyone quite as well as it describes Obama critics today.
@dr. bloor:
I’m sure that was the most important and noteworthy part of the press conference to you.
dr. bloor
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t agree with this entirely–this was a Clintonesque Sister Souljah moment that the media needed no help in blowing up. But even if we accept your premise, could the President realistically have expected a reaction other than the one he’s getting? He really thought the folks that voted for him were really going to shrug their shoulders when he reneged on an explicit campaign promise about tax rates for the wealthy? Pfft.
Culture of Truth
It’s nice to support Sanders, but he is a party of one. He doesn’t have to compromise because he is under no pressure to accomplish anything.
Suck It Up!
@Martin:
Lol! now, now lets be fair. He’s not the only one milking this.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
And as we all know, style is everything, and everything is style.
I like your style, Doug. Heh.
dr. bloor
@joe from Lowell:
Yeah, just ignore what I’ve said in other posts, as well as what the follow up in the media has looked like for the past several days, because I’m entirely responsible for how every major media outlet has covered it. Try harder.
Just to be clear, I’m talking optics here. I didn’t see a nickel’s difference between him and Clinton during the campaign, and I was pretty much expecting Bill Clinton’s third term when he came into office. His actions in the years prior to his campaign were always much more telling than his rhetoric during the campaign.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: The one thing I’d add to that is that MSNBC seems to be taking its cues from the blogosphere. Otherwise I don’t think the blogs would have the capability of making a story on their own. Of course, without that the story probably would have been “Obama adopts strident partisan tone; our expert panel discusses how this is a bad development for Democrats.”
Culture of Truth
Reading this thread one could get the impression that no President in history ever compromised on anything.
Suck It Up!
@dr. bloor:
Please stop framing it this way. You are doing what the progressive pundits are doing. Taking a comment aimed at them and making it look like Obama was talking about everyone that voted for him. Its a lie. Its manipulation. They should not drag their followers in to justify their rants.
not calling you a liar, I mean the progressive pundits.
joe from Lowell
@dr. bloor:
I have no idea who you are, or what you’ve said elsewhere. I was replying to the comment you wrote.
Keith Olberman is not “the media.”
Suck It Up!
@Culture of Truth:
You would also think no one has ever compromised on anything in their own lives.
joe from Lowell
The day after HCR passed, Obama’s approval rating among Democrats was in the 80s.
It’s easy to get a false impression of Democratic or liberal public opinion by reading blogs.
Martin
@Suck It Up!: Not the only, but definitely the most sanctimonious one.
dr. bloor
@joe from Lowell:
You really think MSNBC are the only ones talking about it in this way? Really?
Culture of Truth
In an interview with CBS News, former President Clinton said he regrets instituting Don’t Ask Don’t Tell — but said the policy didn’t work the way he was told it would. Asked if he regretted it, Clinton — who helped get the policy through Congress in 1993 — said, “Oh yeah, but keep in mind, I didn’t choose this policy.”
************************
Clinton: “I didn’t like signing DOMA”
Observer
@DougJ:
Well yes it was different. If you recall, Sister Souljah said “I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? You understand what I’m saying?”
So…first of all: Clinton was correct on the specific issue and the comment by Sister Souljah is unambiguously wrong in just about every aspect of any civil society.
Second, Clinton was just a candidate at the time in May of 1992. Even the primary, (I believe), was still in doubt.
Third, this was a response to a very specific thing said by a very specific person.
Which gets me to my main point… you can’t separate the issue from the process and just say “well politician X needs a Sister Souljah moment”.
Or should I say, you should try to separate the process and tactics from the correctness of a situation.
For the most part, Clinton had correctness of policy on his side in his 8 years. You can’t emulate Clinton by just replicating the process. You also have to be mostly correct. Good things happen when you’re mostly correct and also enthusiastic.
Obama has been mostly incorrect on economic policy in his two years. No amount of posturing will change this.
Obama is faking most of the chattering class by emulating things/people that worked. Kind of like that old Star Trek episode where they landed on a planet in a castle or something and everything perfect for a dinner until they tasted the food and realized the form was a perfect copy but the content was fake food.
Tom Q
@dr. bloor: If he hadn’t made the compromise, he’d have reneged on an explicit camapign promise he made NOT to repeal the middle class tax cuts. He was offered a Sophie’s Choice. Why do you not see this?
FlipYrWhig
@dr. bloor:
Well, I think his basic thing is, “Cut me some fuckin’ slack, man.” You don’t have to be happy, but we’re dealing with hostage-takers here, and holding me to a strict standard isn’t helping anyone. My question is, would the same kerfuffle have erupted if he had made the same remarks about purists but hadn’t linked it to the public option fight?
georgia pig
@dr. bloor: This is not triangulation and it’s not the same as the Sister Souljah move because it was done for different reasons for a different audience. The “purist” lecture was designed more to piss off progressives than it was to make centrists happy, and it looks like it may be working. What do Democrats need? They can’t pass the <250k cuts by themselves because of the Senate, but they need the UI extension and they need the traction of the whole tax equity issue going into the next two years, years in which they will not control the agenda in Congress. If Obama gets his way, tax reform is going to be the issue, but he needed to get that deal to preserve a chance of economic recovery. If he doesn’t throw in the gratuitous slap at progressive “purists,” he risks they don’t make an issue of it and get righteously angry. You need pissed off soldiers to fight a fight, not pissed off generals. Republicans have been winning these fights because their supporters are MAD. That’s also how you get media attention to the issue. You give the media something they flock to like flies on shit — liberal outrage and hippie punching.
xian
@NR: don’t you mean this?
“The Republicans want to pass policy that fucks over the country. I only do it when Republicans threaten you!”
There’s a winning message!
dr. bloor
@Tom Q:
I’m not talking about his compromise per se, and I agree he had two shit sandwiches to choose from. I’m talking about how in that eight short minutes, he changed the message from “Obama makes Sophies Choice, yields high-end tax cuts to greedhead Republican hostage takers” to “Obama tacks to center, agrees to high-end cuts and reaches compromise with Republicans while dissing left.”
FlipYrWhig
@Suck It Up!:
Imagine what it’s like to be at Netroots Nation and try to settle on a restaurant. No one budges from their preference and just starts yelling about how yours is the worst betrayal yet.
Suck It Up!
@BR:
not gonna happen. they should have come with this much earlier or next year when there will be a real battle. I’m gonna wait and see how serious the others are next year. Sanders is serious. I don’t have so much faith in the others.
dr. bloor
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s actually a very good question, but I’d bet he’d still be getting blowback. He did himself no favors by picking at that scab while trying to sell the left wing on this package.
Suck It Up!
@FlipYrWhig:
ugh. too much drama for me.
FlipYrWhig
@dr. bloor:
I’m not so sure he would mind that. From my perspective, the issue is that the blogs are pretending he never said any of that stuff about hostage-takers.
dr. bloor
@georgia pig:
I would be more than happy if this was actually a case of Obama playing his famous game of eleventeen-dimension chess and using some psychological jiu jitsu to get a better outcome than the one he was ostensibly agreeing to. But it’s an explanation that is inconsistent with his history, and that dulls Occam’s razor.
Kenneth
If these tax cuts for millionaires are essential made permanent (and thanks to Citizens United, they WILL be extended in two years thanks to corporate ca$h) it’s time for progressives to seriously consider expatriating.
We can’t take six years of midnight basketball and school uniforms.
Europe is looking better all the time for anyone who cares about social justice and equality.
FlipYrWhig
@dr. bloor: I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s trying to split the purist absolutists from the incrementalists. He’s not telling everyone it’s a brilliant policy, but it’s the best he can do under the circumstances, and should be evaluated as another instance of slow progress. If that kind of thing works on you, it wasn’t even a mistake.
I mean, he _really was_ calling out the diehards. I just don’t want to let the diehards dupe everyone else into thinking his real target was “liberals” or “the base.” (Olbermann and Maddow, among others, fomented that reaction.) It was clearly only a certain faction.
I dunno, on one level it’s an unforced error, because it was immediately evident that we’d hear another round of complaints about hippie-punching. But I don’t think it hurts him to make it look like he has hostage-takers on one side and purity-mongers on the other, and there he is trying to cope with all the craziness. That’s very Jon Stewart of him.
Tom Q
@FlipYrWhig: And, maybe as a result, Jon Stewart has kind of gone light on Obama this week. Last night, he even made the juxtaposition that the reporter who asked the question that provoked The Eight Minutes That Stabbed Progressives in The Back was the same guy who asked him last month if the election results shouldn’t cause him to abandon his agenda entirely.
Rex
I highly doubt that the next president will spend 4 years talking about school uniforms and v-chips.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
You know what? They deserve it. It would be nice, for a change, if when progressives disagreed with policies like this, they could FOCUS ON THE POLICY, instead of turning it into some “Obama is selling us out” narrative. Even if that’s true, it’s not POLITICALLY useful to attack Obama, because that then becomes the story instead of the actual policy issue.
The RIGHT way to do this would have been to see Obama as a victim/extortionee, and to focus on how America doesn’t agree with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell about the high-end tax cuts. But the truth is, whenever there’s a liberal president, high profile legislators in the democratic party get all jealous and butthurt of him overshadowing them, and it comes out as this kind of criticism.
FlipYrWhig
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason: Yes, thisThisTHIS. Instead of “He’s a wuss” kinds of reactions, the big eruption should be something like “I hate this, because continuing tax cuts for the rich is a bad idea!” Let that ricochet inside people’s heads for a while. I feel like the way this is playing out, it’s mostly “even Democrats are mad,” a lot of interior drama about who’s at odds with whom with reasons totally unclear, rather than, “even under the circumstances, this is bad policy,” which would at least give progressive _policy positions_ an all-too-rare airing.
AxelFoley
@BGinCHI:
I’d pay good money to see that. Hell, I’d pay good money to do it myself.
Tom Q
@FlipYrWhig: One of the great annoyances of this is the obliviousness of professional progressives to the fact that the press only lets them on camera when they’re willing to trash a Democrat. If a GOP president is elected, they’ll be shunted right back to Invisible Land; they really ought to wake up to this.
AxelFoley
@FlipYrWhig:
LMMFAO!
Sko Hayes
I was a little angry when I heard the House wasn’t even going to bring the tax bill up for a vote, but at the same time, the House passed a lot of good legislation that died in the Senate, and they worked hard for progressives (okay, many of them).
So if Obama and the Dems on the Hill want to have a kerfluffle right before Christmas, have at it. Just remember this is about actual people who are suffering right now, not about your egos and your grandstanding. You have one chance to get this right, and then the Republicans are in charge, so, as Yoda says, do or do not, there is no try.
Tom Hilton
@Mike from Philly:
Which falls under Emily Hauser’s point about more honesty.
Suffern ACE
@Tom Q: They know this unless they’ve been asleep for 20 years.
Suffern ACE
@Tom Hilton: I honestly don’t believe that the professional left actually did vote for him. Quite a few of these professionals seem like grifters to me.
cat48
Obama is still evolving b/c I think he’s often too honest. He must get him a gimmick person like Luntz or listen to Bubba & practice simplifying. Maybe Plouffe can help when he comes next month.
Hysterical reading about Obama’s “move to the center.” Broder was the funniest. He at first called him “returning to campaign O” who was a pragmatic liberal. Then later he called him “a raging moderate” after his press conf which is better than Cilliza “angry.” Today people on my TV are calling him “presidential” “energetic”, etc. Looks like the press are the ones that moved left.
Baud
@Tom Q: I wonder if it’s the opposite. It seems like the “professional left” were doing much better in terms of both web traffic and influence when they were opposing Bush. Maybe some of them would like to go back to the role of fighting a Republican-controlled government.
Mike M
NPR’s All Things Considered played a clip from another interview Obama gave this morning. He was asked “How many jobs will tax cuts for those making over $250K create?” He answered, “None,” and went on to say that he has always been opposed to tax cuts for the rich and continues to think that tax cuts for the rich are a bad idea.
I appreciate the fact that he didn’t try to spin it, but put the blame squarely on Republican recalcitrance. Instead of continuing to blame each other (and the President), the Democrats ought to keep saying it over and over again until it sticks: “The Republicans only care about giving more money to the rich.”
Republicans have been remarkably consistent in their messaging against Democrats (e.g. tax and spend liberals) regardless of the topic on hand or the underlying validity of their claim. It wouldn’t hurt for Democrats to adopt their one not approach for a while.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@Dennis SGMM:
.
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What indeed. When the Republicans demand that 66.6% of the unemployed be sterilized or killed, and President Obama compromises with them to get “the best deal he could” by bringing the percentage down to 50%, I judge that Randi Rhodes and all balloonbaggers will laud his pragmatic tough-mindedness and leadership skills.
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JWL
“Bill Clinton wasn’t some fucking hippie class-warrior, he was a triangulating centrist.[Obama has] now triangulated to the right of a triangulating centrist. Being unhappy with that is neither sanctimonious nor purist’.
You Are Dumb.com
12/08/10
AxelFoley
Agreeing with Sufferin Ace re: the professional left.
MTiffany
11-dimensional chess, anyone?
Mike Kay (Team America)
OMFG!
NOT BILL CLINTON – HISTORY’S WORST MONSTER! NOT HIM!!
DPirate
Whatever he is, he’s no Young Ned of the Hill.
Pat
This president is proposing along with Mitch McConnell, the GOP Leader, the first steps in dismantling social security and you are worried about style?
John Cole, where did you get this guy?
Robert Waldmann
Maybe you “don’t remember Clinton saying things like that, [and] remember him being enthusiastic about whatever legislation he was signing,” but I actually remember.
Bill Clinton denounced the Defence of Marriage Act even as he was signing it (late one Friday night).
And that makes me believe that there is another difference. I don’t think that Obama would have signed DOMA. I also don’t think he would have signed the horrible welfare reform law (which, I admit, he praised in The Audacity of Hope).
This might just show that I have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.