A few months ago (I think I wrote about it at the time), I did a conference call with some kind of group of liberal people, including E. J. Dionne. I went after E. J., telling him that all he ever did was say “my good friend David makes a great point about why we may have to starve all the poor people, even if I don’t completely agree”. He seemed taken aback and someone else told me he mouthed “who is this guy” after I asked it. I like to think (though I know it isn’t so) that’s why he’s writing stuff like this now:
Conservatives are not accustomed to being on the defensive.
They have long experience with attacking the evils of the left and the abuses of activist judges. They love to assail “tax-and-spend liberals” without ever discussing who should be taxed or what government money is actually spent on. They expect their progressive opponents to be wimpy and apologetic.
So imagine the shock when President Obama decided last week to speak plainly about what a Supreme Court decision throwing out the health-care law would mean, and then landed straight shots against the Mitt Romney-supported Paul Ryan budget as “a Trojan horse,” “an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country,” and “thinly veiled social Darwinism.”
[….]Progressives would be wildly irresponsible if they sat by quietly while a conservative Supreme Court majority undid 80 years of jurisprudence. Roosevelt wasn’t a wimp, and Obama has decided that he won’t be one, either. Conservatives are unhappy because they prefer passive, intimidated liberals to the fighting kind.
Just fucking let these clowns have it. Tebow knows they deserve even worse. If Bobo and David Gergen whine about your angry, partisan tone, that just means you’re doing it right.
I don’t mind that Obama does the “centrist” Village thing sometimes, as long as he hits when he has an opening. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
Corner Stone
Hmmmmm.
danielx
Oh NOOOOOEZE…..Obama is being shrill! Pearls are being clutched so hard the strings are breaking and they’re rolling on the floor! What’s a good Villager to do when the Preznit starts saying Republicans suck? Unheard of! Why, all those little people who don’t matter will actually start thinking they might have a stake in things, and who knows where that might end?
piratedan
Hey, I would love to see a media campaign based on guilt and shame. Far too long have these sociopaths been allowed to wrap themselves in the flag and say that Baby Jeebus has forgiven them for all their sins. There is a part of me that doesn’t give a smelly turd for their venality, what I care about are their bleeping votes to screw over the rest of us at the behest for a few more bucks for their paymasters that they’re damn likely to ever spend on a new yacht much less an economy that works for the rest of us. It’s easy to pick on the homeless and the disenfranchised, they’re not likely to call your office and bitch because they’re too damn busy surviving.
dr. bloor
No shit, Sherlock. Welcome to the fight.
burnspbesq
Marvin Ammori’s Friday post at the Atlantic, in a similar vein, is 31 flavors of awesome.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/why-obama-should-run-against-the-supreme-court/255497/
WyldPirate
Sometimes? That was pretty much what ALL he did for the first three years of his presidency and that was in the face of a unending stream of lies and buffoonery from an opposition party that is quite clearly batshit insane.
Steve
Journolist! Journolist! Liberals are talking to one another!
David Koch
[email protected]
someone e-mail this to EJ with an appropriate intro.
Southern Beale
This is pretty awesome: Dear White People, I Love You.
katie5
Watch Chris Hayes show for today. There is a moment in which Jonathan Alter is to the right of all the panelists on the issue of how liberals should get more judges on the bench. He launches into a “well, we shouldn’t act like the Republicans….” and then there’s this brief WTF moment when he realizes that he’s not among his tribe.
He’ll be scurrying back to Joe Scarborough pretty fast now.
S. cerevisiae
SRV!!!! Love me some Stevie.
Calming Influence
Just the right words and phrasing to give the complete picture. Every word “tells”. This deserves something like a “Strunk & White Memorial Smackdown Award”.
Violet
You made EJ Dionne change his tune. Awesome.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Southern Beale: Tried to copynpaste here, didn’t work, for some reason, so … “If you laughed at any of this, you’re racist.” Omigod. I laughed. Thanks, SB.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Violet: Oh yeah. That was the first thing I wanted to post on here. You go, Doug.
WyldPirate
@Southern Beale:
She must personally know most of the guilt-tripping posters on BJ.
taylormattd
This right here is the difference between normal human beings and approximately 3/4 of the “progressive” blogosphere.
taylormattd
@Steve: I thought the purpose of Journolist was to pass stories back and forth about how we can all do our part to pimp Chris Dodd and/or John Edwards’s 2007 primary campaigns on the front pages of our blogs.
taylormattd
@WyldPirate: Hahahaha. You’re a psychopath.
Violet
@Southern Beale:
That was awesome. The whole blog is hilarious.
Lojasmo
@WyldPirate:
Pearls clutched, vapors had. Go wank, wanker.
Lee
Speaking of FDR, do you think Obama has it in him to add 2 to SCOTUS (if Dems manage to hold on to the Senate)?
Make it a 6-5 liberal majority.
eemom
@taylormattd:
longer Wyldie: Damn, ONE little slip of the white hoodie a couple of weeks ago and I’ve STILL gotta run around frantically trying to cover my racist redneck ass pretending like I’m just an old garden variety Obama-hating firebagger.
hrprogressive
@katie5: Really?
These fuckers don’t get it. The GOP has done nothing but set the rules of the game, and drag the Overton Window with them.
And we’re told “Well gee, guys, we shouldn’t do things like they do it”.
Why the fuck not??? If we DON’T play by whatever sick, twisted rules they come up with, we GET SLAUGHTERED AT THE POLLS.
The Republicans are playing a sadistic version of Calvinball, and yet there are people who want to claim we shouldn’t also join that game? What should we do, Jon? Play fucking Frisbee instead? Or 11th Dimensional Chess?
These people are so full of it, I don’t know how they’re able to walk anymore.
eemom
fyi in case anyone missed it
KG
@Lee: It’d take a lot of leg work to convince people th the supreme court should be expanded. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea, but it’s going to take a whole ell of a lot of work
karen marie
Since Dionne put “tax-and-spend liberals” in quotes, I assume he believes this is ridiculous. By the same token, he did not put “evils of the left” or “abuses of activist judges” in quotes, so am I to infer he thinks “the left” is actually evil? I’m confused.
Polish the Guillotines
@Southern Beale: Holy crap, that’s some funny shit.
mdblanche
Maybe I’m full of it, but here’s my take on the last four years. When Barack Obama campaigned on reaching across the aisle and bringing people together he meant exactly what he said. This was interpreted as a promise to surrender by the firebaggers (=bad) and the villagers (=good). After the election low info left voters expected the millennium, low info right voters expected the apocalypse, and people who actually listened to what the president said expected genuine bipartisanship. But it was not to be. The Republicans wanted only one thing. To take back from the near demmycrat president, the cootie-infested demmycrat speaker, and the heretic cultist demmycrat Senate leader the power that was rightfully theirs.
In the middle of a national crisis the Republicans became all obstruction all the time. Congress became dysfunctional as the bare minimum bipartisan cooperation needed just to keep the lights on was withheld by one party only for the first time ever. On issue after issue adopting ideas from Republicans failed to win Republican support in defiance of all historical precedent and almost any accomplishment of note was along a party line vote. The president appeared paralyzed, scarcely able to believe what was happening. For pursuing liberal goals the Village chided Obama for failing to acknowledge America was a center-right nation like they thought he’d promised to, and for using some conservative ideas to do so the firebaggers shouted “I told you so!” And disappointed moderates figured the problem was one party had too much power because that’s what they were always told was the problem when the parties were arguing.
And so after 2010 we got a divided government. Divided government usually requires both sides to come together but to the surprise of nobody paying close attention (i.e. to most people’s surprise) that didn’t happen this time. Instead we got the debt ceiling debacle. Republicans got most of the blame but the president came out looking bad too. He appeared weak: why couldn’t he get the Republicans to behave? America was disillusioned. And I think the president was too.
He really believed his own rhetoric which had served him well until then. Most people really are willing to work together and compromise, but the GOP today really isn’t like most people that way. I think it took the debt ceiling debacle for this to finish sinking in for a man who didn’t want to believe it and for this to start sinking in for a country that didn’t want to believe it.
The last seven months for the president have been more and more about calling out the opposition and exposing them to a country that may be cynical but doesn’t want to believe one political party is just a bunch of nihilists. And when I encounter people I’m seeing that message seeping in, at least among those who hadn’t already made up their minds about everything important long ago. One of the reasons I think it’s working is because the last few years have been a learning process for both the president and the country. Both have had to have their long-held beliefs challenged before the president could give this message and the country could accept it.
mdblanche
@mdblanche: Gah! I didn’t realize how long that was before I clicked submit comment just now!
gwangung
@mdblanche: A lot of people are slower learners than those of us who are political junkies. It takes a lot more for them to realize, “Jeezus, these guys REALLY mean it”. And even then, it takes still more time to admit “Gee, you were right all along about the right wing.”
The whole deal was to go nice and slow and let people see for their own, without being told, who is really working to help the country and who isn’t.
Mr Stagger Lee
How would Kruschev in the movie, Enemy At The Gates would put it? Oh yes
Is that too much to ask?
Unsympathetic
We shouldn’t be attacking Republicans for all their SH the same way they attack Democrats – that’s far too weak.
We should be attacking them HARDER.
Why are the navy seals the best in the world, bar none? Because the motto is “F* the F*ng F*ers” – and that should be the mentality of Democrat strategists.
Centrist? That’s weak sauce. Attack them harder.
MikeJ
@Mr Stagger Lee: I’m in favour of shooting anyone who takes one step back.
Wag
@mdblanche:
No. You’re not full of it. You’re exactly on the money. Keep it up!
Jewish Steel
@eemom: Shit , I was going to parody WP with something along the lines of, “Why’s everybody so peecee? Lighten up!”
It appears someone has gone beyond satire.
Polish the Guillotines
@gwangung:
That’s it, exactly.
We’re a country that, sometimes to our benefit and sometimes to our detriment, doesn’t want to believe people have nefarious motives. They don’t want to believe the GOP would deliberately sabotage the best interests of the country at large in order to enrich the upper of the uppers.
So, Obama makes a big show of trying to work with the GOP. It’s win-win: If they’re sincere, great. Stuff gets done. If not, you’ve set the table to attack them as obstructionists. But you’ve got to set the table first.
It’s not “eleven dimensional chess”, it’s just a simple game of letting obviously irrational actors make asses of themselves on a public stage. The GOP has obliged at every opportunity, so now the President can throw up his hands and say “I tried. I really tried. But they just don’t want to cooperate. Now give me a congress that will.”
catclub
@Polish the Guillotines: When is he going to get around to actually saying that he needs a better congress? ETA: september 2015?
I am a big fan but have not heard it yet. I would like to hear it. I would like to learn from Kay that the Obama machine is working not just on his re-election but also downticket.
Clime Acts
@WyldPirate:
Not only is what you’ve said here entirely true, it is also appallingly rude of you to say it out loud. How dare you?
Besides, it’s campaign season now, so time to pretend to not be a villager….
Clime Acts
@Southern Beale:
OMG. That was hilarious, and made its point.
Seriously, it was a little like reading ABL before she went off the rails
Polish the Guillotines
@catclub:
Fair enough. That’s probably me putting words in his mouth — wishful thinking.
I’ll be listening for it, though. Still, I’m in nor-Cal in a Dem district, so I don’t expect that message to be pushed hard locally (or even statewide).
mdblanche
@gwangung: Maybe it got lost in there but I think it also took awhile for the president to realize “Jeezus, these guys REALLY mean it.”
I think a lot of people here assume the worst about the other side. It isn’t always the case, but depressingly it usually has been lately.
catclub
@Southern Beale: Agreed, awesome. Only about one step removed from “we love our children … delicious.”
kuvasz
How often must it be said that the best long term method to deal with bullies is not to back down? The GOP is a magnet for bullies.
Loviatar
@WyldPirate:
.
You beat me to it, I was going to say the same thing.
——–
The only thing I would add is that we also had the pragmatist (Obots) here and everywhere nodding there heads and telling Obama’s progressive/liberal critics to STFU with our complaints over the fact that Obama was governing like a 90s era Republican.
Now that there is a real possibility that Obama’s signature policy from his first term may go down in flames, all of a sudden the strident yelling and calls to govern from the left is coming from the pragmatist in the party. Welcome to the party guys, it only took you 3+ years.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
doug is right, and ej, but i just wanted to ask why no one mentioned doug j’s turn at starfucking?
Phil Perspective
@kuvasz: Do you know how to deal with bullies? Kick them in the nuts at the first opportunity. 99% of them won’t ever bother you again after that.
Jess
Lemme repeat a recommendation I made earlier: “Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner, Cantor, and the Tea Party” by Dan Corn. A good peek behind the scenes, and a reminder that, while we love to see Obama landing some good punches, he’s done some amazing work behind the scenes, being sly and persistent rather than macho.
SectarianSofa
@mdblanche:
Worked for me. Rolled right along.
Another Bob
So does this mean that the consensus among the O-bots is now shifting to where there IS some value in using “the bully pulpit?” I thought asking for more fiery rhetoric and a more combative stance was something that only emo-proggers or firebaggers did. Personally, I love the change in tone, but I wish it could have happened BEFORE 2010. Not that it would keep me from voting for Obama one way or the other under the circumstances, but you could argue that at this point it’s just campaign rhetoric. (It might help the administration’s image more if they were putting as much energy into prosecuting crooked investment bankers as they are busting pot dispensaries in California.) In any case, this is the RIGHT kind of message, and the one that they should have been pushing all along.
priscianusjr
@WyldPirate:
Mnemosyne
@Another Bob:
Who was in charge of the House of Representatives BEFORE 2010?
If Democrats learned nothing else from the 2010 disaster, it should have been that running against their fellow Democrats is a really, really bad idea. Obama knew that badmouthing other Democrats wasn’t a smart thing to do, but a whole lot of Blue Dogs thought they could win in 2010 by running away from the Democratic Party and its policies. Oopsie.
TooManyJens
@Another Bob: Do you honestly think that Obama never spoke frankly and forcefully before 2010? Maybe you never heard about it, but I assure you, it happened all the time. You’re kind of a living embodiment of why some of us are skeptical of the magic of the bully pulpit. If even people who are purportedly on his side were not affected by (or, you know, aware of) Obama’s rhetoric, how exactly was it supposed to sway Republicans to the side of sanity?
This kind of language is simply more effective as a campaign tactic than as a cudgel to get legislation passed. That’s part of why you’re noticing it now — it’s campaign season, so these speeches are getting reported on in that context.
Another Bob
@Mnemosyne:
Maybe Obama was giving them too much cover and too much credit while they shot themselves and the rest of the party in the foot. Maybe he didn’t have to publicly bad-mouth Nelson, Conrad and Bayh, but I think they were given too much power during the ACA negotiations. They wasted a huge amount of time and sacrificed a lot of momentum, and all while basically acting in bad faith. Obama didn’t have to indulge them as much as he seemed to.
xian
‘baggers gonna ‘bag
Another Bob
@TooManyJens:
Well, if you’re right, then sadly, it means that it IS basically just empty rhetoric, just like it was during the 2008 campaign. I guess we can look forward to more great bi-partisan triumphs once the campaigning is over. Maybe he can do that grand-fucking-bargain with the Paul Ryan once the dust has settled.
Sorry, I don’t mean to be overly negative. But I can only wonder when O-Bots start prematurely celebrating this apparent change in tone.
Baud
@kuvasz:
Which includes showing up at the polls every election and voting for their Democratic opponents, IMHO.
Mnemosyne
@Another Bob:
And yet, unlike every single Republican, every single Democrat in the Senate voted for ACA, and that was not nearly the foregone conclusion you seem to think it was. There was a very good chance that Nelson, Bayh and Conrad (not to mention others like McCaskill and Blanche Lincoln) were going to vote against it.
Treating the people within your own party as though they’re the enemy while expecting them to vote for your legislation is really, really bad strategy. Badmouthing your allies is really, really bad strategy. The Blue Dogs found that out in 2010, and yet you’re still Monday morning quarterbacking insisting that Obama should have done the same thing even though his strategy worked and theirs didn’t?
TooManyJens
@xian:
Truth.
@Another Bob: I have no fucking idea how you got “it’s just empty rhetoric” from what I said. Then again, that’s happening to me a lot lately, so maybe it’s like that Twilight Zone episode where the man woke up one day and suddenly words meant different things, and everyone but him knew the new meanings. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to go memorize that “Wednesday” means “dog” now…
Mnemosyne
@Southern Beale:
Ouch. Snorting seltzer out your nose is painful.
But I will give a defense of white people walking around the farmers’ market in The North Face hiking clothes: some of us sweat, especially those of us with some Italian ancestry. We sweat A LOT. Just walking around the farmers’ market can mean a huge triangular sweat stain on the back of our t-shirt, which is not a good look when you’re a middle-aged white lady.
But then we had a revelation and realized that if we bought shirts from The North Face, we could pretend that we were cool and sporty when in fact we were buying them because they wick moisture better than cotton does and we wouldn’t have to try and figure out how to spray antiperspirant in the middle of our backs anymore.
I am not joking. That’s what it is. She will pry my Patagonia and Athleta and Ex Officio and Under Armour t-shirts out of my cold, dead (but no longer actively perspiring) hands.
Gary Fuckett and the Mindless Gap
Two truths –
1. Election rhetoric is just hot air, unless it can be backed up with legislation.
2. Although Obama had generational majorities in 2008, he didn’t have the extreme majorities FDR and LBJ had to pass legislation. In the 1934 election, There were 70 Democratic senators, 23 Republicans, and 322 Democratic congressman. In 1964, 68 Democratic senators, 295 Democratic congressman
A third fact is that if Bush’s term had ended in 2010 instead of 2008, the Democrats would have destroyed the Republicans for a generation, like they did in the 1930’s. Obama inherited a crisis where FDR inherited a catastrophe.
So even though Obama had more advantages than Clinton, he didn’t have nearly the commanding positions that FDR and LBJ had.
The only anomalous fact that irritates though is how did a rogue VP like Cheney working for a clear figurehead like Bush get so much more of hid agenda passed in their first term than Obama. That’s the comparison that’s most relevant to the Democratic base today.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@Another Bob:
you’re presuming everything has to come from the top down. maybe its not an obama or an o-bot or a firebagger thing? maybe its about things like the stoprush thing, or anything else that can be undertaken from the lowliest blogger on up. maybe its about every chance to actually speak where conservatives might hear?
samara morgan
But you ALL do variations on that.
DougJ says that about Elias Isqueef, TNC says that about Ross Douthat, Sully says that about Douthat, Cole said that about Kain until reality bit him in the ass and made him stop.
You all believe that conservative brains are permeable to reason and logic.
it just isn’t so.
gocart mozart
The beltway cons are becoming unhinged. I read the local rightwing fishwrap yesterday at my in-laws. George Will called the President a sociopath and Mona Charen cited Coulter approvingly. So much for their normal passive aggressive bullshit.
TooManyJens
@Gary Fuckett and the Mindless Gap:
9/11
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Gary Fuckett and the Mindless Gap:
__
This. You pass legislation with the Congress you have, not the Congress you wish you had. FDR and LBJ got more done when they had better Congresses. It is commonly forgotten that much of FDR’s agenda stalled in the Senate after the fiasco of the court packing scheme, and LBJ got little passed after the 1966 midterms blew up the Dem coalition that was so productive during 1964-65.
__
My take on bipartisan Obama vs combative Obama is that based on his prior political experience in the IL legislature and US Senate, Obama’s default mode is to try to squeeze as much out of a given legislative session as can realistically be expected, given the constraints on what can actually get passed. That means the Blue Dogs Dems had most of the leverage circa 2009-2010 because the Senate was the key bottleneck. Lots of stuff passed in the House under Pelosi’s guidance and died in the Senate. If Obama had been able to sign into law everything which was passed in the House during 2009-2010 we’d be making LBJ comparisons right now.
__
It was pretty obvious going in that this was going to happen, given the obstructionist history of the Senate, so Obama’s team in the WH was staffed with the lessons learned from the last two Dem administration very much in mind, which is the neither Clinton nor Carter were effective at working with members of their own party in Congress, especially in the Senate, and that is why they didn’t get much in the way of their progressive legislative agenda passed when they had the chance. Obama bent over backwards to not repeat this mistake, but that meant that a centrist, Blue Dog friendly approach to crafting legislation was baked in to his relationship with Congress. He ran with this approach as long as he could continue to get something out of it, like squeezing an orange for a long as you can still get some more juice out of it.
__
But after the 2010 midterms and the debt ceiling showdown it became clear that nothing could be done with the current Congress except damage control, to keep them from wrecking the economy and the country. And now we are into campaign season, when the gloves come off, because nothing is going pass in Congress from here on out, so there’s no point in keeping the gloves on.
__
I expect that as soon as Obama has a Congress which can be cajoled into passing something useful by way of legislation, he’ll start sweet talking them again.
Another Bob
@TooManyJens:
OK, then I guess “Do you honestly think that Obama never spoke frankly and forcefully before 2010?” means that the Obama administration DIDN’T largely squander an historic opportunity in exchange for limply looking for bipartisan solutions that never existed. Or perhaps I’ll just say, “Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner,” add the sentence, “Actions speak louder than empty rhetoric,” and rest my case for now.
Some Guy
@Another Bob:
What are you talking about?
El Cid
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
It’s true that the New Deal agenda faced increasing opposition in the Senate, and that this chronologically coincided with the “court packing scheme,” but there were many, many factors involved and not just some reaction to FDR’s proposed expansion of the Supreme Court.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@El Cid:
__
Agreed. I’m using “court packing scheme” as a commonly known chronological marker, not as a casual explanation for the increasing truculence with which the Senate obstructed FDR’s agenda over time.
Another Bob
@Some Guy:
I think you know, but let me indulge your disingenuousness. I’m just tweaking the O-Bots for celebrating Obama’s new fiercer rhetoric after having berated the firebaggers for most of the previous three years whenever they claimed that Obama refused to use “the bully pulpit.”
Just to be clear, I’m happy for the change in tone and feel that it’s better late than never. But I wish it were more than just campaign rhetoric. I’d love to believe that Obama FINALLY gave up on looking for bipartisan solutions with the entire Republican Party being committed to bad faith as it is, but will believe it when I see it in the form of anything other than just talk.
someofparts
Obama – same as it ever was.
Great talk, absolutely great ringing talk.
Then, when it’s time to walk the talk we get the fucking JOBS bill.