Top senators from both parties indicated Sunday that a deal was likely soon on temporarily extending Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans, along with unemployment benefits that have expired.
However, Republican senators made clear they are unlikely to budge in their opposition to other Democratic priorities in the final weeks of the lame-duck session of Congress that ends in early January.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, told the NBC program “Meet the Press” he was “optimistic” about an agreement on the tax rates and jobless benefits, but added there likely wasn’t time for the Senate to ratify a new nuclear arms treaty with Russia or complete work on a major defense bill that includes repeal of the “don’t ask, don’ tell” policy banning openly gay and lesbian soldiers.
***“I’ve said that neither side has the votes to get what they want, so I think we’re going to have to kick it over for two years,” Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah told CNN’s “State of the Union” program, adding that the deal also will have to include extending unemployment benefits, as demanded by Democrats. “If you want to go beyond that then I think things break down.”
I’m trying to think of a scenario in which kicking this down the road until the 2012 election makes things more advantageous for the Democrats or the Obama administration, and I’m coming up blank. Democrats had ten years to come up with a coherent message for why the tax cuts on the rich should expire, and by all accounts failed miserably in doing so. Kicking the can down the road does nothing but cause more problems, and Obama won’t be able to run against the tax cuts for the rich like he did in 2008, because his credibility will be pretty much shot on that issue. We elected him in part to make some fundamental changes regarding the Bush tax cuts, and instead, we got an extension of them. There simply is no message there that helps the Democrats in the next election.
It really is amazing to watch. The public wants them to expire. The President and majorities in both parties chambers want the tax cuts for the rich to expire. They do nothing for the economy but continue to consolidate wealth for the uber-rich, they don’t help create jobs, and they exacerbate our budget problems. And on top of all that, it hurts the Democrats politically.
And yet, with all that, we can probably expect them to be extended for two years.
Yay, team.
Kryptik
Remember when Democratic ineptitude was quaint and minor, and we could still hang our hat on keeping together on major issues and not look like total hacks?
Yeah, me neither.
matoko_chan
Cole, it is the Tyranny of the Stupid.
We can only basically execute a holding action until the demographic timer and Salam-Douthat stratification on cognitive ability give our side a permanent electoral advantage.
HCR was an amazing triumph.
Obama doesnt get enough cred for that.
Lolis
Yep, I believe the enormity of this disaster cannot be overstated. It is bad policy and bad politics. I would be able to suffer through it if we got DREAM and DADT repeal passed along with START. If none of that is going to happen this is the dumbest move ever. President Obama needs to back out of the deal. The House needs to rebel and refuse to vote for this. I am bummed about the food safety bill goof. I guess that bill is toast now too.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Congress has failed so it’s time to primary Obama and teach them a lesson!
J.W. Hamner
Taxes weren’t why I voted for him, but I see your point. If they truly can’t get anything more than an extension of unemployment insurance during Christmas… and are also turning it into a key issue in 2012… it’s hard to not see this as an epic fail by every Democrat involved.
Ooparts
The Republicans have won again. As it stood, if the ‘pubs weren’t interested in extending cuts on marginal rates under 250K, I would have been happy for all of the tax cuts to expire – it would have been something for dems to campaign on. Now, because extending all of the tax cuts is tied to extending unemployment benefits, there’s no way for dems to vote against the extension of the cuts to 250k+ marginal rates.
I wonder if the unemployment benefits were added to keep liberal senators and representatives from killing all the extensions…
celticdragonchick
Another lesson in Profiles of American Courage.
Joe Beese
The President wants tax cuts for the rich to expire the way he wanted the public option.
Remember, my progressive friends… these are only means to an end!
Joe Beese
Oh, by the way… where is the OBAMA SOLD US OUT tag?
Not bringing as much of a smirk as it used to?
Lolis
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I don’t believe in primarying Obama, but come on President Obama is leading the fail on this one. Congress led the fail a few months ago when they refused to get this done before the election, but Axelrod advertised they would cave several weeks ago. Sorry but the White House rolled themselves on this one. Mitch McConnell just gets to be the one to brag about it on national TV.
Mr Furious
I actually hope this all falls apart and they don’t extend ANYTHING, but the only way I’ll be able to swallow Obama and the Dems cutting a deal and extending these cuts is if it gets them EVERYTHING ELSE on the agenda.
-DADT repealed.
-DREAM enacted.
-START ratified.
-Unemployment extended.
-A fucking partridge in a pear tree.
Anything I’m forgetting?
The Democrats need to demand votes on all of this shit. The tax vote can come first, but Obama signs everything at the same time. If the GOP fails to come through on the other votes, then Obama lets the tax cuts expire with a pocket veto.
All in, Mr President. Step the fuck up, so John can post the ole “CHILL THE FUCK OUT, I GOT THIS” pic.
Steve LaBonne
The (bitterly) amusing thing is that Democrats NEVER get any credit for tax cuts- just remember all the people who were convinced Obama had raised their taxes when he’d actually given them a 2 year tax credit. The correct policy AND politics would be to just let the tax brackets revert to Clinton’s and block any tax-cut bill whatsoever, now and in the next Congress. Every time the Thugs introduce it, demand to know how it’s payed for.
August J. Pollak
This is not kicking the can down the road. This is kicking the can toward the inevitable and now even more likely conclusion, which is making the tax cuts for rich people permanent.
That’s why any single concession on this is disgraceful. The “these cuts are the status quo waaaaaaa” talking point already exists. It will exist in 2012 and it will be even harder to push back on then.
And as some stupid hippie what the fuck does he know with with stupid Nobel notes, the top cuts being permanent very likely means destroying Medicare and Social Security. Again, which is what they wanted all along.
But who cares, I imagine between now and lunch Glenn Greenwald will say the same thing and then everyone will whine about how this Isn’t That Big a Deal™.
Martin
Did someone hold a vote while I was asleep? Great that the Senate seems to have a plan. Anyone bother to check in with the massively Democratically controlled House that seems openly hostile to the Senate bullshit they need to tolerate?
Shorter Martin: nobody has won or lost until the votes are counted.
me
@Mr Furious: Yep. If the Republicans want this so bad, hold out for everything else.
cleek
idiots
4tehlulz
@Martin: You’re forgetting that optics are more important than actual votes, and if you have bad optics, you’re a loser.
JimF
Guys guys you are losing sight of the trees for the forest. At 10%+ unemployment we need to extend benefits now. Isn’t that worth a couple more years of tax cuts for those who don’t need them?
Judas Escargot
So our representative government is neither representative, nor particularly interested in governing.
Looking forward to two more years of open-loop government. I’m sure that’ll work out just fine.
beergoggles
At some point you gotta stop blaming it on stupid; after all these people are smart enough to run a campaign and get re-elected.
Once you rule out stupid, the only other option is that they actually want this. And if they want it, then the distinction between them and the republicans become even smaller. At which point I suggest you include these Democrats with the likes of Snowe because they are just crazy-Republican enablers.
cat48
The WH asked the House & Senate to vote on this BEFORE the election. The president had pushed this for 2 months at rallys across the country. I watched the rallys & HIS MESSAGING was FINE! They were afraid of GOP attack ads & refused to pass them. (Unfortunately, they are RISK AVERSE) Now, they are beating up the admin for not “fighting”. Well, he did fight for it and I frankly don’t get why people are pissed at him & blame him ONLY after “our principled Senators, FIVE of them, voted against them SATURDAY! ENTIRE PARTY FAIL!!! Since he’s a FAIL, HE GETS A FRIGGIN PRIMARY, while they sit on the Hill & play with themselves and WHINE & watch for a new prez to blame for their FAIL!/rant
The Moar You Know
Gotta hand it to the Republicans; they are acting like an organized, disciplined party and by doing so, they are achieving their goals.
The tax cut thing should have been a slam-dunk. What’s worse, since we’ve now got it tied to unemployment benefits, we can’t just let them expire and go back to the Clinton-era rates (which is what we should have been doing in the first place). No. Now we’ve GOT to vote on them and pass them, or else Dems are the ones who made sure the unemployed don’t have any money for Christmas.
I am getting sick and tired of being outmaneuvered and outgunned by the fucking MINORITY party. Damn, failure on a gigantic scale is what this is.
Martin
@Mr Furious:
They have. They lost the vote according to Senate rules. The world is not for us to demand. If the GOP want to be dicks about everything, they have that right and there’s nothing that Obama can do about it.
Earl Butz
@JimF: Don’t know if you’re being snarky or not, but the answer is not just “no” , but “hell no”.
Martin
@4tehlulz: Ah yes, we are all David Broder now. Cole especially.
chopper
the best part is, the goopers are going to try to kick it down the road every time so the ‘temporary’ cuts always are up to expire during an election year.
Kryptik
@Earl Butz:
Considering the GOP is demanding that the benefits be offset by cuts elsewhere, while the top rate tax cuts are simply written off and never have to be recuped? Yeah, I’d say this is about as shitty a deal as we can possibly get, and that’s saying a whole fucking lot.
brent
The President and majorities in both parties want the tax cuts for the rich to expire
I think you mean majorities in both chambers
Mumphrey
You know, I, too, am glad to have Obama as our president. But, jeez, he needs to get in the game here. I don’t understand why he still seems to think he can work with the Republicans. I don’t understand why he thought the federal pay freeze was a good idea. I don’t know what it’s going to take for him to wake up and understand that most Americans don’t care whether what happens is bipartisan, as long as it’s good for the country. He seems to have bought into the whole David Broder Bipartisanship Is The Only Thing That Means Anything And All Americans Yearn For It bullshit.
And I’m still pissed off about the summer of 2009. Republicans were going around screaming about death panels, and Obama and the Democrats just sat on their asses and let them spew all that shit.
I’m not some idjit who thinks that “All Obama needs to do is begin cracking some heads à la Lyndon Johnson and he’ll bend the Republicans to his will!” or that “Reid should make the Republicans really filibuster with cots and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington speeches, damn it!” I’m not pissed that the Democrats had to compromise to get the bill through. I am pissed, though, that they didn’t make the case better, and that they seem not to have thought it was worth making any case anout anything they’ve been doing for 2 years now.
Franklin Roosevelt spoke to the country every few weeks about what he and the Congress were doing and why. I don’t understand why Obama and other Democrats have been so unwilling to get out and do that. Sure, maybe they’d have had to show up on Meet the Press and call Orrin Hatch or McCain or Lindsey Graham or some other lowlife Republican a liar, and that would make David Gregory gasp and David Broder cry, and nobody wants to make Gregory gasp or Broder cry, ’cause it’s mean and unseemly…
But if there’s one thing I’d tell the Democrats to learn in the next 2 years, it’s this: It’s time to be unseemly. It’s time to say mean things about the other guys. It’s time to call these people out for the sociopathic thugs and bullies that they are. They’re set on turning us into, I don’t know what their goal is, Honduras, maybe. Now I love Honduras. I lived there for 2 years, and it’s my adopted home. But it’s no economic model for us to follow, but I think that’s the Republican ideal: no social safety net, no public schools in much of the country, the rich can do anything they want to anybody and buy off the police, the oligarchs run everything. That seems to be what Republicans are aiming for, but it isn’t what I want to see here…
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Lolis:
I should have ended that with a /snark
Gotcha! :)
ed
Would a veto of tax cuts for rich-ass fucks be an awesome move for the Prez? Any way that would or could happen?
4tehlulz
Obama is totally overexposed; I wish he wasn’t on TV all the time.
/America 2009
chopper
@me:
indeed. the goopers sunk the tax cuts. at this point letting them expire is on their heads, not the dems’.
well, not if you read the papers, but anyways.
Punchy
See, the Repubs are concerned about the deficit. That’s why these tax cuts are so important. Or something. Shut up, that’s how.
gene108
If they let the tax cuts expire, the Democrats will get the blame for raising everyone’s taxes.
25% of the population is already convinced the Democrats have already raised their taxes. 25% of independents who dwell in reality, will look at their paychecks in January and realize their taxes went up because their take home pay is less.
You just need one more disgruntled person in the country to vote Republican and the Republicans win, in 2012.
The sad part is what should be evidently clear for Democrats and liberals is the way the game is being played right now, we have to be as disciplined as the Republicans and the Right about staying on message.
The chaos of the Democrats and liberals may have worked in the past but it got their ass kicked in 2010 and will probably do the same in 2012.
In all honesty, if Ted Kennedy was alive and healthy in 2009, I think a lot of the chaos that hit in August 2009 would’ve been avoided on healthcare reform. He’d have been in charge of drafting the Senate bill and not Max Baucus of Montana.
The liberals need to understand, if they want to play the political game, they can’t turn on the Party that gives them the time of day. They can try to primary Democrats they don’t like and other things, but they can’t sit out or go third party.
chopper
@ed:
it would be nice if the dem house put forth two bills, one for the middle class and one for the rich. then obama could veto the latter.
course the goopers would expect that and act accordingly.
Jc
I read that article at huffington saying that the administration was pressuring the house. I can’t really trust huffington though.
Also, there are enough blue dogs outgoing, that 40 voted can be had to pass a bill extending for the rich.
Stay strong Nancy!
I think she still sets the agenda of what bills get to the house floor right?
Dont allow that bill to come up.
I think that this should be allowed to expire, and blamed on the rethugs.
Call them on it. Call them on it.
It was interesting watching Kerry correctly point out the lying amoral way the rethugs are acting regarding the tax extensions, and yet say there would probably be a deal.
This is policy malpractice, deeply irresponsible, and is the lie that George Bush began with a decade ago, to force a deficit, which then eventually would force cuts to social security.
I see his smug grin, watching this process now saying, “see? I STILL create the reality. My signature policy is enabled for ALL TIME.”
Politally and ethically, this is a loser for the dems.
Why don’t they see that???
Ooparts
@chopper:
And that’s the problem. Except now it’s not just “Democrats raised your taxes!” It’s “Democrats raised your taxes, and they don’t care about the unemployed!”
Nick
Depends…if the deal is to make the middle class cuts permanent and just extend the cuts for the rich for two years, then it’s actually a pretty good 2012 campaign issue because it’s a lot harder for Republicans to make the case to extend those cuts if they don’t have the middle class cuts as leverage.
Hedges Ahead
Were we to raise the tax rate once in a while, wouldn’t we have the freedom to then lower it when necessary once in a while? I’m not arguing against the stimulative effects of there suddenly being more receipts sloshing around in private hands. Just that it looks more like it’s the first derivative of the lowering of rates that gives the bump, not the rate itself. However, the rate itself is kind of a big deal, since we have more obligations on spending than we have income at the moment. Besides, hasn’t that first derivative of tax rate vs. time chart been pretty much zero or negative for the last 60 years?
Explain again to me how raising taxes across the board doesn’t raise the cost of labor? Or how raising salaries to meet the added tax burden is not in some way tax deductible for a company? Sure it looks bad on the Dow, but what other way is there to get companies to spend? We certainly don’t tax our corporate citizens that much any more.
Rick Taylor
It doesn’t help that their extending the tax cuts almost immediately after Obama announced a pay freeze for government employees. The symbolism is awful–we can’t afford to pay our public servants a competitive wage, but it’s imperative that Bill Gates get his multi-million dollar check. And while I can at least understand why we’re caving on the tax cuts; renewing unemployment benefits really is important, and I understand there are a slew of less publicized tax changes that need to be passed as well, I can’t understand or justify doing it alongside the payfreeze–that was an unforced error.
Mr Furious
@Martin: It’s a package deal, Martin. I’m aware of the procedural bullshit the GOP uses to block votes one by one. This is a situation where if they are going to cut a deal on the tax cuts they have to demand UP FRONT that all this other stuff comes up for a vote too—if not, then they all expire.
Vote on the taxes first, last, in the middle—I don’t care. But Obama doesn’t sign a single bill until they ALL are sitting on his desk.
There is no procedural answer to an arrangement like this.
Honestly, there is very little downside to this for the Republicans. All they really care about is the tax cuts. DADT, DREAM and START won’t really effect anyone’s fortunes politically in two years—the GOP can still use them to stoke the base if they want, but we all know they’ll be hammering Obama and the Dems on the still wallowing economy, and the suddenly resurgent immigration problem.
Handing Obama the comparatively modest “victories” of DADT, DREAM and/or START is a small price for McConnell, Boehner and the GOP to pay to win on your biggest ideological and policy goal and also fracture the Democratic party over the tax cuts.
The added bonus is that the tax cuts will also strangle anything else Obama and the Dems try while it’s still in the crib, and will all but ensure the economy is still in the shitter it two years.
Win, win, win. (For the GOP)
This of course, means “Lose, lose, lose” for the Dems, but at least, this way we get SOMETHING in return.
Martin
@The Moar You Know:
Not to call you out specifically, but this is what’s so infuriating about discussions here.
The GOP is achieving their goals, because their goal is to attack anything that Obama wants. That’s it. The south could literally be on fire and if Obama wanted to put it out, the GOP would oppose that. The GOP and the Dems are playing entirely different games here – the Dems playing the one they were elected to do.
But what do people want the Dems to do? They want good policy, except when they don’t ‘fight hard enough’ for that policy, and then they want good policy + 1. So when the Dems are beating the GOP, the policy is never good enough and when the policy is good enough, the Dems aren’t humiliating the GOP enough. And when the Dems aren’t beating the GOP, then any victories they had over the last 22 months are null and void and only the toughest, most loyal Democrats can point out that the party sucks shit all the time, and if they would just believe more, they would be able to bend the spoon and be victorious.
Rick Taylor
__
I doubt very much that’s what the deal will be. The Republicans won’t agree to it, and the Democrats have already shown their ready to cave.
Nick
@Mumphrey:
where were you in August 2009 when networks were whining he was cutting into their prime time?
gene108
@chopper: Hahahahahahaha…
The Republicans are responsible for nothing bad ever!!!
Don’t you know the Democrats are the Party that raises taxes, while the Democrats are always looking to raise your taxes.
Don’t believe me, look at your paycheck in January 2011, if the Bush Tax Cuts aren’t extended.
The Republicans were willing to extend them, but the Democrats didn’t cooperate.
That’s the message that 99% of Americans will here. The lack of message discipline for Democrats and their liberal supporters has to end.
They have to match the discipline of the Right and Republicans. You can’t say you support extending health care benefits and then say you will never vote for Democrats again, because when they did expand health care benefits, you didn’t like the way they did it.
The only message that gets through is they bill is bad and so why not repeal it and go back to the 2008 status quo on health care?
The message matters and it can’t be set without coordinated support between the Democratic Party and the people, who vote for Democrats.
chopper
@August J. Pollak:
exactly. tax cuts for the rich is dual-use. first it makes goopers and their friends and backers richer, and it’s also a poison pill aimed at taking down SS and medicare in the long run. it’s win-win for these guys.
and the rubes eat it up, because there’s so much fucking rich-worship in this country.
hummbumm
the choice is not between dem plan and repub plan, but would end up being a tax raise for all and no unemployment benefit. This would be an economic disaster.
It is funny how econ 101 goes out the door here. Yes the least effective form of stimulus is tax cuts for the wealthy but it is still stimulus! unemployment benefits are critical and very effective stimulus. the difference between the democratic plan and the full republican plan is $60B/year, basically peanuts.
To me it is amazing. If obama does not get healthcare, he is a loser… if we don’t get fin reform, obama is a loser… if he does not appoint elizabeth warren, he is a loser…, if we don’t hit the first withdrawal target from iraq, he is a loser…. and now suddenly the tax issue is the end all be all, though pre-election it was all about DADT on which of course obama was a loser… of course if DADT goes through, well then obama is a loser because of the tax issue. A tax compromise that from a purely economic standpoint makes sense – extending tax cuts in a period of severe economic weakness. We know the economy will still be weak in 2012. Do you really want to hear 2 years of the economy would have been all peachy but for the tax hike the democrats pushed through, and that is how it will play guaranteed. Now whenever republicans bitch about the deficit, democrats can say, well raise taxes then or shut up. Now we have Krugman going on about the long term deficit implications of the taxes, when he is simultaneously arguing that yields point to no issue, and he would be all for $700B stimulus which is the gap between the two plans.
Mr Furious
@gene108:
They will anyway. They took the blame for raising everyone’s taxes and increasing spending in the midterms, even though they actually cut both.
The old saying needs to be amended to “two things in life you can’t avoid: Death and Democrats raising taxes.”
If we’re going to get blamed for raising taxes anyway, we might as well get the revenue out of it.
The Republic of Stupidity
It’d be my opinion that the Dems in Congress, many of whom ARE multimillionaires, simply CANNOT stomach the thought of increasing their own tax bill…
Hence all the mealy-mouthed platitudes to get elected, then this weird, ever-so-annoying tango when it comes time for an up or down vote on something like the Bush tax cuts…
The real trick here is how to appear to care about ‘the little guy’ whilst desperately working to NOT increase one’s own taxes…
Advantage, Repubs… they don’t have to give a shit what the little people think… everyone already KNOWS they’re shilling shamelessly for the uber-rich…
Kirk Spencer
@JimF: Speaking as a long-term unemployed person, no.
Further it assumes they’ll get the UI extension. The Dems want a year. The Republicans are shooting for a month.
So letting them have it guarantees the next recession while setting up the defunding of Social Security, all for short term benefit.
Rick Taylor
@JimF:
__
Arguably it is, but the point is we should not be here. Why are we arguing this in the lame duck session with limited time to push things through when Republicans arguably have the upper hand? We had two years to introduce an alternative Democratic tax plan.
Judas Escargot
@The Moar You Know:
Gotta hand it to the Republicans; they are acting like an organized, disciplined party and by doing so, they are achieving their goals.
It’s easier to Destroy than to Build.
cleek
@hummbumm:
can you prove that ?
RalfW
This isn’t a deal, its a fucking disaster.
Nancy Pelosi needs to adjourn the House post haste and just say the GOP won’t work with us, so we’re gone. “Pass our version of tax cuts or they all expire. I’m getting on my Airforce 757 that costs a bazillion dollars per second to fly me home to SF in extreme luxury, and I’m so outta here!”
The Republic of Stupidity
@Judas Escargot:
Speaking strictly as someone who’s done demo work in construction, this is true…
It’s also more satisfying…
debit
So, what’s to to stop Obama from using a signing statement on this? W did it all the time to make the bills he signed more to his liking.
Corner Stone
Meh. Did you ever think it was going to end differently?
Odie Hugh Manatee
I say let the cuts expire and let the cards fall where they may. Passing the cuts to gain short term unemployment benefits isn’t worth it. We keep putting a band aid over cancer and pretending it works.
Rip the band aid off and you can bet there will be an increase in public demand that something be done about it.
Keith G
@Mumphrey: In a previous thread I typed:
Our history, both near and far is replete with examples of use of the many tools of presidential power. And D.C. is home to more than a few men and women (mercenary as they may be) who have helped recent presidents successfully fight similar battles.
Obama is in a tough bind, but this is what separates the Lincolns from the Buchanans, the Roosevelts from the Hoovers. There are templates to follow. I just wonder how flexible is the imagination of our president? Can he adjust and face these new challenges as they need to be faced?
MikeMc
I don’t understand why this issue is so fucking hard for progressives to understand. The Dems have no cards to play. They have no leverage. The Democrats aren’t going to risk the tax rate rising for everyone on the possibility that they can get an increase for the top 2%. It would be foolish. Not to mention, political suicide. The GOP is well aware of this.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Mr Furious:
A very good analysis. I’d add that while there may not be much downside for the Reps in allowing DADT/DREAM/START to pass, there is tremendous upside for them in blocking all of them – which is to further enrage liberals and stimulate infighting within the Democratic party. If the 250k+ tax cuts pass, even temporarily then the Reps already have a solid win no matter what else happens – now they are angling for the kill shot.
Currants
Lame duck duck goose? Kick the can down the road and run? I mean, it worked so well for godfather Reagan. This chart –sort of makes me think that the idea of “trickle down” was in fact some sort of fire hose of $$ gushing toward the already-haves. Somebody ought to be working on THAT as a conspiracy theory. It might get more play that way.
El Cid
Republicans or not, I did not think (and expressed it here) that there would be any serious chance that Democrats would not renew the Bush Jr. tax cuts for income portions over $250K income.
I think it was at least better to do the dance, thanks to Pelosi, of appearing to really try, but I never thought it would happen.
I think it’s mainly a policy preference by conservative Democrats and not just a political or campaign finance calculation, it’s what they want.
I could see that there might be people high up who think it would be better for Obama with regard to campaign financing from the super-wealthy and corporate elitist to have not allowed normal marginal tax rates over $250K to resume.
And maybe such sectors of the most wealthy may be a tiny bit less hostile, but such a difference won’t likely matter if the Republican 2012 candidate is anybody who seems close to an electable, human acting candidate.
Nick
@Rick Taylor:
yes, we did, and that’s on Congress.
Keith G
@Corner Stone: We may soon get a few converts, it seems.
jcricket
Kicking the can down the road is how we’re still saddled with the AMT “fix” they have to pass every year.
Most of the GOP, lead by Norquist, et al, think that by cutting taxes but not services, the debt/deficit will eventually “starve the beast” and force the government to cut services.
Most average people seem to think they can have low taxes and high services, and all the cuts can come from waste or foreign aid (i.e. most people are either stupid, willfully ignorant, or just plain mislead)
And the Dems do nothing to fix this situation b/c they can’t figure out the right message, even though the public would probably rally around them if they simply passed tax cuts (of multiple forms) for people making $250k and less and big tax increases on corporations, hedge fund managers, and increase in the capital gains rate, etc. (in other words, taxes they would never face).
Anyhoo, it’s all moot – the big long term issue is Medicare costs. The republican solution is to destroy Medicare (vouchers, eliminate the program, whatever). The Democratic solution will eventually have to be a combination of cuts in spending (not coverage, but lowering reimbursement rates) and increased access (buy-in for everyone – Medicare as the public option). But I suspect that’s at least another decade out. We’ll let everything get to the complete brink and maybe beyond before we do anything about it.
Watch California to see our future.
MikeMc
@Keith G: Roosevelt had 69 democratic senators. That probably helped.
Suck It Up!
@Jc:
HuffPo also had an article that said Obama told Pelosi and Reid that there is no deal if they don’t get something for it. They are working together.
Nick
@MikeMc:
It’s really hard to accept that. and I’m not mocking, it really is really hard to accept that.
The fact that Dems are left with no leverage despite having the public nominally on their side is really difficult to understand and speaks volumes about the situation in our country.
hummbumm
I don’t have the numbers handy but teh CBO has the multipliers for most tax/spend decisions. I believe unemployment benefits had a multiplier of 1.78, so losing out on that would be ~$50B GDP impact. Let’s assume tax cuts going away for everyone would have a multiplier of 1 (the top brackets is around 0.3 but lower brackets would be much higher) so that is another $400B/yr GDP ($4T 10 year cost) impact. So $450B on GDP next year so that would be an impediment to growth of ~3% on a 14T economy. since last quarter we grew at 2.5%, this would likely drive us back into recession, unemployment would definitely go over 10%+. WE are also not counting the deleterious effect of the ARRA stimulus going away including the tax cuts there and the support for states ( who will need to tighten their belts even further in 2011). Add all that up and we are talking amssive fiscal austerity from government which I believe will crush any recovery. Republicans will argue rightly that increasing taxes killed the economy and 2012 will be a bloodbath ( it will be hard to argue that no they only contributed to the killing). People jsut say that the Dems can just submit new tax cuts next year, what happens when republicans in congress offer their own plan and we are back to square one but with the economy suffering from the tax increase in a period of severe economic weakness. If i was king i would be all for a temporary extension and then a slow reversion to higher tax brackets for all. This still does not resolve the spend side which is clearly linked to medicare and the overall health space.There one can build over the time on the skeleton of the health care bill.
Kryptik
@MikeMc:
Even taking that to heart, there’s the sheer fact that they should never have been in this kind of fucking situation to begin with. We had supermajorities, a ‘transformative’ Democratic President, a tarred GOP brand thanks to Bush…and yet here we are with ‘no cards to play’, stuck in a no-win situation and the GOP not only ascendant, but looking to fucking own the whole fucking nation wholesale.
We should never have been in this fucking situation to begin with. And the Democratic party, top down, needs to shoulder blame for that. The GOP, yes, since they’re all fucking selfish monolithic assholes, but the whole Democratic party has been one giant fucking failure after another, and Obama has been no different.
Steve LaBonne
@MikeMc: That’s just crap. Ignorant tax-phobic voters ALWAYS think the Democrats are raising their taxes- Obama gave them at least $800 worth of tax credits and these idiots STILL thought he’d raised tehir taxes. If you’re going to get the blame anyway, may as well get the revenue.
Suck It Up!
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
13 months is not short term.
Mr Furious
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Agreed. And the truth is, it’s likely a choice they won’t even have to make. They’ll get their cuts extended, avoid DADT, DREAM and START and all they’ll give up is the cuts are extended, not permanent and unemployment bennies—probably only for another few months, not the year Dems want.
There’s going to be a bloodbath within the Democratic Party no matter what goes down at this point, because every scenario involves enraging a significant portion of the party.
Martin
@Rick Taylor: And the Dems deferred that in order to get everything else done.
From a deficit perspective, HCR is worth quite a lot more than a 2 year extension on the top rate, so it’s not like the Dems haven’t made good decisions here.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I blame the poor. If they didn’t need jobs, food, and a roof over their heads, then Obama would have all the bargaining power. They should have been paying more attention to politics rather than working long hours/multiple jobs.
/snark
It sucks when you need something more than the other person needs to give it to you. Which is why we need minimum wage laws and other things that only the government can provide.
Nick
@Keith G:
Dude, read Lincoln’s first inaugural speech and as for Roosevelt, two words…Huey Long
bkny
i really cannot understand this at all. this is the (well deserved) collapse of the democratic party.
i wonder what’s going to happen with harry reid’s efforts to legalize online gambling — watch him get that accomplished.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hU4tF_tgCcHKh75VaT3bkxCnFP4g?docId=08621650021d46198a75298a9bf884d3
brendancalling
“The public wants them to expire. The President and majorities in both
partieschambers want the tax cuts for the rich to expire. ”I don’t think i agree with this John.
The president also claimed to want a public option, and he campaigned on it during the health care debates. What no one knew until later was that he’d already cut a deal with the hospitals promising there would be no public option.
why should the taxes be any different? esepcially when you consider that nearly ever senator, republican or democrat, is a millionaire who would benefit from an extension of the cuts.
That’s where you go wrong here: believing what they say is your mistake.
Keith G
@MikeMc: That he did and in the single most important job of his presidency, preparing for an oncoming war, many of them and a majority of the nation were against him. He took chances. He got creative.
That’s all I ask of Obama.
Kryptik
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
And that’s precisely why we’re probably going to see Min. Wage laws repealed and any other kind of government assistance as well, because the government has ceased to be about helping anyone but the fucking plutocrats. We as a country only pull ourselves up by our bootstraps in order to shove said boots up a hippie, poor lazy slob, or some swarthy brown folk’s ass.
James K. Polk, Esq
Wait, let me get this straight.
We can’t afford not to pass the REPUBLICAN PARTY PLANK?
Remember when voting for Hilary was a no-no because of her corporate sellout status? Good times…
Wile E. Quixote
@Joe Beese:
Shut the fuck up teabagger.
chopper
@MikeMc:
even then he had to water shit down to please the blue dogs of his day. and liberals called for his head the whole time.
the more things change…
Keith G
@Nick: Maybe the caffeine hasn’t done it’s job, so could you please elucidate your point?
Emma
Nick: this is precisely why I’ve disengaged from politics as far as I can. The rules written by our lawmaking body (and it’s not the Presidency, btw), state clearly that a small group of jacka__es can hold the country hostage. The first step to sanity means changing that. And the votes ARE NOT THERE. No matter how many times the President talks, gives interviews, holds meetings… the votes are not there in Congress.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Kryptik:
No, we didn’t. We had almost 50 progressive members, a large number of Blue Dogs, and Lieberman.
When FDR passed Social Security that basically only covered the wealthy, he had 68 Democratic senators. When Johnson passed Medicare and the Civil Rights Act, he had 69 Democratic senators.
What they also had that we don’t is a Republican party that was willing to govern. We have the Congress that Lincoln was about to face when he was elected. And we know how that went.
Martin
@jcricket: California has had some of the highest economic growth in the nation over the last 10 years. We’re 1/7th of the US economy, but have 1/70th the budget shortfall.
For all of our budget woes, we’ve got the income to fix it if not for an obstructionist GOP that could give lessons to the Senate GOP, but they’ve been somewhat neutralized this month. The Federal government should be so lucky as to have as much to work with as California does.
El Cid
Jay Bookman notes another ridiculous concession to the desires of the super-rich to spin themselves into appearing like just good ol’ workin’ folks anywhere.
Earl Butz
@MikeMc: Progressives generally are the stupidest people in politics.
Yes, they do, but they either don’t realize it or are afraid to use it.
And that’s where they’re fucking up – they’ve drunk the Tax Cut Kool-Aid by the gallon and sound like the Republicans that they’re supposedly not. Taxes rising would be a clear and provable benefit to this country’s economic health.
Finally, no, it wouldn’t. Most people would scream bloody murder about it for a few weeks, and then forget about it as their paychecks wouldn’t change, and that would be the end of it. The kind of people who will carry a grudge about it will never vote for a Democrat anyway.
Or that would have been the case, had not the bunglers fatally miscalculated and tied the unemployment extension to the tax cut legislation. Now, if the Dems let the Bush rates expire, they just cut off all unemployment checks for Christmas. It kills me. We have no long term or strategic thinking in this party.
Corner Stone
@MikeMc:
Then why do we even bother having a Democratic Party at all?
That’s a rhetorical question.
shortstop
@Nick:
Yeah. Because there’s no way they’d campaign on tax cuts for all and when push comes to legislation, couple the cuts and demand all or nothing. That’d be crazy.
Emma
Earl: what cards do you see Democrats holding? I am curious.
Rhoda
DEMOCRATS in Congress don’t want the Bush tax cuts on the rich to expire; that’s the issue. Not the President. He won the argument and he will win it again in the 2012 campaign.
So yeah, kicking this two years down the road in order to keep the middle class tax cuts is worth it. This economy is brutal, the tax cuts coupled with an extension of Unemployment and the various tax cuts in the stimulus will help the economy.
This is really simple. Democrats fucked up not taking this vote before the election; that’s on the congressional leadership. So now, we gotta make lemonade to do a deal to get the START treaty and hopefully pass DADT and the Dream act. And I’m thinking it’s obvious DREAM is dead and we’re 50/50 on whether we can push DADT through this Congress.
ETA: TOTALLY forgot, we need to do a spending resolution because HOUSE Democrats politically thought not doing a budget would be a good election year move. Another sword hanging over all of this.
dianne
What on earth is going on here. It’s almost as though Obama was set up as a place holder for the Republican resurgence in 2012. The brand was so destroyed that the Democratic brand needed to flame out even worse than their own. And he did it in two years – way to go!
I just don’t know whether there is a 3 dimensional chess game in play (more diabolical than we thought) or else he is just a hapless kid in the schoolyard scratching out a game of tic-tac-toe who doesn’t even know to put the x in the middle first.
I will never vote for a Republican but if Bernie Sanders were to run as an Independent, I would be sorely tempted.
maye
Because they don’t understand 21st century marketing. Plain and simple.
Martin
@Steve LaBonne: BTW, setting your political and policy strategy on what the other side’s 27% believe is a sure ticket to failure.
Fuck the GOP base. They’re never going to vote for the Dems, so don’t buy into their message nor respond to it. Make the case for how the swing voters are going to respond. My guess is that if unemployment comes along for the tax cut bargain, the swing voters won’t punish the Dems.
Tip: Trading something that directly helps swing voters for something that doesn’t directly affect swing voters is almost always good politics.
Wile E. Quixote
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I agree, but not only that, call the Republicans on their bullshit. When they squawk about point out that every single Republican president since Eisenhower has campaigned on a platform of reducing the deficit but has failed to do so and that every single Republican president since Eisenhower has been a complete and utter failure, hypocrite and liar on the issue. Just start hammering the fuckers on this. Use the expiration of the cuts as an opportunity to remind voters of just how much the Republicans fucked things up under Bush and just how good things were under Clinton.
The way this is going down is fucked, there is no upside for the Democrats, none whatsoever.
cleek
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
and FDR’s majority was an even bigger majority than 68 would be today, because there were two fewer states, in the 1940s.
mk3872
Again, we witness John being pulled into this current atmosphere of ultra-polarized R vs L.
Yes, the tax cuts for the wealthy should not be extended.
But let’s be realistic. Obama was only proposing a 4 percentage point increase on their income OVER $200k.
And a LOT changed in those 10 years since they were first enacted.
The current recession and job market makes it very, very difficult to approve letting that rise again.
I like this site because it is more reasonable than DK, FDL, HP, etc. I sure hope we’re not slipping into the clutches of political battle at every turn.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Nick:
I believe he’s referring to Huey Long’s tax plan… which really was a threat to the monied status quo in this country…
Obama ain’t no Huey, that’s for sure…
Earl Butz
@Suck It Up!: You’re right.
But the “compromise” – the mess of potage that we’re going to sell our birthright for – is not thirteen months. It’s one.
Nick
well we didn’t have a supermajority in the House, and only had one in the Senate for a few months that relied on Joe Lieberman, and while the GOP brand was “tarred” the conservative brand was not.
Hawes
This so obviously should have been the vote to hold in September that it boggles the mind. Forcing the GOP to defend tax cuts for millionaires in the heat of a campaign was EXACTLY the right time to do this.
Yes, it would have made the Blue Dogs uncomfortable, so maybe you have the House vote in June. That way you associate the GOP via the Senate with plutocracy.
Again, so bad at politics.
Keith G
@Kryptik: You have tapped into the bottom line, as unsavory as it may seem:
Every president that I have been alive to witness (starting with Ike) has been the de facto leader of their political party and has shaped the party apparatus to play an important part of their administration’s political goals.
I am not sure Obama took office with a plan to manage the party and I admit that such management is never a sure thing. Still, it is part of what a president must do and it is a refection on his presidency.
MikeMc
@Keith G: Roosevelt, nor the country, were prepared for WW II. It took a long time to get the American war machine, not only built, but producing goods. People forget that the American military was pretty much the same as it was when WW I ended. If I remember correctly they were still training on horse back. The country didn’t get serious until Pearl was struck. You’re correct that Roosevelt wanted America to engage in the war in Europe, but without the attack by Japan this may not have happened. The declaration of war against Japan passed with everyone voting yea except one. Hitler declared war against the US when we declared war against Japan. Germany and Japan being allies.
Nick
@Keith G:
Both Lincoln and Roosevelt were considering weak, corrupt and/or sellouts by their own parties during their presidency.
Huey Long thought Roosevelt was a corporatist and Lincoln’s first inaugural was basically him begging the South to come back and he offered to drop the whole banning slavery thing for them.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
US politics makes more sense if you visualize the Blue Dog Dems as a third party which while pro-forma Democratic, are actually independent in practice. Their SOP is to seek to be the swing group in the middle and then to collect rent from that position for themselves and their wealthy patrons. From that standpoint weakening Obama from the very start so he would not have leverage to dictate terms to them within the pro-forma Democratic party was the obvious strategy, one that was given an immense boost by the structure of the US govt and especially by the rules in the Senate.
What we don’t know if how much they will go along with the batshit insane faction in the current GOP. Past history suggests that the oligarchy party will give the right much of what it wants but mostly on economic issues, not so much on social issues. What we don’t yet know is if today’s GOP is too crazy for that game to keep working the way it has in the past. I’m thinking START will be the tell on this – loose Russian nukes really aren’t in anybody’s interest, especially rich people who would make good targets for a future terrorist attack.
Nick
@shortstop:
If the middle class tax cuts are already permanent, there isn’t any “all”
Nick
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
That’s why I’ve always seen the Democratic Party as a coalition, not a party.
Hawes
I think that by 2012, the tax issue won’t be as important, and a smart political team (ha) could reassert that we had to pass tax cuts for the rich to get the GOP to continue UI.
In some ways, what you’re hoping for is regaining the House in 2012 (while holding on to the Senate and WH). That’s your only hope. You bet that when all these tax cuts expire in 2012, you have a better legislative deck to deal with this.
I still don’t understand why this can’t be dealt with via reconciliation, like the original Bush cuts. But I hear it can’t.
jwb
@Jc: If it passes, it will pass with lots of GOP votes, and Broder will be all over how extending tax cuts for the rich is just the kind of bipartisanship the country has been craving.
Wile E. Quixote
@Martin:
If I were a Democrat in California I’d start pointing out how much money California pays in federal taxes versus how much it receives in federal funding and attack the Republicans in the state for taking California’s money and giving it to states full of parasitic, Republican no-loads like South Carolina, Alabama and Arkansas. Point out over and over again that if white southern conservatives weren’t lazy, stupid and parasitic, and that if they were as productive, inventive and hard working as Californians were that the federal government wouldn’t have to constantly bail their inferior and undeserving asses out and that California would be a lot better off economically.
gene108
@Martin:
The Dems and GOP are playing the same game: Politics.
The GOP just won a round in devastating fashion against the Democrats, after the GOP looked to be nearly beat in the prior round.
Also, the GOP goal isn’t just to oppose Obama, it is to oppose Obama AND regain power.
If the Democrats and liberals had been unified in fighting back against Republicans, they would’ve opposed Obama but to no gain. Then the Republicans would’ve been forced to change as a Party.
When seemingly half the liberal base considered Obama a corporatist whore, by February 2009, because he appointed Rahm Emanuel to be his CoS, Larry Summers to be an economic adviser, Tim Geithner to be Treasury Sec and reappointed Bernanke, as Fed Chairman, and a large chunk totally lost it when the public option wasn’t part of HCR, you end up undermining your own cause.
There’s as much liberal vitriol pouring out against Obama, as there is right-wing vitriol, it seems to me. The only problem is Obama will try to advance parts of the liberal agenda. The Republicans won’t give liberals the time of day, if they are in a good mood or more likely call them lazy ass bums who should get their own watch.
I don’t think the issue is the Democratic Party per se, but rather the coalition that put the Democrats in power in 2008 is very unorganized and has as much of a problem with each other, as they do with the GOP.
The failure of Obama and the Democrats is an inability to unify the base and liberal leaning independents behind a unified ideology.
I don’t know if the problem is the Dem Party or the base, being unwilling to not be “manic progressive”, but some form of unity needs to happen to push back against the GOP.
Nick
@Hawes:
they didn’t write reconciliation rules into the budget to do it back in the spring
WarMunchkin
In other news, USA TODAY absolutely SUCKS.
How do you write that? Just how? How do you get away with framing it like that?
Edit: FYWP
Hawes
@Nick:
That’s right. Lincoln was so reviled by the “Professional Left” they tried to dump him off the ticket in 1864 for Chase, who was “more pure”. Luckily, Sherman sacked Atlanta and the war news improved. FDR was also reviled by the far left – which in 1933 was pretty much communists/socialists – as being a cop out.
I’ve always admired Obama as a long term historical thinker. He’s banking on the long term effect of these policies – like HCR and financial reform – to re-establish trust in the American government among people who are conditioned to mistrust it.
But it gets very frustration when they screw up a lay-up like this tax cut thing.
Mike Goetz
Well, I guess I’m not a liberal. I enjoy watching the progs swallow their tongues and piddle into their Underoos too much. This has to be the most entertaining day on the Leftist Internet of all time. Check out Kuttner on HuffPo if you get a chance. If you get through it without a belly laugh or three you are a better man than I.
Wile E. Quixote
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
So here’s a question: how can we destroy these rent-seeking shitbags? Seriously, how can we wipe these sons of bitches out? I hate Ben Nelson almost as much as I hate Mitch McConnell (but nowhere near as much as I hate Jim Demint).
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Keith G:
Since we are getting into FDR comparisons here, let me throw out another caveat. In the 1930s and 40s the Senate had no staff to speak of. The WH had a huge advantage over Congress when it came to anything even remotely technical (check the bios of leading figures in the New Deal, e.g. Leland Olds, and pay attention to how many of them were technical advisors in the executive branch), a lead in quality and quantity of staff which declined over the next two decades (for example read Cato’s bio of LBJ Master of the Senate for details regarding how important it was in the 1950s to seize control of top quality staff in the Senate). That advantage is now gone.
maye
@WarMunchkin: It reads like that in every MSM news outlet in the country. The only place making a realistic assessment of what is going on is blog-land.
Tsulagi
Yeah, but think of the potential withering fire from a Palin tweet. Or a Bachmann deep analysis proclaiming 250+k cuts bring instant prosperity for all. Given that heat, the “capitulation is inevitable” Dems will stay the course.
Kryptik
I’m going to repost a comment I had in a thread below, since I think it’s relevant here too:
I would like to point out…if the ‘dissidents’ in the Democratic party are so small and minute…why the fuck are ‘mainstream’ Dems going out of their way to hippie punch them at every turn and blame them for all the ails of the party, while simultaneously tucking tail and bending over so the Republicans can swing their heavy steel-toed ‘Fuck You’ boot into their ass again?
Yeah, some of the ‘far left’ are annoying, but…since when have they had any honest to god power to sway fucking anything? They’re not the ones compromising away every fucking ticket the Dems have had. So if the “far left” or “professional left” are really having this kind of deleterous effect on the party? Maybe the issue isn’t them. Maybe the issue is the party being so fucking worthless that even a ‘minute’ wing of the party has the power to destroy it from within.
Corner Stone
@Mike Goetz: No one was going to mistake you for one.
MikeMc
@Nick: That’s a good point. The Democratic coalition. That’s a major problem of being a “big tent” party. There are a shit load of competing interests. It’s gotta be tough trying to meet all demands. Someone’s ego is always going to get bruised.
Nick
@Wile E. Quixote:
AnnaN
This is infuriating. Let the damn tax cuts expire. Let the Repubs eat it in the next election for not extending employment benefits. Obama and the Dems have failed miserably on this.
If I were single I would emigrate to Canada.
All US politicians = Fucking fuckers.
Nick
@MikeMc:
I mentioned this before. I’ve been to four different Democratic clubs in Queens, New York and saw four completely different Democratic Parties.
Just Some Fuckhead
Yeah, substitute DADT or the public option or whatever and it’s always pretty much the same story.
stuckinred
Don Merideth dead at 72, live it up, the meter’s ticking.
Mike Goetz
@Corner Stone:
Really? I want an extension of unemployment, DADT repeal, START ratification, and continued lower taxes for the middle and working classes. I can get all that with a lousy two year extension of upper income tax breaks. I’m not willing to shitcan every other liberal priority so I can gloat over some rich person I’ve never met paying a few dollars more in taxes. It’s not worth it.
Nick
@AnnaN:
What the hell makes you think the Republicans will “eat it” for not extending unemployment benefits?
Keith G
@Nick:
Certainly by parts of their parties, at least. And yes, they were attacked from both the left and the right of their respective parties at their respective times.
They are celebrated now because they were both tenacious and creative as they fought for their bottom line goals.
Mike Goetz
@AnnaN:
Is it more important to help the unemployed survive for the next year or make the Republicans “eat it”? I know which is more important to me, but then again I’m not a “true progressive”.
gene108
@Kryptik: I think both the Party and base need to shoulder the blame.
The base for not doing enough work to make Americans demand their agenda be enacted and then turning on Democrats for not doing what they want, because many Americans haven’t been sold on the benefits of their agenda.
I’m sorry, but political parties, in this country, react to political movements. They do not start them.
Max Baucus in the Senate, gets singled out by me, for not allowing a Senate HCR out of committee, before the August 2009 recess, which killed a lot of the momentum President Obama and the Democrats had and opened them up for all lot of the attacks that came their way.
Keith G
@stuckinred: McCain is 74.
jwb
@Keith G: “They are celebrated now because there were both tenacious and creative as they fought for their bottom line goals.”
And we don’t know that Obama is not fighting for his bottom line goal either, because that book is not yet closed.
stuckinred
@Keith G: Did you know that he was a POW?
Mike Goetz
@Nick:
The problem is poor old Ben Nelson, conservative as he is, is still more liberal than the state he represents. That he voted for something as liberal as the Affordable Care Act with no Republican cover is borderline miraculous. And there are far, far more Democrats in that kind of situation than there are Republicans. Simply put, Republicans can afford ideological purity even in face of broader public opinion, because so few of them are mismatched to their districts.
Jeff
Question: If a temporary tax cut for the rich was the only way to get the one year unemployment extension, would people still be against it?
Jeffro
If they’re gonna extend them, I hope they extend them for 3 years. Since Dems obviously don’t know diddly about ‘messaging’ on this (much less using it as a club to beat the Republicans over the head with), I’d rather it not be part of the 2012 elections.
Let that be all about the merits…or lack thereof…of having Snowmobile Snooki in the Oval Office
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Wile E. Quixote:
Realistically, I don’t think we can. The structure of the US govt and the ownership of our current mass media are wired for their control. And I think the Citizens United decision has set back any chance of beating them back on structural grounds by decades.
If there is any hope it has to come from an authentic rural progressive movement. Progressives are strong in urban areas but weak in rural areas, and many of the Blue Dogs are from small rural states. Progressives need to reconnect with that demographic if they want to beat the Blue Dogs on their own turf. Back in 2008 there were some hints of that sort of coalition building at the site where Al Giordano was writing, but then something fell apart.
Kryptik
@gene108:
I can agree with this, but in this same vein, it also reminds me that the Dem party caved hardcore on some fairly genuine movements the last few years, like the anti-war movement (to which millions across the nation and the world protested against the war while Dems couldn’t race to tar constituents and their own colleagues as Anti-American, Pro-Terrorist assholes along with the GOP).
There are movements coming out from the liberal base, but as they get more and more ignored, both by media and both parties, in favor of manufactured bullshit astroturf like the Tea Parties, of course they’re going to get more wacky and more extreme just to be heard, and in turn, it just gives Dems more reason to say ‘Oh see, look how crazy they are, we were right to ignore them before!’. The base may shoulder some blame too, yes, but we’re not the ones bending over so the GOP can meet boot to ass, over and over again.
ruemara
@maye:
Facebook, twitter, a weekly web address, a blog. And they don’t understand 20th Century marketing.
Zifnab
@maye: Wow. Check Facebook. Obama has a weekly address. Congressional Reps have weekly newsletters.
If you’re not hearing any of this, it’s likely because you get all your news from CNN. “Media didn’t cover” does not mean “Politician did not release”.
burnspbesq
OT: C-SPAN has apparently gotten permission to televise today’s oral argument in the Ninth Circuit in the Prop 8 case.
1:00 p.m. Eastern time.
gene108
@cleek:
Four fewer, since Alaska and Hawaii each get two, but I get your point.
Kryptik
@ruemara:
@Zifnab:
I think the issue isn’t the tools. It’s obvious that the WH knows the marketing tools of the age. But the techniques and frames…they’re getting fucking lapped thrice over along with the rest of the damned Democratic party.
Keith G
@MikeMc:
My point was that by late 1938, FDR began taking great chances by opening direct and back channel secret talks with friendly nations on how to by pass U.S. neutrality laws and begin the preparations for the oncoming war.
He got creative. He took risks.
jwb
@gene108: And Obama really screwed the pooch with the way he sold the stimulus as just right. It wasn’t the deal he struck at the time that was the problem; the problem was how he chose to sell the package that was ultimately agreed to, because he left no room to revisit the issue. I think you can chalk that up as a major flaw in both politics and policy. Whatever deal the Obama and the Dems make on the tax cuts, unemployment benefits, etc., let’s just hope they continue to hammer the point that extending the cuts in this way is not their idea and bad policy. I do worry that Obama, in order to seem conciliatory, will say something very stupid at the signing ceremony that will end up locking these things in.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
And to connect the dots – rural support is a key difference between FDR and Democrats today. Our population may have become more urbanized since then but the structure of the Senate and the demographics of the states in the midwest and far west (which are the swing states between the more culturally polarized southern and northeastern states) combine to make rural voters important in US politics out of all proportion to their actual numbers, even today.
Keith G
@stuckinred: I have heard that, somewhere.
An SOB as well.
Chris
Wow, is there anything Obama won’t sacrifice to get reelected? Or just to avoid Republican attacks? Is it even *possible* to find a Democratic leader who won’t give away the whole fucking store to the first Republican punk who walks in and says, “This is a stick-up!”?
gene108
@Mike Goetz:
Also, the majority of opinion comes from just a total number. Unforunately for Democrats and liberals, the bulk of this countries population is concentrated on the coasts and in some urban areas in the Midwest.
New York City has more people in it, than probably 75% of the states in this country.
Yet those less densely populated states get to send two Senators to Congress, as well as Representatives to the House, so rural areas get far more representation than their populations should have in our government.
That’s the way the Constitution was designed, but it’s one reason things the majority of Americans support aren’t always slam dunks politically; the majority of Americans don’t always have a proportionate majority representing them in Congress.
maye
@Zifnab: In business, if the media isn’t covering you, you hire a new PR agency. If no one is influenced by your advertising, you hire a new ad team. If your message can’t be heard louder than your competitor, you need new creative professionals working on your behalf. If the public is not buying your product, and you’ve got a good product that market research says the public wants or needs, there’s a problem with your marketing strategy.
It’s not brain surgery.
Dave
Why the fuck doesn’t Obama occasionally have a press conference so he could make the points about the tax cuts for the rich or START? Can someone show me a scenario where that would be bad?
Jamie
You seems toe confusing this country with a democracy, it’s more of a Plutocratic Republic
cleek
@ruemara:
marketing is getting the consumer interested in your product, creating buzz about your product. it’s about turning potential customers into actual customers.
releasing a product is not marketing.
marketing is invasive, not passive. it’s about putting info in front of the consumer, even if he/she isn’t really looking for it. it has to grab people who want your kind of product and grab those who don’t even know they want your product. it isn’t throwing webcasts into the void and hoping for the best.
Keith G
@jwb:
And I will be the first to gratefully say, “I had faith. I lost faith. And, oh boy, was I foolish.”
But it aint looking good.
Stillwater
@El Cid: I think it’s mainly a policy preference by conservative Democrats and not just a political or campaign finance calculation, it’s what they want.
This. They want it for purely self-interested reasons, because of the income bracket they and their families reside in or because of a class identification. Either way, they truly believe that producers ought to keep all the fruits of the hard working investments and that taxes are for little people.
ruemara
@cleek:
The people are interested. Obama has a brand that works, he has more fans than most politicians. The thing is he gets buzz, the issues don’t. Issues aren’t sexy and the public does not want to understand them. They just want things to work.
Judas Escargot
@Kryptik:
I think the issue isn’t the tools. It’s obvious that the WH knows the marketing tools of the age. But the techniques and frames…they’re getting fucking lapped thrice over along with the rest of the damned Democratic party.
I don’t think it’s the tools, either: The most perfect message out on Facebook and Twitter isn’t going to do you much good at all with most of the over-40 set.
Most of the over-55 set, you can’t get to, since Fox filters all.
And, at least anecdotally, much of the 40-55 set (I’m in there) don’t seem to get their news/views from anywhere substantial. My age-peers are all either soundbite-spouting talkradiobots, or disinterested word-of-mouthers. And that’s if they bother to have their own opinion at all– more often it’s a disgusted handwave with the obligatory “meh, they’re all the same”.
This isn’t a Messaging crisis.
MikeMc
@Nick: I know, right! Democrats are such a diverse group message control is next to impossible. I always get nervous when Dems are on cable news because ya’ never know what they’re going to say. On the other hand, I could answer the republican question for the republican guest. It never changes. I think that’s part of why people are drawn to the GOP. It’s predictable. I think people, especially older people, find comfort in that. If you have no critical thinking skills you can still easily follow the party platform and speak it fluently. The GOP allows people to think, “Wow! Even dick-head like me could get elected!”
The Democratic party is chaotic. It’s why I love it! We talk about shit! We fight about shit! We have no real need for political enemies from the other side. We’ll fight each other. We’re cool with it! There’s been a lot of talk about the democrats imploding. I don’t know how long you’ve been democrats, but our party is usually on the verge of collapse. SNAFU is our default position!
Stillwater
This comment reveals the maturity, analytical abilities and policy objectives of conservatives.
shortstop
@Stillwater: El Cid hit it with “campaign finance.” The amount of $ that wealthy representives/senators personally save with tax cuts is negligible when compared with the cash they can rely on from the individual and corporate plutocracy if they vote its interests.
Outside of campaign financing, there’s all the $ to be made post-Congressional career via lobbying, think tanking, lecturing, board-sitting, “consulting,” insider trading, etc., etc., if they faithfully serve the interests of the wealthy.
maye
It is a complete and total messaging failure.
JC
Krugman weighs in:
Let’s Not Make A Deal
I couldn’t agree more. Stay strong, Nancy. Stay strong, Obama.
It’s policy malpractice to let this go through.
Keith G
@Judas Escargot:
That is just silly. FNC best show, O’Reilly, only pulls 702,000 total viewers. Most people of all demos are doing something else.
Silly, silly, silly.
RosiesDad
A few weeks ago, Bill Maher made the following observation:
“Democrats are known by the “D” because that’s their grade. Passing but just barely.
Republicans are known by the “R” because that’s the sound a pirate makes as he slits your throat and steals your money.”
Epic fail.
jwb
@Keith G: It’s really hard to say. I tend to agree. But the next two years are going to bring a number of difficult crises, starting with the states and cities running out of money next summer and large corporations going bankrupt if the economy doesn’t turn (which it likely won’t). On top of that we have good potential for the Eurozone to melt down and the Middle East to explode. That’s a lot of deck scrambling, which means lots of opportunities for game changing moves.
Corner Stone
I for one am very happy that the Democratic Party has somehow managed to inextricable link UI to the tax cuts.
They have enshrined the delightful notion that:
“Makers gotta make and Takers gotta take”
Well done chappies.
ChrisWWW
If the Democrats are going to be blamed for raising people’s taxes anyways, why not actually do it?
rickstersherpa
Always a good place to start is “Its the Economy stupid.” I think David Leonhardt had a good piece in the Times today, and as an exception to the rules (Rule 1, Paul Krugman is always right. Rule 2, If you disagree with Paul Krugman, refer to rule 1.”), I have to concede in political and short term econmic terms Leonhardt is right. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/obamas-tax-cut-retreat-through-two-lenses/?ref=business
If the economy starts cooking and the housing market starts swinging up in 2012, then Obama will be in far better political position to make this argument and win reelection. If the economy still sucks, then I guess we will all be required to join the President Palin fan club. By such I mean an unemployment rate near 9% or higher, median real income still declining, and a housing market still flat on its back.
Because of the European debt crisis, the Euro will still stay weak and Germany will have the advantages of currency depreciation (perhaps one reason, besides making sure the “profligate” countries pay back their German bondholders they don’t want a system of write downs on the current debt.) With both the Federal and state Government going for full austerity (except for tax cuts), and the U.S. consumer continuing his or her process of paying down (when not defaulting) on debt (the process hear call “deleveraging”), the only source for U.S. growth will be an increase in U.S. exports of goods and services and a decrease in imports of goods and services. And neither Europe, China, Japan, or Korea are making this very easy to accomplish.
Judas Escargot
@Keith G:
And each of those 702,000 folks goes to their Churches, Bingo nights, condo association meetings –whatever it is they do for fun– and casually, uncritically repeat what they’ve been told. Spreading the memes to the rest. Unchallenged.
This isn’t some theoretical Marketing class assignment. You can “Message” your little hearts out all you like: But if the channel is faulty (or perhaps even pre-wired to be against the content of that message), not even the shiniest, prettiest little message is going to get any traction with the demos you need to reach.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Judas Escargot:
Ditto that. The fecklessness of my age cohort’s methods for learning about the news, and lack of awareness of media criticism astonishes and appalls me. The old saying that “if you don’t know where you are going, that is exactly where you are going to end up.” seems applicable here. This is a group of people who are just begging to be led around by the nose. I’m guessing that growing up during the golden era of supposedly objective news media has something to do with this, but dear god the time to put aside childish things passed its sell-by-date a loooong time ago.
JC
Corner Stone
I think the Rethugs plan all along was to look for any leverage to get the rich people tax cuts extended. Unemployment benefits were what was at hand. To say ‘Democrats somehow managed to inextricable link UI to the tax cuts”, isn’t the whole story.
Watching the actual Democrats, such as Kerry, on TV this weekend, he made NO linkage between the two. He continually pointed out the facts and the hypocrisy of McDonnal. It was the David Gregory who kept doing the linking.
Now, the funny part was that 2 minutes after McConnell said ‘you don’t raise taxes in a recession’, as a justification for the rich people tax cut, he turns around and says on UI, ‘one of the questions is are we going to PAY for the UI benefits.”
And of course, Gregory didn’t call him on it. But immediately shifted to DADT.
Same with kerry, actually. Kerry made all these strong points, about the reality of the situation, and Gregory says, “but I’m asking you about the POLITICAL question.”
As if the facts didn’t really matter.
Idiot.
Stillwater
@rickstersherpa: the only source for U.S. growth will be an increase in U.S. exports of goods and services and a decrease in imports of goods and services. And neither Europe, China, Japan, or Korea are making this very easy to accomplish.
Those damn un-American countries and continents! Can’t we designate them as enemy combatants and neutralize their asses?
BombIranForChrist
But, of course, we MUST vote for Obama and not primary him, because John will get mad and call us stupid.
Amanda in the South Bay
I guess this is one of the legitimate areas where BJers can criticize Obama without being called a firebagger?
Sorry to ruin the emo parade, but even if this is a done deal (and yeah, rich people can kiss my ass) extending unemployment benefits aint a bad thing either.
rickstersherpa
I would love if if Obama was far less of corporatist, neo-liberal, Rubinite Democrat, but he is a product of his time and place and unfortunately, in the words I found some of the most moving of Abraham Lincoln, he has been unable to “disenthrall himself from the dogmas of the quiet past, (that)are inadequate to the stormy present.”
But he is what he is. He is a plausible winner in 2012. There are no other plausible alternatives. At the same time a loyal opposition of the Democrats and liberals must continue to push for better policies and the place to start is defending Social Security and Medicare from a permanent extension of the tax cuts.
Amanda in the South Bay
@BombIranForChrist:
Because its a really shitty idea? You must really want a Republican to win the 2012 election.
Amanda in the South Bay
Sweet lemon meringue pie BJers, enough with this meta emo angsty crap. This is probably not the worst moment of Obama’s (hopefully) two term presidency, the sky isnt falling, etc. If comment threads had tags, this one deserves a Burkean Bells in all caps.
cleek
@BombIranForChrist:
a primary challenge would be the absofuckinglutely dumbest thing possible. it guarantees a party split during the time when the party can least afford one. unless Obama declines to run again, he’s the Dem nominee in 2012. period. the quicker you accept that the better.
JC
Rickstersherpa
That is the first cogent argument I’ve heard for the tax cuts, and Nate Silver’s analysis, does cohere together.
As a political argument. Not on any factual basis, just on the politics.
But Silver and Leonhardt could be wrong, as well. Impossible to tell what ‘works’ politically. I mean, as Krugman says:
“Last but not least: if Democrats give in to the blackmailers now, they’ll just face more demands in the future. As long as Republicans believe that Mr. Obama will do anything to avoid short-term pain, they’ll have every incentive to keep taking hostages. If the president will endanger America’s fiscal future to avoid a tax increase, what will he give to avoid a government shutdown?”
So there will be lots more options for Republicans to play chicken with the Dems.
I think that Obama should play chicken on unemployment benefits, myself. As often as possible, bring up the extension of unemployment benefits, and castigate the Rethugs as party of Big Money, and enabling the deepening of the recession, the delay of the recovery.
But that is obvious to me. I don’t know how it works in the general public.
And in the background, I see George W. Bush, smiling his smug smile, ‘creating our reality’, giving all but the rich the finger.
Who knew that the ‘reality-based party’ – i.e. the Democrats – had to learn to bow down to Bush, that he CAN create a reality for the rest of us?
Keith G
@Judas Escargot:
So we are screwed. We don’t try. We find an embryonic position under the bed.
We blame the evil GOP. We blame the treacherous blue dogs. We blame the cowardly mainstream Dems in Congress. We blame the hard times. We blame the corrupt media. We blame the herd of sheep that is our society.
And we vote for an unchanging Obama one more time and hope that all those other things do change so that the rightness of our ideas may be recognized.
Wow. I need a drink. Cornerstone, you got any more tequila?
MikeMc
@BombIranForChrist: Primary him with who? Who is the liberal standard bearer? Also, if the right is in ascension at the moment, would a threat from that flank of the party be more likely?
ChrisZ
When someone like CNN says “extend the Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans” I want to hit something.
We tax everyone the same, we just tax different kinds of income differently. All Americans, even the really, really rich ones, get tax breaks on the first $250K if we extend the cuts on that portion of everybody’s income.
What the Democrats are quickly collapsing into doing is extending all the tax-cuts from the Bush-era, even those that only benefit the richest 2% of Americans.
If we stopped calling them tax cuts for the poor or middle class vs. tax cuts for the rich, and instead appropriately called them tax cuts for everybody vs. tax cuts for only rich people, then maybe (although I have little faith in the Democratic spine) it wouldn’t be so hard to repeal them.
eemom
@JC:
Yes yes yes. This this this this. YES, THIS.
The bobblebots keep forgetting that this ball is gonna land back in Nancy’s court. Or, more likely, assume that she’ll do as she is told.
Say NO Nancy. Please, please, just say NO — say it to fucking Obama himself. No. I will not do this. My chamber will NOT enable another ass-fuck of the American people by the republican party.
She’s got the only pair of testicles in the entire Democrat leadership. She’s our only hope.
Keith G
@eemom:
Welcome to the dark side.
catclub
@Mr Furious: This.
Except I would only allow the tax vote to come last. As an indication of trust in the GOP’s willingness to break their word.
Corner Stone
@Keith G:
After all this time, how could you wound me so deeply? Do you not know me at all?
I’m serving it in two flavors! IV fluid or Funnel, your choice!
Koz
It’s the health care bill, stupid. The American people didn’t want it, the D’s forced them to take it anyway. Therefore, the ability to stop the Obama agenda isn’t something to be given away cheap. Therefore, the R’s have leverage, the D’s don’t.
Joe Beese
@Wile E. Quixote:
Did I strike a nerve, dearie?
catclub
The law, in its majestic equality, taxes the income of poor people that is over $250k at the same rate as of rich people.
Tim H
@cleek:
Not really our choice. Obama’s approval gets down to 40% and they’ll be coming out of the woodwork, I bet.
rickstersherpa
@Stillwater: I think I infer in this stark the argument that it is the U.S. grasshopper that must change its ways as opposed to the moral, thrifty, hard working Koreans, Japanese, Germans, and Chines. I do take askance at these countries, who constantly manipulate their currencies, getting worked up that the Feds efforts to boost the economy at the zero bound might depreciate the dollar as a side affect. What I am referring to is an accounting identity, a matter of double entry bookkeeping in the national economies of nations the trade among them. If the U.S. private savings are going to increase, and consumption decrease, while at the same time we want the public deficit to decrease, then the current account deficit has to shrink.
From Marshall Auerbach of New Deal 2.0 and Naked Capitalism:
…(I – S) + (G – T) + (X – M) = 0
That is the three balances have to sum to zero (see here for more)
• The private domestic balance (I – S) – positive if in deficit, negative if in surplus.
• The Budget Deficit (G – T) – negative if in surplus, positive if in deficit.
• The Current Account balance (X – M) – positive if in surplus, negative if in deficit.
These balances are usually expressed as a per cent of GDP but that doesn’t alter the accounting rules that they sum to zero, it just means the balance to GDP ratios sum to zero.
This is also a basic rule derived from the national accounts it always applies. This is not high Keynesianism, but simple double entry bookkeeping, developed some 6 centuries ago. Call it the tyranny of Accounting 101.
You can then manipulate these balances to tell stories about what is going on in a country, as we are seeking to do here with Germany. For example, when an external deficit (X – M < 0) and a public surplus (G – T S by 20 (whatever $ units we like). So the fiscal drag from the public sector is coinciding with an influx of net savings from the external sector. While private spending can persist for a time under these conditions using the net savings of the external sector, the private sector becomes increasingly indebted in the process. It is an unsustainable growth path.
This situation describes the recent history of the United States, notably under the Clinton years when the country was running budget surpluses. By the same token, using the sectoral balance approach, we can say that a current account surplus (X – M > 0), if large enough, allows the government to run a budget surplus (G – T < 0) which applies in the case of many Asian countries or a European country, such as Norway (where the world does its spending for it).
What about Germany today? In the current German situation, although the country runs a large current account surplus, it is insufficient to offset a high private sector predisposition to save (which means there is some deficit). But the current account surplus does allow for a smaller budget deficit than its so-called "profligate" Mediterranean neighbors, whilst still facilitating the private domestic sector’s desire to net save."
Nick
@Keith G:
No, we DO try and we have, that’s why the President pounded the pavement for months before the elections. That why the House took the vote and the Senate did as well. That’s why John Kerry took to Meet The Press yesterday. We do try, we just always fail.
Isn’t that what you’re suggesting we do anyway? I don’t understand
Cain
@Wile E. Quixote:
Yeah, and sure the media will cooperate. Democrats never get the media time that Republicans get. You have Fox News owning 25% of the crazy in the country.. who repeat the lies to every one else. That is a lot of bullshit to cut through. Unless you frame your debate such that you have news couchers riveted it’s not going to help. You have to say things that are memorable and probably obnoxious.
cain
ChrisZ
@catclub:
But conversely and more importantly, it taxes the income of rich people that is under $10K, $20K, $80K, etc. at the same rate as it taxes poor people. The top 2% get the same “middle class tax cuts” as everyone else without needing another tax cut just for themselves.
Nick
@Tim H:
His approval rating is far more likely to drop to 40% if all tax cuts expire than it is if they are continued.
You won’t get a left wing challenger if he does what the left wants and sees his ratings plummet because of it. You’ll get Evan Bayh
gene108
@Judas Escargot:
The reason right-wing talking points are effective at driving the narrative in this country is because they are unified.
You don’t have Limbaugh saying Fox News are a bunch of liberal jerks and visa versa.
In the liberal blogosphere, you have bunches of people sniping at each other.
There’s no unified message, which undermines reinforcing any ideas of common agreement.
@jwb:
Obama’s biggest failure, when he started office was greatly underestimating how savagely the private sector was going to slash their payrolls. I don’t know how the disconnect between the private sector and Obama’s economic team happened, but his Administration clearly wasn’t anticipating 10% unemployment and didn’t adept to address the problem.
The biggest structural problem with the U.S. economy is the diminishing purchasing power of the middle and lower class, while the rich get richer, but I don’t know how to tackle this and I don’t think any really does.
It’s not just tax the rich more. That won’t do anything to drive up wages for the middle and lower classes or stop jobs from being sent overseas.
There has to be some sort of labor policy to “soften the landing” for American workers, as the global economy expands, but there doesn’t seem to be any attempt to address this.
The Republicans are milking people’s insecurity for short-term political gain. The rest of us are overwhelmed by the stagnating wages, which started two generations ago, in the 1970’s and has persisted ever since.
@Kryptik:
The anti-war movement is a large block of the Democratic Party, but I don’t think Democrats figured out how to handle the Congressional losses of the 1990’s and have been running all over the place, to figure out what their Party should be doing.
John Kerry voted against Gulf War 1, but voted for the invasion of Iraq. I don’t think he’s a hawkish guy, but 9/11/01 changed the political equations in this country, for a few years, with a wave of patriotic fervor and a desire for revenge against the “bad guys”, which Bush & Co. stoked for all it’s worth.
Part of the problem is you have to single minded these days, it seems, to get through the media clutter. Liberals wanted HCR for decades. Obama and the Democratic Congress delivered. Liberals wanted to “hang” Obama because there was no public option.
You can’t push an agenda, when what you want to happen, happens and you jettison the people who made it happen because you don’t like how it did what you wanted it to do.
Privatizing Social Security was a huge flop for Bush & Co. They don’t say how Bush & Co. and the Republicans betrayed their support by not getting it passed and how they’ll no longer work with them. The people who want to gut it keep plugging along and backing Republicans.
JC
Koz
That makes no sense whatsoever. getting health coverage for all, is the right thing to do, what democrats have been attempting to do since the 40’s, and practically, the only thing that will curb the bankrupting of this country, as the biggest driver of the nation’s spending outlays is medical expenses.
Mr Furious
Come on ChrisZ, in that scenario you DO realize that the poor guy making $20K gets a tax cut that lasts all year, while the top one-percenter’s tax cut only lasts a week.
/class warfare!
JC
Gene108,
This is the biggest issue. I saw a chart of company profits, assets, the other day, and the 4 biggest banks, were something like 10 times larger, than the nearest competitors. Really, the amount of revenue and assets captured by the 4 biggest banks is simply staggering.
The plutocracy is no longer local either. It’s international.
Which means, the banks, the investment firms, use their local connections, and money, to buy politicians and policy in different countries, ANY country, while not really having any fealty to a particular country.
There is nothing to discipline the international bond and investment community now. As we see from the example of Ireland, they are FORCING that bondholders don’t take a haircut, but that essentially Ireland has to devote a large chunk of it’s GDP to pay off the bondholders, rather than for local services.
I don’t know what will stop pirate capitalism of this sort, that simply buys out the local politicians. Especially in the U.S. with Citizens United.
ChrisZ
@Mr Furious:
I admit that a small tax cut is a bigger deal for those who have less. If the idea is that the only tax cuts that are fair (and remember we’re talking about cuts, not overall rate of taxation) are those that are equally significant to the poor as well as the rich, then I’m afraid I’m advocating an unfair tax scheme.
JC
Chris Z,
If we cared about fair, capital gains would not be taxed less than working wages.
But you won’t see anyone in the press pushing that argument on a regular basis. Much less the politicians take that on.
AnotherBruce
Why do I belong to a party that does not have one goddamn clue on how to use the media?
patrick II
I remember that back in May Sen. Jim Bunning filibustered extending unemployment benefits by himself — and those benefits were considered so untouchable during a recession that he was considered crazy. Eight months later unemployment benefits is what we get back for what was campagined on as a major Obama policy.
Nice work.
Koz
I would love Mrs. Pelosi to try that. Like her credibility, the personal esteem of Americans for her, her common touch, her innate intelligence makes this even remotely possible.
Mr Furious
@ChrisZ: I was being facetious. I don’t want or expect a fair tax code. I want it to be progressive as all hell.
I was just making the point that the motherfuckers getting the big break here are the guys who make more in a week than most of us earn in a year.
Mr Furious
Kevin Drum’s right about this. If Obama and the Dems are going ahead with this plan, they better extend the cuts for THREE years instead of two.
Of course, the only timeframe I’ve heard mentioned by anyone is TWO, which means the Democrats would be signing on to have their asses handed to them on this exact same issue in the next election.
Brilliant.
Keith G
@Nick:
No dear. Perhaps I was not clear enough. The blaming was for this administration’s recent trouble in getting key policy needs met. In this case one does not “Blame” (which is what I am saying we Democrats seem to be doing), one makes a counter argument, develops the strongest case possible and finds the most emphatic ways to make deliver it.
Obama did hit the trail, but much later and with less intensity than many of us were begging for. Maybe “No Drama Obama” needs to add to his skill set.
And if, as you say:
…Maybe we just have the wrong leader for this time in history if he can not evolve.
Mr Furious
Oops. Forgot the link, and can’t edit.
ChrisZ
@JC:
The media doesn’t push any argument unless it’s essential to the narrative they’ve decided fits the particular people/parties involved in the story they’re writing.
Tim H
@Nick:
IMO, tax cuts are irrelevant to his ratings. Obama gets unemployment down or nothing else matters.
Oscar Leroy
Are you sure?
Keith G
@gene108:
This is one of those necessary and transformational policies and need to be developed and voiced PDQ. This society will be facing many ills unless/until some true, creative leader starts the process of dealing with this issue. This is more crucial to our survival than any war on terror.
Koz
No, that’s wrong on politics and policy. The American people insisted loudly for a year not to pass (any iteration of) the health care bill. The Date Rape Democrats went ahead and did it anyway. That’s why any Democrat who wants credibility with independents has to publicly demonstrate the willingness to punch some hippies.
The financial markets and economic culture in general are also looking at the President’s willingness to punch hippies, as a setup for the spending wars which are about to come up soon. If, when push comes to shove, we can punch some hippies, we can hope to get our own fiscal house in order before we have our own sovereign debt crisis.
Cain
@maye:
Now you understand why fundraising is always the top priority for politicians, don’t you? Where are they going to get that money to do all those things? At some point they have to get it from companies and what not and that means they will need to compromise things, right?
Al Gore was in India for a innovator forum and he had to explain the American situation in regards to the parties. He pretty much was saying the same thing in the above paragraph.
cain
Judas Escargot
@Keith G:
So we are screwed. We don’t try. We find an embryonic position under the bed.
Not what I said.
All I’m saying is that this isn’t a simple case of “message war!”. The bulk of the MSM isn’t passing the message along, and (given recent headlines coming out of the AP) isn’t interested in even pretending to do so– IMO you’d be better off with a clever t-shirt or bumper sticker at this point, if all you care about is ‘messaging’.
If Liberals want a real fight, it has to be just that, a real-world fight. Strikes. Protests. Boycotts. If you want to make the PTB listen to you, then you need to make them fear you. And the only way to accomplish that is to let them know that the Rubes, while slow, outnumber them, and that perhaps they should go back to letting the rest of us have a little taste of the stew before their greed and utter stupidity brings the whole sucker down and it’s clear who’s fault it is.
Mad at BoA (for example)? We could punish BoA at will, if enough of us all took our money out at the same day and time all over the continent. You’d at least be sending a real signal on an uncorrupted channel to those who most need to receive it.
Screw messaging. How do we accomplish something like that?
JC
Koz,
What are you talking about? I truly don’t understand.
Theodore Roosevelt was the first President to favor health care for all.
Every democratic president since Truman has tried. The universal health care plan that we have, is less liberal than the 1974 Nixon version.
And put your green eye shades on. The fact is that it is medical care outlays that are ballooning the deficit, faster than anything else. As Kevin Drum recently said, “Every other advanced country in the world has a centralized healthcare system that largely controls costs via government mandates. And guess what? It demonstrably works. Every other advanced country in the world has significantly lower costs than ours and provides more readily available care, and nearly all of them provide healthcare that’s at least as good or better than ours.”
That is simple fact. That is the reality.
JMS
If you believe the polling, the public DOES for the most part see the issue the same way Obama does, so unlike say, healthcare, it’s not like they didn’t get the message. The problem is that senate Republicans are hanging tough and have the rules on their side and regardless that the president, the people, the house of representatives, and the majority of senators, this can’t get pushed through without some senate Republicans voting for it. It’s been the story of the past 2 years, really. I’m not sure what one can do except perhaps give props to McConnell (I’m pretty sure Reid could not hold 40 Democratic senators together on every contentious vote), and excoriate the press for not doing a better job of explaining what is happening.
When the last measure failed on a 53-36 vote, the Times said “Obama tax plan fails on a 53-36 vote”–if you weren’t really paying attention, you’d assume the 36 votes were on the Obama side!
I said this when Bush was president too–the way our system works, if you want things to change your way, you have to elect enough people who think your way. That’s pretty much the bottom line and everything else is handwringing.
Nick
@Tim H:
Even Paul Krugman admits if you let the tax cuts expire, it will keep unemployment up by as much as .3%
So the choice being tax hike and 9.1% unemployment or tax cuts and 8.8% unemployment, what’s better for his ratings?
Xenos
@Judas Escargot:
The question is not whether or not organizing a bank run on BOA for political purposes can be done. The question is how far into the process of organizing that bank run you can get before you end up like Jose Padilla.
At some point punching hippies will be more than a rhetorical procedure.
Corner Stone
@patrick II:
And there is a certain non irony to this because the UI extension was something the Republicans could not leave the lame duck session without.
They were going to agree to some form of UI extension. So we basically are giving them what they want in exchange for something they were going to do anyway.
eemom
and this from Rude Pundit:
jwb
@gene108:
Except a large number of economists were saying at the time that the unemployment numbers were low for this kind of contraction, and that the stimulus was going to be too small. The estimate was low because those were the numbers that justified the stimulus plan put forward not because it bore any resemblance to reality. My recollection is that Summers nixed showing Obama the models that suggested unemployment was likely to be much higher than 8%.
eemom
@Corner Stone:
what is the basis for this assertion?
Judas Escargot
@JC:
The plutocracy is no longer local either. It’s international.
Which means, the banks, the investment firms, use their local connections, and money, to buy politicians and policy in different countries, ANY country, while not really having any fealty to a particular country.
Yep, this too: And it’s a natural consequence of a world where labor is still tied up in nation states, while capital gets to move anywhere, anytime it likes.
Transaction taxes on cross-border business would help this somewhat, and is one of the things people should start demanding. Maybe someday.
It’d be nice be able to frame this as “global investor class using American political process to destroy the Republic”, but Alex Jones has already poisoned that well. Olbermann/Maddow really tried to push this pre-election, by pointing out how Citizens United enabled Chinese interests to pour cash into the GOP coffers, but (yet again) the story had no legs.
Tim H
@Nick:
Both the same. 9% is just as big a loser as 9.3%. Wake me up when there’s a plan to get below 8% by 2012.
gene108
@Keith G: People have to first admit there’s a structural problem with employment trends in this country and contrary to Republican/Right-wing views, it isn’t an inherent part of the “free market”.
I just don’t see people, especially Congress people, who are themselves wealthy (by merit or marriage), realize the problems people are dealing with.
@JC:
I wouldn’t compare Ireland’s problems to the problems of concentrated wealth in the hands of MNC’s. If investors aren’t going to get paid by buying sovereign debt, than that undermines a lot of the global economy. I can see the need to force any country to pay the bondholders of its debt. If that doesn’t happen and countries can start shafting bondholders, whenever they feel the need to save some money, we’ll end up with another financial crisis.
The interesting thing with corporate profits, right now, is they are doing it with diminishing revenues, compared to the pre-recession era. I don’t know how sustainable that is. At some point, they will end up cutting too deeply into their labor pools and no one will be able to buy anything.
The one interesting thing about corporations and politics, right now, is how much they turned on the Democrats for trying any kind of regulatory reform. Never mind the fact it was Congressional Democrats, who pushed through the TARP money that saved them, because Republicans were in the minority and could afford to not support it.
I really don’t know what corporations want or expect, in terms of regulations, but they really do want to call the shots with regards to what the government does.
jwb
@Corner Stone: What makes you so confident the GOP was going to agree to UI extension?
Koz
And that’s under the current welfare state commitments, which are essentially to subsidize health care service for old people and poor people. The point of the Obama bill was to guarantee subsidies to everybody, a new commitment in the American welfare state. If we can’t afford the welfare state commitments that we have already, why do we think we can afford those plus new ones on top of that.
And, let’s also note that the Obama plan has no cost controls (once you allow for the doc fix which is a fair assumption I think because the bill would not have passed without it).
AnotherBruce
@Xenos:
So, just to be clear, you’re arguing that our nation is run by a mafia, right?
gene108
On a side note, I think I have one example of the messaging disconnect between Democrats and their base.
President Obama’s decision to use TARP money to rescue GM and Chrysler and save many jobs.
For the base, this doesn’t seem to be a big deal. There is very little mention about how he saved the U.S. auto industry, from liberals. It is just not an issue on their radar, unlike DADT, for example.
President Obama did do some stumping, running up to the 2010 election, about saving GM and Chrysler, but there wasn’t a steady stream of praise from other corners of the Democratic Party and the liberal base.
There’s no reason Ohio and Michigan should’ve tilted Republican in 2010, if messaging had been done about saving the U.S. auto industry, yet its an often forgotten part of Obama’s Presidency.
I think if a Republican President did something like this, there’d be 24/7 saturation across the right-wing media on this point, so it gets drilled home and becomes a net positive for Republicans.
Right now what should’ve been a positive for Obama and Democrats has given them no political advantage, whatsoever.
JC
eemom,
That Rude Pundit article is great. Especially all the quotes from Obama about rolling back tax cuts over 250K.
Hold out, Nancy, and keep your campaign promises, Mr. President.
Judas Escargot
@Xenos:
Absolutely true. But, again– strength in numbers. And notice how I didn’t suggest anything illegal. This nation needs a Ghandi/MLK figure now more than ever, I suppose.
If 20, 30 million people all skipped their mortgage or credit card payment one month, the banks would tremble, and be unable to do anything about it.
Jules
@Mumphrey:
Every week the President tapes a message.
You can watch it on the internet.
Every Saturday.
This brings me to this from Cat48:
This.
Every time I see someone whining that the President did not speak enough about taxes or health care reform or DADT I wonder where the fuck they have been.
Because he does.
He gives speeches all over the country and he has over and over again but NO ONE PAYS ATTENTION to what he is saying. Y’all are too busy fighting on the internet instead of actually listening to what the President is saying.
Yeah, I know, Obot…whatever.
JC
Yes. But if you look at the various twitter and facebook feeds, and Obama and Biden going up to Ohio, Michigan, they did point this out, again and again.
And again, actually.
They used the messaging under their command.
But they received no help. What the Rethugs would do, is that every outlet would be repeating the same message, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. As would their mouthpieces in the press.
But democrats, liberals, don’t work that way.
Hugh
A lot less energy being spent in this thread arguing why Obama is powerless than the last thread I visited. I haven’t yet read all the comments but I didn’t see one that suggested people who are criticizing Obama need to clap their hands louder because they’re living in a fantasy land. That’s good.
A primary challenge to Obama would be terrible. It would rip apart the party.
I suspect the Democrats folding on tax cuts is a sign of how deep the corruption of big money is in the Democratic party and not just general wimpitude. I also think Obama demonstrated once more how tone deaf he can be to his base. It’s all very depressing.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@JMS:
I may repost this in a newer thread, but what the heck:
There is a structural difference between the Dem coalition and the coalition the Reps have to keep together.
The Reps are divided along core-issue lines. The racists, neocons, theocons, and taxcutaholics each have a core issue that matters to them like nothing else (whitegoodbrownbad, bombkillprofit, fetusworship+hatetehghey, and allURmoneyRbelongtous respectively) and they are willing to give ground on other issues, in deference to the other members of their coalition who care more deeply about that area of policy. Yes there is some overlap between these groups, but when the Reps are in charge each group has a green light to pursue their prefered solutions in their core area and the other members of the coalition go along for the ride, with the understanding that reciprocity applies. In some cases these groups have conflicting agendas (e.g. illegal immigration pits big business interests against what the racists really want) but for the most part they avoid stepping on each other’s toes when it comes to setting policy.
The Dems on the other hand are split along preferred-solution lines in the same area of policy. We have corporatist Blue Dogs, liberal centrists, and actual leftists all fighting with each other over the same economic policy issues: taxes, allocation of govt. spending, support for unions, etc. Which is why we can’t unite on a single message or get strongly behind one particular policy, and why when we do manage to pass something (like the ACA reform of health insurance) the legislation ends up having a Rube Goldberg device quaility to it. It has to, in order to balance the conflicting requirements of a coalition that is not in agreement about who is in charge of setting the agenda for that particular issue. That is why Dems end up negotiating with themselves, and one side of the Dem coalition is always tempted to pull in the GOP as ideological partners so as to get better negotiating leverage within their own Dem coalition.
The Dems would have better leverage if they could agree on an issue-by-issue basis which branch of the party has the lead in dictating what is the “Democratic position” on that issue, with the obvious proviso that the different members of the Dem coalition each get to pick a core issue that matters the most to them, and will back the others on peripheral issues.
But we don’t or can’t do that. I’m not sure why – I wonder if it has something to do with a liberal and centrist view of the world tending to see multiple issues as all being interconnected with each other, more so than on the right.
danimal
For the hundredth time, stop with the Dems have no leverage argument. The GOP is desperate to extend the Bush tax rates. They have to have it or face the frothing extremists (the corporatocracy) and their tea party minions. They don’t show their panic nearly as much as BJ commenters, but there is plenty of leverage on the Dem side of the aisle. Walking away scares them and they would HOWL if it happens.
Which may or may not make it worthwhile. How much do we want DADT repeal, UI extensions and the DREAM Act. Really – that should be the debate rather than the sufficiency of the all-important “Obama Fail” narrative.
Nick
@Keith G: Color me surprised. Now we’re going to hear “he should’ve fought with more intensity” or “he should’ve done this earlier” or “maybe he’s just not the leader we need”
because it’s not at all possible to actually LOSE a fight. No, that can’t happen.
Nick
@danimal:
No they’re not
who will blame Obama for the impasse
wengler
Republicans learned from Wall Street well. Ransom whatever it is in your power to ransom.
Give us 700 billion dollars or your economy gets it!
Give us our top 2 percent tax cuts or your unemployed people get it!
The trick is to be so sociopathic as to not care about the economy or unemployed people. It’s all about number 1 in the jungle, and Ayn Rand taught us how to survive there.
Roasting these guys on spits in the post-apocolyptic world might be quite enjoyable actually.
lacp
Rarely is the question asked, is our Democrats cutting taxes?
JC
Nick,
Agree with you on this – when you are reduced to ‘Obama should have fought harder’, as you point out the many ways he DID speak for his preferred policy, then you are grasping for straws.
Still, at this point, if neither the Senate or House take up an extension – the voting on the middle class extension being what the House and the Senate and the administration wanted – then the Bush tax cuts simply expire.
All three – Senate, House, and the administration – have to ACTIVELY enable Bush’s extension of tax cuts to millionaires. They need to ‘actively’ lose the fight here.
Which I hope they decide not to do.
Koz
That’s true. Unfortunately for the D’s, the GOP wants to extend the Bush tax cuts for essentially the same reason the D’s want to end them.
The D’s will want to delude themselves into thinking that the current fiscal problems are essentially a matter of not enough taxes on the rich. If the Bush tax rates are extended, that line of argument is discredited, ie, we get to punch some hippies.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
[continuing previous comment]
And this structure arises in a situation where on any given issue the core GOP position is borderline lunatic, so the Dems end up as a collection of all the people who aren’t crazy (and consequently have widely varying ideas about what would be the best non-crazy policy and thus unable to rally around a single position) on that particular issue. By getting their nuts to compartmentalize themselves into single issue voters the GOP ends up with the union of the set of all lunatics in this country, while the Dems end up with the intersection of the set of all non-crazy people for all possible issues.
In this country the number of people who are lunatics on every last issue is small, but so is the number of people who are not lunatics at all on any issue. Most Americans are pretty sane, but many of us are at least a little bit crazy in some way or another, enough to make the GOP’s union of all nutters approach constitute a working majority. They screwed up enough during the W administration to cause the walls of cognitive dissonance and compartmentalized lunacy to break down, but only temporarily, and now those walls are being rebuilt with astonishing speed.
NR
I’d just like to remind everyone that Obama ran on repealing the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Not “let them expire.” REPEAL. But as soon as he got in, that mysteriously fell by the wayside. All we heard was, “Oh, it’s okay, we’ll just let them expire instead.” Never mind the fact that that cost us another $100+ billion, and never mind the fact that we warned all along that we’d find ourselves in exactly the situation we’re in now.
And now, predictably, Obama is ready to go to war – but only against the left wing of his own party, in support of Republican policy.
It’s time to primary this guy.
danimal
Nick, think like a conservative for a minute. It’s unimaginable for these rates to expire. They will destroy everything if they don’t get their way on this issue. It’s more important than ideology; it’s real money.
And they’ll blame Obama and the Dems for the impasse, tis true. Why do so many progressives care???? They’ll blame Obama for stealing Christmas, taking candy from babies and spreading disease as well; their talking points really shouldn’t be our concern.
Omnes Omnibus
@NR: Yep. Let’s do that. Let’s spend a shitload of money to to find a magic pixie unicorn candidate who will run against Obama in a Democratic primary. Let’s run every attack against Obama that we can think up. At the same time, Obama will spend a shitload of money to defeat the magic pixie unicorn candidate. He will run every attack against that candidate that he can think up. In the end someone will win the nomination. Woohoo. Now, here is the fun part. The winner, either Obama or the magic pixie unicorn, will have to run against a Republican candidate. He/she/it will be bloodied from the primary fight and will have run through a shitload of cash. He/she/it will still need a shitload of cash for the general election. Does this sound like a way to win or does it sound like a shit-all stupid ass thing to do?
Hugh
@Omnes Omnibus:
The real destruction would come from the intense internal hostility the party would be left with. It would be awful and very much not worth it.
patrick II
@eemom:
I’m pretty much with Rude Pundit on this. The thing about Obama’s constant compromising is that it doesn’t force choices or let people see consequences of decisions that republicans make. Everything is blurry. Republicans get to hide the hard edges of the real policy affects of their threatened unemployment filibuster.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hugh: That too.
JC
NR,
A primary fight for who? As Omni says, what candidate?
If you care about having a strong, unbloodied candidate with money to take on the rethug candidate, you have to let the ‘it’s time to primary this guy” go.
And, you keep ignoring all the good things Obama has done.
geg6
@eemom:
Doesn’t happen often, but on this matter only…
THIS.
FlipYrWhig
@danimal:
I’m not convinced by this. They will simply say that Democrats raised everyone’s taxes, and whip up the frothing extremists even frothier for a month. Then, when the new Congress comes in, they can pass a tax cut bill for “everyone” and dare the Democratic Senate and Democratic president to block it, then, if they do, bash them again for working to keep everyone’s taxes higher than Republicans want them to be. I don’t see how anyone would blame Republicans for a tax increase. It doesn’t compute.
IMHO the virtue of tying the tax cuts to unemployment is that Republicans are already seen as callous and heartless, and they tend to blame unemployed people with variations of the “get a job!” phrase. I think a tax cut bill that didn’t include a UI compromise is something that Obama _could_ veto and grandstand on, because people will believe the logic: “I can’t in good conscience sign a bill that cuts the taxes for the top 2% of the country and leaves the most vulnerable, hardworking Americans unprotected. It’s bad for the economy and, more importantly, it’s just wrong.”
That way the demagoguery on Democrats hiking taxes can be met and repelled by demagoguery on Republicans hating out-of-work people. That’s a winnable battle. I don’t think that you can go into battle saying “We wanted to give 98% of people a tax cut, but Republicans blocked it, and now you’re going to pay higher taxes, but it’s not really our fault.”
FlipYrWhig
@NR:
What are you referring to? It can’t be the policy that he has said for 3 years he opposes, which he reiterated days ago.
Hugh
@FlipYrWhig:
I really don’t see why that’s such a stretch. I think you could absolutely go into battle with that message. You could also go into battle after making an attempt to pass UI. The throughline is the Republican party cares only about the rich.
You don’t get to win a fight if you don’t get in the ring.
danimal
@FlipYrWhig
They’ll froth no matter what happens. All those seven-figure salaried gasbags must keep the masses enraged and misinformed. It’s how they roll.
We really just need to figure out if we want to live in a world with: the Bush tax rates and some of our priorities passed, OR the Clinton rates with few to none of our priorities passed.
The frothers will froth regardless. Hell, Obama gave them a tax cut in 2009 and they still froth about tax hikes that didn’t occur.
Koz
Right. And the reason it works this way is because everybody already knows the GOP has credibility on taxes. The D’s have to earn theirs.
Amanda in the South Bay
@NR:
OMG candidates don’t always follow through on campaign promises? Stop the presses! Lets allow a Republican to win in 2012 instead!
FlipYrWhig
@Hugh:
Just cognitive dissonance. Not everyone is going to hear this carefully crafted message about _why_ they’re paying higher taxes in a bleak economy. Instead, they will experience a lower paycheck, the result of a law that emerges from the last gasp of a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president that have been tagged as too free-spending and too liberal. It matches up all too well with existing political stereotypes. Then the new Republican House will take up as a first order of business a new wave of tax cuts, and put the Democrats on the hot seat for opposing them. I don’t like the way that plays out. I think it would take a lot of finesse to avoid having the result be chalked up as a Republican victory.
In contrast, I think linking continuing the tax cuts to continued unemployment benefits helps create a downside for Republicans. “Your taxes went up because Republican refused to budge on giving their millionaire buddies and doing nothing for the little guy who’s out of work” rings more true to people who don’t follow politics much, and the Republican counterargument is harder to formulate. YMMV.
FlipYrWhig
@danimal: I think there’s a mass of people who don’t really understand or pay attention to what’s happening in politics, and that’s who Obama has to try to keep happy in order to win again, and it’s hard to figure out how to speak to them because they don’t understand or pay attention to much. But following a course of action that results in their having less money in their paychecks could be devastating. They won’t hear the explanation. That’s what I worry about. They’re the kinds of people who vote for candidates on things like “likeability” and “character” rather than on policy, unless your policy specifically affects them in a tangible, personal way.
Personally, I think the rich should pay more in taxes, because they benefit more from living in a free, open, protected society. A lot of people share that view, or a version of it. But I don’t think a lot of votes are going to be won or lost on the basis of what some rich dude you’ll never meet is paying in taxes. Many more votes are going to be won or lost on the basis of what _you_ pay in taxes. And for 98% of the public, taxing income over $250K is immaterial. There’s no way they’re going to accept as a trade-off their own taxes going up so that rich people’s taxes _also_ go up.
JC
FlipYrWhig,
Take the political hit now, if there is one.
As Krugman said, “the only way to cut spending enough to pay for the Bush tax cuts in the long run would be to dismantle large parts of Social Security and Medicare.”
We can’t take that risk. We need to get the tax rates back to a sustainability, and we need to do that while we still have a democratic president, and a democratic Senate.
A lot will happen in two years, and, as has been said, those who won’t listen to the message (such as the reality of taxes going down last two years), won’t listen to any message.
And the newly Republican House will engineer lots of ways to ’embarass’, create the image of ‘Obama the tax and spender’, between now and the election of 2012.
Do the right thing, and play the politics as best you can.
And, by the way, hire the best short story tellers in Hollywood, and start crafting short movies that are entertaining, that spread virally, and that Obama uses to carry on his message.
Hugh
@FlipYrWhig:
By linking UI and tax cuts for the rich you give away a large part of the fight before it begins. The Republicans will say Democrats raised taxes no matter what. We’ve seen that already. Why be afraid of that?
Make the Republicans kill continuing tax cuts for the middle class. Then fight like hell to make them pay for that politically. Make them kill continuation of UI. Fight like hell to make them pay for that too.
It does no good to run from a debate that hasn’t happened. Especially when the polling regarding tax cuts looked very good for the Dems.
There’s little cognitive dissonance in saying Republicans only care about the rich and will sell anyone out to give the rich what they want. That message will resonate I believe and it will certainly fire up the base.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@FlipYrWhig:
Judging from the rhetoric of the 2008 campaign, I’d say that getting these folks engaged in our small-d democracy is Obama’s single biggest objective, and that much of his rhetoric regarding “bipartisanship” is designed to lower the barrier to entry for these folks. In a longer term historical frame I can’t say that I disagree with him on this – if the disengaged don’t become more engaged in this country, then I think many of our most serious problems are insolvable and we are basically doomed to be a dying empire, like it or not. On the other hand his technocratic style of governance is looking like the worst possible way to try to engage these folks in something they’d just a soon ignore (and the recession isn’t helping on this score) and this is something that should have been pretty obvious to any reasonably bright person going in. I don’t know what his remaining years in office and future elections will bring, but if getting the disengaged into the political arena was his top priority to which other priorities must be sacrificed, then judging from the results of the 2010 midterms he appears to have failed and failed massively.
gene108
@NR: Pish-posh. Primary Obama? That’s thinking small.
What we need to do is send a clear message to the Democrats for what liberals will and will not stand for, by demanding the Democrats and Republicans unite in impeaching and removing Obama from office.
That way Democrats will learn never to scoff at liberals.
cyntax
@FlipYrWhig:
I think that’s a fair point about linking the UI to tax cuts, but are we sure that’s happening? I’m getting conflicting information so this isn’t a rhetorical question. And I notice you’re using “continuing” as opposed to “extending” UI; that’s because the prospect of extending the benefits beyond 99 weeks died with the Stabenow bill right? So at this point I think we’re simply talking about funding UI for another year.
WyldPirate
@JC:
This simply isn’t going to happen, JC.
The WH signaled back when Axlerod made his statement that they would make a deal. The deal is being made because the Dems and the White House boxed themselves in. They are in a lose-lose situation.
Obama can’t and won’t veto this negotiated solution which will tie Bush tax cut extensions and, most likely at a minimum UI extensions. If he vetoes it—-he screws the UI at Christmas and the taxes on everyone goes up in January. He’s already said he won’t do this (not that it matters what he said–he couldn’t get done one of his signature issues–ending the tax cuts on EI above 250K because of the deleterious effect on the debt levels).
This is going down much like I predicted back when Axlerod made his statement (and I was pilloried here for it). Personally, I agree with you and Krugman–Obama and the Dems should either sack up and let the cuts expire or Obama should veto it. Doing this would hurt me tremendously because I would lose my UI and have to dig into my meager savings and then my retirement accounts.
Sometime, somewhere on some issue, Obama and the Dems are going to have to stop getting rolled. This “hostage taking” by the Rethugs is going to become their SOP.
.
Personally, I think you can write off the Senate in ’12. I think there are 23 D’s up and 10-13 R’s. Not that it matters, they essentially control the Senate now. The White House is iffy, IMO. If things go much further south, and the Rethugs can find a sufficiently inoffensive candidate, then Obama is toast.
gene108
@Hugh: In order to fight Republicans on anything, you need a movement that has the Democrats back and will keep hammering away at Republicans, even when Democrats do things this movement doesn’t approve of or compromises here and there.
The Democrats don’t have it. The Republicans do.
You now have liberals, who want to primary Obama. Because? I can’t think of any reason this is a shrewd political move to even be talking about it now.
Even if you tried to pin expiration of UI benefits or the tax hike on Republicans, the Professional Left would more than likely bash Obama because he didn’t fight hard enough to get the cuts extended for the middle class and let them all expire.
WyldPirate
@gene108:
There is no “structural problem” in employment trends. The problem is that ,there has been so many jobs off-shored and lost due to cutbacks and down-sizing .that there are not enough jobs to go around
gene108
@FlipYrWhig: 90% of the country is employed. Sure everyone is jumpy about their job security, but they aren’t actually unemployed.
The higher up you go the education / income ladder the more unemployment declines. Yes, these folks, may be worried about their jobs, in the backs of their minds, but the companies they are working for are profitable, so no imminent moves to down size are around the corner.
They maybe sympathetic to the plight of the unemployed, but they are not empathetic. They cannot 100% relate to the though of being out of work for more than year on a personal level.
If you really wanted to whip up the UI debate, you need to start pushing the stories of hardworking people, who just can’t find a job. Make people care.
The problem with America and social safety nets, versus Europe, is our diversity. No one in this country says, “but there for the grace of God, go I”, rather it’s “those people are lazy, why are they taking my money?”. Getting past that barrier is essential to make Americans really care about things like extending UI benefits and since all but the richest are a lay off away from serious economic problems, I think it could be sold, but somebody has to step up and push the stories.
That, I think, would be a more productive use of time for organizations like Huffington Post or Moveon.org and would go a long way to solidifying support for Democrats and the base; that’s something the politicians and their supporters can agree on.
JC
WyldPirate,
I agree. I would think this makes it even more imperative to not enable to tax extension now. This will be a fight again in 2012.
You are most likely correct that Obama is amenable to negotiation (really capitulation) on the tax extension to the rich, given the reporting on this over the last couple of weeks.
But, we did get the vote on the cutoff above the 250K, both in the House, and in the Senate.
It still may be the case, that Obama can the Dems can go forward into the New Year saying “hey, we were blocked by the Rethugs, who want to balloon the deficit by giving more money to the rich”, and pin that on the Rethugs.
This would be TRUE, and if, Dems could keep get on board with repeating themselves ad inifinitum (as the Rethugs do), it might actually penetrate the regular voters brain.
So until Obama signs off and says ‘yes sir, whatever you say sir’ to Bush, Cheney, Rove, Boehner, and McConnell, I’m hoping he won’t capitulate.
Until it happens.
gene108
@WyldPirate: I was referring to wage stagnation for the not very wealthy.
It has been a persistent problem, since the 1970’s, with a brief turn around in the real wages most people earn, in the late 1990’s, when we were at full employment.
Off-shoring of economic resources overseas is essential to the long term viability of global society. The disparity between the rich nations and poor nations has been mindbogglingly huge, in the 20th century. A lot of it caused by colonial pillaging of now third world nations.
You aren’t going to be able to stop the trend. The issue is how to make things better for Americans, as this global change is happening.
Pangloss
Clinton raised income taxes on the rich and a variety of small taxes (like energy) in ’93and won re-election fairly easily in ’96.
FlipYrWhig
@WyldPirate:
I see it the other way around. The WH signaled they would make a deal because they can count the level of support their own, better, smarter view — the one they’ve never given up touting — has within the Democratic caucus, and it wasn’t enough. You’ve got people like Manchin and even Coons during their campaigns saying that they don’t think taxes should increase on the rich (although Coons didn’t cast his vote that way this time), and you’ve got people like Boxer and Murray pleading with you not to move forward on the two-vote strategy that the blogosphere, Olbermann, Maddow, _and Obama_ by all reports wanted to see happen. When the Senate finally held its vote, they got 53 yeses for the supposedly no-brainer plan. I guess that would have been 54 before the election, with Burris instead of Kirk(?). But then some of those yeses in close elections might have lost, or at least that was their fear.
(BTW, remember how Orszag said that there should be a deal too?)
If you don’t have the votes to do what you want, and it’s not just because of a few people but because of a lot, what do you do? You can either try to shame your own party’s people, or you can find a way to save face and count something else as a win.
With a Republican president, Republican legislators do his bidding. With a Democratic president, Democratic legislators refuse to do that. They don’t have the same commitment to loyalty, and trying to manufacture it seems to make them act even worse. Obama hasn’t fixed that, but I don’t think he can. It’s the way Democrats are. We will always be longing for the top-down coordinated messaging strategy, and we will always be getting 2/3 of them basically playing along and another 1/3 going rogue.
JC
Also WyldPirate,
As Pangloss says, the doom and gloom about any raised taxes, causing the President not to be elected, wasn’t true for Clinton.
Lastly, THIS CHART, is why the Democrats need to stay strong now.
The light blue portion, I believe, is mainly Social Security taxes. The only thing that has been increasing. (I could be wrong, of course). and that cuts off at around 100K.
I’m sure even the dark blue, is skewed towards the middle class. As a percentage, the corporate tax, and the estate and gift tax, have gone down/fallen to nothing.
So basically, we are now raiding SS taxes, to pay for things that the rich and corporations, have finagled themselves out of paying.
This would just be another step to this.
Triassic Sands
@Martin:
V-E-T-O
You see, there is something Obama CAN do about it. The question is rather is there anything he WILL do about it. The answer seems to be pretty clearly no.
Apparently, there is no issue where this president has a line in the sand beyond which he simply won’t
cavefoldcompromise. The more one likes Obama the more painful this should be.@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Obama can’t do that. He’s talked himself into a rhetorical bind in which he’s made it clear that middle class tax increases will be disastrous. He seems to be able to use his vaunted rhetorical skills to help the Republicans accomplish their ends, but not to achieve those things he claims are important to him. It’s a sad spectacle to watch.
Obama might have been a fine president in another time with different conditions and a different adversary.
FlipYrWhig
@Pangloss: He had the benefit of a better economy, and didn’t have to stare down the prospect of raising taxes on everybody if his vote failed.
FlipYrWhig
@Triassic Sands: In what way is he “helping” Republicans achieve their ends? He ran on promising a tax cut on income under $250K. If he has to “compromise” or whatever more pejorative term you want to use, it’s largely because Democrats in the Senate won’t play ball with a plan that he wants, articulates consistently, and has never stopped saying. You seem to be suggesting that the Democratic position should be letting all the tax cuts expire, and counting as “capitulation” any continuation. But that’s not what Obama ran on or advocated since being elected, and it’s not what other Democratic politicians want either, and it’s not what 88% of the public wants (IIRC the last poll I saw, the one that had 53% support for the Obama plan).
Corner Stone
Dylan Ratigan is going NUTS on some apologists right now on his show.
scarshapedstar
Neither side has the votes to get what they want, so the Republicans get what they want.
Can’t we at least flip a fucking coin?
scarshapedstar
Interesting to note, though, that there IS one thing that neither side has:
60 votes.
Here’s an idea. Russ Feingold is on our side and has nothing to lose. How about he filibusters the bill until Harry Reid promises to, you guessed it, FIX THE FILIBUSTER. Something along the lines of Josh Marshall’s simple idea: instead of 60 votes to invoke cloture, it take 40 votes to deny cloture.
patrick II
@Pangloss:
The economy was better, and the right wing noise machine was not as effective as it has become.
But I agree with biting the bullet anyway. Perhaps by 2012 the economy will be better and that could in part be attributed to tax raises — and it might even be true.
The economy is unlikely be much better by 2012 however since a republican congress is unlikely to pass any bill that significantly improves the unemployment/economic outlook before then. So what we are getting here is long term inadequate government income which will cause large deficits, cuts in medicare and social security combined with short term republican sabotage. The confederacy wins in the end with wage slaves replacing actual slaves.
JC
Ack – thought I linked to this.
fasteddie9318
Just make the fucking things permanent, for Christ’s sake. The Democrats either don’t have the spine to block their “temporary extension” or aren’t really interested in blocking it so much as they’re interested in talking about blocking it, so they’re never going to go away. Since having this same argument again in 2 years is just going to make the Democrats look like pansies right before yet another election, they’d be better off politically just extending the damn things permanently.
FlipYrWhig
@scarshapedstar: Cool idea. Sort of like the reverse Bunning.
FlipYrWhig
@scarshapedstar: If Senate Democrats don’t like the contours of the Obama “compromise,” they should have no compunction about raising a ruckus. They’re the ones who have a job to do, which is to come up with a tax-cut bill that can pass their chamber. Have at it. It’s your Constitutionally-sanctioned role. Don’t foist responsibility onto Obama and then bitch at him when it doesn’t suit your preference. Do it better and sell it to him.
JC
Got this from Sullivan, but linking to the source.
The choice quote:
“We knew that, politically, once you get [the Bush tax cuts] into law, it becomes almost impossible to remove it. That’s not a bad legacy. The fact that we were able to lay the trap does feel pretty good, to tell you the truth,” – Dan Bartlett, communications director under George W. Bush.
There is Bush again, giving all of America but the rich the finger, as he says at the end of the video just the one fingered victory salute.
He’s pretty funny when saying it, but not in this case of tax cuts for the rich.
scarshapedstar
@FlipYrWhig:
I’m just saying, it’s easier to start with the ones who have no one to answer to, hopefully only for a few years.
I don’t harbor any illusions that I’m gonna convince my Senator (…….Mary Landrieu) to do it. Al Franken, maybe?
Let me start compiling a Lame Duck List and then go from there. Somebody has gotta be willing to fix this shit.
Plus, 60 and 40 add up to 100, so if the Republicans complain about how it’s unfair then we can just laugh about how they can’t do math.
Cain
@gene108:
You can do all the movement you want, but the media is not going to cover them. Look how much media exposure tea partier folks have been getting. They aren’t even that big.. yet here they are… you think we’ll get the same treatment. If it won’t fit their narrative it’s not going to be exposed.
The movement will need to start at the local, covered by local media, and then watch as other local media also cover it. Only then will the CNNs of the planet will cover it.
cain
JC
Agrees with Atrios as well:
Hugh
@gene108:
Really? A a few blog comments at Balloon Juice calling for a primary challenge is Obama’s big problem? That’s what caused the Democrats to cave?
And what is the “professional left” anyway?
I think Obama is uniquely cursed with a significant fraction of his base that appears to believe he is of little to no consequence. They argue hard that he faces forces that are so far beyond him he is politically unmanned (by that I mean neutered).
What kind of support is that? It’s horrible…
The most effective line Republicans have used and still use against Democrats is that they are wimps. They hit Democrats with that all the time. When Democrats say and do wimpy things they reinforce that image.
scarshapedstar
Why did Bush get almost everything he wanted?
Because Bill “Captain Intimidating Badass” Frist kept on threatening the nuclear option.
And whenever they retake the Senate, even if it’s after a decade-long filibuster, they will start threatening to do it again. And suddenly the “60-vote threshhold” and “blocked legislation” will disappear for another few years, to be replaced by “Democrats threaten to filibuster”.
Anyone disagree? Anyone see a way out of this, besides my modest proposal?
FormerSwingVoter
Huh.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/12/thats_not_smart.php?ref=fpblg
Looks like all extensions will be temporary, not just those over $250k.
Hugh
@scarshapedstar:
It wasn’t Frist who scared the shit out of the Democrats. It was Cheney, a man who had very little institutional power but tons of informal power and he knew how to use it. Can anyone argue here that his lack of formal power got in his way?
Martin Gifford
@Hugh:
Great comment!
FlipYrWhig and the Dems are always too cautious and too focused on current political climate rather than on creating the future political climate.
In politics, if you don’t fight, you lose. Instead, FlipYrWhig and the Dems imagine how powerful the Reps are, then practice ducking and weaving, then just don’t step in the ring. They don’t focus on Republican weaknesses. They don’t fight.
fasteddie9318
@FormerSwingVoter:
You didn’t think our Republican Politburo was going to allow any decoupling, did you? They’re the bosses.
From your link, I don’t have the stomach to go read it myself, but it’s good to see that Ezra has the obligatory “why rolling over and begging for their lives is politically smart for the Democrats” entry up. Because looking like wimps is always appealing to swing voters.
FormerSwingVoter
@fasteddie9318:
I’m not sure this is the worst outcome. It allows them to punt on the debate this time around, and in a Presidential election year (when turnout is higher and more Dems vote) have the “middle-class tax cuts vs. cuts for the rich” debate that we should’ve had this time.
Also, the Klein link isn’t as bad as it sounds – it sounds like one of the concessions Obama is getting from the Republicans is $180 billion in additional stimulus, most notably in a 13-month extension for unemployment benefits.
Meh. It’s not terrible, but that’s not exactly glowing praise.
Martin Gifford
@FlipYrWhig:
…because the Dems don’t fight and don’t push a narrative that is interesting. Again it’s circular argument. The people don’t listen, so the Dems can’t fight, so the people won’t listen, so the Dems can’t fight because people aren’t listening. You’ve got tap into interest and create the future political climate where people are engaged.
People would be very interested in the truth and ethics and things improving for America. How hard is it to show that the Reps are not operating in America’s interest? Torture, 4,000 Americans dead in war, economic collapse, spying on Americans without warrants, playing with your balls at the airport. The current bunch of Reps are easy targets – stupid and immoral. It’s just amazing to watch the Dems pussyfoot around.
FlipYrWhig
@Martin Gifford: Dude, I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to say this, but I don’t think the Democrats _shouldn’t_ fight, I’m just trying to explain why the kind of fight everyone seems to think is a winner immediately runs into all kinds of difficulties. Everyone feels very rough and cool to say, “They should fight, why don’t they fight, what a bunch of wussies, it’s not rocket science.” Well, sure, they _should_ fight, and they _should_ all agree on things. But in the here and now, they don’t all agree on things, and that’s part of why they don’t fight the way you like, even when public opinion and politics seem to line up on their sides. Reversing that is a _much bigger project_ than calling for a “fight,” especially when the same people who call for fights then _continue_ to complain when the fight doesn’t go well, because if they just fought right, they’d win, and since they didn’t win, they must not have fought right, and around and around and around it goes.
It’s cheap and easy to say that all Democrats should talk like liberals, vote like liberals, and work towards liberal ends in a coordinated, intelligent way. Yes, that would be great. But it can’t happen until every elected Democrat is an unapologetic liberal, _and_ the unapologetic liberals hold a majority. If that ever happens, it’s decades and decades away. Until that happens, the median ideological position of elected Democrats is going to be just barely left of center, and more technocrat than populist, and those are the conditions we’re dealing with, and a lot of slurs about balls and fighting are going to remain futile until it changes, and doing the things that make it change might involve being an ineffectual-but-pure minority party with like 25 senators that always speaks with one voice and never accomplishes anything.
FlipYrWhig
@FormerSwingVoter:
And to the degree that the debate has been had, both in 2008 and 2010, the public agreed with the Democratic position. My chief concern is that letting the tax cuts lapse _now_, so that Republicans can swoop in and restore them in the new session, hits the Democrats twice over.
Nick
@Martin Gifford:
I agree that this is a circular argument, but I don’t think there IS an interest.
this kind of reminds me of when I was arguing with a conservative friend over healthcare a year ago at an outing with a group of friends (the rest of whom agreed with me) and no one backed me up in my argument. In fact, my other “liberal” friends kept telling me to shutup.
That’s where the left is now. No one interested in making the argument or backing the fighter up.
Hugh
@FlipYrWhig:
If they can’t put up a fight when politics and public opinion are so clearly on their side over an issue like this one, keeping taxes on the middle class at current levels while letting tax cuts expire for the rich (in an environment where Republicans are complaining endlessly about the national debt).. then when CAN they fight? The bar here was very low. What are they waiting for? They’re like General McClellan with his lovely Union army. He let it sit idle because he was continually too fearful to actually engage in battle. Obama’s idol replaced him in order to get the job done.
Nick
@Hugh:
they can’t.
It’s pretty simple really, the reason the public is on their side on this issue is because a significant number of Republican and Republican-leaning independents side with them. The problem is, they’ll never vote Democratic, so the Democrats can’t go into battle saying “Do what we want or lose your seats,” because Republicans know they won’t lose. The people of Illinois chose Mark Kirk over Alexi Giannolious despite Kirk supporting tax cuts on the rich, Ohio chose Rob Portman over Lee Fisher, Pennsylvania went to Toomey instead of Sestak, despite the fact that the people in these states don’t support tax breaks on the rich.
The Republicans can do whatever they want and they won’t lose a single voter beyond what they’ve already lost. That makes them infinitely powerful.
AAA Bonds
How many times can the Republicans kill fiscal conservatism?
A lot. A lot of times.
Zifnab
@maye:
What happens if you’re under a media boycott? If major networks won’t run your ads?
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=major+networks+won't+run+moveon.org+ad
What happens if the major outlets (Meet the Press, the WSJ, etc) won’t publish your announcements or let your politicians on to speak?
What happens when you’re neck deep in a shit storm of lies, each encapsulated in a clever little sound bite that is repeated ad nauseum by an entire news network dedicated to the opposition?
The GOP repeatedly, successfully poisons the well. And no matter how thirsty the public gets, it’s not going to drink from a well marked as poison. What the public says it wants and what the progressives offer are irrelevant if the two groups are prohibited from communicating effectively with one another.
Martin Gifford
@FlipYrWhig:
Summary: It’s difficult, and not all the Dems are really liberals, therefore it can’t happen.
Attention FlipYrWhig: I get it. I totally understand what you are saying.
And you are wrong. Focus carefully now. This is very important. This is the moment when the light switches on for you. I can hear the angels singing already:
1. It’s difficult… because no Dem president has fought for the truth and for ethics.
2. Not all Dems are liberals… because no Dem president has fought for the truth and for ethics.
3. Change can’t happen… because no Dem president has fought for the truth and for ethics.
Do you see the light?
Nick
@maye:
and that new PR agency is going to tell you to sell your soul to the devil to get the media to pay attention, lie, steal, innuendo, give up your principles.
Nick
@Martin Gifford:
It would help if said Democrats actually got elected President, which doesn’t happen because…not all Democrats are liberal
Martin Gifford
@Nick:
That’s exactly the problem.
So Obama critics attack Obama for not making the argument (or not backing it up with veto threat), and they attack his defenders for enabling him to continue not making the argument.
@Hugh:
Exactly. Everyone on both sides knows that they can safely ignore Obama. He is a weak leader.
Nick
@Martin Gifford:
He did make the argument. He made it for two months in the fall. No one backed him up. Someone on OpenLeft posted a Quick Hit showing his speeches and suggesting they back him up, and the response was “no, he should be doing this, he’s no hero, he didn’t prosecute Bush”
Martin Gifford
@Nick:
Well, we are assuming that the president is slightly left (which would be center in other democracies). Maybe he’s not. All the more reason for liberals to not support him. Don’t forget that Reality has a liberal bias, and the the current political climate in America is insane. Saying Obama isn’t a liberal is saying that he is insane, which he doesn’t seem to be.
But it’s hard for me to imagine that Obama wants tax cuts for the rich. It seems to me that only corrupt people and blind economic rationalist ideologues would want tax cuts for the rich in America, especially in this economic environment.
Nick
@Martin Gifford: Way to miss my point there
JC
In all this talk about ‘fighting’, here is the thing – this goes beyond fighting. This is the (current) Democratic House, the Democratic Senate, the Democratic administration, ACTIVELY CARRYING the water for a f*cked up poison pill policy.
It’s beyond “fighting”, on this particular issue.
It’s ACTIVELY VOTING, and affirming, a poison pill policy, that is wrong on the policy, wrong on the substance, wrong on the polling, wrong on the optics, betrays your campaign pledges, and contributes to a deficit that will be taken out of social security, and medicare.
Just DO NOTHING.
What is the upside for carrying Bush’s water? For what? The best case is what Ezra Klein makes – this gives some ‘stimulus’, to lower the unemployment rate, for the 2012 election.
Krugman pegs the stimulus from this act, the following way:
“A two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts, it estimated, would lower the unemployment rate next year by between 0.1 and 0.3 percentage points compared with what it would be if the tax cuts were allowed to expire; the effect would be about twice as large in 2012”.
That’s not enough to betray this.
As far as unemployment insurance, deal with it on its own.
The President and the Senate can hammer the Republican House about this EVERY DAY. The news sob stories about people eating catfood are GOOD COPY, so the news organizations will run with this. It is GOOD OPTICS, for the democrats.
Hugh
@Nick:
It’s perspectives like that among Democrats that make Republicans “infinitely powerful”. Really, this is a remarkable quote. It’s as if the 2008 election didn’t happen. Democrats can win. And it isn’t that difficult. The Republicans turned out their base for the mid-terms. They figured out how to motivate them once more by demonizing yet another minority and the economy helped a LOT. But that’s it. They have gigantic structural problems. They’re a whites-only party without a huge political wind at their back. Demographics are trending against them big time and their rabid base can’t deal with that. They’re constitutionally unable to. They keep alienating folks of color.
Republican strategists are smart and manipulative but they’re just people for goodness sake. And they’re party is in deep shit if the Democrats can just stop hitting the panic button and punch the bully back.
Martin Gifford
@Nick:
He wasn’t convincing. He didn’t say he was drawing the line in the sand. In fact, he wimped out before the election. No one on either side takes any notice of Obama. There’s a leadership vacuum, which everyone feels. Maybe he’s the wrong guy for the times.
Obama, if he was serious, should have made a clear distinction – something like:
1. Tax cuts for the rich is unethical and irrational and so he will veto them.
2. Those who are supporting tax cuts for the rich are being unethical and irrational and should not be supported by anyone.
In this way, the Overton Window would make its way back from the right towards the center.
JC
Well, now you are talking PERCEPTION. He convince ME, and he argued against the tax cuts for the rich numerous times. Sounds like you were convinced as well. This is a matter of optics.
Remember what he has done, when you say he is a ‘weak leader’.
Good Obama things:
1. Universal health care – as damaged as it is, written into law.
2. Financial reform law – not good enough, but better than Clinton, and of course much better than any Rethug.
3. Prevented the collapse of the automakers.
4. Subjected Big Tobacco to regulation (The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Tobacco Control Act)
5. Brought 100,000 troops back from Iraq.
6. Invested 200 billion in clean energy
7. Lily Ledbetter Act
8. Hate crime protection for gays and lesbians
9. Staved off a possible 2nd depression
10. Massive stimulus act, though not big enough.
11. Consumer Protection Act (within Financial Reform)
12. 100 Billion for Education (within Recovery Act)
13. Lots of evidence of calmly and practically restoring America’s reputation in the world, one data point of evidence being Iran – where we got China and Russia to go along with strong sanctions, which they didn’t do for Bush.
I’m sure there is more.
Obama also did this in the face of MUCH LESS of a Senate coalition backing him (59) than Johnson (68) or Roosevelt (69) had, while having unprecedented unified opposition, and a completely broken Senate. From Talking Points:
“How many Senators do you need to get on the floor to break a filibuster? 60.
How many do you need on the floor to sustain one? 1.”
“You don’t have to do anything except sit there and be ready to stand up for 30 seconds and make an objection. So while the majority needs 60 Senators cooling their heels on the floor, the minority can just have one or two sitting there playing Angry Birds on their iPhones.”
Not to mention Big Business Democrats like Lieberman, Bayh, etc, who were willing to cross to vote with the Rethugs, if one of their fat cat backers were threatened.
What Obama has NOT done:
a. Put an end to Guantanomo, or really, the authoritarian security state processes, in a multitude of ways.
b. Still 50K troops in Iraq
c. Still troops in Afghanistan
d. end DADT
e. Repeal the Bush tax cuts (at least, this is how it looks).
What am I missing? Help me out here.
the last one – E – really STINGS for me, because, as I mentioned in another thread, when I started paying attention to politics in 1999, the economic plan offered by Bush was A JOKE. An obvious and discreditable LIE – and YET HE GOT AWAY WITH IT! And it turned a surplus for the nation, into a huge deficit.
That Bush will GET AWAY WITH IT AGAIN, just really really burns me. I don’t want it to happen. I want to start anew, and let the LIE EXPIRE.
People say that Obama isn’t ‘making the case’ stronger enough. that he ‘really’ doesn’t care about the people, he is a ‘center rightist’.
That seems crazy to me, but let’s look at what he is saying.
The 2nd thing I see on Obama’s facebook page, is Biden urging Congress to pass the MIDDLE CLASS tax cut, and unemployement benefits.
Lots of urging for the DREAM act.
Lots of urging to vote for repeal of DADT.
Urging to go forward with the Food Safety Modernization Act.
Urging to vote for START act.
More DREAM Act.
Disappointed with Rethugs (he doesn’t use that) that they voted against Paycheck Fairness Act.
These aren’t the accomplishments of a weak leader.
I really really will be pissed, again, if Bush is able to ‘create his reality’ again, that the rich get a tax break that will only come out of the hide of social security. I really will.
Optional
I cannot comprehend how this could possibly be an issue amongst a crowd of people who are actually paying attention to politics…
If no bill gets passed, then none of the tax cuts are extended, and everybody gets a tax hike next year, right?
Anybody that thinks that once people start noticing their reduced paycheck that they will actually blame the Republicans has simply not been paying attention these past two years.
Most people will know that they have a Democrat as president, a bunch of Democrats in congress, and their taxes went way up this year. They’re dimly aware that there was some sort of big fight at the end of 2010, where Republicans wanted to pass tax cuts for everybody, and Democrats wanted to, well, do something about taxing the rich or something, raise taxes on somebody anyways… Anyways, the point is they have a lot less money every month so the stupid tax and spend Democrats obviously won that fight and raised their taxes!!
Republicans are perfectly well aware that this is what will happen. It would be a huge political victory for them, and they simply do not care that it would be a huge hardship on Americans.
This ending was inevitable. There is absolutely nothing that could have been done to stop it, short of overhauling the entire Democratic party to instill actual message discipline (along with Democratic auxiliaries, like for instance left leaning blogs and their commentariat). The fact that anybody here is surprised by this result is highly surprising to me.
-me
Hugh
@Martin Gifford:
I don’t see Obama as a weak leader but I do see him as someone who continues to misread his opposition despite overwhelming data that ought to make it very clear who he is dealing with. And he doesn’t get how much he’s losing his base.
I completely agree regarding use of veto, etc. Concrete, confrontational acts from time to time are extremely effective. Reagan knew that.
lol I have no idea how the line-through just ate through this whole comment!
Martin Gifford
@Nick:
Sorry. Can you explain what you meant?
@Hugh:
Thanks, Hugh. Your comments are very refreshing.
I think the bully is actually incredibly weak and vulnerable, and the Dems just don’t realise their own power. The Dems are smarter and have truth and ethics and the rest of the democratic world on their side. They are just in a habit of presuming the Reps are powerful.
The Dems think, “If we do x, then the Reps will do y, so we can’t do x,” instead taking it to the next step by thinking, “if the reps do y, we’ll do z.” The Dems just stop at the first obstacle. And they think short-term rather than long-term.
Martin Gifford
@JC:
I’m not convinced that the good things you list are really that good. Some are, but others are such compromises that it simultaneously sows the seeds for further political/corporate corruption. While ever flagrant corruption is rewarded and allowed to continue unchallenged, then he is just treading water. The political climate must be changed, and this requires fighting consistently for ethics and truth.
The bad things Obama has done are really bad: hiding torture, drone bombings, advocating war when receiving the Nobel Prize, and basically maintaining the whole corrupt war/security regime. If crime and punishment were about ethics, he would be in jail for the rest of his life. Liberals should be frank about that.
By consistently reinforcing the idea of compromise, Obama maintains the current corrupt political process. That’s the big picture view, and that’s the place from which everything else will follow. Celebrating partial victories without taking on the overarching evil just leaves an overarching evil in charge to spread further later on.
Martin Gifford
@Optional:
How can he misread the opposition like that? Someone said the other day that he wants to appeal to the swing voters and being conciliatory is his best strategy for that. Maybe.
Absolutely. Obama seems to have no ability to be confrontational. It’s just not in him, or he’s scared, or something.
Can you imagine how powerful it would be if he drew a line in the sand over tax cuts for the rich in the way I suggested. It would totally reorient the debate. It would provide a reference point for the debate. Imagine this headline:
Obama says tax cuts for the rich are unethical and irrational in this climate so he will veto it.