In Alex Pareene’s review of the book This Town that DougJ posted yesterday, there’s this aside:
(Strangely, one person who comes out fairly well in the book is Barack Obama, who is both barely present and also inescapable. Obama genuinely hates This Town. It is a sincere and unflagging hatred. Many of his staff happily sold out, obviously, taking lobbying jobs and media gigs and massive speaking fees, but the president clearly has nothing but contempt for the entire city and its self-important longtime fixtures. He hates Politico, hates old Clinton hangers-on, hates the parties, hates it all. And he should!)
One of the manifestations of Obama’s attitude towards DC is the way he treats the press. He doesn’t even bother to fuck with them the way Bush did by giving them nicknames and making cutting little remarks about their appearance. He just tolerates them the way an old dog tolerates a puppy. He tries to pretend they don’t exist, and gives them a nip when they get on his nerves. Since the DC press corpse can’t just sit down and write a story with the headline “Obama hates us”, it all leaks out in oblique references to how “aloof” or “cool” he is, and how he doesn’t have the right number of the right kind of drinks with Members of Congress.
Obama’s clear and longstanding hatred of the DC press is probably a little part of the reason that lefty bloggers expected more from him, since we both view them as an anachronism, obstacle and enemy.
Betty Cracker
It’s very sensible of the president to hate those worthless fucks.
Napoleon
Obama’s clear disdain for the press is one of his best qualities.
amk
It’s more of contempt than hate, which these lazy fuckers richly deserve.
cathyx
I don’t see why he should hate them so much. They willingly and happily report anything his administration says without questioning it. That should make him love them.
gene108
From what I’ve read on the internets, Lefty bloggers wanted Obama and the Congressional Democrats to turn us into Sweden by January 21, 2009, arrest Bush, Jr., Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et. al for war crimes, arrest the heads of Wall Street firms for crimes against humanity and probably a few other things that any reasonable President, with Congressional majorities, would be able to do instantaneously.
Baud
I don’t see Obama as a “hater” per se, but agree that he correctly believes the DC press is worthless and shameful.
cvstoner
@cathyx:
Indeed. He just probably feels dirty every time he has to deal with them.
maurinsky
I wish Alex Pareene was on a better site than Salon. I have to shut down 15 pop-up ads before I can read his articles.
cvstoner
@gene108:
I would consider those all laudable, though highly unrealistic goals. If those lefty bloggers were guilty of anything, it was falling head over heels for all the “hope and change” hype.
JGabriel
From yesterday’s Guardian article on Microsoft bowing to the NSA’s demands:
Prism is a team sport! really should become one of BJ’s rotating masthead tags.
.
c u n d gulag
Uhm…
Outside of their own DC Circle-jerk Village, who DOES like these useless clowns?
If a suitcase nuke killed the DC MSM Villagers, and there were none left, no one would mourn them?
And a lot of people would probably agree that it’s better not to try to clean that site up, since it’s liable to start all over again.
MomSense
@gene108:
If only he had used the bully pulpit more!
/magic wand
Just Some Fuckhead
Folks, it’s not my intention to stop the always mad fun Balloon Juice bashing of the left but mistermix was clearly referring to people like himself when he wrote “we” – not your sworn enemies in this internet passion play:
“Obama’s clear and longstanding hatred of the DC press is probably a little part of the reason that lefty bloggers expected more from him, since we both view them as an anachronism, obstacle and enemy.”
jayackroyd
No it’s not. It’s that he had a transformative opportunity both in policy terms and political terms, and he chose the failed policies and politics of the Third Way.
Now it’s fair to say that supporters didn’t really pay attention. He has always been a New Democrat. It’s interesting that obots don’t generally defend these policy and political choices on their merits but, Third Way-like, defend them on “pragmatic” grounds about the way the world really is rather than the way we might wish it would be.
Sadly, even with a majority in the House and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, it just wasn’t realistic to expect real change.
MomSense
@JGabriel:
And then in about paragraph 17 of that article they slip in the part about needing to get a warrant when it comes to US citizens.
JGabriel
maurinsky:
That’s never happened to me at Salon. Are you sure it’s the site? It sounds like your browser or computer might be infected by an adware program/virus/trojan.
MikeJ
@jayackroyd:
It’s not Obama’s fault that Max Baucus exists.
JGabriel
@MomSense:
The Guardian is a British newspaper. Whether or not the NSA needs a warrant to monitor US citizens is pretty much irrelevant to the British or the rest of the world: they’re more concerned about the NSA monitoring them.
Don’t be so parochial.
.
jayackroyd
@c u n d gulag: From Parene’s review, that seems to be the main point of the book–along with their monumental unawareness that the rest of us really don’t give a fuck about Scooter Libby’s kid being on the same Little League team as yours. Or, rather, we don’t see it as a good thing lending humanity to your status as a guy just working hard at doing his job in a tough town.
jayackroyd
@MikeJ:
TJOP.
amk
And right on cue, the firebaggers arrive. What was the trigger word, Hate ?
Valdivia
@amk:
trigger word– Obama
:)
MomSense
@JGabriel:
Ha! Because there is no monitoring in the UK.
Bobby Thomson
@MikeJ: Or Norm Coleman.
JGabriel
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Well, to some extent, it’s mine. I don’t get hippie-punching; I prefer punching to my right.
The
reich-wing, sorry I meant right-wing, is the real enemy.MomSense
@amk: @Valdivia:
Obama and Hate mean the same thing in firebagger speak.
pagodat
@c u n d gulag: Hell, those of us actually from DC probably hate the Village even more than the rest of you do. Here they are setting asinine agendas, claiming our city as their clubhouse and giving us a bad name while we don’t even get to elect one voting Congresscritter.
jayackroyd
@amk: I think it has more to to do with the quality of comments like MrMix’s.
“We’re all on the same page, of course, it’s just that the firebaggers live in an idealized environment of purity. Sadly, in the real world, compromises must be made. It’s unfortunate that they can’t see that, especially when we share so many common values, like Dancin’ Dave as a manifestation of a corrupt, malevolent policy regime. But even a Vulcan can only do so much…..”
That’s how it sounds anyway.
Baud
@JGabriel:
Hippies punched first.
dm
@MomSense: no, just that there are no warrants.
amk
@pagodat: yeah, that’s a bummer of a bum-rap.
maurinsky
@JGabriel:
It doesn’t usually happen to me on other sites.
Samuel Knight
I guess a more basic surprise to the lefty activists was IF the President and his crew despised the DC press corps so much – why did he pick Rahm Emmanuel and a few others to lead his administration who were in bed with that press corps? And then why did he more or less run his administration almost exactly as that press advised? (forgive and forget, not prosecute, be bi-partisan, etc.)
And yes, we all know the arguments about fiiubuster – but 1) we all know that can be overturned instantly, and 2) most lefties seemed to be asking – cna you at least seem to try? No Green Lantern stuff, but at least call the opposition on it.
Unfortunately, one explanation is pretty stark – the President clearly loves making intricate deals not having public spats. For example, as soon as he came to office there was an Afghan election that President Karzai clealry stole – international observers reported it all over the place. But the President went ahead and surged anyway. You can argue that he did exactly the same thing with the GOP – they publicly said they would do anything to destroy him – but he went ahead and negotiated anyway.
Shakezula
Wow cool! A new reason [some] lefty bloggers (define as you will) are eating Obama Disappointment Sandwiches. Always with the projection. Always with the same results.
It is entirely possible that he doesn’t hate the press. Hate is a pretty intense emotion and if he hates the press there’s nothing left for what he must feel about the Republican drool buckets he has to cope with.
JGabriel
@MomSense:
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. We all know the British monitor communications, and the Guardian has written about it. Hell, the Guardian has been writing about British surveillance for over a decade.
That simply wasn’t the subject of the MS/NSA article — Microsoft and the NSA were.
MikeJ
@JGabriel:
That’s fine for the grauniad, but why should I give a shit about it? I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with the NSA listening in on Brits. That’s what spy agencies are supposed to do. Listen in on foreign people.
MomSense
@JGabriel: @dm:
One surveillance camera for every 11 people.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveillance-camera-for-every-11-people-in-Britain-says-CCTV-survey.html
Loviatar, Firebagger
@jayackroyd:
.
Agree totally.
Prepare to be insulted and and have your morals, ethics and sanity questioned.
—–
In return for Obamacare we got a 2010 Republican wave. Possibly for the next 10 years the Republicans have the House of Representatives, several states legislatures, a stalemated Senate (if not for the wingnuts it should have gone Republican in 2010 and 2012) and numerous racist, sexist and anti-poor legislation.
Was it worth it?
gogol's wife
@cathyx:
I have no idea what you are talking about.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@cvstoner: Especially if they missed the “You’re the change you’re looking for” part of his campaign.
DecidedFenceSitter
@jayackroyd: I’m probably pissing into the wind.
Might have had a majority, might have had a filibuster proof majority, but they were extremely fragile majorities. A couple Democratic senators “taking a stand” and BAM, you are done. Kaput.
For comparison, on the scale of the New Deal legislation which is what it seems today’s liberals want, we would need 75-80% of the senators and representatives – Make Up of the 74th Congress for your reference.
The fact that Obama got any sort of healthcare reform through without a huge supermajority where he could afford to lose a few people from his own party or where he couldn’t arm twist/entice like one could do in the 60s is a friggen miracle.
raven
@Loviatar, Firebagger: AND WITH SOMEONE ELSE????
Ramalama
@JGabriel: I prefer punching on the right, too.
Also I just wish Obama could take some of that disdain he feels for the press (is it just Beltway press?) and use some of it on those horse’s asses in Congress.
Loviatar, Firebagger
@jayackroyd:
Sadly, its the quality of most Obots and it has to do with the reason you gave upstream.
JGabriel
@MomSense:
I was there two posts ahead of you, at #35. Click on the last link.
Nina
You know, it’s OK to despise the DC press corpse. It’s logical, even. But the problem is, they do (brokenly) serve a function and they do have power to shape some part of public opinion, so a president has to work with them even as he hates them.
That’s why I’ll never be a politician; I have a hard time forcing myself to be nice to assholes with power. It’s got to be soul-destroying in various ways.
Sometimes I wish Obama was better at it, but for his longterm psychological health it’s probably good that he hasn’t done too much press-schmooze.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@jayackroyd:
Hey, I defended the stimulus, ending our occupation of Iraq, having Congress end DADT rather than using an executive order, counting the wars as part of the budget rather than as emergency expendatures, fixing GM and Chrysler, winding down Afghanistan by 2014, the use of drones, saving the banks. I do wish there had been more done to restructure them, but that’s Congress, not the president.
jayackroyd
@Loviatar, Firebagger: I would say, rather, in return for an unwillingness to go full-bore on a massive, broadbased stimulus program, the votes threw the 2008 bums out.
The opposition to the bankster bail out was very widespread, crossing all party boundaries. Not dealing with the repercussions of that criminal behavior, but rather, rewarding it and using the same actors for a trickle-down stimulus, was a really bad policy choice and an even worse political choice.
But, sadly, it was the only realistic choice available.
It’s the economy, stupid.
Ramalama
@DecidedFenceSitter: Filibuster reform would have taken care of the need for a super majority. That’s not Obama’s fault – he’s not in the Senate – but he as leader of his own party could have been an advocate. I know: coulda woulda….
MomSense
@JGabriel:
Because you were being ridiculous. It is widely known how all encompassing surveillance is in the UK, that most of the cameras are privately owned, and that there are massive shadow worlds between government and private corporations and surveillance. Also, too they just went through a massive scandal involving Murdoch owned publications hacking into cell phones so I don’t think that people are shocked, shocked that the US is spying on people abroad.
I think it is also silly to suggest that the Guardian’s target audience with this whole series of stories is not also the United States. But whatever I am just a simple mom living in rural Maine and have no idea how the big, complicated world works.
lol
@Samuel Knight:
He picked Rahm because he’s a ballbuster who helped Obama shepherd through the most progressive legislation since the New Deal despite having little to no margin for error vote wise.
Filibuster can’t be overturned instantly. You needed 50+Biden votes at the start of the session to do it at minimum and loads of otherwise liberal Senators from Feingold to Byrd opposed any reform. How many times does that need to be stated?
At the end of the day, Obama prefers policy over posturing. The Netroots wants pointless show trials that go nowhere and public “trying” at the expense of getting anything done.
MomSense
@JGabriel:
You are just a douchebag.
Ramalama
@lol:
Wait, isn’t that the role of the Republican party? See: entire Clinton presidency.
JGabriel
@maurinsky: Hmm. Okay, then – you’re right, it’s probably Salon.
Just Some Fuckhead
@JGabriel: It was bound to turn into a shooting war one way or another. This way, at least, we found out who can read and who can’t.
Kathleen
@jayackroyd: Well, there was that major economic meltdown thingy to deal with. His administration had to tread carefully to stabilize the economy. I would think that was its first priority. In retrospect, good, bad or indifferent, I think pursuing an aggressive agenda against the bankers and the Bush administration for war crimes would have backfired than and it would now. I don’t think there was widespread support for either action (the banksters perhaps, but after the right wing noise machine got finished not so much), and it could have hurt the efforts to save the economy. Just my opinion.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@JGabriel: That’s how I feel. Most people have a purity streak: If you’re not exactly like me you must be preventing the changes I want. I guess it’s human nature to believe that the person who was only 98% like you must be more of the problem than the person that is exactly the opposite. But we all should know who the real enemy is.
DecidedFenceSitter
@Ramalama: Yup, and I’m frustrated as all hell that it wasn’t pushed harder.
Of course, there’s also the voice in my head of “Would I want/trust VP Dick Cheney (instead of Biden) making these choices?”
I’m not sure what can be done – we have a parliamentary system de facto without the parliamentary rules de jure.
jayackroyd
@DecidedFenceSitter:
TJOP.
You make no defense of the policy regime, or the politics of it, but just plead its necessity. You could say disagreeing with that necessity is a bootless counterfactual, which is one reason for the raging* contempt for firebaggers.
For a long time I’ve been saying eventually you have to consider the possibility that Obama and the Democratic leadership have been getting the policies they want.
It’s a much simpler hypothesis than their being helpless in the face of circumstance.
————
*I happen to think the rage is generated by cognitive dissonance.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@jayackroyd: So, let me ask you this: How much compromise are you willing to put up with? Would you have rather not had any health care changes or was the ACA a good step?
NickT
@jayackroyd:
Which public offices have you been elected to?
amk
@lol: Yup. Nutroots is all about booing and clown show. All this ‘policy’ tack is just a veneer to gain some respectability for their ODS. President bernie!
MikeJ
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Emo Philips on that subject:
NickT
@MikeJ:
That’s always good for a twisted grin. Thanks for adding a smile to the morning.
JGabriel
@MomSense:
Oh! I am wounded! Wounded to my very core! How will I ever get over the fact that a stranger on the internet thinks I’m a douchebag?
[Swoons, falls to the floor.]
Somehow, somehow though, I will survive.
Do really want to get into a flame war with me? I haven’t been a douchebag up to this point, but I’ve no qualms about being one if that’s where you want to go today. I’m like Microsoft that way.
Comrade Jake
The dude who epitomizes this is Tapper, IMO. Tapper, more than perhaps any other journalist, has trolled the President. Whether it’s writing about his smoking habits or asking him “Where have you been?” with regard to gun laws, I suspect he’s one of the cats Obama would like to drop kick.
Then when he got the show at CNN there were all these DC people on Twitter saying how awesome it was, that Tapper was one of the best in the business.
The bar these people have set is pretty fucking low.
Ben Cisco
Yo Alex,
That’s a feature, not a bug.
amk
@MikeJ: Lulz. Perfect.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@JGabriel: I take other countries complaining about us monitoring them with a huge grain of salt:
NickT
@Comrade Jake:
The trouble is that by “the business” they mean “sucking up to the rich while systematically relying on the ignorance of rural Americans to get away with consistent falsehood and stupidity”. And, indeed, Tapper is one of the best at that business.
JGabriel
@Ramalama, @Belafon (formerly anonevent): Thank you.
Loviatar, Firebagger
@jayackroyd:
No, I have to disagree. While the anger at the bailout was there, on the Republican side the 2010 elections driving force was mostly about Obamacare. Remember the Republican money men didn’t want their sheep becoming too inquisitive of who really benefited from the bailouts. They needed them to come out and vote so they gave them a reason that while it had a touch of populism (Tea Party) it was still mostly anti-government, anti Democrat, racist, sexist and anti-poor. What fit that bill in 2010; Obamacare, a brand new Democratic government program meant to help the poor who are mostly minorities and woman.
jayackroyd
@Kathleen:
Yeah, and he could have taken major action. He was in a position similar to FDR’s in his first term. It was a time when he had more freedom of action than he would ever have–and that was also obvious at the time. He could have blamed Bush, corrupt banksters and gone on a populist revamping of the banking system along the lines of Roosevelt–not even having to innovate, but just returning to the pre-1995 policy regime.
But he, and the Democratic leadership, were and are dominated by the same forces that gave us the repeal of Glass-Steagall and unregulated markets in financial derivatives. Obama, like President Clinton, and in all likelihood, Hilary Clinton believe that we live in a new globalized era where we need unregulated finance systems to compete globally, that we need policies to lower wage rates and that we must protect the rentier classes that dominate the world economy.
It’s unfortunate that these conditions obtain, but there it is. We have to live in the real world.
Sadly.
NickT
@jayackroyd:
What public offices have you been elected to?
JGabriel
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Yes, so do I. But I also think it’s silly to expect foreign periodicals to put the interests of US citizens first or in the lede.
LAC
@JGabriel: oh heavens! Stand back ladies! Gerkin wagging to commence! Scary!!!
jayackroyd
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
TJOP.
You’re saying we’re agreeing on the preferred policy regime? One like the rest of the OECD (background here) where there is a large government role controlling provider pricing whether it’s private insurance, socialized medicine or single payer, right? And where provider prices would be brought down to levels like the rest of the OECD?
NickT
@JGabriel:
It’s not completely crazy in the case of the Guardian – they do have a separate US site and have hired quite a few American writers.
Just One More Canuck
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): source, please?
MomSense
@JGabriel:
Look I have no idea who you are but I think it is ridiculous that you started out insulting me and then when I try to explain that I don’t think people in England are shocked by the notion that the US engages in espionage abroad or that the target audience for the Guardian is only the UK you then get into some pissy thing about posting faster. I didn’t realize this was some sort of speed contest. What was that comment anyway? “I can post faster than you can nananabooboo”? I’m calling you a douchebag because you are clearly not interested in seriously engaging with me to explain your perspective or to persuade me to your opinion. It seems that you just want to prove your superiority–and that’s fine if you need to do that but I’m too old for that nonsense. I’ve successfully shepherded one young man to adult hood and have two more to go and don’t feel the need to parent random internet adolescents. So yes, I do think you are acting like a douchebag but you are perfectly free to do so. I’m just not into those games.
NickT
@jayackroyd:
So, you’ve never been elected to public office then? Right?
cleek
so many lefty bloggers can’t even count to 60, there’s little doubt Obama doesn’t think they’re all a bunch of mouth-breathing jackasses, too.
Comrade Jake
@jayackroyd:
Good to see that the Sorkin liberal fantasy hour has returned once again.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@jayackroyd: I was alive in 2008, and I don’t remember seeing any kind of anger like that he could have actually built on to accomplish what you are saying. By the time FDR got into office, things were bad enough that they could go after banks.
I still believe that we would have been better off if what happened in 2008 had happened in 2006. What Obama and the Democrats did in 2009 saved the economy enough that most people don’t think it was all that bad. We really needed two years of shitty Republican decisions in order to actually make real changes.
Just Some Fuckhead
@JGabriel: Three scalps gets you in the Cracker Pack.
NickT
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
FDR had a majority in the House of 311-117 and a Senate majority of 59-36. But why should that little detail matter? After all, Obama had exactly the same situation as FDR in the eyes of the purity hypocrites.
DecidedFenceSitter
@jayackroyd: Except he WASN’T in the position that Roosevelt was in. He was in a far weaker position, which was the ENTIRE point of me posting about the make-up of the Senate and House.
When you have 58% in the house, and somewhere between 58-60% in the Senate depending on exactly which month, you don’t have a strong base of support to enact major changes. Because if you lose 1 person, or can’t gain 2 people from the other side of the aisle, that’s it, your changes are kaput, done, nothing happening.
And yeah, I’ll grant you that it is possible that these legislative items are the most that the folks in Congress want. Unfortunately, the only solution to that is electing more and better Democrats. Which oddly enough, is also the solution to my belief that the leadership doesn’t have enough congressional support to enact better legislation.
Whether you are right, or I am right, the solution is the same, now the question is, how do we act on that solution productively and efficiently?
jayackroyd
@NickT:
LOL.
jayackroyd
@Comrade Jake:
TJOP
Jay C
@cathyx:
I don’t think President Obama’s (well-justified) disdain for the DC press is so much based on what they report, but how they report it. “Mainstream” media outlets usually do report what the Administration says/does, then has said reportage hashed to bits by the resident “pundit” class – virtually none of whom would ever dream of actually standing up for a (reasonably) popular liberal/Democratic President and/or any of his policies. Whether out of misguided notions of “fairness”; equally misplaced fear of being perceived as “The Librul Media”; fundamental conservatism, or corporate directives, this country’s political press has, for the most part, adopted the view that a conservative/Republican power structure in DC is the norm; and that is a boat few in the Press Corpse are going risk their lucrative careers by rocking…
cleek
@jayackroyd:
no, he wasn’t. in FDR’s first election, he won 42/48 states. he had a 12 seat majority in the Senate (which didn’t work the same way it does these days). and he had a nearly 200 seat majority in the House.
rikyrah
I love that POTUS and FLOTUS don’t give two shyts about Washington.
JGabriel
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Ah. Yes, I suppose that’s true. Though I honestly wasn’t expecting my innocuous mocking of the NSA’s business seminar speak (Alright team! Let’s go and tap those phones, together!) to be one of the matches that lit the flame this morning.
amk
@NickT: @cleek: Stop pissing facts on their pity parade.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@NickT: Good point.
@jayackroyd: That is not a response, and you know it. Either answer the question or ignore it, but calling people idiots in a cowardly way will generally lead to you getting ignored, which will make us consider your points how?
jayackroyd
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
And my personal recollection of the time was an explosion of fury on the part of voters, with phones ringing off the hooks in DC demanding their be no bailout. In fact, it seems to me that the first bailout vote failed because of the widespread popular reaction.
But that’s neither here nor there. We agree on my central contention, right? That we’re both unhappy with the policy regime we’re living under, and that our differences are over whether this is really the best we could have expected?
NickT
@jayackroyd:
You’ll notice that jayackroyd has never dared to answer the question about his holding any elected office. Why is that? Because it exposes his schtick as schtick. He’s never done any of the actual work of getting policy through by trading votes, winning over Blue Dogs, while fighting a press corps that is ignorant of economics and infected with lazy libertarianism. It’s so much easier and nicer and more fun to sit on the sidelines as part of the luxuriously eternally gleefully betrayed left and throw cynical remarks at people who have to do the dirty work of governing and building majorities.
Jayackroyd is just another standard-issue bullshit artist who knows his own hypocrisy but thinks it’s much easier to grift off the purity rubes than to do an honest day’s work getting policy through.
Napoleon
@jayackroyd:
You live in fantasy land.
Just Some Fuckhead
@JGabriel:
It’s that sorta naivete that makes you so adorable.
jayackroyd
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I don’t see how the question is relevant. Is that better?
jayackroyd
@Napoleon:
TJOP.
Jeremy
The problem with purity progressives is that they set unreasonable expectations when Obama was elected without understanding that even FDR, and LBJ compromised with the largest majorities in history. Social Security was really compromised from the payroll tax to finance it, to the large swath of workers (especially African Americans) who couldn’t get access to it. FDR reversed himself several times by embracing federal stimulus and then embracing austerity (cutting the pensions of federal workers and their pay being one example)
I could go on and on about the history but some “purity” Progressives don’t like to deal with these facts. Obama is not a New Democrat and if you knew his record in the Senate, and State Senate you would know this.
Obama spoke out against “Triangulation” when facing Clinton in the primaries, and as President he never signed any bills similar to Welfare reform, deregulation of Telecoms, Deregulation of key bank regulations, DOMA, etc.
Yes the man compromised on some things but he had to in order to get important legislation through the Senate. Getting 90 % of what you want and campaigned on is not a bad thing.
jayackroyd
@cleek:
Actually, the similarity I was thinking of was an economy in a serious crisis. Crises are opportunities for change. One reason politicians invent crises (“Missile Gap” “War on Drugs” “Window of Opportunity”) is to create an environment for otherwise unpopular or bad policy.
Comrade Jake
The stimulus bill, passed shortly after Obama entered office, received precisely three GOP votes (or two, depending on how one counts Specter) in the Senate. Without those votes, it would not have made it out of the Senate.
Now the stimulus bill was such a awesome display of progressive policy proposals that about half of it was tax cuts. At the time I think Obama’s approval ratings were just north of 60%. And he barely got this passed.
NickT
@Jeremy:
It’s disastrous for the purity hypocrites – which is why they’ve spent so much time trying to pretend that Obama betrayed them. If they admitted that Obama had a pretty damn decent record in office, they’d be exposing their own shell game. That’s why the purist hypocrites have to resort to blatant nonsense about how Obama and FDR had exactly the same situation. Once they admit that their con is a con – well, game over.
jayackroyd
@Jeremy:
“I am a New Democrat,” he told the New Democrat Coalition, according to two sources at the White House session.”
http://americablog.com/2012/05/obama-2006-too-many-of-us-have-been-interested-in-defending-programs-as-written-in-1938.html
But let’s be clear here. You agree that being a New Democrat, being a supporter of the Third Way is a bad position to take, both in terms of policy and politics?
Right?
NickT
@jayackroyd:
More simplistic word games to disguise the fact that you’ve never been elected to any position, never done a day’s work actually getting policy through – in fact, never done anything except grift off the gullible and present yourself as a progressive when in fact you are nothing of the kind.
Jeremy
I would also suggest for those that love to tout the New Deal but bash Obama. Read Micheal Grundwald’s book the new new deal.
The Recovery Act (Though many including myself wished it was larger) was larger than New Deal spending as a percentage of GDP. The stimulus has launched a transition to a clean-energy economy, doubled our renewable power, and financed unprecedented investments in energy efficiency, a smarter grid, electric cars, advanced biofuels, and green manufacturing. It is computerizing America’s pen-and-paper medical system. Its Race to the Top is the boldest education reform in U.S. history. It has put in place the biggest middle-class tax cuts in a generation, the largest research investments ever, and the most extensive infrastructure investments since Eisenhower’s interstate highway system. It includes the largest expansion of antipoverty programs since the Great Society, lifting millions of Americans above the poverty line, reducing homelessness, and modernizing unemployment insurance. Like the first New Deal, Obama’s stimulus has created legacies that last: the world’s largest wind and solar projects, a new battery industry, a fledgling high-speed rail network, and the world’s highest-speed Internet network.
Now tell me how Obama is a “New” Democrat ?
jayackroyd
@NickT:
No. In point of fact, campaigning for Blue Dogs. Pressuring the DCCC to support Blue Dogs. Choosing a champion of capturing GOP seats by running Blue Dogs as his chief of staff.
Comrade Jake
@Jeremy:
Dude, you are so fucking up my argument right now. Fuck!
jayackroyd
@NickT:
You happen to be wrong about that, but it’s not relevant to the discussion.
Nat
I wish firebaggers and teabaggers would jump off the same fucking cliff. Medicare, VRA and CRA were three of the greatest legislative achievements in our country’s history, and they led to Richard Nixon.
The firebagging morons always somehow leave this out when pissing themselves about what ObamaCare hath wrought.
JGabriel
@NickT:
Fair enough. I still think it’s a little silly, but you’re right, it’s not totally unreasonable given the the Guardian’s recent forays to build market share in the US.
GregB
This unmitigated hatred of the DC media is outrageous. It is full of wonderful and warm people. The young Russert boy is a hoot at all of the soirees, dear David Gregory dances up a storm whenever the orchestra plays a snappy tune and the warm crab dip that Misses Krauthammer brings to every party is to die for.
-The Ghost of David Broder
jayackroyd
@Jeremy:
Just to be clear, you agree being a New Democrat is a bad thing, right? You agree supporting the policy positions of the Third Way is a bad thing, right?
MomSense
@NickT:
You know the other thing about FDR policies like Social Security–they pretty much sucked if you were not a traditionally employed white male. In order to get Social Security through the Senate FDR had to compromise with the conservative Southern Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee (sound familiar). They structured SS such that it did not include blahs, people like my grandmother who worked as a domestic. She was only able to participate in Social Security the last year that she worked. He sold out poors and blahs to get Social Security passed. But over time we have expanded it, improved it, and we still have to fight to preserve it. I often ask people whether they would have voted for that first iteration of Social Security. With the benefit of all the intervening years the answer for me is yes!! How would I have felt at that time? I try and keep this in mind because trying to create meaningful, structural change is a patient process.
LAC
@GregB: Lawdy, yes. And you get Cokie and Peggy in their cups and you have a girls’ gab for the ages!
– The other ghost of David Broder (since there are two sides of an issue and both sides do it)
Jeremy
@jayackroyd: Well First of all In that link he never said he was a new democrat. Also, he makes a great point about how times change and you can’t just say that what worked in 1938 will work today or policy has to be crafted in a rigid manner.
I’m not a big fan of the new democrat but, Obama has not done anything close to what Clinton did domestically(deregulation, welfare reform, doma) so I won’t call him one since he hasn’t acted like one.
JGabriel
@GregB: Ha! Well done.
jayackroyd
And again, just for clarity, we’re talking about 50 House members here:
In the 113th Congress, the following 50 members of the House of Representatives currently belong to the New Democrat Coalition:
Terri Sewell (AL-07)
Ron Barber (AZ-02)
Ami Bera (CA-07)
Lois Capps (CA-24)
Susan Davis (CA-53)
Scott H. Peters (CA-52)
Loretta Sanchez (CA-46)
Adam Schiff (CA-28)
Juan Vargas (CA-51)
Jared Polis (CO-2)
Ed Perlmutter (CO-7)
Joe Courtney (CT-2)
Elizabeth Esty (CT-05)
Jim Himes (CT-04)
John C. Carney, Jr.
Joe Garcia (FL-26)
Patrick Murphy (FL-18)
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-23)
John Barrow (GA-12)
David Scott (GA-13)
Colleen Hanabusa (HI-01)
Bill Foster (IL-11)
Mike Quigley (IL-05)
Brad Schneider (IL-10)
André Carson (IN-7)
Cedric Richmond (LA-2)
John Delaney (MD-06)
Gary Peters (MI-14)
Rush D. Holt (NJ-12)
Dan Maffei (NY-24)
Sean Patrick Maloney (NY-18)
Carolyn McCarthy (NY-4)
Gregory Meeks (NY-5)
Eliot L. Engel (NY-16)
Bill Owens (NY-21)
Mike McIntyre (NC-07)
Kurt Schrader (OR-5)
Allyson Schwartz (PA-13)
Pedro Pierluisi
Jim Cooper (TN-05)
Joaquin Castro (TX-20)
Filemon Vela, Jr. (TX-34)
Jim Moran (VA-8), charter member
Gerry Connolly (VA-11)
Suzan DelBene (WA-01)
Denny Heck (WA-10)
Derek Kilmer (WA-06)
Rick Larsen (WA-2)
Adam Smith (WA-9), Vice-Chair, charter member
Ron Kind (WI-3), Vice-Chair, charter member
LAC
@MomSense: You are my hero – I bet your son grew up well. Not the sort to think that flashing gangsta signs with his hat on backwards (yo, wit’ the flame war. Bring it on!) on a site is the height of manhood.
MomSense
@jayackroyd:
But look at the districts that Blue Dogs represent. We lost blue dogs in 2010 to tea party candidates because some of those districts were 60-40 Republican. Part of the 50 state strategy was running candidates who actually stood a chance of being elected in conservative districts.
It is easier to just blame Obama than it is to acknowledge just how conservative this country has become–especially since the Reagan Revolution. We are going to have to do a lot more organizing in conservative districts and be willing to compromise in order to make progress.
jayackroyd
Also, he makes a great point about how times change and you can’t just say that what worked in 1938 will work today or policy has to be crafted in a rigid manner.
That’s New Democrat rhetoric, just by the way. This whole sadly things are different and therefore we have to do things like cut auto worker pay in half to survive in this new modern world is down New Democrat Broadway.
Now I gotta go.
rb
@Comrade Jake: So right about Tapper.
And to add insult to injury, recall that in 2000 it was Tapper (even then a hack, but one not yet completely assimilated) who was so appalled at the way the Village media’s open, sneering contempt for Al Gore compromised their ability to do their jobs. It’s funny to think now that those were the good old days.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@jayackroyd: And what does this have to do with Obama other than representing a group of people he has to get on his side to get legislation passed?
Jeremy
@Nat: They also forget that ACA included the largest expansion of medicaid since it’s creation. The legislation bear similarity to the bill that was negotiated between the Nixon administration and Ted Kennedy as a bipartisan proposal. Ted Kennedy eventually pulled out because the labor unions urged him to wait for single payer. Which didn’t come after Nixon resigned.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@jayackroyd: (Maybe you’ll read this later). Oh, you mean the car companies that are still standing (a pay cut is still smaller than no pay at all) and whose wages are back up and they are receiving bonuses? Those companies?
MomSense
@LAC:
In all honesty I think he just makes me look good–because he has always been great in spite of all my failings! I’m just happy that he actually invites me to do things with him.
Tractarian
Pareene’s graf sums up the single best thing about this president.
Jeremy
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Because Obama is a dictator and can just pass legislation on his own. He is Barack the magic Negro !
I also love how those that claim Obama is a sell out never acknowledge the good he has done.(Executive action on Climate Change) It’s always hatred and this was even before he decided to run for office. The purity Progressives pretend like FDR was this kick ass far left liberal when he was receiving the same criticism we hear today from the purity progressives of that time.
handsmile
@MomSense:
My apologies if this is an unwelcome intrusion (and having how read through the entire thread, perhaps trivial), but having had the pleasure of meeting the RL JGabriel and reading his commentary for the past three years, in this one man’s opinion he’s anything but a douchebag. I’d agree that calling you “parochial” was ill-advised.
I myself found your introduction of the issue of warrants not quite germane to the principal subject and focus of the Guardian article linked by him. The subsequent exchanges between you suggested that you both are in full agreement on the comprehensive scale of British government public surveillance of its citizens.
Belafon (@#57) made an observation about interactions and opinions among members of a shared community that Dr. Freud termed “the narcissism of minor differences.” I think of that phrase quite a lot when I read this blog, especially when raging at comments made by certain individuals whose opinion on other topics I find admirably trenchant and astute.
I believe the customary phrase here is YMMV.
LAC
@MomSense: My kid too – it is like one of those moments when the sun shines on you. All of a sudden you go from a mom who has *sob* NEVER experienced heartbreak and is, like, lame, to a person that they actually say they respect and look up too. It is kinda cool.
MomSense
@DecidedFenceSitter:
I actually think we only had a few months of super majority. First, one of them was Lieberman (I-CT and I’m pretty sure the I stood for Insurance Co.)who had campaigned for Obama’s opponent and was the first to pull out the un-American line. Then it took forever to do all the MN recounts before Franken was finally able to become a senator. Then I think there was the mess in IL with Obama’s seat. Finally everyone was in and then Teddy Kennedy died which ended up in the centerfold Senator Brown who was elected to be the 41st vote to stop health care and financial reform (he got massive $ from banking industry). Byrd was barely functioning and I think hospitalized this entire time and so unwell that Republicans were actually praying he would die and not make it to the Senate floor to vote on ObamaCare.
MomSense
@LAC:
It’s the best!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@handsmile: I’ll have to remember that term ‘the narcissism of minor differences.’ So, it’s been around a while.
Jeremy
@jayackroyd: Well the problem with that is you have to look at their voting records to determine where they fit politically.
There are republicans in the republican mainstreet group (which is a moderate-centrist republican group) but some of the people listed as members are actually conservative by their voting records.
It’s way more complex so talking about Obama making a speech to the Brookings Institute (when he was running to get elected president) means little. You have to look at the platform and the overall votes they take. Hell, I could take a speech from when Reagan was President to make him look like a liberal.
bemused
I wanted to gag when Bush gave press nicknames but they didn’t seem to resent it. On the contrary,they seemed to love being patronized…reminded me of high school suckups.
Kay
@MomSense:
I think Lieberman was protecting providers not insurance companies. I know CT is an insurance industry state, but Medicare at 55 probably helps insurance companies. They’d love to off-load the over 50 crowd on Medicare, because over 50 use all the medical care.
Lieberman appeared at a press conference with the AMA after he killed it. One of the things that was fake about our health care “debate” was how providers were never questioned. It was ALL insurance companies. Should have been both. It woukd have been a better debate if we had also discussed the cost of health care. No one wanted to do that, because then you get into REALLY hard questions.
MomSense
@handsmile:
I should probably just read all these Guardian/Spying things with bemusement and scroll past them. I read that article and honestly it was pretty vague. Interestingly, the one thing that jumped off the page at me was the bit about the 51%–now there is something, if true, to pursue because that suggests that there is a regulatory framework which is circumventing both the intent and the letter of the law. On the other hand, FISA does give a 5 day window of time to conduct surveillance before seeking a warrant. Just to be clear, FISA ’78 gave them 3 days and this was extended to 5 in 2008.
I also should say that I had a dear friend who died a few years ago but who lived in Europe and ran a major telecom before retiring. His tour of all the listening stations and the ways in which European countries monitor each other and us was fascinating! I don’t know how far north you have traveled here in Maine but we had listening stations here. Let’s just say that there is going to be a lot of feigned outrage publicly by all the pols but privately there is considerable snooping and sharing by all sides.
jayackroyd
@Jeremy: Right. His speeches don’t count because you have to look at the policies, not the politics. And the policies don’t count because he isn’t a dictator, and has to deal in the real world. His membership in centrist organizations doesn’t count because they are part of the electoral process.
It’s just sad.
IAC, you DO agree that the centrist, New Democrat agenda is a bad in policy terms and political terms, right?
We’re only discussing whether we have any choice in what we can actually implement, and that if it were up to us, a policy discussion between you and me, we’d largely agree, right?
MomSense
@Kay:
Except that insurance companies were getting a really sweet deal and were being reimbursed at 114% of cost for all the Medicare Supplemental plans. Bottom line is that they just didn’t want anything to pass. He used to be in favor of lowering Medicare eligibility to age 55 until there seemed to be enough momentum for that option to pass the PPACA–and then he had a big change of heart.
They also hate, hate, hate the medical loss ratio and all the regulations about what constitutes actual health care expenditures.
I really think his job was just to kill it.
catclub
@MomSense: how much of the exchanges between eavesdropping organizations are referred to? I always understood that we monitored British subjects, since they could not, while they monitored US subjects, then the two organizations just swapped info. Likewise for France or Germany.
Davis X. Machina
@NickT: U6 approaching, or over 40%. U3 over, or approaching 25%. That’s the climate that breeds unicorns.
RaflW
@Comrade Jake: Most of those tax cuts were payroll tax cuts that were and are considered highly stimulative. It was about the only Keynsian thing Dems could get past an already assholish GOP, and yes, Obama is from the moderate/business-y wing of the Dems that believes in traditional macroeconomics.
Just because Repubs say “tax cuts” every time they speak doesn’t mean tax cuts are never the right policy prescription.
I do think Obama’s WH failed to effectively message and politically use the tax cuts (ie he didn’t get credit for them, didn’t use them as clear evidence that he’s not an ultra-leftie) but tax cuts as part of a macro response to the deep recession had sound reasoning behind it.
There could have been a different path to stimulus that didn’t include a payroll tax cut, but political passage of an all-spending bill would have been incredibly difficult if not impossible.
Steeplejack
@jayackroyd:
What is “TJOP”?
jayackroyd
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
We haven’t seen this kind of wage reduction in the rest of the OECD. We’ve seen the sharing of productivity gains between capital and labor come to an end. Rising inequality,and reduced wages and opportunities for workers is a policy choice we need not make. The discussion here is whether the Third Way people are right and this is an inescapable policy choice, or whether governments like Norway or Germany are correct in being able to sustain a competitive global economy along with greater distributional equality.
Dean Baker discusses these issues in his book, The End of Loser Liberalism
jayackroyd
@Steeplejack: That’s Just Our Point
burnspbesq
@jayackroyd:
Sigh. A majority that included Joe Liebermam was not “filibuster-proof” in any meaningful sense of the word. You know that. What do you hope to achieve by denying reality?
P.S. I slaughtered your unicorn and turned it into cat food.
MikeJ
@Davis X. Machina: I guess that makes it too bad Obama only had a max U6 of 17.1%.
jayackroyd
I’ve asked this question of a few people here none of whom have answered it.
You do agree that the policy regime we’re living under is not the policy regime we’d prefer, right? The argument is not over whether it would have been better to have more stimulus with more investment in infrastructure, preservation of government jobs at all levels preservation of our social insurance programs, and affordable universal access to health care. The disagreement is not about goals, but about tactics and the achievability of those goals in the current environment?
That is, we agree the New Democrat/Third Way policies are wrong-headed. Right?
NickT
@jayackroyd:
Oh yes it is. You’ve contributed nothing but extreme hypocrisy to this discussion. You’ve peddled ignorant nonsense about FDR, when the facts are readily available. You’ve bashed Obama for getting the most significant piece of legislation through since LBJ – and you’ve shown no evidence that you’ve run as much as a lemonade stand. Yes, Obama campaigned for Blue Dogs – and so would any sane Democrat in their districts. Where are all the “progressives” you elected by force of will alone? Why, nowhere. You’ve failed miserably to achieve a majority – and probably cost us part of the slender one we had by your poisonous whining. You want respect, earn it. Do something constructive for a change. Hell, since it’s all so easy, get yourself elected and then show us just how easy it is to pass progressive legislation.
But somehow I doubt you’ll ever do any of this. Now tell me how unfair it is to judge you and your little band of purity hypocrites by your actual record of doing absolutely nothing but whine and snivel.
RaflW
@MomSense: Yep.
That was some Super-Duper “supermajority” wannit?
Oh the good old days.
NickT
@burnspbesq:
Bad news. The FDA rejected that unicorn as composed of poisonous hallucinogenic substances of an alien origin. Apparently those magical sparkleponies just aren’t good for anything.
Jeremy
@jayackroyd: I said that some of the new democrat stuff is bad. The problem is that you see everything through this purity prism. If someone doesn’t do everything you say or agree with you 100 % then you consider that person a sellout.
Now is the president perfect ? No he is not but he has done more for the left than Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter ever did when they were in office. From the Recovery act investments, executive action/ regulations on Climate change/ the environment, from expansion of Children’s health insurance, to ACA and the expansion of medicaid, Equal pay law, hate crimes legislation, the fair sentencing act, credit card reform, Student loan reform (eliminating subsidies for the banks), the repeal of DADT, and the fight to end Prop 8 and Doma, ending the war in Iraq and now Afghanistan, the Start Treaty, and even now he is looking to find ways (reported by Newsweek) to finally close Guantanamo.
There are not prefect presidents. FDR could be made to look like a “New Democrat” if you looked at the harsh austerity he endorsed and some of the compromises he went along with. But FDR was still a great president.
Tone in DC
LULz.
I can’t feed into ANOTHER “how BHO has failed us ELEVENTY!!!1!” comment battle. Just can’t do it.
What I can do is appreciate a bit of caustic humor on a Friday morning
jayackroyd
@burnspbesq:
TJOP.
Harry Reid, and his 58 colleagues were incapable of exerting influence on Lieberman sufficient to prevent him filibustering his party’s legislation? Really? Not getting his vote, but not having him filibuster? Really? Sadly, the Majority Leader is also powerless…..
Sometimes you really do have to consider the possibility they are getting the policies they want.
NickT
@jayackroyd:
Whereas you, of course, used your mind-control ray to gag Joe Lieberman and tie him to a post in the basement until he promised to give you all his toys.
Oh wait…..
Sometimes you really do have to consider the possibility that purity hypocrites are getting exactly the policies they want.
Infamous Heel-Filcher
My Google skills may have deserted me this morning, but what is this “TJOP” y’all keep throwing around?
MikeJ
@jayackroyd: Stop trying to make fetch happen.
NickT
@Infamous Heel-Filcher:
It’s purity trollspeak for DERP. Being purity trolls, they demand their 100% pure and virtuous spelling of it.
Omnes Omnibus
@jayackroyd: No, we agree that they are not the optimal solutions. If the optimal solutions are not politically feasible, is it better to hold out for them or to take the half a loaf that is feasible? I think that is where the differences really can be found. Half a loaf can improve things and be built upon. OTOH half a loaf could slake the momentum for reform or be too little at too much cost.
Jeremy
@burnspbesq: He thinks people like mary landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman, Max Baucus, Mark Pryor would have accepted a pure liberal agenda. LOL !
When JFK was president he could barely get any of his big ticket items like Civil Rights legislation, a Tax Cut and Medicare through Congress though it was under Democratic control. Because conservative democrats were hesitant to support it along with a number of republicans. It wasn’t until his death and 2/3 majorities after the 1964 election until they were able to pass what became the Great Society.
So I guess JFK would be considered a sorry president and a sell out for failing to live up to all of his promises according to the purity progressives.
Infamous Heel-Filcher
Never mind, refreshed thread. Carry on.
the Conster
LOL at purity trolls love for “Obama should be like FDR eleventy!111!!” Wasn’t there something in FDR’s 4 terms about rounding up American citizens for internment camps, or did I just imagine that?
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Jeremy: I’m an fan of the guy. Well, OK, not really a fan, but he was by orders of magnitude the least worst option we have had for a president this decade. But let’s not bullshit ourselves. “Race To The Top” – and Obama’s education policy in general – has been an unmitigated disaster.
Kay
@MomSense:
Right, but if you look at is 20% of premiums going towards 80% of claims, over 55 are not the people insurance companies turn a profit on.
I understand why no one wanted to talk about providers. It”s politically toxic because then you get into who gets what care and how much is too much, but it isn’t an honest debate unless you include payment mechanisms AND what we’re paying for.
No one wanted to go there. Every issue was narrowed to insurance companies. That’s politically pragmatic for both liberals AND Democrats, but it’s only half the story.
We are eventually going to have to have a real debate about the cost of medical care. It can be public, but if the public can’t handle it, it will be private, between lawmakers and lobbyists.
I don’t think the public CAN handle it. I remember the absolute freak out when experts released the report that we do too much medical testing. People went INSANE, on this blog! It was perceived as rationing, and it was just a recommend!
Davis X. Machina
@MikeJ: And among the college-educated? Among white people?
Not bad enough times to drive major change on a “Don’t just stand there, do something” scale. Once the financial system was prevented from completely seizing up, it was easy to coast.
A credible threat of mass social unrest lies behind any major, systemic change. As it is, except for Germay (and Spain, but it was pretty backwards) the major industrialized democracies came out of the Depression with the same constitutions they had going in…. (Italy flipped in the early 20’s)
Forum Transmitted Disease
@burnspbesq: Not that you should care, but you’ve earned my respect with that line. I’m going to be laughing about that all day.
jayackroyd
This caricature gets in the way of helpful discussion. Nobody agrees with me 100%. For instance, nobody else agrees with me that we should abolish the corporate income tax or if not that at least get rid of tax exempt organizations. On health care there are plenty of acceptable solutions, but the one we have now isn’t acceptable. The only defense for it is that it was the best we could do in difficult and it’s a camel’s nose under the tent. In fact, that’s the only defense I hear people make.
There are plenty of good ideas I have, like giving everybody a debit account at the Fed with ATM machines in every post office that are non-starters. Like Atrios idea of fixing all the water mains in the country. Or the obviously good idea of fixing all the bridges that are grade B or less. Our inability to implement obviously good public policy, and to eliminate obviously bad public policy,like building the F35 or retaining our full complement of nukes is also interesting. I would argue the recondite quality of our policy making apparatus is evidence of very deep corruption. The degree to which the president himself is complicit or simply weak is unknowable. But he is part of a leadership apparatus that is failing the nation pretty badly.
Again, you can just blame the Republicans,and say more Team Dem will cure what ails us. I don’t think available evidence supports that contention. Even when they are in power,they are, sadly, powerless because Lieberman or because Baucus or because globalization.
Jeremy
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Well like I said no president is perfect. You can look into every president’s record and find areas where the policy was not good or a mistake.
The point I was making is that some progressives will always be upset if they believe a democrat has to be 100 % pure. FDR, Truman, Wilson, JFK, LBJ, etc. wouldn’t be able to meet those standards.
ericblair
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s a personality issue. The moderate will say yes, usually half a loaf is good, because it will solve at least part of the problem and under many conditions it will make it easier to improve later. The radical (not a slur, just descriptive) will say no, that will convince people that the problem is solved and will then be forgotten about: you need to hit bottom so that there will be impetus to solve the problem completely.
The trouble is, we have a good amount of evidence that when the half-a-loaf solution fails lawmakers don’t double down and try harder, they quit. Look at the previous failed experiences with healthcare reform: they took the issue off the table for a generation. Then the half-a-loaf solution of the initial Social Security legislation didn’t get left to rot: it was expanded upon for decades. I can see where some half-a-loaf solutions could theoretically cut off future improvements, but I don’t see it in practice. We get evolutionary, not revolutionary change, and if we are in a situation where we get revolutionary change it’s nowhere near guaranteed that the change is going to be progressive.
NickT
@Jeremy:
I doubt you could find any society in history where policy was perfect at the first go around. Even the idealized dictatorships for which our little purists so obviously hunger screwed up a phenomenal amount of stuff on a regular basis.
NickT
@ericblair:
I find your impure lack of progressive faith in the Great Leap Forward deeply disturbing.
jayackroyd
@Infamous Heel-Filcher: That’s Just Our Point.
jayackroyd
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thank you. Why is that so hard for people to say?
Kay
@MomSense:
Vermont and MA to me are good examples. Vermont approached cost honestly. They started there. “We’ll do single payer, but we plan to regulate what and how much”. MA went the other route, where they focused on the payment mechanism. Only now are they reaching COST.
The VT approach just strikes me as more straightforward, in terms of a “debate”
They ACTUALLY and OPENLY said “who gets what and how much does it cost?”
MomSense
@catclub:
I don’t know the answer to that question and I’m sure there are also different levels of exchanges. We could get mired in all of the lower level exchanges that happen between Mexico and the US re: drug trafficking and never have time to discuss all of the other exchanges.
NickT
@Kay:
I get the impression that Vermont has more of a tradition of open local democracy and discussion at that level, whereas Massachusetts seems to do most of its public policy at a fairly removed state level. I think that might have made a difference, in that Vermont could bring people on board with the idea more directly and with less chance of it being demagogued out of all recognition.
amk
@jayackroyd:
Google “Scotland’s national animal”.
Just do it, man.
Redshirt
What’s more illuminating in these “discussions” is how some people who are nominally informed and interested in politics still don’t understand what’s happening. Now, take that, and imagine the lack of knowledge in someone who pays no interest in politics whatsoever.
This is in the Repukes gameplan, because they bet – correctly most of the time – that most won’t understand the process, and thus blame will be shifted to “Washington” or “Congress” or better yet, since 2008 to now, the President.
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
Christ, the past week is giving me comment nostalgia for the days of Brick Oven Bill.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@jayackroyd:
Is TJOP the new ‘cudlip’?
Jeremy
@NickT: True !
Jockey Full of Malbec
@NickT:
When I noted the top-down thinking of this “New-New Left” the other day, this is what I meant: They seem to crave a King of their own.
IMO that’s just not an impulse we need coded into liberal DNA. It’s an impulse that can lead to some very bad places, in the future.
Marc
From the OP:
Only in the sense that the DC press and lefty bloggers are both determined never to give him the slightest fucking credit for the things he’s done right.
NickT
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
The funny thing is that the purists love to denounce others as Obots – but they are the ones who have this weird inverted cult of personality where Obama is all-powerful and just refuses to make their dreams come true out of malice. They’ve got a Powerful Daddy complex that must leave David Brooks and Peggy Noonan green* with envy at times.
*In a strictly non-environmental sense, of course.
jayackroyd
@ericblair:
There’s an argument that compromise is counterproductive, that it rewards corrupt logrollers and deters innovators. Look at the Farm Bill for a persistent example. The PPACA represented, to my mind needless and counterproductive, compromises with providers, gatekeepers and skimmers. The only explanation for letting these people dictate public policy is corruption,particularly corruption in the Senate. Upthread there is castigation of Lieberman and his role. That’s pretty clearly a case of corruption–but letting him keep his committee chair when he refuses to follow leadership dictates on cloture can’t be called anything but complicity. Moreover,it is complicity of the entire caucus; they’ve chosen Reid.
I don’t think this is about Obama per se. I don’t think Clinton or Edwards would have been appreciably different. Obama (and the presidency in general) is something of a shiny object. Making it about Obama is a distraction.
jayackroyd
@Jockey Full of Malbec: it’s old for me actually. The guy who coined it runs the NBER these days.
Marc
@MikeJ:
Or that Ted Kennedy died. Or that Al Franken couldn’t carry Minnesota by more than three hundred votes. Or that Massachussetts had to rewrite its laws about appointing senators because in 2004 they were so worried that Mitt Romney would be naming the replacement for President Kerry. Or that primary voters thought Martha Coakley would make a hell of a senator.
Obama had his “filibuster-proof majority” for about five months, much of that time with Kennedy out of commission or Congress in recess. If the left critics of Obama detect a certain disdain for their grasp of political realities, it’s because they have yet to show any.
NickT
@jayackroyd:
And now you see the utter emptiness of the purity hypocrites. If one dishonest argument fails, they just scurry on to the next one, shamelessly.
jayackroyd
@amk:
The reflexive personal disparagement is dispiriting. Re unicorns:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/settled.png
Tone in DC
I like it.
Reality has a liberal bias, but only when one actually pays attention.
jayackroyd
@NickT: Can you please explain what you mean by that?
NickT
@jayackroyd:
TJOP
NKGFY.
Steeplejack
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
Seriously, I’d like to know where it comes from, and why jayackroyd assumes it’s so common that he can sprinkle it around with no context. As an amateur etymologist and out-of-it old person, I got on the Google to educate myself, and I couldn’t find it anywhere, even going pages deep in the hits.
And why wouldn’t it be “TJMP”?
Kay
@NickT:
Vermont had something else. They had a non-profit network of providers; community health centers. They had a base to build a payment mechanism on.
I just wish it could be more honest. I once used a community health center for a pregnancy and delivery, and I really got excellent care. I have a comparison, because I later had health insurance so went thru the private system. It wasn’t “private” in the sense that I often had to wait and the single MD was just not available at my beck and call at the community health center (she didn’t have time) but I saw that as a trade-off, that’s why it cost 800 dollars in interest-free payments. The fact is there would be real resistance among the general (insured, college educated) portion of the population if they were all directed to community health centers. We never reached “health care” for a reason. A huge portion of voters get very good private health care, and they want to keep it. That political reality was never discussed. Obama knew it, because all politicians know it. It’s why he kept saying “you can keep your doctor and your plan!”
Davis X. Machina
@Kay: How many teaching hospitals are there in MA? In VT?
That, and not political culture, or even state size, is your difference.
NickT
@Kay:
I am sure that network helped – but I do get the impression that they are much better at talking at the local level and getting buy-in from various sections of the community – which you don’t see much of in Massachusetts (or Connecticut for that matter).
jayackroyd
@Davis X. Machina: It’s increasingly looking like the post-war, pre-embargo period was an aberration–that we’re returning to the normal state of affairs.
MomSense
@Kay:
I do think those are interesting examples. In Maine we tried to do Dirigo health but found out pretty quickly that it is impossible for a small state to try and implement something like universal health insurance coverage on your own. I don’t think that VT could attempt their version of single payer without the rest of the PPACA behind them.
MA is a really interesting case because Romney was governor and really pushed health care because of the individual mandate. When we say that MA focused on access and not cost we are talking about what happens when you have the mandate without the medical loss ratio. Republicans loved the mandate without the medical loss ratio. They organized against the mandate provision in 2009-10 but that was just the easiest thing to sell to the public.
Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements are changing. The next thing that is coming under the Advisory provision of the PPACA is the change from fee for service to fee per condition reimbursement. Essentially they are just going to force providers to follow the best practices of places like the Mayo Clinic which cost less and have better outcomes.
BTW when they released how much procedures and operations cost here at all the hospitals there was a lot of shock about the pricing discrepancies.
MomSense
@jayackroyd:
Ok but the PPACA wasn’t the only legislation in the pipeline. Lieberman was a key vote on repeal of DADT, START, etc. The House passed a pretty good climate change bill and Lieberman not only would have been a big Yes but he would have worked for that legislation and brought others in.
I understand the frustration and the desire to play hardball and all the catharsis that comes with that but it is not responsible governance.
Kay
@NickT:
There’s just so much to it. We had a funny thing happen here, in the middle of the fake-debate on health care. We have a single for-profit hospital. It was always really bare-bones, not at all luxurious. Right before the crash, they borrowed a bunch of money and made it bigger (I have no idea why, there’s no population growth in the county) and much fancier.
The CEO was writing these blistering editorials about how “Obamacare” was going to kill his hospital, and there was just NO discussion of his decisions to borrow all that money and build atriums and fountains and such. The new fancier hospital was an unquestioned “good”, and all we were going to discuss was how to pay for it. I guess his approach was “not pay for it”, because he had no alternate ideas on Obamacare. What he wants is his traditional rural health care subsidy for his hospital, and no public debate on the subsidy or how he spends the gubmint money.
Kay
@MomSense:
That was UNDER discussed, the conservative opposition to anything that might actually regulate costs. They were fighting this two front battle, publicly decrying THE COST and privately blocking every cost provision.
It became fashionable for uninformed conservatives to insist that there were no cost provisions in the law (Andrew Sullivan! Step up!) WHILE elected conservatives were frantically undoing any attempt at cost control. What did they think the fierce opposition to the Medicare-Medicaid director was about?
The level of bullshit that went on in this debate was just epic. It may be historic :)
NickT
@Kay:
I suppose it would be evil and socialist and possibly Muslim of me to wonder just how much his salary has risen over the last five years.
MomSense
@Kay:
Ok, that one is too easy. DEATH PANELS!!! ;p
It really was just epic BS.
Kay
@NickT:
He’s paid really, really well. Unfortunately, he’s the “go to” guy on health care for the local newspaper. He won’t talk to me, like, in person. He pretends I’m not there. I think it’s childish. His wife likes me though.
When Sherrod Brown came to town we said “we see you’re meeting with the hospital CEO. You should know he trashes you and the health care law at every opportunity”. He just laughed. They lobby him all the time, and he gets them rural health care funding, unsurprisingly, because only 25% of the county are college educated, so we have a lot of uncompensated care. They’re like secret Democrats, over there. They want the money, but not discussed publicly.
Kay
@MomSense:
I still feel bad about him. He was this hugely ethical physician and they turned him into a monster. He has a sense of humor about it. I read a speech he gave after his ordeal and he presented it as entering this strange alternative universe, where facts just don’t matter. It must be hard for people who are not completely insane.
I like having Cordray in there at consumer protection because he’s a really astute politician in addition to qualified. I don’t think any of this bullshit surprises him.
jayackroyd
@MomSense: I take your point. (Where in Maine,by the way? I grew up in Windham.)
But I also think that a party can,and should, demand,at minimum, support on procedural actions. That is, you can vote your conscience on the bill itself, but it is simply unacceptable to support a filibuster.
My point is that the our leaders in the Senate used the filibuster to avoid up or down votes on what would have been hugely popular programs–in this case a health care initiative that was more broadly based and cut costs more, and did both more rapidly. The stakeholders, from the perspective of the Democratic leadership, including the President and Rahm, were seen as including the providers and the insurers. Not only do I think this is bad policy and bad politics that played a role (along with an inadequate stimulus) in the 2010 debacle but I don’t see how you can not say that this was failure on the part of the President and the leadership. And that this failure is driven by corruption of the process.
Now you can say corruption is also an inevitable part of the political process everyone in the Party did the best they could–that it was necessary to have a Pharma lobbyist write the Pharma language in the bill, for instance. Or that the real experts on world financial systems are the banksters and their advice should be sought and followed, But I insist on labeling this Third Way centrism, an ideological rejection of good public policy.
cleek
even FDR was seem as a compromising sell-out, by the Purists of his day.
Purity is about being Pure in the eyes of fellow Purists; it’s not about getting anything done.
FlipYrWhig
@jayackroyd : I’ll offer you a paraphrase:
“President Obama, all liberal people are for you!”
“That’s not enough. I need a majority.”
It’s just undeniable that when the Democratic Party had a majority, the liberal wing of the party was constrained by the non-liberals. Make a list of Democrats in office who are not reliably liberal and you’ll find that it’s very long.
To the point, then. This whole long-running debate, then, seems to come down to what the Democratic Party needs to do when it is ideologically heterodox: scale back, make compromises, and water things down to keep the coalition together, or have a lot of quixotic failures that even while losing galvanize support, raise awareness, and point the way forward. Would you agree with that? It appears to me that you have a lot of disdain for the first option. Fair enough. I don’t have a lot of hope in the effectiveness of the second. Why is it that you do? Or am I mischaracterizing your argument?
MomSense
@jayackroyd:
I live in Mid Coast but grew up in Kennebunk. Windham is a great town! Have you been following the pipeline issue?
Lieberman chose to caucus with the Democrats (which wasn’t certain in Jan 2009) but he became an Independent after the 2006 fiasco so I’m not sure that there was that much space to strong arm him. Also, we hate it when Republicans don’t break away from their party to vote for things.
I do think it was necessary to bring the Pharmaceutical Industry in otherwise they would have joined with the insurance company to fight the legislation. They spent a fortune killing the Clinton health care plan. Take someone like Sen. Rockefeller who had for years sponsored legislation on pharmaceutical pricing, competition, etc. He actually voted against an amendment in the Senate Finance Committee that would have regulated pharmaceuticals in line with what he had been trying to do for years. Do you think it was corruption in that case? I think he just wanted to pass the PPACA and wasn’t going to jeopardize it by trying to slay all the dragons at once.
I guess your Third Way is my pragmatist.
ruemara
@jayackroyd: You have the most magnificent set of factual blinders on.
FlipYrWhig
@jayackroyd: How would a party make that demand not to support a filibuster? Take away committee assignments? Withhold re-election campaign funds? Because the irritant being punished (for good cause) can always say “Do your worst, but if you drive me out, you’re sure going to hate the guy my state sends here in my place.” Blanche Lincoln was a pain in the ass, but John Boozman isn’t an upgrade. That’s something to weigh too. If you decide it’s worth it to teach Blanche Lincoln and future Blanche Lincolns a lesson about betraying the party, great, but until you have a coalition so massive it doesn’t need any Blanche Lincolns, that’s a serious gamble. I can see it either way, but I’m not surprised that the Democratic Party as a whole would rather try for narrow majorities that include illiberal pains in the ass than undertake a vision quest that puts them in the 40-ish-seat wilderness for years rebuilding a more reliable liberal and/or populist politics. ETA: Because that isn’t guaranteed to work either.
I’m a Phillies fan. The way baseball works these days, a .500 team has a shot to get hot at the right time and make the playoffs. The Phillies have a lot of aging veterans right now. They would be be better off for the long term trading away those vets for prospects. But that would also condemn them to not making the playoffs for a little while. So it’s not surprising that instead of rebuilding they think about keeping the aging vets and even adding a relief pitcher or two, because maybe they’ll scrape together 85 wins that way and make the playoffs. That’s what the Democratic Party keeps doing, especially IMHO because the Republicans are so crazy that it seems easy enough to poach votes from non-crazy Republicans by running colorless functionaries.
It’s a coherent strategy if the goal is to win, hold ground, and make incremental improvements to policy. It’s a terrible strategy if the goal is to recalibrate politics in a fundamental way. But I’m not sure that I’ll live to see any fundamental shifts like those. If incrementalism is the best we’ve got, caution and restraint might be more productive, as little as they are inspiring. Would that it were not so. YMMV.
Joel
@Kay: the mammogram recs, I remember. The report revealed that too much testing shortened lifespan (ie the worst outcome). But the recs were taken as antifeminist in some corners, regardless.
jayackroyd
@FlipYrWhig:
Rick Perlstein had an interesting post on the history of this that I can’t put my hands on. If I find it I’ll pass it on. We are living in the interesting time of the Senate, in particular, polarizing along strictly party lines rather than party/regional/economic interests lines. The coalitions aren’t shifting anymore, which renders the underlying collegiality model non-functional.
To your particular point, I think there are times to move boldly and times when you hold the line, when you ratchet forward, and then hold the ratchet. So when you defend the PPACA a historic shifting of the ratchet in the right direction, you have a point. The desperate GOP battle to prevent any sort of implementation is evidence for that position
BUT. We’ve spent way too much time, in my opinion,fighting holding actions when we should be extending. The SS fight shouldn’t have been over cuts, but increases in payroll taxes for the top quintile. Government jobs should have been expanded,not shrunk. Deficits should have been embraced. And, yes, the PPACA could and should have been far better. I attribute this to dominance of centrist/New Dem/Third Way ideology in the leadership.
Note that when I say far better,or say extending,I mean that the politics and policy results of pursuing a centrist agenda have been predictably bad, and I don’t attribute THIS to a need to compromise. The idea of public/private partnership is a terrible innovation that has always proven to be terribly unpopular, because it reinforces a trend toward rewarding the top percentile at the expense of everyone else.
See Chris Hayes’ book for a detailed discussion of what’s going on.
jayackroyd
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah, I woulda stripped Lieberman of Homeland Security if he refused to vote with the leadership on procedural matters. And, yeah, withhold DSCC funds. And say mean things. I think you’re falling into the GOP trap of regarding this filibuster everything business as the new normal. BUT, as I also said, the Senate has the leadership they want,and what they want, in my opinion, is to avoid up or down votes on popular legislation that would not benefit their donors and employers of former staff members.
FlipYrWhig
@jayackroyd: I chiefly attribute the shortcomings of the biggest policy items to the difficulty of building consensus when there’s a large amount of significant disagreement among the people sitting around the table. I know that you’re inclined to saying that the outcomes may actually be the desired outcomes, and I disagree about that. I think they have all the signs of committee work that includes uncooperative assholes, because I have been on a lot of committees that include uncooperative assholes.
jayackroyd
@MomSense:
It’s a little weird visiting Windham. Growing up there it was rural–still a dairy farm next door, actually. But it’s become a Portland suburb complete with powerhouse HS football teams. Well, powerhouse for Maine, anyway. I went to Cheverus in part because my father wanted his sons to play football.
I recall the PPACA story as you’ve told it.. I do think we ended up where the Dole/Daschle plan that was originally intended to be the policy. Dole had promised GOP votes for that plan, enough for passage. When that didn’t happen, a reasonable response would have been to move away from compromise (you weren’t getting any votes for it anyway) and ram legislation through. That also, of course, could have been a threat to use when seeking votes from GOP senators. Starting from Dole/Daschle left the Dems with no bargaining chips when the promised support didn’t materialize. So the fight became bringing stakeholders on board for Dole/Daschle.
Again, the routine filibuster breaks the seek bipartisan compromise approach. You can pick people off and let caucus members off the hook when you’re trying to get to 51. You just can’t do that at 60.
In any case, I believe Dole/Daschle is what the president wanted, and what the president got. By and large, I think the president and the leadership have gotten what they wanted. You may think that he got all he could,and there we disagree perhaps.
FlipYrWhig
@jayackroyd: I think the Senate Democratic leadership primarily wants to keep the numbers of Senate Democrats as high as possible, which means acting super accommodating when a Democratic Senator says he or she will bolt on this vote and not lend support to future votes. That’s why the people with the most leverage are the red-state Democrats (who can always make an argument about how they have to be careful not to jeopardize their reelection prospects). Lieberman was a special case, because he wasn’t even in the party anymore. But at any rate that group of Democrats realized that there was a lot of leverage in being coy about what would be involved in their being the 60th vote, wink.
jayackroyd
@FlipYrWhig: Fair enough.
jayackroyd
@FlipYrWhig: Sure, and that’s an artifact of GOP party discipline and a lack of party discipline on the Dem side. This would not be an issue, really, if we didn’t have the new supermajority rules.
FlipYrWhig
@jayackroyd: Agreed, but I think greater party discipline is a long-term project that probably isn’t best undertaken when Republican party discipline is so high and feverish that Democrats can pick off voters who might vote Republicans if not for their lockstep conformity. Basically what we need is so many passionate liberal voters that the erstwhile Rockefeller Republicans who now often vote for Democrats can go back to being Republicans without it costing Democrats too many elections. And I totally agree that tossing the filibuster (at least in its current form) would be a step in the right direction. But the Senate’s old hands are a barrier there, for deep-seated reasons that don’t have to do with electoral prospects and thus aren’t particularly susceptible to grassroots pressure.
Ramalama
@DecidedFenceSitter: Here’s the thing. I have stopped myself from asking the if not x then y thing. Which means I can get as angry as I want to be about Obama rolling over countless times for assholes and not think about what would have happened had I voted for Cheney/McCain/Romney etc. I never would have voted for those crooks. I just want the person I cast my Yea for to actually heed a few things since I helped get him his job.
AxelFoley
@cathyx:
You cannot be serious.
AxelFoley
@cvstoner:
Yup, confirmed troll.
lojasmo
@jayackroyd:
There was a filibuster proof majority for a grand total of fourteen weeks.
Know what kind of sweeping reform happens in Washington DC in a span of fourteen weeks?
None. Nothing happens in DC in fourteen weeks time.
I think there are some cobwebs under the bridge that need tending to.
AxelFoley
@lol:
Fucking PWN’D.
lojasmo
@jayackroyd:
Oof. How many times are you going to insist on being wrong?
http://www.blackcommentator.com/48/48_cover.html