Brilliant at Breakfast writes:
Michele Bachmann became the darling of the night when she pathetically blurted out like a Tourette’s patient, “Obama’s a one-term president!” without demonstrating in either word or deed how the Republican Party is going to somehow manage that feat of right wing political engineering.
I want Bachmann to make a serious run, so that I can hear Bobo muse about her homespun Hamlitonianism. I’d like her to be the nominee because she’ll likely bomb in the general and would be less dangerous than a president Pawlenty if she won, IMHO.
But I am a superstitious man, so I regard all the Bachmenntum from Halperin/Politico as potentially bad news. I have limited internet access, so tell me: are the wingers jacked about Bachmann too or is is just Halperin/Politico? Is she really in it to win it now?
dmsilev
Well, there’s Erick Erickovich:
He seems pleased.
Martin
In Bobo’s world, MILFy is worth extra credit. Not as much as in Tweety’s world, but yeah, Bobo will, er, muse quite a bit over her.
eastriver
shouldn’t you be knee-deep in best bitters by now?
seriously, get some persespective. GTF off the webz.
cleek
Dana Milbank says she “Stole The Show”!
so, yay
cmorenc
Most dogs, er candidates have his or her day early in the nomination process, when the possibilities for their path forward appear momentarily bright against the poorly consolidated political landscape of their respective party, uninformed by many, or even any, actual primaries yet. Bachman is having her day simply because she managed to look less crazy in the comparative context of the clown show she appeared in than everyone expected.
She’ll meet the moment of her own undoing soon enough. I doubt she has remotely anything like the mojo Obama summoned to survive her own inevitable “Reverend Wright” type moments (i.e. not necessarily that the specific matter involved will resemble the the Wright affair, except that it will provide an extremely stiff test with the electorate of her ability to come across as acceptably mainstream, rather than too much a part of an unacceptable fringe).
Doug Harlan J
@eastriver:
Taking a break from work, I can’t drink til tomorrow.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
the rank and file people who post comments on boards were bored silly.
Mnemosyne
If Bachmann does win the nomination, you’ll know that the big money boys have officially lost control over the Republicans. That’s gonna get ugly.
Cris (without an H)
Expound, please. When your internet access limit eases.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@Martin: I thought it was the other way around. Tweety gives extra credit to Mothers he like to fuck (MILF) and Bobo gives extra credit to Men he like to fuck.
beltane
Thanks, now I have that song in my head where it will remain for the rest of the day.
Poopyman
Cilliza sez:
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@cleek: I think he meant it literally. She probably stole some microphones.
Guster
@Cris (without an H): Same policies, but being more obviously crazy limits the potential Beltway tonguewashing.
artem1s
Off topic, daily dose of schadenfreude…
http://www.insidebayarea.com/top-stories/ci_18255207
Han's Solo
Halperin parrots the wingnut talking points; if he likes her so do they. Wasn’t it Halperin that thought McCain not being able to remember how many houses he owned was good news for McCain?
As to Bachman I say good luck. If her opponents don’t use the hundreds of video clips floating around the web of her saying stupid shit against her, the Ds sure will. Of course, maybe her opponents can’t use those clips because those clips are what make her popular with the base. Those same clips make her look crazier than an inbred meth addict with people who aren’t in her base, so maybe the Republicans won’t point out with the videos that she is nuts because to do so would make them appear sane, which is the last thing baggers want.
If she wins maybe she’ll pick Palin as VP? It could be called the “Sisterhood of the traveling crazy pants ticket” or just the “Crazy Pants Campaign” for short.
Davis X. Machina
Highly ironic, considering Brilliant at Breakfast would like nothing better — it would clear the way for the election, by the great, silent, left-wing masses presently abstaining from exercising their franchise, of the truly progressive president Jill has been hoping for since 2009.
With friends like that, who needs enemies?
August J. Pollak
Actually, reading FreeRepublic the hardcore right seems to hate Bachmann because, well, because she’s not Sarah Palin.
Also, Bachmann has hired former Huckabee and Bush Jr. staffers, who the teabaggers all hate.
Finally, and no, I swear to shit I’m not making this up, they don’t like Bachmann because they think she’s unaccomplished.
ChrisNYC
Oh don’t worry, the wingers love Bachmann today — the blogs are going nuts for her because, how sad, they seem very very happy that she seemed merely robotic and not super-duper-jaw-dropping crazy last night. They’re using lots of euphemisms — “poised,” “professional,” “impressive.” But what they really mean is — she did not sound as incoherent as Palin or as crazy as the Armageddon pastor.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
I’m surprised Bachmann wore such ugly heels. You know Palin would have been up there with some double-naughty-monkey hooker boots, in a pencil skirt, topped off with a tight plunging neck line.
Captain Haddock
@Martin: Tweety isn’t into the MILF’s – he’s all about the Rugged American Males that he wants to have beers with (and presumably more, hence all that beer).
fasteddie9318
I can’t believe that somebody who constantly looks one slip up away from picking up a cleaver and running wild on the crowd is going to be taken seriously as a candidate for president. But she makes losers see starbursts, I guess, so she’s going to stick around.
Lolis
Huff Po is too busy pimping Huntsman to bother with Bachmann.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@Davis X. Machina: HA!!
bryanD
I’d say the wingers are pretty jacked as the ascendancy of Michelle Bachmann means that lantern-jawed whambulance Sarah Palin will be put in the cut-outs bin. Sarah will still be “for sale” but only as part of a discount pack. Buy a Sarah, get a free Dick Morris!
As for “one term” Obama, the funny papers are reporting Obama readying himself for just such an event; him getting all philosophical and shit, navel-gazing together with the missus. Apparently the Democrat powers-that-be see it not as a bad thing to hand off the next decade’s economic pain to a GOP administration.
Georgia Pig
I’d be a bit skeptical as to whether it’s really come down to Bachmann vs. Romney, but they do seem to embody the “tastes great/less filling” poles of modern republicanism, crazy teabagger and corporate nymphomaniac. Together, they make a shitty beer, roughly characterizable as “it’s all about my tribe and its obsessions” where the obsessions can be religion, god, money, social status, security or a combination thereof. Could the Republicans could have a ticket faster than we think in Romney/Bachmann? The thought makes me shudder.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Davis X. Machina:
Nach Bachmann uns.
After all, it worked out so well the first time. And really, if the teabaggers get to do American Revolution Cosplay, why can’t we have a little fun with 1930s Europe? At least the uniforms were really kicking.
Howlin Wolfe
@August J. Pollak: they don’t like Bachmann because they think she’s unaccomplished.
Your point being?
Trurl
The GOP doesn’t have to do anything to make Obama a one-termer except nominate someone not obviously insane.
The unemployment rate will do the rest.
ChrisNYC
Slightly O/T. From Politico:
Mitt Romney pretends waitress grabs his ass.
In the most bizarre moment of the morning here in Derry, Mitt Romney posed with three or four waitresses at Mary Ann’s Diner, in front of a jukebox.
While posing, Mitt suddenly jumped and said: “Oh, my goodness!” — pretending that a waitress grabbed his butt. Apparently it’s a joke from four years ago, when he claims someone grabbed him at a fundraiser.
“I would never do that,” the waitress said later.
Romney agreed, saying he “was just teasing.”
eemom
@bryanD:
That’s a bunch of bullshit. He said, in direct response to a QUESTION he was asked, that Michelle and the kids would be fine with him not running, but that they believe in what he’s doing for the country.
MagicPanda
Clash FTW!
Steve
I also want to know why DougJ thinks President Bachmann would be less dangerous than President Pawlenty.
cleek
@Trurl:
the ghost of FDR thinks you have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Violet
@ChrisNYC:
Is that for real? If so, talk about tone deaf. Goes right along with those dogs being let out.
Dave
Is it time to dredge up the old Bachmann having an affair rumor?
Villago Delenda Est
@Martin:
Tweety’s got that bizarre homoerotic thing going (his gushing over the deserting coward’s package, his obsession with Ovenmitt’s landing strip shoulders).
Davis X. Machina
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
B at B had already bailed on Obama by July of ’09.
Cris (without an H)
So, they’re still not out of the woods.
Violet
@Dave:
I thought the rumor was that her husband is gay.
Ripley
@Davis X. Machina: Brilliant at breakfast, stupid by lunchtime.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
It’s okay. They own the Democratic party now, so it’s all good for them.
Dave
@Violet: Maybe the second rumor explains the first rumor…
Martin
@Mike Kay (Chief of Staff): Oh, yes, I believe you’re correct.
Poopyman
@Violet: Why not both? Logic would dictate that the one would follow the other.
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@cleek:
Big deal. The UE rate predicts the results of every presidential incumbency re-election campaign not ending in 1936, 1940, 1948 and 1984. What with throwing out 4 of the last 9 such examples as “outliers”, this is obviously a rock-solid prediction scheme. You could write credit-default swaps based on it.
PurpleGirl
Actually the column being referenced was written by Jurassicpork and not Jill. He posts at B at B, too.
ChrisNYC
@Violet: It is for real. It’s up on Politico, posted by Maggie Haberman. So bizarre.
gbear
In the Little Green Footballs poll, Romney was the top republican, Bachmann was in the top three republicans, but Obama is the clear winner with 51% of the votes.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@Villago Delenda Est: don’t forget how he went into a teesy over fred thompson’s after shave lotion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbn8DXA7AnU
gbear
@Martin: Can we have a new acronym? MILP. Mother I’d like to punch.
DZ
@Howlin Wolf:
I thought the point was obvious but perhaps not. The freepers think Bachman is unaccomplished but they like Palin who is the living definition of unaccomplished. Got it? :)
NR
@cleek: FDR was (and was seen as) a fighter for jobs. That’s not the case with Obama.
Poopyman
Ah ha! Bachmann doubles down:
Davis X. Machina
@PurpleGirl: Same difference. I direct your attention to #9, from September of ’09.
A dead heat in the race to be first to say “I told you so…”
chopper
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
and obama’s 50% approval rating in the middle of a shitty economy, don’t forget to ignore that.
Suffern ACE
@NR: Yep. The complete lack of vision of the democrats as to how to create a few more jobs programs as it became apparent that unemployment was going to remain depressed will get them punished, and deservedly so. (Now if only we had a different other party it wouldn’t matter). They believed they had done enough. They had not. They have pretty much the same ideas that republicans do on what consitutes a healthy economy (when the stock market goes up, the unemployed disappear from their concern). Cash for clunkers, cash for caulkers and then nothing until someone noticed fifteen months later that perhaps one needed to have more infrascture planning. Nice job all around.
artem1s
nice spot from the Obama campaign
https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/o2012-GOP-Debate?source=20110614_JM_nd2
this.over and over again.
Frankensteinbeck
NR:
As Chopper’s poll reminds us, YOU don’t see him that way, but you are blissfully an outlier. 50% is pretty damn good, historically.
Little Dreamer
Freepers are not jacked about Bachmann. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2734554/posts
I especially liked post #29: “If by some cruel, twist of fate she would happen to be the last person standing, I would hold my nose and vote for her; with the expectation that her presidency will be an unmitigated disaster.”
Emerald
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Nate Silver pointed out that Reagan won with Unemployment over 7%, but that no one knows how high the rate might have had to be to beat him, because he won by something like 18 points. He had lotsa leeway on that UE rate.
(Not gonna link to it because it’d use up one of my 20 free NYT views, but you can find it if you try.)
And Obama’s polls have been tracking Reagan’s eerily, except that Obama’s are higher than Reagan’s were.
I think the Republican overreach in the states matters, and I think the Republican plans to trash both Medicare and Social Security matter. I also think that a president’s personal popularity–whether people just like him or not–matters.
So really, I don’t expect Obama to have much difficulty getting re-elected, unless some awful catastrophe happens, or the Republican governors steal the elections in their states again.
The media, of course, will do all they can to make it look like a real horse race, even if the Rs nominate Herman Cain.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
What good does owning the Democratic Party in 2012 do them if the crazy people that the big money boys put into office last year crash the world economy next month by not raising the debt ceiling?
If the big money boys can’t convince the House to back down now, what good does it do them to back Democrats in 2012?
PTirebiter
@NR:
Yea, tell it to the folks still punching in at Chrysler or GM or my wife the 7th grade English teacher. Because we all remember how the air was thick with unanimous consent back then. this crap really gets tiresome.
Tata
So… Hate to rain on Davis X. Machina’s parade, but B@B is written by six writers and so far, the comment thread here references posts by two different people. Maybe you could decide who you’re mocking so we could worry about who’s talking about us in the cafeteria.
NR
@Frankensteinbeck: 50% is certainly nothing to cheer about, and this is before the campaign against Obama on jobs has truly begun. If Romney gets the nomination, he and his money and his rich backers will put on a campaign that will really threaten Obama. This ad is an example of what they can do, and it’s scary.
If Obama’s most ardent supporters (i.e., you guys) really care about him, you have to find some way to tell him to change his strategy on jobs and the economy. Right away.
If you really want him to win, you have to make him focus on job creation. He needs to stop listening to people like Geithner and start listening to rank-and-file Dems who have been saying that this is the issue for a long time now. He needs to forget about the deficit and focus on jobs.
You all have to help him do this, or he will lose in 2012. Guaranteed.
Steve M.
They don’t need to manage it. Goldman Sachs and the rest of Wall Street is managing it for them.
Villago Delenda Est
I doubt very much that Michelle Bachmann can explain the difference between Hamiltonian economic theory, the Hambletonian Stakes, or a Hamilton Beach blender.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Frankensteinbeck:
Obama’s approval ratings in the face of a bad economy compare favorably with Reagan’s during his 1st term. A broad swath of the general public (especially low-info independent voters) likes a genial and not too overtly partisan President, something that is lost on political junkies. Where Obama is at a disadvantage compared with RR is in his supporting cast, IMHO. Reagan had numerous attack dogs on his side who savaged the Dems for him so he could stay above the fray most of the time. Obama doesn’t have that. There don’t seem to be many Dems of consequence who really enjoy tearing the GOP and their backers a new orifice, and the few that we have either can’t get near a microphone on a regular basis or are too busy doing stupid stuff like Twittering schlong pics of themselves. We need a better bench.
jwb
Bachmann is potentially far more dangerous than Pawlenty because she’s a believer rather than a grifter. In practice, she might turn out to be far less dangerous, but only because she seems to have an exceptional talent for alienating staff, meaning that she’d have difficulty following through in policy. But if she managed to acquire and keep a competent staff, watch out. I don’t know that there is a Republican candidate who is more likely to transform the Republicans into an actual fascist party.
Martin
I think people are being overly shallow on voter reaction to the jobs situation. If voters thought less of Obama, it’d be in the polls. It’s not.
I think voters understand that any jobs program is going to require spending, and they understand that the GOP is 100% ideologically opposed to spending. Further, if the GOP message is that government can’t create jobs (something they say constantly) and voters believe that then Obama can’t possibly create jobs.
That’s the fundamental problem with the GOP messaging. They can’t argue that only the free market can create jobs and then hang the job numbers on Obama. They can hang the deficit on Obama, but nobody gives a shit about that, so it’s not hurting him as much as the GOP would like. Until the GOP comes up with messaging that suggests that government can do something about jobs, it’s not going to hurt Obama in November, because clearly the GOP can’t offer any better solution.
Carnacki
@Mnemosyne: Oh she’ll come around to what they want
cleek
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
plus, the stats say that no black man will ever be re-elected
Little Dreamer
@Martin:
You are correct, because, technically, all GOP candidates should have the name Grover Norquist stamped on their foreheads. That’s who is running (vicariously) on the GOP ticket!
Little Dreamer
@cleek:
Obama’s not black, he’s half white!
ruemara
@NR:
1. FDR wasn’t seen as that great by progressives at the time, just for your historical information.
2. Doesn’t the GM bailout count for anything? What about the funds to keep teachers employed? I know it kept my school district from layoffs.
3. Do you ever think that if you keep repeating a meme, that it becomes true? Not as a fact, but as something accepted as true because it’s what you want to believe. I keep hearing that Barack Obama is not a fighter for jobs, yet when I examine the issue, fairly often the “fight” that people wanted to see is not one that would win except as a spectacle and the “win” which they despise is often the best of a bad set of deals because of the nature of the people involved in crafting those deals.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@ruemara:
Online anonymity being what it is, I sometimes wonder how many self-proclaimed true progressives commenting on the blogs are GOP ratfuckers in disguise.
cthulhu
If no one else of note jumps in, I can certainly see her winning Iowa and perhaps with a supportive narrative in the media, making a good run at it and ending up with the VP slot. So if anybody should go after her hard and quickly, it would be T-Paw who clearly wants would be a great VP – in the Dan Quayle mold.
Tsulagi
What the hell, WP ate my post. Fucker.
Anyway, to condense: Go Crazy Eyes!! Plus also too, wingers would love them a straight teabagger ticket: Rick Perry and Bachmann. Real America in government.
gex
@Steve: I’m guessing because Pawlenty can act like a sane person more readily than Bachmann. Low information independents like a serious male in a suit.
Murican
@fasteddie9318 –
“I can’t believe that somebody who constantly looks one slip up away from picking up a cleaver and running wild on the crowd is going to be taken seriously as a candidate for president.”
Excellent! But not so fast my friend.
In the Republican primaries, that’s an asset.
Surely, sometime, somewhere, maybe South Carolina, Willard will have to steal this line from you as a defensive measure to fend off the attacks of the Bachmaniacs.
Mnemosyne
@Carnacki:
Not if she actually gets the nomination. If that happens despite everything the big money boys throw at her, that will be her proof that she was Chosen By Gawd and doesn’t need to listen to anyone.
Bachmann is fucking insane, and insane people are difficult to control, no matter how much money you throw at them.
gex
@Little Dreamer: Wow. What clearer declaration of party over country could there be?
PTirebiter
@Emerald:
I agree, especially regarding the over-reach blow-back headed the GOP’s way. The only people buying into the Obama’s lack of focus on jobs is the problem are those Democrats among us who still worship at Our Lady of Perpetual Butthurt. Ask any of them what specifically Obama should be doing to create jobs in the face of the nihilist GOP and you’ll likely hear their theory of the Unified Executive Bully Pulpit.
alwhite
Put me down for wanting to hear why Batshit Bachmann would not be as bad as Ed Gien Pawlenty. I think there are two big reasons why that is wrong.
Batshit has nothing to prove to her base, Paw would always have to turn it up to 11 to prove he is one of them.
and
Because of his bland, nice guy, image the press will never suspect he is a sniveling sociopath and give him a lot of good press as a reasonable guy. Even after she has intentionally turned the crazy down Batshit still has the reputation.
NR
@ruemara:
And this is a perfect example of what’s wrong with Obama’s inner circle and his staunchest supporters. The idea that making a “deal” is the end-all, be-all of politics. The idea that you have to make some sort of deal, even if it’s a bad one. Well, not only is making bad deals bad from a policy perspective, it’s also destructive in another way, because once your opponents see that you are willing to accept a bad deal, that guarantees that they will offer you nothing but bad deals in the future.
Sometimes the best option is not to make any deal at all. The Republicans understand this. They pursued this strategy at the beginning of Clinton’s first term as well as the beginning of Obama’s term, and it paid big dividends for them both times.
So here’s a novel strategy for Obama and his inner circle: The next time the GOP offers a shitty deal, don’t take the deal. Stand firm to principles instead. The voters will reward you for it.
Politics is like pool: Sometimes it’s not what you make, it’s what you leave.
NR
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: And sometimes I wonder how many self-proclaimed staunch Obama supporters are GOP ratfuckers in disguise. They’re the ones who are encouraging him to pursue a strategy that has a good chance of leading to his defeat next year, after all.
Maude
@ruemara:
Chris Christie has been battering the teachers in NJ since he’s been govenor. He never stops going on about it. He neglects to mention that he lost the $400 million Race to the Top money for the state.
I can’t remember what the Rightie meme is on GM, but it’s negative.
piratedan
if Bachmann is their nominee you can bet that Roe vs. Wade becomes a talking point. Michy has been groomed by big religion and she’s one of their stalking horses. The only reason she’s not a C-Streeter is that it would lead to people talking that the boys living there weren’t behaving themselves (oh well I guess that didn’t really matter). She’s a true believer, a real Greg Stillson type who would have no issues in opening up a Jihad for Jesus. Plainly speaking, she scares the shit out of me.
Jewish Steel
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I feel like a paranoid conspiracy theorist when I think this. But I still think it.
boss bitch
@NR:
FDR didn’t create the job’s program until 2-3 years into his presidency. All those jobs created took several years. It wasn’t in one fell swoop and plenty of those jobs were a result of the war AND FDR had a real super majority.
I love how the left worships FDR when they wouldn’t tolerate him today.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@boss bitch: FDR was a militarist (former secretary of the Navy) who led a defense build up and illegally armed Britain (Iran-Contra style), placed Japanese American citizens in concentrations camps, left blacks and minorities out of the Social Security Act, bailed out wall street when he could have gone to zocializm, appointed wall street crook Joe Kennedy to head the SEC, ignored the Holocaust, and firebombed civilians as he built the most evil weapon ever, the atomic bomb.
The firebaggers are as ignorant as the teabaggers.
batgirl
Whether the Republican candidate is Romney or Bachmann (or Perry or…) it will not make a difference if they also have the House and Senate. Would any of these GOP candidates veto any of the crazy legislation that has come out of the House this past session?
This is what I keep telling friends, family, and strangers who voted for Obama but are disappointed and are looking for a “sane,” “reasonable” Republican candidate. I hope they listen.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
That’s true. Congressional Dems don’t like to do tee vee. And oddly enough, that included Weiner. Weiner never went on tee vee to denounce or criticize Bush during his 8 years in office. He stood by silently. He only decided to become a tee vee fixture when he determined he could become Mayor without appealing to MSNBC’s audience.
Steve Kornacki, a liberal writer for Salon.com, wrote two seperate articles, one in 2010 and one in 2009, warning bloggers not to get suckered by weiner, that he was just using them.
He goes on to detail how weiner was pandering to this niche on issues he never cared about his previous decade in office.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@Mike Kay (Chief of Staff): I should also add, FDR opposed federal anti-lynching laws, which were prevalent during his tenure!!
Fucking know-nothing firebaggers.
Killerdog
But if Barky wins you will all be outta work and there will be no food stamps for any of you! Bhaaaaaaa
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@NR:
The thing is, there are actual historical examples of the concern I cited of the GOP using undercover ops to stir up dissent along ideological cleavages in the Dem camp, most notably during the 1972 campaign, which is precisely when Rove, Ailes, et. al. were cutting their teeth as young GOP operatives. The reverse example you cite is to my knowledge purely a hypothetical. If you can cite an example of one party using undercover operatives to encourage excessive leadership praise and unconditional support on the part of the other sides supporters please do so as I’d love to hear about it. It sounds like a strange tactic to use to me, but then I’ve been surprised before.
kdaug
@piratedan: “Gentlemen, the missiles are in the air. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.”
NR
@boss bitch:
We’re 2-3 years into Obama’s presidency now. Where’s his jobs program?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@NR:
In 1933 FDR had won a crushing victory in all sections of the country the previous November and came into office with overwhelming majorities in both House of Congress. When he was sworn into office in March, the Great Depression was already 3 years old and counting at that point, and the nation was, not on the verge of, but rather in the midst of a complete collapse of the banking system which was proceeding as panicy depositors withdrew their funds (or tried to and failed) and failures cascaded from bank to bank and state to state. There was no social safety net as we know it today. No food stamps, no UE insurance, nothing but private charity and what little in the way of minimal public relief the Hoover administration had scraped up. Protesting WW1 veterans suffering from long term unemployment had been dispersed from DC at gunpoint. The conventional wisdom of that era’s Village punditry was that quite possibly small-d democracy itself had failed in the United States and that what we really needed was a dictator. The first major banking reform bill signed into law by FDR was not even read at all by the Congressmen who voted on it, because the Govt. Printing Office didn’t have time to set the type before it was passed. That is the political context into which FDR’s achivements happened.
If Obama had been gifted with that sort of political capital we’d be having an entirely different sort of conversation right now.
El Cid
@boss bitch: In 1933, Roosevelt used the Hoover-passed Emergency Relief Administration which funded state level projects to a much broader and comprehensive program. Why? Because nothing else was in existence or ready to go*.
But here’s what happened in 1933. We wouldn’t want anyone coming away with an impression (which you didn’t suggest) that FDR twiddled his thumbs until the WPA passed.
20 million people getting work starting 3 months after FDR came into office could be considered by many as hugely significant.
The Civilian Conservation Corps passed into law in March of 1933.
In 1933:
Those programs became the WPA. The WPA didn’t come out of nowhere. It came out of projects launched within months of FDR taking office.
More parts of the FERA, remember, enacted in those first few months of 1933, the ‘100 days’.
People had to survive even before they might be able to get a job, if they got a chance at one.
Because it was overturned in 1935 by the Supreme Court (note, though — only weeks before it was set to expire anyway) which then began working so hard to reverse much of the New Deal before FDR’s ‘Court Packing’ scheme taught them to back off, today people seem to regard the National Industrial Recovery Act as merely a failure. Much of it was — the business codes, much of the labor codes.
But it came down strongly, stronger than anything ever before, on the side of workers’ unionizing rights, including indirectly protecting the rights of agricultural workers who organized.
FDR had to exclude agricultural workers from most workers’ rights because Southern segregationist Rep’s and Senators could easily have shot them down. Hey, blacks, you know, in those fields, and broke white sharecroppers, and mill owners which needed cheap and fearful labor.
Southern states especially and the richest agricultural interests within them did everything they could to stop too much relief from getting to poor and tenant farmers — yet with inspiration from the NIRA’s labor protection regulations, the most powerful US union to had ever fought for poor farmers rights — the Southern Tenant Farmers Union — got more relief and assistance than any of those higher up assholes wanted.
It created the Public Works Administration — without which the WPA wouldn’t have had quite as much to do. And the infrastructure needed by the public employment and industrial program known as “WWII” when that was called upon.
No one has to idolize or sanctify FDR to note the gigantic changes and improvements experienced by millions and millions of Americans.
FDR tried a number of times to either initiate or listen to the recommendations of various of his advisory and policy-making groups to initiate some minor expansion of benefits and jobs for African Americans. (And he did in fact do the unprecedented in yielding to A. Philip Randolph’s demands / threats to employ more African Americans in military production in 1941 [before Pearl Harbor though].)
Most times these were blasted out of reality before he could ever have proposed it to anyone, even had he really, really wanted to push: it wasn’t just Southern votes he had to lose.
It was the domination of House and Senate by the ‘Conservative Coalition’ of Northern Republicans and Southern segregationist Democrats. The Southerners in many ways a more difficult barrier, as they were often in office so long as to have vacuumed up big committee leadership by virtue of seniority.
But, yeah, the amount done and launched within months of FDR’s inauguration in 1933 is not the kind of thing which waited around for the WPA.
————-
* It’s almost like there was a ghostly recall by Hoover of his really heroic work in disaster and humanitarian relief from the 1927 Mississippi floods. It’s what made him President. He even began reaching out to blacks because of what he saw and was criticized for in relief camps.
But in the Depression, he stuck to his ideological guns that the federal government must avoid too much intervention and that surely private and charitable relief organizations were the right way to help those hurt in the Great Depression, whose causes of course led straight to the super-rich forces he really assisted.
Bill Arnold
Where’s his super majority?
(And no, he never really had a Senate super majority. If Frankin had been seated sooner, and/or if more Democrats had bothered to vote in 2010, we probably wouldn’t be having these discussions, though Senators have a tendency to become prima donnas when votes are +/- 1 close.)
NR
@Bill Arnold:
I wasn’t aware that Obama needed a super majority to propose a jobs program.
Zach
Both Bachmann and Romney looked like superior campaigners to McCain. McCain was too lazy to campaign on the weekend most of the time. The only reason he got the nomination is because Wall St. was scared of Huckabee and Romney had already given up. Everyone else on stage… not so much. Newt’s got no filter for what he’s going to say, Paul & Cain are crazy, Pawlenty’s boring, and I forgot Santorum was there for the last 30 minutes or so.
Bill Arnold
@NR:
Fair enough, he could have and maybe should have proposed something ambitious.
It would never have passed, because the Republicans (with a few D fellow travelers prone to aisle-crossing) were in “priority number one is to make Obama a one term president, that’s our interpretation of our oath of office” mode from before Jan 20 2009.
The guy is too focused on the politically possible IMO. Also, I suspect he (like many others including advisers) did not realize the extent to which the economy was likely to have a severe jobless recovery.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@NR:
He certainly didn’t. He did however need a supermajority in the Senate to pass a larger jobs program that what he got. Have you wargamed out what happens when the President and leader of the Democratic party proposes his most ambitious policy plank and has it voted down and rejected by a Congress which is controlled by his own party? Hint: it doesn’t enhance the leverage the WH has to make round 2 go better, and as an example see exactly what happened to the prior Dem president. Given the choice between what we’ve gotten so far out of Obama and a repeat of NAFTA and DADT and DOMA and Midnight Basketball Leagues, I know which one I prefer. YMMV.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Bill Arnold:
Agreed. I think they were ignorant, perhaps pigheadedly so, about the degree to which this is a balance-sheet recession which will take a decade or more to pass rather than an cyclic downturn. They thought that patching up the banking system and getting credit flowing again and consumer confidence back up would be enough to prime the pump and then the economy would grow again on its own. But that isn’t happening because the financial back of the US middle class has been broken. For decades our consumption driven economy has been living on borrowed time due to a combination of factors: the conversion of single income to dual income households, cheap oil, an influx of cheap manufactured goods from Asia which created the temporary illusion of material affluence without rising wages, and massive amounts of cheap credit allowing households to leverage themselves way beyond the point of sustainability. Now all of those factors are either played out or gone for a generation at least. The only thing that is going to get our economy going again is to expropriate at least 1/3 to 1/2 of the hoarded wealth of the top 2 percent and invest it in building new infrastructure. And that is politically impossible without a crisis as traumatic as the 1930s Great Depression and/or WW2. The 2008 collapse wasn’t big enough or scary enough to do the job.
FlipYrWhig
Why doesn’t [Democrat] fight? It’s not so much that he doesn’t win, but that he doesn’t try. He doesn’t even talk about it! Or, no, wait, he does talk about it, but that’s all he does, talk, he doesn’t try. Or, hold on, sometimes he tries, but doesn’t get it through, because he doesn’t actually try hard _enough_. Also, when I don’t hear about things, it’s because Obama didn’t try hard enough to tell me, like, personally. Also, I’m disillusioned and so are all my friends, which is a big problem because we represent such a wide and diverse spectrum of the electorate.
Copy, paste.
I’m looking forward to the presidential election of 2036, when we’ll get to hear about how that year’s Democrat doesn’t fight hard enough like that bold progressive champion Barack Obama did.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@NR: that’s because you’re retarded.
FlipYrWhig
@Bill Arnold:
Do you really think that proposing something big and bold and progressive that goes down to inevitable defeat _improves_ the chances of something like it actually happening later? I do not. It would instead produce stories about Obama suffering setbacks and losing momentum. This goes back to the health care bill debate. If you fight for it and lose the fight fair and square, maybe you make a segment of the electorate very pleased with your bravery, but, more importantly, it gets chalked up as a loss, and it gets tagged as a losing idea, and it goes back on the shelf for _years_, and you get tagged as a loser, and you’re in worse shape the next time you want to try something ambitious.
That’s why you have to be focused on the politically possible. When you fight and lose, it’s not just one loss, it compounds, and it makes you more likely to lose the next one too. IMHO political losses are much, much worse for you than political wins are good. That’s why you can’t fuck around with symbolic gestures and noble defeats.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@FlipYrWhig:
I console myself by reading all the nasty stuff Progressives had to say about TR back in 1902. Backstabber, compromiser, ignorant and stupid tool of Wall St., etc., etc. Plus ca change.
Monala
@El Cid:
True, but as has already been noted, FDR was able to do so in large part because of super majorities in both houses, and because three years in to the Depression, people were desperate.
In contrast, the economy crashed just a few months before Obama took office. People weren’t yet desperate. And even now three years in, things aren’t as bad as they were during the Depression. Meanwhile, Obama has to deal with an ugly, radicalized, much larger opposition.
And I’m not sure if you’re suggesting this, but does FDR get a pass for wanting to help African-Americans but not being able to do so due to opposition, while Obama doesn’t get one for those things he wants to accomplish but can’t due to opposition?
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@FlipYrWhig: this has always been a flaw of the blogosphere. they would rather have hard rhetoric and a complete loss, than any kind of progress. They would rather have a big mouth loser like Weiner than someone who gets shit done like Pelosi.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: don’t even have to go that far back. today LBJ is lionized on the internets by the same people who were calling him a “baby killer” when they were in college.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Mike Kay (Chief of Staff):
Oh, I know you don’t have to go that far back. Heck the same commentors are complaining about how Obama doesn’t connect with ordinary folks like Bill Clinton did back in the day. But sometimes it doesn’t hurt to go a little bit further back into time to get some distance from the dustups of today, and “good enough to make it onto Mt. Rushmore, muthafukkas” strikes me as about as satisfying a way as I can find to end a conversation which wasn’t going anywhere nohow.
NR
@Mike Kay (Chief of Staff): It’s the maturity of Obama supporters that impresses me the most.
NR
@Mike Kay (Chief of Staff):
The problem is, Obama’s idea of “progress” is extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
I’ll take hard rhetoric and a complete loss over that kind of progress any day.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@NR: you let weiner and edwards get away with slaughtering 100,000 iraqis because they gave you lip service and a pat on the head, how pathetic. Like those losers who see star bursts when palin winks at them. thank goodness the firebaggers are an discredited insignificant cult.
NR
@Mike Kay (Chief of Staff): An Obama supporter complaining about foreign wars is fucking hilarious. Buh bye, kid.