progressive involvement

They've been pulling stunts like this ever since the beginning of the country

The south has been insisting on its own way ever since the Constitution of the United States was written, including while it was being written.  

They're at it again.  The tea party caucus, overwhelmingly white and southern, refuses to recognize and is actively subverting a law that provides universal health insurance coverage.  

The first President to propose a national health care plan was a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt.  The Democratic Party has supported universal coverage since Harry Truman.

President Obama ran for president on universal health care.  The Affordable Care Act was passed by both houses of Congress, declared constitutional by the Supreme Court, and the President who proposed it was re-elected by five million votes.  In a constitutional republic, this is supposed to count.

But no, the southerners don't like it.  Joan Walsh slices and dices southern GOP history to remind us of the racial bias that has animated the GOP since at least 1964.  She remembers Lee Atwater in particular.  He's the one who famously said:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N–ger, n–ger, n–ger.” By 1968 you can’t say “n–ger” — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites … “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N–ger, n–ger.”

"Defund Obamacare" is the new "states' rights".  What could be worse than a black president passing a law that, in many minds, helps black people?  

In fact, government itself is synonymous in some peoples' minds with helping black people, and is probably the main reason a certain constituency thinks government is the root of all evil.  (Actually, money is.  I just checked.  1 Tim 6:10)

When I was growing up in a rural Kansas environment back in the late 1950's and early 1960's, people liked and generally trusted the government.  We were farmers, and a certain natural grousing about the government comes with the territory, but, overall, even we farmers thought the government was doing a good job.

"I'm from the federal government and I'm hear to help you."  That's the sarcastic punch-line of a supposed joke that I first heard in 1974, told by then Congressman Robert J. Dole.  

What had happened between 1964, when my conservative civics teacher was singing the benefits of the New Deal, and 1974, when Cong. Dole thought it politically wise to unleash an anti-government zinger?  The civil rights movement, when government (finally) came down on the side of black people.  For some, the government has been the enemy ever since. 

 

 

So wrong in so many ways

Maureen Dowd has assistants who outline her columns for her, then she goes in and adds the snark.  In today's case, she didn't even really do that.  She "relies heavily"--let's say--on the opinions of Jonathan Alter.  Alter has just finished a book on the Obama administration.  (I much enjoyed his biography of Franklin Roosevelt.)

Alter is worked up over the Obama administration's relationship with the press, but Dowd spins that to include the Washington establishment as well.  Obama is acting snooty to both of them.  "Obama is not a needy person, but he needs to think of himself as purer than this town."  (One wonders:  How could she possibly know this?)

They said the same thing about Bill Clinton.  "He trashed the place and it's not his place," as David Broder famously said.  He was from Arkansas, land of hillbillies.  What's he doing among us?  

The President is aloof from the Washington establishment, says the Washington establishment.  He doesn't schmo-o-o-ze enough.  Oh, if only he would reach out to us!  If only he would "reach across the aisle", we could break the legislative logjam and something could finally get done!

One wonders what planet these people are living on.  The President has reached out time and time again, and, each time, has met absolute intransigient resistance.  Alter and Dowd think this is a problem of etiquette?--or, more to the point, Obama's etiquette?

In my view, Obama has done too much of this, not too little.  It's not his job to make the people on the other side feel valued and appreciated.  It's his job to make the people who elected him glad they did.

David Plouffe told Alter that Obama was “better suited to politics in Scandinavia than here,” meaning, Alter writes, “that he was a logical and unemotional person in an illogical and emotional capital.”

So the situation would be better if Obama were less "logical and unemotional" and more "illogical and emotional" like everyone else?  The problem is Obama's sanity and reality contact?  

 

President gives Democratic speech

It was a good speech--good on the merits and good on the politics.  His jobs proposal, bigger than the rumored $300 billion package, weighs in at $450 billion, a little more than half as big as the stimulus in 2009, but constructed in such a way that it's likely to generate nearly as many jobs.

Even more, he's seized the political high ground.  The opposition has no jobs program, other than more tax cuts, which nobody but True Believers think will actually create any jobs.  We've been waiting--and waiting--for the administration to weigh in.  

Finally, it did.  If the President is serious about throwing down the gauntlet and taking this jobs package into every part of the country, his odds of actually getting something done go up, as well as the odds on his re-election. 

White House gets the "Hillary question"

From Press Secretary Jay Carney's press conference today:

Q Just one. Just one. Just one. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said — and this is a quote — “One of the reasons the President has moved so far to the right is there is no primary opposition to him.” And my question: Why is the President certain that Hillary won’t run against him? (Laughter.)

MR. CARNEY: You win the award for originality today.

Q Thank you very much.

MR. CARNEY: The President is focused not on any election — he’s focused right now on doing his job to grow the economy, create jobs, ensure that Americans who are in the path of this hurricane are taken care of. That’s what he’s focused on.

Q I understand. You’re running away from this question. I mean, can you guarantee that — are you sure that –

MR. CARNEY: You’d have to ask –

Q — Hillary is not going to run?

MR. CARNEY: You’d have to ask her. We’re fairly confident –

Q That she won’t?

MR. CARNEY: — that we need to focus on the task at hand.

Q All right, thank you.

 

Not going to happen, but one can still enjoy it

"Democrats express doubts over Obama's reelection, hope Hillary will step in," by ANI.

"I should have picked Hillary over Obama," by Bill McClennan at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

"Democrats turn on President Obama, look to Hillary Clinton," by Periscope.

"Hillary Clinton should primary Obama," by D.K. Jamaal at the Post-Partisan Examiner.

"Hillary 2012:  Democrats find a new target for hope and change," by Alex Moore at Death and Taxes.

"Hillary's supporters on Obama's troubles: We told you so in 2008," by Tim Herrera at AM New York.

And for the French-speaking:  "Les démocrates regrettent de ne pas avoir choisi Hillary Clinton," by Jeff Lanouille at Amerique 24.

Would President Hillary Clinton have done things differently?

A staunch Obama supporter talks about posting "Hillary 2012" on his Facebook page.  At salon.com, Jonathan Bernstein wonders if President Hillary would have been a stronger leader.  Froma Harrop is talking up a challenge to the President from Hillary or Ed Rendell or...anybody.

This kind of talk has been going on under the radar for a few months now, but, following the debt ceiling deal, it appears to have broken open in public.  The left is seriously disillusioned with President Obama.

As it happens, yes, I do think President Hillary would have done some things different--two things, in particular.  First, she would have focused on jobs first, then health care.  (President Obama pursued health care reform first because he promised Ted Kennedy he would.)

Politically, Hillary's approach probably would have worked better, if for no other reason than that her "street cred" with core Democratic constituencies such as labor and the working class would have been bolstered right in the beginning by her support for job-creating policies.    

Second, she would have fought harder.  That's not a slam on President Obama, by the way.  He correctly perceives that white America would recoil from an African-American man they perceive as angry or "riled up."  Therefore, he pursues compromise, bipartisanship, making deals, "changing the atmosphere," and all that.  He pretty much has to do it that way.

As the first woman president, Hillary's problem would have been the opposite.  She would have had to prove her toughness.  She would have gotten a political boost for standing her ground and fighting hard.  It would have been in her political interest to do so.  As it happens, she's quite good at this.

Plus, these Washington Republicans are not the southern Illinois politicians one would work with during the day and play poker with at night.  If you're not tough as nails, they'll eat your lunch.

So yes, I do think a President Hillary's approach would have been different, and likely more successful.  The political atmosphere, however, would be just as charged and just as noxious as it is now.  The emails you get from Uncle Edgar would be misogynist instead of racist, but loathsome all the same.

All that said, I find it somewhat difficult to share the liberals' pain.  It's their own fault they're disillusioned.  

They fell in love with Barack Obama.  People in love often imagine their beloved to have the most sterling character possible, so it followed that Barack Obama must needs incarnate the long-deferred liberal dream.  

"He's Bobby Kennedy," George Clooney famously said--(which was rather curious since most of Bobby's constituency supported Hillary).  He was anti-war, or so they supposed on the basis of one anti-war speech given by the state senator in 2004, in the most liberal district in Illinois, that was so little noted at the time that no Chicago newspaper mentioned it, and no observer present could remember it.  

Now, they're finding out that he's not the liberal heart-throb they thought he was and they feel like lovers spurned.  Yikes!  Hell hath no fury!

You should have known.  Where did you think those hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions were coming from?  20 year old college students?  You didn't notice the kind words for Ronald Reagan, or the reluctance to even say, "I'm a Democrat"?

But that was then, and this is now.  What next?  Liberals will have to manage their grief and support the President anyway on the grounds that, for all his faults, he's better than the opposition.  Most will, but many won't.  

They stayed home in '68 and we got Richard Nixon.  They stayed home in '80 and we got Ronald Reagan.  They flaked off to Nader in '00, and we got George W. Bush.  There's a pattern here, people.  Take note.

Image:  Hillary speaking in Hungary, State Department photo

 

None of the reasons involve a Democrat acting like a Democrat

Doyle McManus at the Los Angeles Times recently talked with David Plouffe, one of President Obama's major strategists for 2012.  Plouffe gives four reasons he believes Obama will be re-elected.

The first reason on his list is that the President will do better among independents because they'll see how hard he has tried to work with Republicans.

Obama has an opportunity to improve his standing among independent voters — many of whom deserted the Democrats in the 2010 midterm election — by working with Republicans toward bipartisan deficit-reduction measures.

The second reason is that Plouffe believes the President has "managed to move toward the center" without losing significant support on the left.

Third, demographics--read:  more hispanics--favor the Democrats.  And fourth, Obama has already run a winning campaign and knows how to do it.

In other words, the first two reasons involve the President impressing voters by showing them how much he's not a Democrat, while his third reason depends on the Democratic loyalty of a group for which he's done very little.  

Of those four reasons, only the fourth is indisputable, and, Plouffe surely hopes, it may be the most important of the four.

 

 

Yep, that's about it

Jed Lewison at DailyKos notes the recent uptick in public approval for President Obama, who is up 6 points in an Opinion Research.  

Lewison thinks, however, that this is a pretty big jump and there must be more to it than just getting bin Laden.

Why so?  In the first place, it's a nice boost, but not a huge one.  Secondly, getting bin Laden may turn out to have been a bigger event than some think.

When was the last time the United States had a successful operation of this kind?  

Plus, it shifts domestic politics.  The Democrat got him, which is nice tonic for a party that is regularly derided by its opposition on security issues.

A 6 point jump for getting bin Laden?  Sounds about right to me.

Democrats will not be surprised at the notion that their strategists aren't that whippy

Raising the debt ceiling is usually pro forma, something you have to do as a technicality because, if you don't, all hell breaks loose in the markets and the United States takes a nose-dive back into the barter system--which would be bad.

The House GOP leadership knows the debt ceiling needs to be raised, but the rank-and-file House members are worried that Tea Party activists might challenge them in a GOP primary.  Therefore, they have to appear resolute against debt.

Stuart Rothenberg argues here that the Democrats are in a weaker bargaining position than the Republicans because a vote to raise the debt ceiling sounds bad.  

But even partisan Democrats agree that their party faces a considerable risk if they look as if they are insufficiently committed to cutting spending. Indeed, merely by supporting an increase in the debt limit, Democrats play into an image that they are trying to change — that they are fiscally irresponsible.

What utter nonsense.  If these party insiders are this stupid, no wonder we lose.  Everybody knows the debt ceiling vote is a technicality.  Besides, what kind of "fiscal responsibility" is it to start two wars, pass an (unfunded) prescription drug benefit, all while lowering taxes for plutocrats and easing regulations for oligarchs?

Secondly, the American people are not as worked up about the debt as Washington insiders think.  In fact, they barely care about the deficit at all, and they are absolutely right not too.  What we need are jobs and people paying taxes.  That debt goes away surprisingly quick if you have broad general prosperity. 

The problem for the Democrats is that, if the debt ceiling is not raised, a spike in interest rates would not be a positive development in an economy still struggling to recover and people would blame the administration and the Democrats.

The danger for the Republicans is that their intransigence sinks a struggling economy, and their fingerprints are all over the crime.  The Republicans have a political problem, in other words, while the Democrats have a governing one as well as a political one.

On the other hand, if the Democrats refuse to cut programs that benefit the middle class in order to slake their opponents' ideological thirst--if they refuse to be blackmailed, in other words--there's a good chance the American people would rally behind them.

He slew the dragon

In my lifetime, there has been an effort to delegitimate every Democratic President.  Kennedy was called a traitor and undermined by his own military.  Clinton was called a communist, and was said to be murdering people right and left while importing drugs from South America--a real Arkansas Scarface.

Kennedy had to face down the Soviets, with nuclear war on the line, in order to be legitimated as president in the eyes of a certain portion of the public.  His opponents finally recognized Clinton as president in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing.

In President Obama's case, it's been the "birthers," the agenda of which is to assert that Barack Obama is not really an American, not really one of us.  This would now seem to be out-dated.  He just took out our number one national villain.  You don't get more "one of us" than that.

Psychologically, this gets into mythological territory.  It's not surprising that the President is enjoying a notable boost in his popularity, which, the pundits hasten to assure us, will be short-lived.  That may indeed be so.  After St. George slew the dragon, he urged the townspeople to honor the clergy and help the poor--then he rode on.  One thing for sure though:  He damn sure slew the dragon.