Michael Kinsley’s pristine moderate liberal mind can’t handle the untidy situation in DC, so of course the only thing Democrats can do is cave:
The media will no doubt call Obama weak because he gave in. So let them. Sticks and stones. Meanwhile, will the Republicans really take the past couple of weeks as a precedent and push him around on every issue that comes up? Highly unlikely. They are already getting most of the blame. They surely don’t look forward to trying to convince voters it was such a swell experience that they’re going to put us through it again and again.
Let me answer the question that I bolded: Yes. Because when you win by taking hostages, you’ll keep taking hostages. Seems obvious to me, but if you’ve been the editor of Slate for 7 years, you just can’t resist the impulse to ignore the obvious and assume the contrary.
(Thanks to reader J for sending this in.)
WereBear
Because this is working so well for them.
Warren Terra
See also yesterday’s thread on this at LGM.
Splitting Image
The first problem I see with Kinsley’s argument is that if Obama caves, the Republicans won’t be getting most of the blame anymore. Even without Republican talking points, the narrative will immediately shift to how Obama was 100% responsible for the shutdown, along with every other Democrat who holds office from now until the end of time.
barry
Kinsely would no doubt have advised HM Government in 1939 to surrender the Sudentland to the Germans and Hitler would then realize that there is no point in making any more trouble.
And Kinsley would have also advised the Cherokee Nation that it was okay to sign a treaty with the State of Georgia as they could always enforce any favorable ruling from the US Supreme Court.
Betty
Any chance Michael Kinsley will just go away or at least stop pretending to be a Democrat?
MattF
So, y’know, Obama now has to do what Kinsley thinks he should do– regardless of what Obama actually thinks. Do you see the flaw here?
Anya
Michael Kinsley needs to STFU and DIAF. I can’t muster the energy to say anything original but this contrarian douchebag.
sparrow
Last night at our conference dinner (where all the government academics were notably absent, from the entire meeting), I got into an epic argument with someone trying to convince him that no, it is not Fox = far right, CNN = middle and MSNBC = “far left”. I told him the “far left” doesn’t exist in this country and it sure as hell isn’t the democrats. Apparently that was a bomb I shouldn’t have lobbed.
Napoleon
@sparrow:
Why not?
Anyone who can write what Kinsley wrote just has to be a clueless dumbfuck.
evodevo
@sparrow: Two thumbs up.
njb
Michael Kinsley lives in a cave with no cable.
dmsilev
That’s almost Kristolian in it’s wrongness.
WereBear
Gee, what’s the difference between Republican advice and wish fulfillment?
Really, stop laughing. What’s the difference?
Ash Can
And to think I had thought I’d heard all the possible ways of saying “uppity ni-CLANG.”
Elizabelle
Kinsley’s insane with this column.
David Ignatius of the WaPost was trying the same tack.
I don’t see where it helps Obama or the Constitution or average Americans to roll over for Republican congressional extortion.
Patrick
@sparrow:
Not only that. FoxNews does not have 3 hour show in the morning led by a former Democratic Congressman and whose guests are mainly centrists or Democrats. On the other hand, MSNBC has a 3 hour show in the morning led by a former Republican Congressman and whose guests are mainly centrists or Republicans.
People that do not know any better (most people) make the claim that MSNBC = FoxNews. I haven’t watched MSNBC in the morning for years. Joe S and his female sidekick are just dumb and dishonest.
RosiesDad
@Warren Terra: Also this.
JPL
President Obama should have another press event to push for opening the Government but congratulate the repubs for coming to their senses. He needs to emphasis that the needs of the country should be placed before politics.
If he uses the extortion word again that would be fine.
Bill E Pilgrim
Michael Kinsley’s answer to everything is that the Democrats should cave.
For example: If train A leaves station B traveling north at 50 MPH and train C leaves station D traveling south at 120 MPH toward train A, where exactly will they collide?
Kinsley: The Democrats should give in.
The fly in the fair and balanced ointment (TM) is that he rarely thinks that the Republicans should cave in, the fact that they won’t is just something he concedes with a Droopy Dog voice. Oh well, what are you gonna do.
Chuck Butcher
I suppose a person could call Kinsley a liberal, I suppose. Maybe that’s why I look at the word as an insult, not because of its original meaning, but what it has become. Then again, I’m only mildly insulted if someone calls me a progressive. The hell of it is that a real leftist would be insulted by me calling myself a Lefty. What a fucking country…
EconWatcher
Has Kinsley noticed that Obama is kinda good at this, and probably doesn’t need advice from someone who’s never run for dogcatcher?
Linda Featheringill
Michael doesn’t know much about bullies, does he? Obviously, he’s led a protected life and probably came from money.
Eric U.
@Patrick: I find the people that say msnbc == fox news are always confused when you mention that JoeScar is a partisan republican ex-congressman. This is the same lazy thought that people talk about radicals in both parties, particularly with regards to House members. I wish there were radicals in our congressional delegation, Overton window and all that.
I found out who has been calling me 3 times a day, it’s the Democratic Governors Association. It’s on a schedule, just as I’m getting ready to do to work, just after school, and at dinner time. Now, if there was one democratic party group that would never, never, in a million years get any of my money, it’s the Demcratic governors. I will give money to whoever runs against Gov. Drillbit, but throwing money into a pool that might or might not be used to reelect Dem Govs is not going to happen.
And they have the phone person programmed not to give up. I blame Dean, I got all excited when he was head of the DNC and gave them money. Big mistake.
Gin & Tonic
@Patrick: I unfortunately had it on for a little while this morning (my body is still on Yurp time) and was entertained by the fact that, in answer to AL’s question of yesterday about who’s the designated scapegoat for the GOP clusterfuck, the crowd on that show was picking not some 30-something think tank dweeb but rather a 40-something junior senator from Texas. It was pretty sweet.
JPL
OT TPM has a link to the values voters conference, the one where they value the fetus, anyway Cruz and Rubio are suppose to speak.
Citizen_X
@sparrow:
Sure it does: the Anarchists; the Black Bloc faction at large demonstrations. They are the left-wing equivalent of the Tea Party.
The fact that they don’t have their own major network, deference from all other news outlets, and forty congressmen working to pull the government down shows you how skewed this country is the right-wing radicals.
PeakVT
@Linda Featheringill: I first became aware of Kinsley when he used to come on Buckley’s Firing Line show to “rebut” or something. Judging by those appearances, I think Kinsley decided he liked being bullied a long time ago.
Patrick
@Gin & Tonic:
They have their moments, I suppose.
Citizen_X
@Citizen_X: towards the right-wing radicals. Danged edit function.
Eric U.
@Citizen_X: I have a theory that the anarchist types are either police undercover agents or working for the Koch bros. I have no idea how someone would become radicalized in the U.S., those people just go into drug dealing.
Kay
Really, this is just astonishingly dumb. If Obama agrees to delay the law a year it will never go in. Obviously.
That is the point of the delay. To work to repeal the law. This isn’t a mystery. They’ve said as much on the front pages of newspapers for the last 5 days.
You know why he’s so cavalier about this and so willing to sacrifice other people’s health insurance?
Because he will never, ever need this law.
The arrogance and cluelessness continues.
Here, he bravely offers up something that belongs to someone else.
themann1086
@Patrick: The “MSNBC is left-wing” argument also ignores that their “biggest” name, Chris Matthews, had a massive mancrush on [insert Republican manly man here]. Matthews is sometimes a partisan, and sometimes he crushes on Democratic candidates, but he’s no bleeding heart.
Elizabelle
I think Obama needs to nail some Republican balls to wall.
Make sure they don’t even THINK of trying this extortion tactic again.
That would be good for America. A good precedent for future presidents.
If and when the GOP wants to negotiate like adults do, after the hostages have been released, negotiations can resume.
Rosalita
Absofuckinglutely
aimai
The significant thing to me about the Kinsley Argument is that it is based on a very deep seated distaste for real conflict, for getting down in the mud and punching back, and, essentially, for the rough and tumble of politics. The Alternate Universe Obama should be above such messy realities as (for example) actually pursuing the policies he advocates. He should be as disgusted as Kinsley is with all this kiddie infighting and he should withdraw from the game, given in, and let the kiddies fight it out and suffer the “natural consequences” of their acts. He’s a parody of liberal parenting where you try to reason with the kids for a while but your main objective is not losing dignity or moral authority by descending to their level. You don’t argue with the kids, and you don’t punish them by taking away their toys, you let them suffer through their bad decisions and let outsiders (teachers, DUI tickets, bad consequences) “teach them a lesson.”
But politics isn’t some kind of game egos and life lessons. There’s just as much bizarre ego gratification in the Alternate Universe Obama withdrawing from the contest and giving up (he’s above this sort of thing) as there is in Boehner and the Tea Party insisting on “getting something” for their trouble. Politics and the ACA isa bout helping real people to really live better, safer, healthier lives. 40 million of them. That is a literally immesuarable benefit on a massive human scale. The people freaking out about one child on one cancer trial are simply unable to scale up to the level of what the Republicans want to deny 40 MILLION PEOPLE. Kinsley’s tin pot, paper Obama, simply reflects the fact that Kinsley is one of those people whose imagination and morality and guts are not up to the task of being President and taking on responsibility for 300 million people. Because that is what matters and that is what Obama is fighting for. Not the approval or disapproval of journalists calling him “weak” or “strong.”
amk
@EconWatcher: But, but, what would a black legal scholar, who fought and won two consecutive elections in the face of stiff oppo from establishment types and moneyed billionaires and a crooked court, do without the gentle guiding hand of erudite totebagging white folks?
Elizabelle
@Kay:
I guess Michael Kinsley got tired of being taken (semi) seriously.
Pulling Obamacare away, just as it goes online, would get me out in the streets.
Kinsley and others with health insurance don’t know how much many of us have been hanging on by our toenails until Obamacare can be implemented.
pillsy
It’s not even dumb because “both sides” or whatever other tedious Village idiocy you see when Serious People complain that Obama isn’t compromising enough. Kinsley has discovered a whole new form of idiocy that suggests that Republicans will unilaterally decide not to use tactics that work for them because reasons.
Patrick
@themann1086:
Great point. I will never forget when Chris Matthews was commenting on when Bush declared “Mission Accomplished on that military ship. He called Bush a hero and suggested he should be on Mount Rushmore. Just despicable comments…
Judge Crater
I hate to use a Nazi analogy, but Kinsley is probably like the German upper class and intelligentsia of the Weimar Republic.
He can’t imagine that the crude zealots (of the Tea Party) are anything more than an inconsequential and transitory political sideshow. That they are incited to extreme measures by a constant barrage of Fox News and right-wing radio demagoguery is lost on him. Like any extreme movement, they will (symbolically, I hope) burn down the Reichstag to get their way. They are political luddites: breaking things is what they do.
Belafon
There’s even history on what happens when you give in to hostages demands: Ronald Reagan. We were constantly paying off hostage takers in the middle East, which meant they kept taking more. That stopped when George Bush 1 stopped giving into their demands.
SatanicPanic
Let’s beat up Michael Kinsley for his lunch money. You know he’ll never fight back.
Splitting Image
@sparrow:
I’ve solved this problem by refusing to engage with anyone who uses the words “left” and “right” in a political argument. You’d be surprised how many people you can catch flat-footed when you press them to use more descriptive terms. It’s also helpful if you are forced to explain that “liberal”, “progressive”, “Democrat”, “communist”, “Muslim”, “atheist”, and “terrorist” don’t all mean the same thing.
njb
@Linda Featheringill: Kinsley knows all about bullies. They used to knock him down and take his lunch money.
Patrick
So Kinsley wants Obama to cave. Does he realize that this means that for EVERY Congress going forward, the minority party can ALWAYS start taking hostages? Hell, does Kinsley realize that there would no longer be a need to vote since our votes would no longer have any meaning?
The stupid (except for Obama) are running our country…
Napoleon
@Kay:
FYI, doesn’t he have Parkinsins (sp?)?
Ridnik Chrome
Glad to see that Kinsley is taking a beating in the comments to that stupid article…
shortstop
So revolting on two levels: in its complete lack of understanding of how you deal with policy terrorists, and, far more importantly, in its utter indifference to the highly tangible consequences to millions of abandoning — the actual result of a year’s delay — the ACA.
It’s bad enough that he reduces national access to healthcare to an interesting problem of political gamesmanship. It’s ludicrous that, having done so, he’s so bad at the game.
schrodinger's cat
Kinsley was on the austerity bandwagon too and he likes to take potshots at Krugman. Liberal Pundit not so liberal actually.
My conclusion, he is not liberal and definitely not a Democrat.
shortstop
@SatanicPanic: As tempting as that is, one suspects that he would fight back for something he sees as important to himself. He wouldn’t fight well, but he’d likely make an effort.
danielx
Did Kinsley, like, miss the 2010 election, those who got elected, and everything that has happened (politically speaking) since then?
It’s possible that such a Very Serious Person’s mental vision is more acute than mine, but I’ve seen no indication that the Crazy Caucus is ready to quit running their heads into brick walls to acquire brickbats to hurl at That Man In The White House. Why should they? The crazier they are, the better their constituents like it. As far as they’re concerned they’re in a Holy War – just ask Michelle Bachmann – and to fight the horrifying socialist tyranny of Obamacare, increased financial regulation, etc etc, is to obey God.
barry
@Patrick:
The d###bag Matthews would routinely put on GOOPER nut jobs (Joe DiGenova, Victoria Toensing, Larry Klayman) and pretend that they were rational human beings who just happened to see the flaws in President Clinton.
schrodinger's cat
Another thing about Kinsley, his contrarianism only runs in one direction, always pro-Republican and pro-wealthy. Read his op-ed about raising the minimum wage.
NotMax
@Patrick
Not sure (and don’t really wish to know) who wears the Reagan mask and who the O’Neill one when Matthews and his better half are having adult playtime.
mapaghimagsik
Trolling for clicks by taking abuser fire a stood idea in the name of being contrarian is pathetic, though I guess is enough to maker you important in some half-assed Web mag.
Is it too late to send them off with the telephone cleaners?
shelly
Saw this on an earlier thread. And made me laugh. Always fall back to comfortable default position.
Just recently discovered, from prominent RW bloggers, that Romney didn’t just lose cause he was a bad candidate, but because of massive voter fraud. Any evidence for that? ‘Course not, all part of the conspiracy.
danielx
@NotMax:
Thanks. I’m trying to lose weight and that particular image has eliminated all desire to eat breakfast.
hoodie
@PeakVT: I remember those shows. Kinsley is a test tube liberal raised by conservatives. Buckley used him as a prop to create an illusion of affinity between conservative and liberal ideas, i.e., that conservatives weren’t just a bunch of mouth-breathing racists and Birchites and that reasonable people at the Club could disagree as to whether “I am my brother’s keeper” and “Fuck you, I got mine” was the superior moral philosophy. This is part of how we ended up with David Brooks.
dubo
I think you should praise Kinsley, that in fact this article entitles him to a raise. Surely he won’t take this as encouragement to write more tripe, because he sees how much his commenters are savaging him, and wouldn’t want to go through that again.
schrodinger's cat
Speaking of centrist pundits, credit where credit is due, MoU has been good at calling the Republicans out for their hostage taking.
low-tech cyclist
Kinsley’s always been the Worthless Milquetoast Centrist Pretending To Represent The Liberal Side On TV, but shit, even in comparison with his own usual stuff, this is garbage.
The reason we’re here right now is that hostage-taking has worked for them so far. Why would they quit now?
Oh, that’s right, they’re getting hammered in the polls. When have they paid attention to the polls when they didn’t want to? Anyone remember 1998, when they turned the midterms into a referendum on impeaching Clinton, but went ahead with impeachment despite losing the midterms?
Y’all do. Pretty much everyone alive and politically aware then does.
Kinsley doesn’t. Or wants to pretend it away, whatever.
And what aimai said about politics being too dirty for the clean hands of Villagers like Kinsley, and how they wish the rest of us would rise to their level. Because the actual policies don’t matter to them.
Kay
@shortstop:
I think it’s a fair measure, because I’ve noticed that. I’ve noticed that the brave compromisers are always willing to put something on the table that they don’t need.
We need more skin in the game in punditry circles. Desperately.
I know they’re all thinking “please make mom and dad stop fighting, do something!”, but I think it’s amazing they feel free to offer up things that other people need publicly. I like to think that they’d feel some reluctance to do that publicly, but they don’t.
“Here’s my advice. Trade away what those other people over there have”. This is considered brave!
Xantar
Which media is this? Because the media I see will probably react by saying, “Congress and the President reached a compromise” and then within a few hours will go right back to saying Obama doesn’t compromise enough.
MattF
Kinsley is a professional troll. He doesn’t care what Obama does, he doesn’t care about the deficit, he doesn’t care about the minimum wage, et cetera, or whatever, and so forth. When people who actually do care about any of these things read his stuff and feel they have to point out the various errors and stupidities– he feels he’s won the day. The trolling finger writes– and having writ, moves on.
Xecky Gilchrist
Meanwhile, will the Republicans really take the past couple of weeks as a precedent and push him around on every issue that comes up?
Is this another way of saying “past performance is no predictor of future results?”
This isn’t the first time the Republicans have pulled this stunt since the Stupid Anger Wave of ’10.
Mike in NC
So at some point Kinsley drifted from Slate to TNR. Didn’t notice because both suck and I stopped reading them years ago.
Patrick
@Kay:
One wonders what kind of crap Kinsley would have written in the 1780’s when we fought the British. “If only Washington would compromise with the king…”
Elizabelle
@MattF:
I did wonder if Kinsley wrote his column to troll, and to get readers to think out the issues as they assailed him in the comments?
Kinsley is a glibertarian, isn’t he?
gelfling545
@aimai: “getting something” for their trouble
I just love that concept. Like they were doing the Democrats a favor or something & should be compensated.
danielx
@MattF:
It’s not commentary, it’s a business model! And why not – the model has been brought to perfection by David Brooks, who concern trolling has made wealthy in a minor way.
Keith P.
Shades of Schoen and whatshisname writing an op-ed a couple of years back saying that Obama shouldn’t even run for re-election. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. At least the comments are suitably brutal.
MattF
@Elizabelle: I think William F. Buckley was a major influence and mentor for Kinsley. So, Kinsley is not only comfortable with the role of ‘pet liberal’, he believes that this is what liberalism is actually all about. Wrong, but it’s his life.
kc
From what planet did Kinsley file that?
Randy P
@EconWatcher: No. And neither do most liberal commenters. Yet things (such as diplomatic outcomes) seem to keep accidentally coming out Obama’s way, by sheer coincidence. It may be years before most people realize just how good he is, if ever.
hueyplong
I didn’t realize Kinsley is still alive.
Not sure my confusion has been put to rest by this. What sentient being says “they’d never go back to the well on this” when the very event he’s writing about is in fact a case of the GOP going back to the well, only more severely.
hueyplong
I didn’t realize Kinsley is still alive.
Not sure my confusion has been put to rest by this. What sentient being says “they’d never go back to the well on this” when the very event he’s writing about is in fact a case of the GOP going back to the well, only more severely.
GregB
Kinsley should be nominated for the Golden Gelding Award. What total bag of excrement.
kc
Oh, my God, I just read the whole thing. It’s got to be a spoof.
Keith P.
@kc: Make sure to read the comments. They’re stringing him up alive in there. Typical comment: “are you retarded? like not insult-retarded, but for-real-retarded?”
J
The phrase ‘give them an inch and they’ll take a mile could have been invented for the Republicans.
Kay
@Patrick:
It bugs me, because I think ordinary people do it all the time. They’ll say “I’m worried about global warming, so I think we should increase the carbon tax. This won’t affect me that much, however, because- blah, blah”
Pundits never do that. Put Social Security on the table, the health care law, Medicaid, they’ll offer anything up. There’s just never any mention that all of these things involve sacrifice by real people.
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
The Republicans have a long sought after list of things that they want; privatize Social Security, abolish the Department of Education, abolish the EPA, do away with food stamps, reduce the highest marginal tax rate on top earners and corporations to 0%, reinstitute prayer in schools, outlaw abortion, etc., etc. Kinsley is so in love with his contrarianism that he doesn’t realize that the Republicans will hold essential bills hostage for those things going forward.
His mind is certainly pristine now because he isn’t using it.
SFAW
@shelly:
I think Barro was snarking. (Maybe you were laughing with him, not at him, and I just didn’t pick up on it?)
In other unskewed poll newsblasts: Dean Chambers says that The Ni-Clang is Teh Gay.
And, interestingly, Chambers’s post-election, post-bullshit-semblance-of-contrition website “Barack O’Fraudo,” has gone
nigrablacknon-whitedarkNapoleon
Hey, is that a Decemberist reference?
Liberty60
Because, for anyone who has spent even 5 minutes browsing the fever swamps of the wingnut blogs, what they want, isn’t This Policy or That Policy-
What the GOP base wants is to destroy Obama, full stop. There is nothing aside from his swinging from a tree (yeah, I went there) that will satisfy them.
Cleeks Law, proven daily.
gelfling545
@Xantar: No, they will say that the GOP forced the President to compromise. Nothing good, even in the short term can come from such an action.
Joel
Michael Kinsley is a columnist for the Washington Post and the founding editor of Slate.
kc
@Keith P.:
I read the first 20 or so. I hope Kinsley reads them. Of course you just know he’s the kind of guy who would think, both sides are criticizing me, which just goes to show that I’m right.”
Waldo
Reminds me of an idea I had while playing chess with my 9-year-old nephew: Maybe if I let him win this time, he’ll stop overturning the board every time I put him in check.
It didn’t work, of course, despite the fact that my nephew is way more rational than House Republicans.
shortstop
@Kay: My favorite version of this is people piously intoning, “Freedom isn’t free”…while sending other people’s sons and daughters off to fight (sometimes fabricated) wars. But you see just as much of it in the domestic policy realm. Hey, we as a country can’t afford to give everybody everything they want, as nice as that would be, so would you mind giving up your basic necessities so I can enjoy things much farther up Maslow’s hierarchy?
cmorenc
@Eric U.:
It took me longer than it should to learn to be comfortable with quickly hanging up on such calls, and not give the “phone person” an extra second of room to persist before doing so. If the caller is from some organization I really would like to support, I might go so far as to simply say “my policy is to give on-line, not over the phone”. But my offer to phone solicitors of any type? To quote Michael Corleone: “My offer…is nothing.”
cmorenc
Fortunately, most democratic-inclined voters quit paying any attention to Michael Kinsley at least a decade ago, if not longer.
MattF
@cmorenc: One of these days I’ll have to get rid of my landline, just because of all the solicitations, ‘polls’ and scammers. I get the feeling, particularly from the scammers, that they’re assuming anyone with a landline these days is so old that they probably have cognitive problems.
muddy
@dubo:
Quoted for perfection.
RSA
@Napoleon:
That’s what Wikipedia says.
Other sources online say that this surgery costs between $30,000 and $50,000, usually covered by insurance. In my experience, people who have had to deal with serious medical problems are generally more sympathetic to people who don’t have health insurance. But my experience doesn’t include people like Kinsley, Cheney, et al.
Napoleon
@RSA:
Which was my unwritten point. Even if he had insurance to cover it you would think he would have in the back of his mind “but for the grace of God”.
RSA
@Napoleon: Yup.
Steeplejack
@RosiesDad:
From the Times piece linked at LGM:
That’s pretty direct for the usually wishy-washy Times, even allowing for an interpretation of “We’re not saying that; we’re saying Obama believes that.”
feebog
Hahaha. Ewick, son of Ewick still wants the Boner to play Custer at Little Big Horn:
Keep fucking that chicken Ewcik.
jim filyaw
for someone who i’ve always regarded as bright (although his foray into the debt issue was so lightly thought out and so obviously wrong, it gave me pause), this column is stunningly stupid, in the class of the schoen-caddell piece urging obama not to run for re-election. give in and i will gurandamntee you the gop’ers will be back for seconds and thirds and for as long as obama is in office. as for “blame”, i can’t recall an instance of a terrorist organization responding to bad publicity.
Cervantes
In a unique approach to the government shutdown, Kinsley’s actually recommending that we give up on “common sense, good government, and democracy”:
Spoken like a man who has never had young children.
Mind-boggling.
One wonders what he’s advising the Republicans to do.
Fax Paladin
@Kay: Sure, there’s mention.That’s when the David Brooks types say, “You need to start making more sacrifices.”
Emphasis on “you.”