Jonathan Bernstein argues that Obamacare, even if very successful as a matter of policy, won’t help Democrats much politically because once a party attains its ostensible objectives — be it Medicare or the fall of the Soviet Union — the conversation moves away from that objective in a way that may not help the party at all.
SteveM makes a perverse but profound point:
So if Bernstein is right, and the most motivated voters are the ones who haven’t gotten what they want from their party, then Democrats may win elections forever, because Republicans will never let Democrats give voters what they want.
Part of the genius of the Buchanan-Nixon playbook that’s dominated politics for the last 40 years is that it relies on battles that can never be won, grievances that can never be fully addressed. Civil rights will never be revoked (overturning VRA was bad, but it didn’t bring back Jim Crow), Roe v. Wade will likely never be reversed (and if it was, it would be a disaster for Republicans). So you can motivate some blocks of conservatives with abortion and xenophobia literally forever.
The GOP is now engaged in unprecedented efforts to block everything Obama is trying to do. That’s why I think this time may be different, that we’re entering a long cycle where Democrats have an advantage. If Republicans got out of the way and let Democrats implement health care reform, immigration reform, economic stimulus measures, and so on, they’d be better off in the long run. The public is ultimately with Democrats on these issues (despite what polls say about Obamacare), and the Republicans would be better off bowing out and picking better fights later.
Librarian
Speaking of the Stones, Mick Jagger will be 70 tomorrow.
cokane
“hte” is the the new “teh”
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Not for lack of trying around heah.
Dave
Yeah, you know, it’s thrilling to imagine a permanent Democratic majority, but, uh, actual progress would be nice.
Further, civil rights and healthcare aren’t grievances for large voting blocks like abortion and race are for the right. They’re hopes. Democrats aren’t going to exploit people’s hopes all the way to a 40 year majority because, really, hope doesn’t work that way.
It’s fun to troll conservatives about their intransigence, though, I guess, huh.
grape_crush
> “The public is ultimately with Democrats on these issues (despite what polls say about Obamacare), and the Republicans would be better off bowing out and picking better fights later. “
Not that I disagree, but coming from here, that would be considered concern trolling if the person reading is a GOPer.
From Ornstein over at AEI or the USA Today editorial board, not so much.
MattF
Ha ha, as if ‘logic’ was an option for Republicans. News flash: it’s not.
Luthe
Yeah, but as Democrats we like to shoot ourselves in the
headfoot by whining and complaining when we don’t get what we want and then boycotting the election/voting for Nader because our pony didn’t arrive on time.Unhappy conservative voters might show up at the polls on the regular, but unhappy liberals tend bitch and moan.
Doug Milhous J
@cokane:
Heh.
Roger Moore
Only if you care exclusively about the horse race. If you think politics is about outcomes, then folding on all the issues that you care about is the worst possible result, even if you go back to winning elections when it’s over.
Doug Milhous J
@Roger Moore:
I don’t think they care that much about those issues. They care about lower taxes and culture wars.
EconWatcher
Who’s “they,” kemosabe?
Seriously, I think you miss the point when you say “they” would be better off if only they would let Democrats implement health-care and immigration reform. Yes, the political fortunes of the Republican label might do better in the long run. But it would then be an entirely different party from the one we now know.
For these guys, immigration and health-care reform are existential threats to the country they want. One threatens to end the white majority, and the other threatens to end the merciless, unfettered, rough-and-tumble capitalism they claim to love. I do think they’re right about one thing: Saying that everyone has a right to health care is a fundamental change in our social contract.
If they were willing to accept this stuff, they wouldn’t be who they are: They wouldn’t be Republicans.
TG Chicago
@Dave:
Agreed. Are we supposed to be excited about a situation where Democrats win elections, but Republicans win all the policy battles?
Zifnab25
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Well, but that’s just it. It will never be revoked. But then it will also never be fully attained.
Why are blacks and Latinos voting Den on such high volume if they are all so happy now that racism is over?
Tone in DC
These g00pers, IMHO, have trouble spelling “logic”. Using it may be too much of a challenge for ’em; besides, they have to expend a whole lot of energy that could be used for critical thought on this activity: hating on Obama, Biden, Holder and at least 52% of the country.
catclub
I think it impossible to actually learn and apply this point in real time.
All the neo-confederates who berate Lincoln for being the father of the giant federal state
do not analyze one more step and ask why the original confederates did not realize this and stop
(their secession) before the madness was allowed.
TG Chicago
@Doug Milhous J: But how do you have healthcare reform and economic stimulus without ever raising a dime in taxes? How can you see immigration reform as untethered to culture war issues?
Zifnab25
@Luthe: Go tell that to Mitt Romney. If memory serves, he underperformed McCain and Bush by a few million votes, and not only because he failed to attract enough moderates.
Doug Milhous J
@EconWatcher:
Not for republican elites.
Zifnab25
@Luthe: Go tell that to Mitt Romney. If memory serves, he under performed McCain and Bush by a few million votes, and not only because he failed to attract enough moderates.
Jay C
Nice idea/dream, Doug: but in the real world, has to be filed under “AINTGONNAHAPPEN”, because you formulation misses one vital point. The issues you cite are all policy choices, and in contemporary American politics, Democrats focus on policy, Republicans focus on politics . Yeah, we here might sneer (rightly so, but that’s irrelevant) at Republican intransigence, time-wasting, prejudice, fearmongering, etc.: but that (and, of course, high-tech gerrymandering) is what gets voters to the polls: popular approval of particular policies notwithstanding. Or, in most cases (a la North Carolina or Wisconsin) deliberately nothwithstanding…
It is, truly, a sucky system, but until we get a better class of voters, nationwide, it’s the only system we have.
ranchandsyrup
No Donny, these men are nihilists.
Roger Moore
@Doug Milhous J:
Who is “they”? The money backers of the Republican party certainly do care about blocking health care and immigration reform, because they want powerless workers who have to accept whatever the boss chooses to give them. And immigration is certainly a culture war issue because immigrants don’t accept the culture warriors’ version of America. As for stimulus, I think that’s the exception to the idea that success gets ignored. People really do vote their pocketbooks, and a big economic bounceback would provide the president’s party a similarly big boost at the polls.
catclub
@TG Chicago: I just read Andrew Tobias, who mostly has pretty happy posts, but he was noting that 3.8% (2.8%) tax that is applied to the very rich to pay for much of the ACA. The rich have not forgotten it. Obama does speak pretty carefully: “If you make less than $250k, your taxes will not go up.”
Forum Transmitted Disease
And you are wrong. Republicans have unity and get shit done even as a minority. Dems have no united vision, unity or party loyalty whatsoever, and while I think this is a mentally healthy attitude to have, it’s unworkable as a political entity trying to achieve a specific set of goals.
Alex S.
Well, you also know that the law-and-order republicans didn’t really reduce crime, instead it peaked after 12 years of a republican White House. It’s true that the republicans fight many wars they can’t win. On the one hand, it’s because that’s what conservatism is: standing athwart history, yelling STOP. On the other hand, at some point you might want results and if they don’t come, you turn crazy…you have to dedicate yourself to the cause of the GOP because there’s no other alternative, even if you have realized that solving your problems is not in their interest. It’s extreme cognitive dissonance.
Still, I think it’s astonishing how many successes movement conservatism has achieved. Usually, history only goes forward, not backward. The victories of the democrats or progressives in general are usually there to stay.
catclub
@Roger Moore: “a big economic bounceback would provide the president’s party a similarly big boost at the polls.”
Obama is clearly a lucky man, in many ways.
It may turn out that a very [far too] slow but steady improvement in the economy will benefit him and the
democrats more than if there had been rapid growth followed by another downturn in 2015/6.
Wasn’t there a radio item on random rewards (in video games and other apps) being more addictive than reliable ones?
Seanly
@cokane:
I was using that long before it was cool. Had to manually add it into my autocorrect back in the day.
Back to topic: The bit about having the Republicans get out of the way is reminding me of recent trend in football – the realization that if the clock is against you and the other team is driving, there are circumstances where it would be better to let them score quickly and get the ball back. However, very few coaches go ahead & do that. Emotion & hope that my defense can stop them quickly outweigh the logic. Sorry to bring a dreaded sports metaphor into the discussion but it’s the first thing that came to mind.
catclub
@Alex S.: “Still, I think it’s astonishing how many successes movement conservatism has achieved.”
There are lots of things that make people conservative in many ways: Home, family, possessions,
habits. I think the Buddhists would just say attachment. It is deeply in almost all of us.
So not as surprising to me.
catclub
@Seanly: And by the same token, you will never find a runner with an open field stopping at the two yard line so the team can burn another two minutes of clock
before scoring. Deeply ingrained habits.
burnspbesq
At least, not yet. We still have time to prevent it, but it’s by no means a sure thing if certain constituencies (you know who you are) continue to mope and whine because they didn’t get their pony on 1/21/09.
The Moar You Know
@Roger Moore: I disagree. I live a half-hour from the border, we’ve been having fights here over Mexicans and their presence here since the 1920s (including the first school desegregation case ever) and the aversion to immigration has nothing to do with a refusal to “accept the culture warriors’ version of America”, it has to do with the “fact” – according to most of our local conservatives – that Mexicans are filthy, disease-ridden drug peddling rapists hellbent on reclaiming California and exterminating all the white people.
Simple racism is the driver, is what I’m saying.
By the way, the “exterminating all the white people” is a new twist on the theme, just heard that for the first time two months ago. I’d like to know where that came from.
dmsilev
The Republican minority-outreach project continues apace. From David Corn’s story on a new conservative message-coordination group,
Besides the hilarity of the spelling fail, I wonder whether it ever occurred to these geniuses to look into just why terms like ‘GOP’ communicate racism? Probably not.
raven
@The Moar You Know: \
Juan Cortina
Ruckus
Conservatives don’t have better fights to pick.
They. Just. Do. Not.
That’s why they have to pick the ones and ways they do now. They have nothing better. Never have.
Their only ideal is obstructionism.
That’s all it has ever been and all it ever will be.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@The Moar You Know: Bleedover.
Modern euphemism for ‘slave revolt’, triggers same fears.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
You say potato, I say potahto. The culture war is basically a dogwhistle; it’s all about unwillingness to accept Those People as equals.
Phil Perspective
@catclub: Wrong!! Brian Westbrook of the Iggles, against the Cowpokes. Look it up!!
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
Only the messaging may ever be changed, never the policy. Questioning the policy makes you a RINO.
The Moar You Know
@dmsilev: Nice, save that most folks would just assume that “Fredrick Douglas” was a Confederate general, or a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain with a gun, a truck, and a huge streak of paranoia.
burnspbesq
@The Moar You Know:
Huntington Beach, most likely. The center of the skinhead universe.
Mike in NC
For House Republicans, every day is another chance to re-stage Pickett’s Charge, hoping for a different outcome.
Pongo
And since we all know the true role of elected representatives is to get re-elected–not to implement policies on behalf of the governed–this is critical information. Who cares if healthcare desperately needs to be reformed if it won’t help the party who pushes it through in future elections?
In case any of us thought governance was a real thing done by people who truly care about making this a better country, our media and punditry classes bring us right back to reality. Policy schmolicy. Let’s focus on the horse race and reelection odds.
Chris
@raven:
Zorro, in real life?
El Caganer
If the Democrats have such an advantage, who’s passing all these anti-abortion and voter-suppression laws?
Hoodie
@burnspbesq: Maybe that’s the natural progression as it becomes more futile to envision a white-dominated America. Maybe a lot of these folks subconsciously fear retribution, but they seem to be doing their best to make that a possibility.
We’ve become inured to it, but the level of negativity coming out of some quarters of the white community can be pretty shocking. Just the other day, I was on a ferry in Washington with my teenage sons. An old fart strikes up a conversation with me, perhaps mistakenly thinking he had found a kindred spirit in old fart negativity. He tells me he is a retired corporate exec and spends his summers in Gig Harbor and his winters in Hawaii, but he’s looking at property in Kimberly BC because “the US is a house of cards with all the debt” etc. The country’s given him a sweet deal, and he’s ready to ditch it like a dose of the clap. Right in front of my kids, could have decked the asshole. When I didn’t respond in the expected manner, he threw in “of course, I mean both parties,” which is, of course, the tipoff that the guys is a faux “independent” conservative. The look on my face must have made him move on to another target.
It seems a bit stupid that conservatives, particularly wealthy ones, decided to take the maximal resistance path with Obama. Seemed to me he was a perfect target for co-optation. He is somewhat sui generis, i.e., there does not appear to be a parade of Obamas waiting to succeed him, and he is not really tied into any ethnic power structure. In fact, the way the GOP treats him gives him an appeal to some groups that he might otherwise lack.
Maybe ODS is an unintended consequence of the surfacing of an underlying weakness in the GOP, i.e., the aging out of its base and the dissonance between the money interests and the fundie and racist elements. This all plays out in terms of who can be the most vehement in their opposition to Obama.
Chris
@Hoodie:
I think the thing is that they and their ideology have been dominating this country for about half a century, and they’ve gotten so used to that (it got a lot easier once the Fox News bubble was up and running, and it’s probably even easier if you’re rich) that even the mildest pushback from the country (in the form of electing a moderate Democratic president) enrages them to the point where they can’t see straight. The more you win, the harder it is to lose.
Ronnie Pudding
If ObamaCare works, surely there will be an election or two where you can runs ads saying “so-and-so to repeal it 40 times…if it were up to him, you could be prevented from affordable insurance due to pre-existing conditions.”
You just have to be willing to do this. Maybe you can’t run on it 30 years hence, but those are the breaks. Did the Democrats not win elections due to the New Deal?
OmerosPeanut
If Roe v. Wade was overturned tomorrow it would be a disaster for Republicans? Did Lord Saletan steal DougJ’s login info? Because if you rephrase that as “victory for Democrats” the result is every Saletan abortion column ever.
Scott Supak
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: “overturning VRA was bad, but it didn’t bring back Jim Crow”
These things take time. First you get the vote. Then you get the power. Then you get the Jim Crow.
Scott Supak
@Dave: What makes you think a “permanent Democratic majority” wouldn’t bring about progress?
rikyrah
The Right’s Latest Scheme to Sabotage Obamacare
BY JONATHAN COHN
It was one thing when Obamcare critics started fighting attempts to educate people about the law’s insurance options—warning sports leagues not to promote the new benefits, for example, or criticzing states undertaking outreach efforts of their own. Now some conservatives are taking it a step farther. They’re launching campaigns designed to discourage young people from using the law to get insurance. Via David Morgan of Reuters:
FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, a conservative issue group financed by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, known for funding conservative causes, are planning separate media and grassroots campaigns aimed at adults in their 20s and 30s – the very people Obama needs to have sign up for healthcare coverage in new online insurance exchanges if his reforms are to succeed.
“We’re trying to make it socially acceptable to skip the exchange,” said Dean Clancy, vice president for public policy at FreedomWorks, which boasts 6 million supporters. The group is designing a symbolic “Obamacare card” that college students can burn during campus protests.
Brian Beutler is aghast. So is Kevin Drum: “What’s next? A campaign to get people to skip wearing seat belts? To skip using baby seats in cars?” Drum also wants to know whether FreedomWorks “plans to help out the first person who takes them up on this and then contracts leukemia.” A good quesiton, that.
Of course, Obamacare critics will justify these steps if you ask them. Obamacare will wreack such havoc, and so violates American concepts of liberty and freedom, that extreme measures to undermine it are worthwhile. And this thinking is not limited to rabble-rousing groups like FreedomWorks. Leaders of the Republican Party are now threatening to shut down the government if Obama doesn’t agree to defund the health care law. It’s the same basic premise.
If you’re among those people who agrees about the inherent malevolence of Obamacare, then this might all seem very reasonable. (Hey, they burned draft cards to protest the Vietnam War—and Obamacare is just as awful!) But if you don’t see things that way, you might be wondering if this is the way opposition parties and movements typically act when a law they don’t like is about to take effect. The answer is no. Democrats certainly didn’t respond this way to the Medicare drug benefit—a point made here previously and more recently by Norm Ornstein, from the American Enterprise Institute, who knows as much about congressional history as anybody in Washington. He writes in National Journal:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114028/obamacare-sabotage-watch-conservative-campaign-gets-real
Donut
Doug, didn’t you make a post a few days ago saying Obamacare isn’t something most people will even notice? Which is it? A big ideal to the voting populace or a big nothing burger??
Donut
“Deal” not ideal
Matt McIrvin
I’ve never bought the idea that conservatives wouldn’t actually overturn Roe v. Wade. The relevant people are Supreme Court justices, who can be nakedly ideological without worrying too much about what it does to the party.
In fact, I don’t see much in the way of the current Supreme Court overturning Roe 5-4, given an appropriate test case; and the blatantly unconstitutional abortion laws that have been passed in many states lately will give them a test case. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it overturned in the next few years.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Yeah, that ain’t gonna work. You’re going to have the same tiny group of Campus Republicans who think having an “affirmative action bake sale” is a great idea buying into this, but nobody else. College students worry about how they’re going to be able to get health insurance once they leave school, and many of them keep taking a few classes here and there just to be able to continue going to the student health center because they’re otherwise uninsured.
If anything, you’re going to have college students going, “Wait, I can get inexpensive health insurance?! Sign me up!”
Heliopause
FDR’s generation of Dems more or less delivered on their promises and the result was decades of Dem government. So yes, it makes political sense for the GOP to sabotage the Dems as much as they can.
pseudonymous in nc
That’s the long long run. The response to that is: not if they set the districts, and not if they choose the voters. Stage legislatures, redistricting, and voting laws can perpetuate things from a run that’s long enough, as far as they’re concerned.
jim filyaw
“…overturning VRA was bad, but it didn’t bring back Jim Crow,”
This is ridiculously sanguine. For God’s sake, look what’s going on in North Carolina! Look at Texas, Florida, and a host of other members of the former Confederacy. The only way to describe what is going on is ominous.