The Bipartisan Virus in Iowa

by: Matt Stoller

Thu Jan 03, 2008 at 12:48


There's another side to what Atrios says.

Since I'm not a politician I can say it: self-described independent voters tend to have that wonderful combination of arrogance and stupidity, along with a belief that the right politician will just wave his magic wand and the correctly colored pony will appear.  They have little understanding of how politics works, and thinks that if someone says they'll just ride into Washington and get things done by bringing people together and making it happen, that this is in fact a stunningly new concept never before communicated by any other politicians. And a pony.

Being in Iowa and listening to the radio on long car rides, as well as various politicians, I'm hearing a huge amount of talk of bipartisanship as some sort of virtue.  There have literally been several call-in shows on NPR soliciting opinions from anyone who believes that both parties are bad (though Rush Limbaugh doesn't seem interested in bipartisanship - weird, isn't it).

It's more than the media.  I was at a Deep Dish pizza place wearing a bunch of candidate stickers, and a political neophyte came up to me and started talking to me about his caucus choice.  He was from Iowa City and black, with a biracial child who wants to be Barack Obama when he grows up.  He filled me in on the politics of Iowa City; there's a large black migration into the city from Chicago due to a wide availability of section eight housing, and this is creating racial tensions within the black community between middle class and poor blacks, as well as increasing overall racial strife within the city itself.

This guy wanted to run for office, and asked me to come back to visit in four years "when he's a city councilman."  He said Obama's example and Cornell West's writing had taught him the value of statesmanship.  And then he said that he hopes that Obama and Clinton can run on the same ticket, and if they can't get along and do that in a bipartisan way, he'll be disillusioned with politics.

He was clearly exactly the type of optimistic person you want running for office, inspired by Barack Obama to reach for a different type of politics.  And yet he was using words about politics he clearly just did not understand and in conceptual frames that are sure to disappoint and frustrate him.  And this is coming from the overall media environment, and in this case, the candidate he picked, Barack Obama.

In other words, leadership matters.  When a leader says everyone should get along or else politics is meaningless, supporters believe that leader.  And then they will often be upset and disappointed when there's no pony.  I don't understand why pandering to this illusion is considered necessary; if Obama or Edwards or Clinton said that partisanship is good and that it's time for Republican rule to end because that party is a group of warmongering greedheads, people would believe that.  Out in blogostan we get this, but I'm not sure how to transmit this to the rest of the political system.

Matt Stoller :: The Bipartisan Virus in Iowa

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The Bipartisan Virus in Iowa | 21 comments
Where to go next and what to do when 'we' get there..... (4.00 / 1)

............depends on what happens where you are standing. People are energized to an extent because Bush and his evil clown army have been so bad but what happens when you new acquaintance finds out that Obama's strategy is worthless?

He may become disillusioned and drop out of the political process; he may stick to it because he's a determined guy.

Individuals may drop out of the progressive movement or they may hang in. Doesn't matter for as long as the conditions we see now, and the worse ones to come, exist more and more people are going to become politically active.

It's their only chance to survive.

Peace, Health and Prosperity for Everyone.

If you aren't pissed, you haven't been paying attention. (4.00 / 2)
I so want Edwards to kick Obama's Republican lite ass.  Obama has out-Clintoned the Clintons, and he has made Hillary my second choice.  This is something I didn't think anybody could ever do.

They're asking for another four years -- in a just world, they'd get 10 to 20. ~~ Dennis Kucinich  
Ultimately counterproductive (4.00 / 1)
Unless Obama is a fool, he has to know this post-partisan thing won't work.  Republicans won't make any "deal" worth making.  The whole tenure of the Bush Presidency was "Compromise: do it my way" and there's no way that will change.

It's also nothing new, 1993, William Kristol called the play that Hillary's health care plan had to be stopped cold.  Republicans can't compromise if it will mean voters relearn that government is a force for good. 

Iowa, all Iowa (4.00 / 3)
It just gets me to wondering:  Did Obama pick this whole bipartisan bull s**t line because he knew it would play in Iowa and guarantee him the nomination?  Or, was he just lucky and a natural fit for the weird worldview of the Hawkeye state?

In any case, Kos is right.  Unless Iowa loses its sole and almighty place at the front of the line, we will continue to get the same types of candidates that lost and lost and lost.  Please ... give us a primary and a secret ballot at the least instead of this cucus mumbo jumbo with the viability thresholds, the three hours of closed doors, and nosy neighbors intruding.  Even the back rooms did a better job of picking a candidate than this crap.

Bipartisanship (4.00 / 1)
And then he said that he hopes that Obama and Clinton can run on the same ticket, and if they can't get along and do that in a bipartisan way, he'll be disillusioned with politics.

Ho-kay...

Come to think of it: my sentiments, too. I mean, if Democrats and Democrats can't just get along and run on the same ticket, then what good are we, as a party? As a country, even? Kumbaya!

I think we need to go back to testing (4.00 / 1)
people before they can vote.  I don't care if they can read or understand english.  I just want to know if they can even name the parties. 

Iowa has to go. 

They're asking for another four years -- in a just world, they'd get 10 to 20. ~~ Dennis Kucinich  

[ Parent ]
Great post, thanks! n/t (4.00 / 1)

Hit the Ground (4.00 / 2)
Out in blogostan we get this, but I'm not sure how to transmit this to the rest of the political system.

It's going to take very hard, very expensive offline work on the ground and, I'm afraid, an economic situation so dire that more than the usual people feel it and are ready to think in different ways.  And, as you suggested, it will take a leader, who really believes what Edwards is talking about. 

It worked for the GOP.  They did their organizing in churches, not online.  And when they got their guy installed, he didn't waste time reaching out. He happily accepted the reaching hands of the dopey Dems who helped him get NCLB, CAFTA and the truly awful Medicare Part D.  When it came time for him to reach out based on election results, he found that veto pen and threatened to shut the gov't down. 

I hate that Dick Army saying about bi-partisanship being date rape but it lets you know exactly what the people Obama wants to accommodate think about Dems who compromise. 

Uniting the middle class (0.00 / 0)
The appeal of Obama is that he unites the Middle Class -- meaning Middle Class Republicans, Democrats and Independents.

That should be the goal of the Democratic Party -- uniting the Middle Class around legislation and policies that serve the Middle Class. The Republican Party has spent the past 30 years dividing the Middle Class on issues of race, gay rights, abortion rights, civil rights, and now immigration. They know that if the Middle Class comes together, it will be an awesome political force. Well, it appears that the Middle Class will come together around Obama. As someone who opposed the war from the start, and someone who has one of the most progressive voting records in Congress, people rightfully trust him to use good judgement and to address their Middle Class concerns.

He's not perfect. No candidate is. But if, as President, he can use his leadership to build Middle Class support for progressive legislation and policies that benefit the Middle Class, then he has my support. 

Your one example of the guy pining for the Obama-Clinton ticket is really indicative of nothing - other than perhaps a desire for more experience or political muscle on the ticket. But I know Democratic voters who wouldn't want Clinton or Edwards anywhere near an Obama ticket. An Obama-Richardson ticket could be more appealing. An Obama-Webb ticket, or Obama-Mark Warner ticket might be pretty powerful too.

Civility (0.00 / 0)
Please don't confuse civility with bipartisanship.
Fuck civility (0.00 / 0)
Until the Republican Party stops hating anybody who isn't a millionaire, embracing nativism and communicating with the rest of the world by shitting on our collective doorstep then setting it on fire, they can go to hell.

Forgotten Countries - a foreign policy-focused blog
[ Parent ]
Oh, those poor naive Iowans. (0.00 / 0)
Oh, those poor naive Iowans.  Only the bloggers can see that the way to enact long-lasting political change is by being big jerks to our political enemies, since only we've seen how successful that was for... who exactly?  What, precisely, has you so convinced that a more combative approach is one which will enact actual change?  (And not just win some elections?) 

In 2003 or so, when bloggers wailed about the wimpiness of Democrats, the argument went something like this: "George W. Bush, Karl Rove and the Republicans are hyperpartisan, and look how well they're doing!  We're not, and we've had a history of failure since the DLC showed up."  Now, with hyperpartisan Republicans bloodied in the face by their excesses, reduced to fillibustering and vetoing every bill that hits the Senate floor in an effort to hold back a rollback of the travesties of the Bush years, is the argument still "Oh, look how well the Republicans are doing with their hyperpartisanism"?  Is the argument that hyperpartisanship won us the House and Senate, and that's why we all have children's health care and stem cell research?  Are there municipalities where this plan has worked that gets us so convinced that we know so much more?

I really don't know anymore.  But I've seen sentiments like these before, usually coming from the mouth of Broders, and directed straight at the left blogosphere.

Look, imo, some fighting and partisanship is good.  But that's my opinion, not the opinion of some omniscient God of Politics, and there's something awfully dangerous and problematic about believing otherwise.  At least, certainly not without some super powerful political science studies.

Um (0.00 / 0)
"since only we've seen how successful that was for... who exactly?"

Republicans since 1980.  It isn't hyperpartisanism that did them in, and it wasn't this administration that started it.

John McCain opposes the GI Bill.

[ Parent ]
This is a related thought rather than a real agreement, (4.00 / 1)
but I've been noticing the "we have to beat the Republicans to a bloody stump" rhetoric in lots of places, and I'm wondering what exactly people mean by that.

One, DeLay/Rove hyperpartisanship actually causes severe blowback.  It takes three cycles for it to show up and outweigh the big initial reward you get from your own base, but it shows up.  The DeLay/Rove eliminationist politics actually didn't work.

Two, the party of the right, unlike the party of the left, can never be squashed.  More precisely, the economic interests at the core of the party of the right are never going to be reduced to a bloody stump.  It is possible to dismember the political party they're currently using, in which case they migrate into Steny Hoyer's column for a while.  And it is possible to increase or decrease their relative political strength at any given moment.  But you don't just crush the Money Party... it just doesn't happen. 

So, what exactly are we going for?  A four year period of triple crown (WH, House, Senate) is achievable, and some progressive legislation will come out of that.  If that's all we mean, then fine.  A much stronger national Democratic Party, that wins 60% of elections instead of losing 60% of them, is also achievable.  And hell, maybe we can get back to the era of LBJ, where big chunks of the budget were appropriated for citizens and not earmarked for corporations.  But the real Money Party has only lost once in the last 100 years, and I don't think they're going to lose that completely anytime in the next 30, barring a very bad economic turn of events in this country which would probably send this country hurtling closer to Giuliani than FDR.

=========

PS - the decline or even disintegration of the Conservative Movement, a particular vehicle that has served the Money Party as well as a few other organized interests, can probably be accomplished.  And in the attendant disorder that would create, enough progressive legislation could get past the business community to maybe save the planet.  So maybe that's what we're going for.  I just think some clarity on this point would be interesting, because while something along these lines motivate all of us, it's rarely stated explicitly what we think we can achieve.

And the more we achieve this, the more important the Steny Hoyer wing becomes, not the less.  Primaries in which we beat them are going to become more important in forcing them to negotiate, because if anyone wearing a D is immune, then the interests we need to constrain will just happily wear Ds.

[ Parent ]
Comparing apples and oranges (0.00 / 0)
a) Republican policies constitute an attack on working men and women. Democrats can afford to be more partisan, since they are right (well, closer to right) and their opponents are wrong. In fact, they really have to be, as the deck is stacked against them to begin with.
b) Republican hyperpartisanship is working. They didn't lose congress because of the Hastert rule. They lost it because of Iraq, a suffering economy and the Foley scandal. And the Republicans have prevented any real progress in 2007 thanks to hyperpartisanship, without their position becoming any worse. OK, that's partly because their numbers were in the toilet anyway, but hyperpartisanship has worked for them.

Hyperpartisanship has up until now been almost exclusively a Republican tool. It has worked. Whilst Republican policies must be fought without any notion of compromise, Republican tools need to be adopted where they work.

Forgotten Countries - a foreign policy-focused blog

[ Parent ]
Obama's biggest liability (0.00 / 0)
is that he's gonna be exceptionally vulnerable to the GOP if he's elected.

If Obama promises to be bipartisan and bring everyone together, then once he's president it's even easier than normal for the GOP to punk him: all they have to do is scream with a unified voice "he's being mean to us, he's not being bipartisan" and if they all do that, then suddenly Obama has an enormous amount of egg on his face.  He can't do what he promised to do without their cooperation.  In fact, they can easily make him look like a complete failure at what he promised to deliver.

Edwards meanwhile has promised a fight.  When the GOP fights him hard hard hard, well, he was at least proven right.  The fights would be much more severe with Edwards as president, cause he aint packing any olive branches, but at least all those fights would be proving his model of politics correct -- "see, I told you we have to fight them."  As long as he kept his own caucus together, which I personally doubt he could do, then he wouldn't have to fear what the CongressGOP could do to him.

Obama's best solution is to win with 55% of the vote, big enough that individual key GOP politicians are somewhat scared to fuck with him.  At the end of the day all he needs are George Voinovich and a handful of people like him, which under certain circumstances he can get.  If he runs very strongly in the territory of moderate Republicans, so much the better.

Edwards' best solution is also to win with 55%, but to run extremely strongly in BlueDog country.  If he proves to BlueDog congressmen that he can deliver their voters, and that he can personally reward or punish them, then he holds that wing of his caucus in.  Then, he has only the NewDem DLC types, whose donors and whose voters he is least well positioned to impress.  Steny Hoyer and Ellen Tauscher are gonna oppose his program no matter what, but if they have no allies among the Blue Dogs they might not be strong enough to ruin his term a la Jimmy Carter.

Interesting comment.... (4.00 / 1)
......I find the shear delusional quality of Obama's camaign kind of scary...until I start hearing from the 'voters'. There's a huge chunk, perhaps a majority, who read the paper watch TV talk with their neighbors yet have no frikin' clue as to how politics functions in this country. They're gonna vote their 'gut'....bleah....

The idea that Obama would be able to 'peel off' Republican Senators and Reps is just plain insane. The stated strategy of  the Republican Party which is not only the only viable one but, with the expert help of Miss Nancy and 'Sellout' Reid, looks to be working is to obstruct everything the Dems try and accomplish and then frame them as the 'Do-Nothing Congress'.

I really doubt that Rahm Emmanuel's mush cherished supermajority is gonna appear. Why would it when the most important group in the change in direction, the 'sphere, could very well sit this one out. Obama/chump 08! will have zero coattails. I know for a fact that many who worked their tails off in '06 are not excited about Obama or Clinton.

And the regular voter? McCain vs. Obama? It will be a like a mugging. Especially in the South.

So...

No working majority and a guy with zero executive experience in the WH. If the ReThugs were planning their comeback they could not even imagine such fertile ground.

Peace, Health and Prosperity for Everyone.

[ Parent ]
Success! (0.00 / 0)
The stated strategy of  the Republican Party which is not only the only viable one but, with the expert help of Miss Nancy and 'Sellout' Reid, looks to be working is to obstruct everything the Dems try and accomplish and then frame them as the 'Do-Nothing Congress'.

I love how in a single sentence you point out the Republican strategy to block all legislation while blaming it on the Democrats; and the blame it on the Democrats!  Damn, those Republicans are good.  Even their mind tricks work on even those paying close attention.  :-)

If Obama wins he will have a mandate to work with everyone to pass "universal health care" and his other initiatives.  He either peals away a few votes or, when the inevitable happens, he lays the blame on the obstructionists and works around them with the support of the people.

Whether Edwards, Clinton or Obama, getting past obstructionists is a difficult process, but Obama's strategy seems pretty solid to me.  There was a great video posted yesterday at Kos where Obama pointed out he just push the obstructionists aside if the people are behind him.

[ Parent ]
Obama (0.00 / 0)
Obama pointed out he just push the obstructionists aside if the people are behind him.

His uniting strategy could work. After his DNC speech, there were Obama signs on lawns in my Republican hometown.

Banned for posting five straight diaries.

[ Parent ]
It is true that Obama only has to peel off a very few Republicans. (0.00 / 0)
He doesn't need the assent of frickin John Boehner here.  All he needs is about four of the set {Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter, John McCain, Lindsay Graham, George Voinovich, Dick Lugar, Judd Gregg, Chuck Grassley, GordonSmithSusanCollinsNormColemanwhicheveronesurvives} on any given issue, and all he needs them to do is vote for cloture, not the underlying bill.

They're not an extremely easy group of pickups, but they're not impossible either.  (They are generally easier to get on social issues, but can be bought on economic issues as well.)  And if he wins big among their constituents, and half of them are near retirement age anyway, he'll have a decent amount of leverage with them.

I don't know how they would act, but it's not completely insane to think he could bully/cajole/seduce them into going along with some real policy.  He doesn't need Jon Kyl he just needs a few somewhat more reasonable people.

[ Parent ]
Maybe (0.00 / 0)
he'll charm a few more. These neighbors were lifelong Republicans.

Banned for posting five straight diaries.
[ Parent ]
The Bipartisan Virus in Iowa | 21 comments





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