Steve Benen revisits John’s legendary bipartisanship post from 2009:
I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.
Benen adds:
Much of the American mainstream probably believes we have the same two modern major parties that have existed for generations — one’s center-right and the other’s center-left. They should bicker, argue, and compromise, as the system has always demanded of them.
That doesn’t go quite far enough: the American public is constantly told, by establishment media, that one’s right center, the other’s left-center, that they should bicker, argue, and compromise, as the system has always demanded of them, and that if Democrats don’t agree to eat at least a little antrax, then they are just as much at fault as Republicans are.
dr. bloor
A classic post, and like Benen, it stuck with me as well (always given credit when I’ve used it with friends, though). And you’re quite right about the establishment media; unfortunately “both sides do it” creates the soap opera line that induces the best ratings. And it’s all about selling soap, baby.
ruemara
I’m going to say 1 thing on this. It’s not “Obama is failing because he’s negotiating with terrorists”. It’s not even the date analogy. This is a many headed hydra where one head is clinically insane and cannot be doing things that harm the body. You can’t get up and walk away, it’s fricking attached. You can leave a date, you can walk away from terrorists, you cannot leave a diseased part of the body. It’s the possessed hand from Evil Dead and it’s in your Congress, holding your wallet. Every time people vote for a teapublican, this is what you will get.
Earl Butz
White folks are apparently thinking that anthrax would taste pretty good.
Might be the most disheartening thing I’ve read this year.
BGinCHI
Anthrax the virus or the metal band?
You know Cantor is rocking that shit when he drives back and forth from NoVa.
Dennis SGMM
Spot on. I stopped watching the establishment media back in ’08 – the year that should be asterisked forever as the beginning of the Golden Age of False Equivalency. The lazy, fake even-handedness of the emmessem has been a cardinal factor in shepherding us to the brink.
eemom
excellent analogy. Spot on.
Dennis SGMM
@BGinCHI:
Heh! A thirty-three year marriage to a wonderful woman who was born in Juarez led me to immediately interpret “NoVa” as “No va.”
BGinCHI
Mainstream journalism needs the status quo. They have jobs in an established culture that exists because of the way things are, and poking at it threatens to unravel their livelihood. They are way more afraid of their mortgage payment and their kids’ private school tuition than of the GOP actually wrecking the country.
The analogy would also be to a family in which one parent is responsible and the other is a raging alcoholic. The media is the child or the responsible parent who will enable such behavior for fear of splitting apart the family. That’s imperfect, but the MSM really can’t bear to see the established order of things disintegrate.
I hope no one lets them into the lifeboat.
jimmiraybob
And tire rims, dammit. Don’t forget the tire rims.
eemom
@BGinCHI
Please. That fucktard is not from Northern Virginia, he’s from Fuckville Nowhere, Virginia. Fucking Culpepper. Fuck him.
BGinCHI
Dennis, that would be a good nickname for Cantor: No va Eric.
BGinCHI
eemom, I forgot about that. Culpepper is next to Fucking Nowhere. It’s the only place there is shitty cell service between DC and Albemarle Co.
Talk about a safe seat….
trollhattan
@jimmiraybob:
Just sprinkle some Tussin on it.
Not looking forward to this campaign season one tiny bit.
JGabriel
ruemara:
So your point is that we can cut off the House Republicans with a chainsaw?
.
Nylund
I’m always a fan of the music references you sneak into your titles.
BGinCHI
JGabriel, red, white & blue chainsaw of freedom, naturally.
They have them at Lowe’s.
Brian S
There’s one group that can do something, i.e. effectively cut off that hydras head, or at least maim it enough so it doesn’t kill the whole body, and that’s what passes for mainstream Republicans. But it means they’d have to either abandon their party completely and become Democrats or take the chance that they’d get primaried, and that’s not happening. Liberals and even moderate Dems can’t do anything about that hydra head because it’s on the whole other side of the body, but the head next to it can surely take a chomp out of it if only it’s willing to do so.
Citizen_X
and that’s something I don’t wanna catch
Linda Featheringill
@Earl Butz:
white voters.
Damn.
The Dangerman
Maintaining the date analogy, tire rims and anthrax might be more palatable you didn’t know your date was sneaking off to supplement her diet by doing a guy that was having mignon and merlot.
Shawn in ShowMe
@BGinCHI
Me likes analogies. I wouldn’t call a mother who covers for an abusive father as responsible but I see what you were trying to do there. In fact that family scenario hits really close to home. Unlike the mother I have in mind, I don’t see any evidence that this media ever cared about the child.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Retired Republicans are willing to call out the crazy, and it gets some attention, then the Broders and the Cokies go right back to treating the crazy as just another way to view the shape of the Earth.
Short of Chuck Hagel running as an indy, or Bill Cohen or Angus King taking a run at Ollie (and I expect to win the Powerball more than I expect either of those to happen) I don’t see how this ends.
jacy
@Dennis SGMM:
My propensity to skim had me imagining he was jamming to Anthrax on his tape deck while driving his Chevy Nova.
I am the Emily Litella of skimming.
JGabriel
Since we’re revisting an old post, I’ll just re-post my response (cause it made me laugh when I re-read it) from back then:
.
bisquits
@5dennisSGMM
I stopped watching during the OJ trial. Then the a few years later the Lewinsky stupidity. If I happen upon network or cable, it strikes me how much they all remind me of Entertainment Tonight. So much stooped! I feel bad for my kids. The mess they will inherit if this ship isn’t righted. Sigh.
Shawn in ShowMe
I agree. Chris Evans deserves a cabinet position.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I can’t remember who it was who said, back in the health care debate, that in a rational world, any bill that has the support of Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln on one side, and Tom Harkin and Barbara Boxer on the other is as bipartisan as you can get.
Frankensteinbeck
JGabriel @24:
Can we get Jeffery in here with a delicious looking photo of tire rims and anthrax with tomato sauce?
walt
I used to think that the only way to disabuse people of the idea that there’s such a thing as a Randian paradise was to give them just enough of a taste of it to make them sick. The government defaulting, by definition, isn’t a bad thing to people who consider government to be the problem. These people, perhaps 40% of the citizenry, are in desperate need of this experience. Even more so is the nation itself. We are going to spend the next several years circling this drain if we go ahead and “make a deal”. Why not let them have it now? Seriously, they have something to prove so let’s have the proof now rather than whittling away the social compact in bits and pieces.
Frankensteinbeck
walt:
Because they will take us down with them. And it’s way, way far down. I’d really rather not lose all of the economic and social progress of the last 100 years.
Alex S.
Forced to choose between tire rims and anthrax I would probably eat anthrax.
Brachiator
@Earl Butz:
And pay special attention to the attraction that young and poor whites are finding for the GOP. This is a very important corrective to those who insist on believing that the Republicans are just a bunch of cranky old white people.
The Democrats still have an advantage here, but one that is easily countered by apathy and confusion among this group. On the other side, the GOP is still benefitting from the anger, energy and enthusiasm of its extremist core.
Mike E
It’s the Roman Empire, peepulz. It’s all the
leadmercury in our diets.OzoneR
I never understood the hostage taking analogy. When hostage takers take hostages in real life, cops do two things, or both, they either negotiate with them to get the hostages free and convince them to give up in a way where they come out saving face, or they kill them.
So unless you want to kill every Republican in the country, you’re going to have to negotiate with them to get the hostages free and let the takers save face before sending them to jail. I don’t know what the jail is in the political analogy.
Northumbrian
@25. bisquits
I remember years ago a promo spot on CNN, back when I watched them, so many many moons ago now: the white-collar office drone straightening his tie, sitting down to breakfast, and turning on the morning news offerings and flipping among them:
Channel A:
Anchor 1: Big events happening overseas, but first:
Anchor 2: Is your pet psychic? We’ll find out!
(flip)
Channel B:
Anchor 1: This is Harry, who replaces, Janie, who replaced Ellie, who replaced…
(flip)
Channel C:
Anchors 1 and 2, laughing together: We’re all just one big happy family!
(click)
And then CNN would voiceover its claim to real reporting and being the most trusted name in news…
I get my news now mostly from McClatchy, TPM, and the Guardian these days, mostly, and wherever the BJers and their commentariat link to.
Seebach
The Oslo shooter apparently wanted a European Tea Party movement:
He argues for setting up a system of social networking “such that is linked to similar organizations in other countries (similar to a beginning of a cultural Euro-version of a Tea Party movement).”
David
Not to defend the media here, but don’t the democrats, and especially president obama, treat the republicans as relatively reasonable people, for the most part? Why should the media do our work for us?
Shawn in ShowMe
And let the terrorists win?
Wer’e going to be re-fighting the Civil War every couple of generations as long as people are entitled to their own set of facts. It seems to me if you want to avoid that you go all in on reforming the educational system. Have team building projects that require students to engage with others outside of their own cultural echo chamber.
Let that incubate for 30 years and see what happens.
cat48
@walt:
They’re still attacking the social compact now & the Senate will help, per NYT
JGabriel
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Isn’t this the same technique that led us to a centrist media which insists there must be a reasonable middle ground between Italian food and Tires Rims w/ Anthrax? I mean, there’s no reasonable middle ground between natural selection and evolution is evil either.
There must be a better way. Though I confess to not knowing what it is.
.
JPL
Earl,
The President will get blamed for the economy. It doesn’t matter that the repubs are serious about tanking the economy for power. It doesn’t matter that it was repub rule that created the mess we are in. It doesn’t matter that their foreign policy created unnecessary wars. All that matters is who is President. The poll does not surprise me.
Now on the bright side, unless they are calling cell phone numbers, the youth vote could be tilted.
ruemara
JGabriel
I’m fine with that. But, seriously, the cut off is at the voting booth.
JPL
Breaking from msnbc..Boehner says leaders hope to have a plan in 24 hours…
Colleen
OT, Amy Winehouse has died.
Amir_Khalid
@JPL:
Soon to be followed by another MSNBC strap:
“BREAKING: Boehner: Just kidding, folks”
opal
@Earl Butz:
One wonders how many of those polled are still bitter about a recent presidential primary.
WereBear
I know a lot of young, poor, white people, but the overwhelming majority of the ones I know are repulsed by the Republican racism, sexism, and stupidity.
I obviously know a better group of poor white people than the ones gravitating to Republican in that Pew poll.
RossInDetroit
The Modern GOP is sort of like having a substance abuser around. You know the one; oblivious to the damage they cause, ignored by 1/3 of the people around, deplored by 1/3 and enabled by 1/3. Only the violent, raving derelict in our national family has the PIN to the country’s ATM.
jeffreyw
@Frankensteinbeck: Close as I can get you without advance notice.
Julia Grey
Yaysu Christie. IF ONLY we’d had a stimulus twice the size of the one we got and real mortgage relief.
Obama sank himself with those two mistakes right out of the gate. The economic limping along ever since then has been the result.
That thing about losing ground among young and poor whites was depressing as hell.
Well, at least we got some progress on gay rights and a good swing at the health care problem out of this deal. I can only hope we don’t give away the entitlements farm in the next year and that Mitt won’t be as bad as we think…
Man.
I could just weep.
Mnemosyne
@cat48:
Meh. Sounds like more spin from the Repugs. Every quote from a Democrat says they will not do a short-term extension.
Elizabelle
Got to inject a little brightness into this thread, because this is America and no one should be eating tire rims or anthrax.
Can’t do much this weekend about the tire-rim-serving/teatarding crowd, but we could help a seven year old author from northern Virginia buy himself a seizure-alert dog.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/7-year-old-writes-book-to-raise-money-for-a-service-dog/2011/07/22/gIQAiOqHUI_story.html?hpid=z11
You can purchase the book ($10) or donate directly to Evan’s dog fund. Per WaPost writer Tom Jackman:
Send a check, made payable to “4 Paws for Ability” to
I’m in.
Jeffro
I think Shawn @ 36 is headed in the right direction (and JGabriel @ 38, I think you actually are too, with the natural selection point) – anything that gets both real, provable facts out there and gets people thinking helps move the ball forward.
The 27%ers won’t change their minds (isn’t it proven that in the face of being wrong, some people just double down no matter what the evidence?), but we get a lot closer to full support from the other 73%, and we might even get a few of the 27%ers’ kids down the road.
opal
@Julia Grey:
Not really.
At least not with anyone who keeps their lawn nice and doesn’t stink of armpits and patchouli oil.
slag
@David:
I agree with you, in spirit, but I think this is a really tight needle to thread. Unfortunately, the VSPs play an influential role in forming public opinion. People who don’t pay a whole lot of attention to issues are easily swayed by tone and narrative. And if the tone and narrative are distinctly and sharply geared to reward High Broderism, you are only proving yourself Unserious if you are too direct in your criticisms of the crazy half. In other words, you become shrill or smug. And shrill or smug are the worst sins imaginable in the Village.
BlueDWarrior
Regarding the problems with the stimulus was only gonna be as big as Nelson and Liberman let it be; in fact even if it went through reconciliation then it only would have been as big as say McCaskill or Landrieu would have let it been. Real mortage relief is a non-starter as well.
One of the side effects of the Republicans going all-in on the crazy in the last 40ish years is that all of the sane Republicans have become Democrats and ‘our’ Party has nothing resembling ideological consistency, which is what you must have given the rules of the Senate.
I think some people have not come to accept the fact that 40 years of political alignments being completely out of whack is rendering up almost totally incapable of solving problems with the normal way the system works. Unfortunately the only thing I think we could do to reform the political system that can be passed would be an elimination of the filibuster and secret holds, and frankly that’s what I think the Republicans want in the end, to piss Democrats so bad we end up eliminating the only thing that could keep them from rewriting the entire slate of Federal Laws once they get all 3 branches again.
Elizabelle
Commenter PEA had interesting suggestion on the Benen thread:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/tire_rims_and_anthrax031053.php#comments
Linda Featheringill
@jeffreyw: #49
LOL!
FlipYrWhig
@ Julia Grey : Oy, this again. Remember how the original stimulus package _was_ bigger, but Specter, Snowe, and Collins wouldn’t go along with it unless it was smaller? You’re implying there was a mechanism with which Obama could have moved them to a bigger number, but he refused to use it. What was that?
Especially in the middle of a discussion of Republican intransigence, it seems kind of disingenuous to wave it off and suggest that there _really_ was a _better_ deal he _could_ have done if he had only said the magic words.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
To say nothing of McCaskill and Nelson, and by my guess at least a half dozen others they were providing cover for by being so loud about “the silly stuff”
Ruckus
walt
The concept of letting children see the results they are asking for doesn’t seem that bad when what they are asking for is too much ice cream. What the conservatives are asking for is everything. And the road back from everything is very hard, long and deadly, if it can even be done. So like the reluctant child it is time to say no. Well… not just no, but fuck no. They will throw a tantrum like all small children but I think they should be allowed to hold their breath till they turn blue. Pun intended.
Julia Grey
Obama made very little effort to consciously use the idea of EMERGENCY in order to make his case. He was all calm and mild and “okay, I think we can manage on that.” That’s where I fault him.
He didn’t make the case. He didn’t try to educate the public. He didn’t fight. He was too conscious of trying to retain his political capital, even that early in the game, maybe for the health care fight, I don’t know.
But I do know that if he and his staff and surrogates had put more into sounding maybe a little more alarmist and not putting out such freaking rosy and TOO CONCRETE pictures about what could be accomplished on the inadequate amount they ended up asking for, if they’d really TRIED to sell a bigger stimulus, we could have gotten more. Or at the very, very least, there wouldn’t have been as big a disappointment factor working on the emotions of the electorate today.
Julia Grey
I mean, seriously, did he never ask anyone in any of the meetings, “What happens if this isn’t enough? Shouldn’t we be careful about what we promise in terms of unemployment, etc.?”
boss bitch
@Slag:
No. It IS the media’s job to point out when our leaders are whackos. The Democrats civility is not to blame here.
Shawn in ShowMe
@FlipYrWhig
But LBJ would have arranged for a bloody horse’s head in each of their beds, etc, etc.
Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached a Seldon Crisis in this nation. The only way to get out of it is by manipulation. If getting Boehner and Norquist to side against Cantor isn’t manipulation, I don’t know what is.
slag
Another paragraph from Benen that I agree with wholeheartedly:
As much as I despise High Broderism in theory, in practice, I think it’s important to approach a problem assuming that all parties involved, no matter what perspective we’re coming from, are working toward a common goal. And that we all just need to learn to communicate a little better and think a little more outside the box in order to achieve progress. That said, at some point, you just have to stop jumping onto that turnip truck. That point will likely vary by individual.
I would like to think that Obama has stopped jumping onto that turnip truck by now and is retooling his strategic approach (and, in my dream world, his advisory team) to come up with some more creative ways of continuing to try and meet his policy objectives. But since I’m not getting back onto that turnip truck, all I can say is…we’ll see…
boss bitch
@Julia Grey:
Good grief. The stimulus wasn’t being decided in the voting booth, it was being voted on by members of Congress. He didn’t need to convince the public, he needed to convince Republicans.
I really hate this “he didn’t make the case” to the public complaint. As if Republicans listen to the public. As if the American people are going to bum rush Washington, start a revolution and demand that they give Obama what he wants.
boss bitch
@Julia Grey:
Gee. I’m pretty sure if YOU thought of it, they did also.
slag
@boss bitch:
Here’s the thing. I’ve never worked at a place where I’ve refused to do something because it wasn’t my job. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever participated in a community in which I refused to do something because it wasn’t my job.
Whether or not it’s the media’s job to do an essential task isn’t necessarily relevant when they either aren’t doing it or can’t do it. At that point, the necessity of the task makes it everybody’s job to do. But not everyone can do that job effectively. Which was the point I was trying to make. Democrats can do that job, but they will always have a nearly impossible time doing it effectively because of the constraints they’re working under.
boss bitch
@Slag:
The work place is not a good comparison here. At work you are working together towards one goal. The media is not supposed to be on anyone’s team but mines. They haven’t been doing their jobs and we are worse off for it.
opal
@Julia Grey:
Your ratfucking is BELOW PAR.
I am disappointed.
Shawn in ShowMe
@boss bitch
To some folks it’s always 1933.
I’d really love to live in a nation where more than 50% of the people bother to vote, where labor unions are thriving, where the mainstream media doesn’t engage in False Equivalency around the clock and where the defense budget isn’t an anchor around this country’s neck. That world doesn’t exist and yelling “bully pulpit!” isn’t going to make it reappear.
slag
@FlipYrWhig:
You know, usually I ignore stuff like this, but…This kind of statement smacks of an arrogance that some of us can only aspire to. You don’t need to believe in “magic” to assume that everybody could do or could have done a better job at something. If the Obama Administration is always satisfied with the work they’ve done, then well…they’re letting me, you, and everyone else down.
That said, I think that any criticism needs to be modulated by the reality that no one’s perfect and by the recognition that, as much as the Obama Administration could have done a better job, so could the liberal community.
slag
@boss bitch:
Well, I’d like to think that–as corny and vague as it sounds–our collective goal might be a stronger Union. That said, I completely agree that the most prominent and rewarded members of the media haven’t been working toward that goal, in any way you look at it. Come to think of it, I would apply that criticism to the most prominent and rewarded members of our entire country. Strange how that is.
Corner Stone
It’s always something.
FlipYrWhig
@ slag : There’s a tremendous difference between saying that Obama et al could have, should have, used different rhetoric, made different cases, whatever — which is a fine thing to think — and making the farther leap to say that _if_ they had adopted a communication strategy that lined up with everything we would have liked him to say _the results would have been different_. No, they wouldn’t. Because of the entire premise of this very post. Republicans don’t give a shit. Name one additional Republican who would support a bigger stimulus because Obama made it clear that things were extra dire.
And, frankly, using the idea of “emergency” wasn’t going to work because TARP was sold that same way. You can’t keep saying that everything is an emergency. “We’re in an emergency, so $800B won’t do, only $1.5T will?” Who does that work on? Not Republicans. Barely even Democrats. I don’t know why we have to keep pretending that there was a way to get a better result. It wasn’t that long ago. _Democrats_ had cold feet on all of these programs. _Democrats_ needed stroking and hand-holding. Then, once that was carefully done without any big, sudden gestures, _only then_ would they attempt to peel off a Republican. So if they just said “booga-booga, scary emergency!” that would change their minds? An avalanche of phone calls would change their minds? Not bloody likely. Because, as was discussed in the original post, Republicans DON’T BELIEVE in working together, because they’re a pack of dickbags.
That’s why believing in rhetoric, framing, bully pulpiteering and all that is, in essence, magic. It has a chance to affect public opinion, yes. But public opinion in favor of Democratic priorities has no chance to affect Republican votes. Because they want tire rims and anthrax.
Julia Grey
What the hell?
I am an Obama supporter, but I don’t think that means I have to silence myself on the issue of what he did wrong in the beginning, with his naïve, “lets change the tone,” “compromise is essential” way of doing business.
He made some major mistakes right at the start that have undermined everything else he’s tried to do since. That’s all I’m saying. That the mistakes were partly because he did not properly anticipate the buzz-saw he was running into does not entirely explain them. In fact, it doesn’t even LARGELY explain them. Why didn’t he anticipate that buzzsaw? Wasn’t that a mistake, too? No? Why not? Is he still perfect and totally innocent even though he miscalculated?
You know, I agree with you. So my question becomes, if they did see that there could be problems, why did they make the MISTAKE of over-promising the results of a stimulus that elementary calculations we were told they made at the time indicated were likely to be inadequate to the spending shortfall that it was designed to fill? Did they really think they could go back and get more later or something? Gee, what a MISTAKE.
I begin to understand what people are talking about when they complain of rabid “Obots.” Some people apparently can’t even tolerate a discussion of what went wrong YEARS AGO. I have defended President Obama fiercely many times on many sites. I plan on not only voting for him but contributing and working for him during the next campaign. But I should be able to speak about the MISTAKES I think he made in his early days without being accused of being a ratfucker, for shit’s sake.
Get a grip.
slag
@FlipYrWhig: Exactly how many Republican votes were needed to enact the stimulus package?
Besides which, your argument is not with me or any other liberal complaining about tactics. Your argument is with Obama who often says that he (and many economists) underestimated the size of the economic problem. That has nothing to do with the bully pulpit and everything to do with judgment. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it’s the kissin’ cousin to “nobody could have predicted”. If Obama wanted more sympathy on that particular issue from liberals like me, he would say something along the lines of, “I listened to the wrong economists at the time; I hope I have corrected that error by starting to pay more attention to economists who were better at their jobs.”
Sapient
“If the Obama Administration is always satisfied with the work they’ve done, then well…they’re letting me, you, and everyone else down.”
Obama said at the Town Hall on Thursday that he wished he’d explained more clearly the dire conditions and the length of time it would take to get through the financial crisis. He said that when asked if he had any regrets. So, sure.
But FlipYrWig is correct on this – it really wouldn’t have helped. I mean, how would it have helped? People would have just been more depressed. People don’t think of the economy in terms of “Life is going to suck for the next 7 years, and then it will get better.” Who knows whether it will get better or not? People take their circumstances as they find them and live through it.
I honestly don’t see how Obama could have done better under the circumstances. If, by some miracle, a “deal” passes, people will complain about that too. But he’s right – a huge chunk of change goes from taxpayers to serving the national debt. That’s anything but stimulating to the economy. Since we’re not using that money to stimulate the economy (since the Republicans won’t let us), we should get it out of the national conversation.
FlipYrWhig
@ slag : I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing any longer. My gripe is specifically with the claim that a different rhetorical approach would have yielded different vote counts. I find that highly doubtful. I don’t have a gripe with the broader idea that policies pursued have been less than optimal. I might raise the point that the pursuit of better policies can’t be discussed outside the context of running a gauntlet of scaredy-cats and malicious assholes; but that’s, again, a question of politics.
I mean, in terms of better policy, single-payer would be better HCR, _anything_ would be better on energy, and I’d much rather be debating how to continue to dispense stimulus than taking up a bunch of wonkish techno-fixes to long-term problems with deficits and debts. But making those better policies _happen_ is a totally different story. I think too many people skip that step or wave it away.
opal
@Julia Grey:
They told me the buzzaaw was dead.
They told me…
slag
@FlipYrWhig:
Yes. But, speaking for myself, I don’t see the field of options for achieving good policy as being this narrow. And honestly, I don’t know any real person who does. If there are no more tools in the toolbox than the bully pulpit and already having enough votes on your side from the start, then we, as a country, are in much more trouble than we can possibly imagine. My belief is that’s not the case.
Now, with regard to the stimulus, I feel like different stories are being told–as they are. You have the rhetorical strategy story and the economic judgment story. I have little doubt that both stories are true in their own ways and that one even influences the other. However, I, for one, find the judgment story to be more problematic, assuming no correction was made as a result of it.
FlipYrWhig
I think that’s where we are. That’s the McConnell strategy: all Republicans band together come hell or high water, and if the voters don’t like it, that’s why there are elections. It’s a risky strategy for people like Snowe, Collins, and Scott Brown, which is why they sometimes stray.
But I’ve said before that I think what has totally broken down in politics is the notion that Republican politicians need to do what their constituents want. Just for sheer self-interest you’d think that’s how they would behave: Republican considers doing something awful, gets an avalanche of angry phone calls, is chastened and acts better the next time. That’s the way most Democrats still behave. But Republicans really don’t anymore. They figure that they can do whatever bullshit they feel like doing; as malicious and damaging as it gets, even to their own constituents; and still count on having a shot to get reelected based on nothing but spite and tribalism. And I don’t know that they’re wrong about that.
Tonal Crow
@FlipYrWhig :
This is bullshit 72 ways from Sunday. The Republicans have used *fake* emergencies to rape us of the right to grow plants in our own backyards; to inject their toxic ideology into every woman’s uterus; to send gays to prison for being gay; to pass, repass, rerepass, and rererepass the “PATRIOT Act”; to warrantlessly record all our phone and internet conversations; and now, at this very moment, to precipitate a global depression.
Yet you argue that Democrats can’t use *real* emergencies to force progress? Bullshit!
The fact is, Republicans have learned how to use rhetoric to accomplish their goals. Democrats, however, are still saying, “Rhetoric? What’s that?” and are acting as if enumerating policy positions and pre-compromising with the Republicans is the road to success.
Our Democrats is *still* not learning.
Really? Please present your evidence. I’m not seeing. What I am seeing is a tremendous amount of public teatardism and confusion wrought by Republican-dominated media and rhetorically-feckless Democrats.
FlipYrWhig
@ Tonal Crow : None of your points are inconsistent with the fact that Republicans don’t give a shit when voters tell them they don’t like what they’re doing on [Issue]. Democrats, by contrast, do. So, yes, sad to say, Democrats can’t use real emergencies to force progress. To do so would mean that it was possible to build up such a critical mass among the public that it would genuinely spook Republican politicians into voting against what Republican dogma would dictate. I don’t think that can happen. Show me one occasion when it has happened in the Obama years on anything significant.
Democrats still fear public disapproval and crave public approval when they deliberate what to do. Republicans don’t. You can move the public with rhetoric, but you can’t use rhetoric to move the public _to then move Republicans_ away from hardline Republican doctrine. There’s no convincing Republican politicians to deviate from their marching orders. The only ones who even _slightly_ care are Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins. Their thinking is, “Don’t like it? Then don’t vote for me.” Democratic thinking is, rather, “Don’t like it? If I changed my mind, would you consider voting for me?”
Obama skeptics think this is true of Obama. I’m not so convinced of that. But I think it’s _hella_ true of almost all elected Democrats. They have a well-developed sense of self-preservation. Republicans actually don’t. They’re more like Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and John Kasich: you elected me, I’m doing what I think is best, and if you don’t like it, bite me.
gerry
I do feel like a beetle on its back!
OzoneR
you do in this scenario.
OzoneR
Yes, because Democrats care about public opinion, not matter how stupid it is, Republicans don’t. This isn’t hard to understand.
Tonal Crow
@Flip (85) & Ozone (88): I see no evidence for the idea that national Republicans do not respond to public pressure. Please show me some examples.
Meanwhile, I’ll show you some counterexamples.
Using excellent (and badly misleading) rhetoric, Republicans and their media propagandists have convinced Americans — by 42% to 22% in a 7/7-11 Gallup poll — that Congress should not raise the debt ceiling. And guess what? Congressional Republicans are responding to that public pressure (which they largely created) by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.
And here’s another example: the ACA. The most vociferous public pressure — as in the “Death Panels” town-halls of summer 2009 — came from the teatards, again acting on effective (and outrageous-misleading) rhetoric conceived and promulgated by elected Republicans and their media lackeys. And congressional Republicans responded to that public pressure by opposing the ACA.
And here’s yet another example: the war in Iraq. In a rhetorical tour de force, the Republicans lied, lied, and lied again, eventually convincing 67% of the public that we should invade Iraq (Q42). And once again, Republicans (and plenty of Democrats!) responded to the public pressure Republicans had created by voting to invade Iraq.
You see, Republicans do respond to public pressure. But they go one vital step further by *creating* the very public pressure they need to “justify” their pre-existing policy preferences.
Democrats (especially here) seem determined not to learn this lesson.