There are two things that are sucking all the life out of that surge of hope so many people felt when Obama came to office. The first is the perception that, early on, Obama chose to help rescue the big banks but has been more passive when it comes to creating new jobs for people, a perception which, while unfair in some regards, is reinforced by record profits and bonuses last year for the big banks we rescued while unemployment is stuck around 10%.
The second is that the legislative process always seems like it follows the same depressing pattern: Obama proposes a legislative package that makes some concessions to industry but is pretty decent legislation overall; the House then makes some other concessions to industry and passes a more compromised version of what Obama had laid out; the Senate then gets stuck for a very long time and then tries to break the logjam by making massive compromises to industry lobbyists, but even that doesn't seem to get the deal done. Everyone who ever cared about the issue and making real change gets depressed. Rinse and repeat.
Unfortunately, both of those problems in terms of dousing any excitement level about the Obama agenda are coming to a head on financial reform. Both the general public and the progressive base of the Democratic Party feel like the big banks have already gotten way too much help and now Chris Dodd comes out with a bill that seems to have given a huge amount away to the big bank lobbyists. As Simon Johnson put it:
The lobbyists did their job a long time ago. Treasury sent up a weak set of proposals Secretary Geithner apparently felt that to do otherwise would be just to seek punishment for past wrongdoings; there is too little concern at the top levels of this administration regarding what comes next. And Senator Dodd was pushed hard by various interests to weaken all potentially sensible proposals including anything that would bring greater transparency and safety to the derivatives market.
But of course even all the bad ideas Dodd put in his bill to please the big banks didn't actually win over a single Republican vote, just as all of Max Baucus gifts to health industry didn't deliver any Republican floor votes for the health reform bill. Now when you start to look at the details of Dodd's bill, just like with the health care bill, you will find some very good things to like, enough that a great consumer advocate like Elizabeth Warren decided to give it some modest support. Here's the problem though: if you are trying to get people excited about your reform agenda, and they are too busy debating with themselves over whether to even support the bill, you have a big, big political problem.
What it feels like is that you are breaking faith with the people who put you in office. Coming out with this kind of highly compromised bill on your single best issue for the fall elections is how you tick off both your base and angry independents at the same time. This is how Democrats will get themselves destroyed in the 2010 elections.
The Democratic Party needs to pick a fight, draw a line in the sand, and dare the Republicans to filibuster. This issue is the one to do it on, and right now is the time to do it. Lets debate whether the Federal Reserve should get a lot of new power. Lets debate whether to start breaking the big banks up. Let the Republicans be on the other side of those issues (and let the Democrats who are friends with the big bankers join them if they want). The Democrats need to have a full-scale fight on these issues, for the sake of their electoral fortunes in the fall, and the sake of their souls.
Hi all. Welcome back to The One About....'s special weekend feature, The One About Book Club. For those of you who are new readers to The One About...., let me recap for you. On the weekends I write in depth about a book that I feel is of significance to Progressives, looking at one or more chapters per post. For the complete introduction to the project you can go here. My pick to inaugurate this project is The 48 Laws Of Power. So far I've offered an introduction and overview of the book, and written about Chapters(or in keeping with the tone of the book Laws) 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and 5 and 6. So I bet you can guess what comes next.
I am less concerned with party politics than I am with candidates, but rarely do I see entries in support of candidates where one political party was not promoted to the exclusion of all others. And other than the League of Women voters, I don't find many sites where information is given about all candidates running in a given race. Unfortunately, in all too many instances, the candidates I see named are people from the business sector, and their interests are all too often not those of the public. Even independent candidates tend to come from private business interests rather than public interests. It was heartening, therefore, to read at USelections.com that there is an independent candidate from the left who is running for governor and who isn't culled from the pools of Big Business. His name is Dennis Spisak, and he is running for governor this year. You can check out his web site by clicking this LINK.
Other candidates for governor are incumbent and Democrat Ted Strickland, Republican and businessboy John Kasich, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for U.S. president in 2000, and building contractor Ken Matesz on the Libertarian Party ticket.
An update on the effort to replace Bayh on the ballot in Indiana. The Indiana Dem Party State Central Committee must meet to pick to pick a nominee. There are 32 voting members. According to a friend who is close to the process in the state, the vote technically doesn't have to happen until June, but they are expected to pick by next week- and if it's a House member, someone would have to start campaigning for that person's House seat. All that incentivizes a quick process, as the Dem Party Chairman commented to the Indy Star:
"The sooner the better," Indiana
Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker said.
Here's the problem. Multiple sources, including the Star and TPM, are reporting that Rep. Brad Ellsworth is under consideration.
Ellsworth, as many of you know, is a Blue Dog who voted against the stimulus package, voted for Stupak, voted against federal funding for stem cell research three years ago, voted for the GOP motion to recommit on health care reform. Yes on FISA, Yes on the bailouts, Yes on the war supplemental, No on Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009. As Taniel pointed out in Quick Hits this morning, he is as far to the right as you can get for a potential Senate Democrat. He's a virtual Parker Griffith, the right-wing Democrat who just switched parties.
Yet that's not all. Over at HuffPo, Bil Browning, a Hoosier based in Indianapolis who publishes The Bilerico Project, and whose partner, Jerame, is on the leadership of the Indiana Stonewall Democrats, has a piece this morning documenting how much Ellsworth has thrown LGBT people under the bus. He was one of just 15 Democrats to vote against the Matthew Shepard Act on hate crimes last year, and when asked by Bil about it later, he actually said he didn't want to stand up for equality because of how it would look to his district. Despite voting for ENDA on the floor several years ago, he voted for the Republican motion to recommit immediately prior that would have killed the bill. He's not a co-sponsor of the current version and has not announced his support. He has not announced a position on Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal. He's not only against marriage equality, he voiced support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which was voted upon before he was elected. He's not publicly in favor of any other pro-LGBT legislation. In other words, not only are there Republicans in the House who are better than him, but according to HRC's scorecard, Republican Sen. Lugar doubles Ellsworth's 30% record with 60%- and Evan Bayh triples it at 90%. The "Indiana's too conservative" argument doesn't fly.
Now, Parker, the Chairman, says he wants a consensus nominee:
Still, he said he wanted the party to
coalesce around one candidate before he
calls a meeting of the central committee.
"Whoever this nominee is," he said, "they
need to have the entire party behind
them."
Great. If that's the case, then Ellsworth cannot be the candidate. In fact, several of the rumored candidates are anti-equality, and we need a pro-equality candidate. Indiana Stonewall Democrats have a seat on the State Central Committee. No anti-equality nominee could ever have the entire party behind him. Stonewall Democrats has a petition to Parker on this. Please sign and share with your friends. Remember you can use our new shareable links to do so on Facebook, Twitter and other sites, as well, with just a click.
Side note: One question raised is "wouldn't all Dems within the realm of possibility be virtual Republicans?" Not quite. Baron Hill scores better on LGBT issues, and is somewhat better on a wider range of issues as well, as Taniel demonstrates. I'm also told former Sec of State Joe Hogsett, who is also rumored to be in the mix, would be better on LGBT issues at least. Bottom line is that Ellsworth is the worst.
Political prognisticators inside the Beltway like to talk about all the reasons Obama's approval ratings are dropping, and what the results of the Massachusetts Senate race and other recent campaigns might mean. Is Obama communicating well enough about the key issues? Did Martha Coakley run a good campaign? Is Obama For America failing? Will David Plouffe's coming back shake things up? Was health care reform sold properly? Will Obama's budget freeze help him politically (even though it's truly terrible policy)?
You know, they are all interesting questions, and those of us who write and talk about politics for a living love to talk about them. But at the end of the day, nothing drives voters' opinion about politicians like jobs and the economy. As long as we are stuck with high unemployment and wages stuck in neutral or worse, voters are going to be angry at incumbent politicians. And the truth is that this economy has been far harder on working people than most of the inside the Beltway pundits even realize, so that anger is far bigger than the DC establishment realizes.
My friend Leo Hindery, a businessman in NYC, has taken it upon himself to look closely at the unemployment numbers, and has done some important analysis as to the actual level of misery in the jobs sector. Leo has started looking at the unemployment reports each time they come out, and factoring in things like people too discouraged to look for work, people working part time when they want and need full time jobs, and people in the shortest term jobs with no security or attachment to their place of work. The way Leo figures it, if you look at all the available data to come up with the real rate of unemployment and underemployment, it's currently 19.1% instead of 10.0%. Given that at the height of the Great Depression in 1933, unemployment was 25.3%, that 19.1 number is pretty damn scary. And that's with a "stronger than expected recovery", as one newspaper article said yesterday.
As important as health care reform is, as interesting to us political junkies as the latest communications tactics or staff shake-ups are by the White House, it is this crushing level of unemployment that is driving the President's approval numbers and the entire Democratic Party's political fortunes down. This level of misery is unprecedented in the years since the Great Depression, and until we begin to make serious progress, all else we do politically won't matter much.
That's why this latest move by the President, this freeze on domestic discretionary spending, is a fool's errand. The White House is saying they will exempt jobs programs and health care spending, which I am relieved to hear, but getting a short term political boost for sounding tough on the deficit in the State of the Union doesn't do much for your long term political fortunes while almost 20% of Americans are looking for work. Policy-wise, it is still a terrible idea even if you exempt jobs and health care because it is domestic discretionary spending in all kinds of areas that would help create more new jobs. The thing that is so frustrating about this proposal is that there are plenty of things that could be done to both cut the deficit and produce new jobs, and this proposal goes the wrong direction in both regards. To cut the deficit, there are literally scores of corporate tax loopholes that you could close, scores of specific cuts in wasteful defense spending, big cuts in agribusiness subsidies benefiting only the richest corporate farms, and programs to recover money from wealthy tax cheats that could all raise more than the budget savings you are going to get from this freeze in it's first year. The other way to lower the budget deficit over the next ten years is to actually create new jobs, so that instead of being on welfare and unemployment benefits, those people are working and paying taxes. And you can create jobs in a variety of ways, not just by new spending. For example, America could enact the same kinds of buying-in-country programs that every other industrialized nation in the world has, and you can award big new contracts to American firms rather than foreign ones.
Let me go on a slight detour here, and talk about one related jobs issue that I should do full disclosure on. This policy debate has even driven a progressive like me into the arms of a big business, Boeing. Over the last few months, I began reading about the controversy over whether the Department of Defense should award a new contract to build tankers to a European company, Airbus, or to Boeing, which would design and manufacture everything here in the US (Airbus says they would create some jobs in Alabama if they get the contract, but most of the work would be done in Europe). I got so mad about the idea that our government might award Airbus this contract that I actually got in touch with old friends who work at Boeing, and now I've taken a consulting contract with them, the first time in 14 years I have taken on a corporate client. I probably disagree with Boeing on much of what they lobby the government for, but they have 45,000 members of my old union (the Machinists), and personally, I'd like them to have more. To have Airbus get this contract when 19.1% of Americans are looking for work would be an outrage, so on this one, I'm actually working with a big business (and yes, it's an odd feeling.) But here's the bottom line, and it couldn't be more basic: the simplest way to create more jobs in America is for the American government to award contracts to American firms.
The jobs issue trumps everything for our party and our country over the next few years. If we don't start producing jobs ASAP, any chances of cutting the deficit will go up in smoke, along with any chance of Democrats winning elections in 2010 and 2012. Instead of doing phony and counterproductive things like this freeze on domestic spending, Obama ought to be focused like a laser beam on actually creating American jobs.
About 6 months ago, I started warning about the potential for a really bad electoral cycle for the Democrats in the 2010 midterms. I feared that by not taking the big banks on more aggressively, not doing more to create jobs in a really bad economic period for job creation, and letting the health care bill drag on and get too compromised in terms of taking on the insurance industry, that Democrats would be badly hurting ourselves with both our base voter turnout and with swing working class voters getting hammered in this economy. A lot of the Democratic establishment said folks like me were over-hyping, that while it wouldn't be an easy year, there were all kinds of reasons to think it wouldn't be so bad. To my great chagrin, my predictions were proved right with a vengeance in the first three big elections of this cycle in NJ, VA, and MA: base vote turnout was terrible, and working class swing voters turned dramatically against us. Now, the conventional wisdom has turned and just about everybody in the Democratic party is in full scale doomsday mode.
That's why I was so heartened to see David Plouffe's well reasoned analysis piece in the Washington Post on Sunday, laying out a strategy on how the Democrats can survive 2010 without getting slaughtered. Because what is needed now in the Democratic party is that kind of calm, steady thinking. As worried as I have been now for these last 6 months, I am equally convinced that if we do the right things politically and policy-wise (the two are in sync), we can surprise people in the 2010 elections and do a lot better than the pundits and the panickers think.
The reason I believe this is that I have been involved in several elections where good things happened against all the predictions of the conventional wisdom. Let me take you back to some elections in the past where Democrats came back when things looked really dark for them:
Congratulations to Scott Brown in his history making upset victory in Massachusetts, it surely shows that no seat is safe or certain in the age of the independent voter or amid the shifting tides of anti-incumbent sentiments. The one thing that is abundantly clear is that Brown rode to victory on a wave of independent voter support and not because large numbers of Massachusetts voters have suddenly embraced the principles of the G.O.P. and switched their party affiliation. In his acceptance speech Brown acknowledged: "Tonight the independent voice of Massachusetts has spoken." Also, let us take a moment to thank Mr. Brown for putting the Republican Party back in the game of creating meaningful legislation for now they will no longer have the political cover of hiding behind the excuse that the Democrats control everything due to their filibuster proof supermajority. The arrival of Scott Brown in Washington means that the G.O.P. will now be held accountable for actually producing some sort of legislative product. The days of just saying "no" to every proposal put forth by the Obama Administration are over.
The degree to which the Massachusetts election is a repudiation of the Obama Administration is less than perfectly clear. A post election poll by Peter Hart, Election Night Survey Of Massachusetts Senate Voters, produced findings that reveal evidence of a working class revolt arising from unaddressed economic concerns; a continued desire to fix health care with no support for an abandonment of reform efforts; the sense that Obama has done too little rather than too much; that local issues trump the issue of Obama's overall approval and; that there is no evidence of any endorsement of the Republican agenda on the economy or otherwise. According to Democratic strategist Steve McMahon, Obama's approval rating in Massachusetts was 60 percent before the election as well as thereafter. In contrast a poll by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University's School of Public Health found, as per the Post's Dan Balz: "Dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, antipathy toward federal-government activism and opposition to the Democrats' health-care proposals drove the upset election of Republican senatorial candidate Scott Brown in Massachusetts." Interestingly, 52 percent of Brown's supporters said that Obama was not a factor in their decision to vote. Balz points out another noteworthy finding from this poll: "Among Brown's supporters who say the health-care reform effort in Washington played an important role in their vote, the most frequently cited reasons were concerns about the process, including closed-door dealing and a lack of bipartisanship. Three in 10 highlighted these political maneuverings as the motivating factor; 22 percent expressed general opposition to reform or the current bill." There is also an element of misconception in Scott Brown's opposition to Obama's health care initiatives. In an article detailing Brown's involvement in Massachusetts's health care reform, David M. Herszenhorn points out: "Mr. Brown, as a state senator, voted in favor of the Massachusetts universal health care law in 2006, when the state became the first in the nation to pass a far-reaching overhaul guaranteeing coverage for nearly every state resident and requiring everyone in Massachusetts to obtain insurance. Mr. Brown, in campaigning against the health care legislation emerging in Washington, has sought to portray it as fundamentally different from the Massachusetts plan. But Massachusetts was actually an important model for what Congress has developed, arguably the model for what Congress envisions." It is hard to make the argument that the Massachusetts voters are against health care reform when 68 percent of the voters in Tuesday's election say they support the existing state plan. Slightly more than half of those who voted for Brown also favor that plan. Even Jennifer Nassour, the Chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, said on the New Hour (1/20/10): "We have health care in Massachusetts and we do want quality health care for everyone, like we have it here in Massachusetts." Beyond Massachusetts there is new evidence in a Kaiser Family Foundation poll that reveals that while Americans are evenly divided over the health reform proposals being debated in Congress, they are actually more supportive of reform generally, when specifics are examined.
Like the Hart poll above, the Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard polling shows, according to Balz: "GOP policies prove even less popular, with 58 percent of Massachusetts voters saying they are dissatisfied or angry about what Republicans in Congress are offering. Among those voting for Brown, 60 percent give positive marks to the policies of congressional Republicans, but a sizable number, 37 percent, offer a negative appraisal." To date, the Republican Party on Capitol Hill continues to trail the Democrats on the issue of overall approval ratings. Likewise, the numbers of Americans who identify as Republicans is at historically low levels. The latest political identification polling results available on Pollster.com reveals that just 22.5 percent of those polled identify as Republicans. What does this all mean for Scott Brown? I think the simple answer is that if he wants to get re-elected in 2012 he will act more like Olympia Snowe of Maine than South Carolina's Jim DeMint. In fact Snowe has indicated a renewed interest in a health care compromise and Scott Brown my very well be the ally she has been looking for on her side of the aisle. Deep in their hearts, Republicans know that the health care system is broken and unsustainable in its current form and ultimately they don't want to be the ones associated with continued failure.
No analysis of the 2010 Massachusetts election can be complete without acknowledging that the Tea Party Movement has moved, at least for the time being, from the fringe into the mainstream of American politics. When you sift out the gun toting crackpots living out their "Minuteman" fantasies and the ideologically challenged that sport placards about Fascism, Socialism and Marxism thereby revealing their utter lack of understanding of these ideologies or there applicability to the present, there are actually people within the movement who know how to make a difference. In Massachusetts they did. But the real question for the G.O.P. is has it made a deal with the Devil in jumping onboard the Tea Party tiger? It is one thing to embrace the Tea Party Movement when the opposition is a Democrat, but what about the prospect of intra-party challenges during the upcoming 2010 Republican primary process. The Tea Party crowd has been up front about its wanting to "purify" the G.O.P. of those who don't hew to a far right agenda. Even Republican heavyweights like John Cornyn R-TX are in their cross hairs. Likewise, for Scott Brown, getting too close to the Tea Party Movement may result in a one-way ticket back to Massachusetts in 2012. A new group within the Tea Party Movement called "The National Precinct Alliance" aims to take over the G.O.P. from the bottom up by capturing local committee leadership positions which will allow the movement to endorse candidates, formulate policy platforms and control asset allocation. The net result may be either an all out civil war within the G.O.P. or a restructured party far to the right of center. As conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer recently pointed out in one of his editorials, politics in America is played within the 40-yard line, on either side of midfield. When either party tries to push past that 40-yard line there is push back within the electorate. That said, it is hard to imagine a G.O.P. reformed by the Tea Party Movement as occupying any turf around midfield which would have a net affect of alienating independents and pushing the G.O.P.'s favorability ratings even lower than they are today. When you combine the Tea Party Movement's penchant for ideological purity with the likes of it's leading personalities: Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint, you have a formula for driving independent voters into the hills and thereby affecting a drain off of support for any type of centrist Republican agenda. Mark my words, the G.O.P. may be celebrating the election of Scott Brown now but they will soon rue the day that they got onto the Tea Party tiger, especially when they see where the ride is taking the G.O.P.
Beyond the challenges facing the G.O.P. the other relevant question is: Can Barack Obama's new found populist campaign drain some of the steam out of the collective Tea Party kettles? Political commentator Sam Tanenhaus recently opined that the Tea Party surge in Massachusetts was a combination of two forces, anger over deficits and a drive for ideological purity. As I already said, the ideological purity issue is a poison pill for the G.O.P. and a subject beyond the control of the Obama administration as it is an internal G.O.P. issue. If Democrats can regain the initiative in crafting health care reform that truly reduces the deficit and successfully combines that with some degree of positive results stemming from the new populist push, then a large part of the Tea Party message will begin to dissipate.
One thing that the election of Scott Brown does not change is the embedded problems that beset health care and thereby deficit growth in America. Again, David Herszenhorn lays out the predicament: "Here's what has not changed about the health care system in America. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, by 2019 there will be 54 million people in the United States without health insurance. The chief actuary of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says it will be even worse: 57 million people without insurance. In 2017, just seven years from now, the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted. Empty. Dried up. Done. Total national expenditures on health care will continue to soar, according to the chief actuary, to $4.7 trillion in 2019 from $2.6 trillion today. The average cost of an employer-sponsored family health insurance policy will rise to $20,300 in 2019, or about $10,000 more than today, consuming an ever growing portion of family income and continuing to put downward pressure on wages." The average American would do him/herself a favor in asking their employer a simple question: How much does my health care cost and how much has its cost increased over the last ten years? Then they might ask: If not for the cost of health care, how much would my income derived from my employment with this company gone up and with it my standard of living? Thereafter, they might just want to go over the fine print in their coverage to see what kind of health care they actually have and to what degree it protects them and their family assets from insurance coverage shortfalls.
When the dust clears and the supporters of Scott Brown emerge from their celebratory hangovers and head out onto the street to again address the issue of deficits and health care reform etc., they will see, sitting there on the horizon the same broken health care system with its runaway costs feed by a failure to address what are now the inherent inadequacies of the "free market" to provide affordable coverage to all. It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same and so we are back to where we were a year ago, we have gone back to the future.
There's been a lot of analysis about why Democrats lost the Massachusetts Senate race, because it was so obvious. Failing to accomplish what you campaigned on depresses your base, emboldens the enemy and convinces independents that you're a loser. The lesson is not that Democrats went "too far" - but that they didn't go far enough. If I had faith in President Obama and the Democratic Party, I would be hopeful that they learned that lesson. But only one person seems to get it - former DNC Chair Howard Dean - who was unceremoniously kicked to the curb last January. It was Dean who gave Democrats a backbone in the run-up to the Iraq War. It was Howard Dean's "Fifty State Strategy" (as opposed to Rahm Emanuel's recruitment of Blue Dogs) that won Congress in 2006. And it was Dean's playbook that Barack Obama used to beat Hillary Clinton in an historic campaign. Beltway Democrats resent Dean, because he cares more about helping progressives win than stroking their ego. And - what's most unforgivable - he's been proven right.
A good deal of criticism against generic "Democrats" has begun in the aftermath of the loss over marriage equality in New Jersey. Yesterday, Garden State Equality launched a push poll on its website:
Which Senators who voted "no" or abstained on marriage equality bother you more?
Conservative anti-LGBT Republicans who were never with us to begin with.
OR
Democrats and moderate Republicans who didn't have the guts to stand for equality.
Not surprisingly, as of this post, 98% of the 1,325 votes were for the latter option. The poll follows a trend by the organization to warn Democrats that the LGBT community is not a one-party community, as Steven Goldstein said:
In an effort to stay in front of rising anger in the New Jersey LGBT Community, GSE president Steven Goldstein dropped his long-time dedication to the Democratic Party, threatening that gays would "cross the aisle to support independent candidates" in future elections.
I think making threats like this is generally fine. When the Newsweek piece came out a few weeks ago predicting the Obama Administration wouldn't take action on LGBT issues in 2010 for fear of mobilizing an angry conservative base, I told a lot of LGBT friends that now was the time to push back against that. We had to put the fear of God into Village Democrats that a pissed-off LGBT base would stay home if no activism was taken. That's how the game is played.
But what I find amazing is people who have fallen for promises that simply electing a Democratic majority would bring about LGBT utopia. Quite a few LGBT donors and activist friends have told me personally they were sick and tired of helping committees to elect Democratic majorities in NY and NJ and being told that, in return, Democratic leadership would ensure marriage equality becomes law, when it did not.
If I may chide for a minute, you certainly got played on that one, my friends.
We're talking about LGBT issues here, people. You, know, G-A-Y. Homosexuality. Trannies. I'm mentioning these terms because to many members of legislative bodies, these issues are anathema to them and their constituents, so I would never believe that any Democratic leader is going to go out and actually pressure members on marriage equality or make it a "party loyalty" vote like they would on other bills. Why would you expect that just because potential Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith promises you he'll "deliver" marriage equality, it would be so? I laugh at people who tell me marriage equality is a "core plank of the Democratic platform" and so are outraged when things like this happen. No, it's not. In what fantasyland are you living? In an ideal world, sure. And you should keep going after Democrats for "not acting like true Democrats/not having guts" so we can get there. But we're not operating in that ideal world.
So there's a big difference between believing what Democratic leaders promise and having realistic political expectations. Realistic political expectations means that just because a politician says a Democratic majority will deliver marriage equality doesn't mean the votes are actually there or that members are going to be threatened into line. In fact, while Malcolm Smith was making these promises to LGBT activists, he was cutting a side deal with Ruben Diaz to not have a vote. Realistic political expectations means that LGBT victories are coalition-built, not Party-built. You have to go out and find Democrats and Republicans and Independents, one by one, who swear on their mother's life they will vote for marriage equality, and put the fear of God into them if they even consider screwing you.
Instead, what we've done is taken the easy route and elected a Democratic majority and expected all would be well, then became shell-shocked when marriage equality did not pass. Exhibit A is Garden State Equality, which contributed tens of thousands to the Senate Democratic Leadership Fund, the Assembly Leadership Fund, and the New Jersey Democratic State Committee- money that is doled out to Democratic candidates to elect and retain majorities without regard to positions on marriage equality. The day after the vote, Goldstein said "The gay ATM is done." It's the same argument that progressives shouldn't bother contributing to the DSCC. Find progressive candidates, one by one, and help them individually. I myself become incredibly frustrated when people blame "The Democrats" for our woes. Which Democrats, I ask? Specifics matter. Find the ones who screwed you and beat them. A Democratic majority is important, but it only provided the opportunity for a vote. It did not provide the votes. You have to go get those yourself.
Now, will individual politicians lie to you on issues, just as Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu lied over the public option? Absolutely. There are always a few bad apples who operate in bad faith. But I can assure you that building your marriage equality coalition one by one is a hell of a lot smarter than simply electing a Democratic majority and then being all infuriated when "The Democrats" didn't "deliver" marriage equality.
You win by building coalitions, not by building parties.
That is what makes this current compromise surrender to special interests so doubly tragic. Like any exercise in legislative sausage making, near infinite deals and trade offs went into crafting the piece of Health Care Reform legislation that lies in front of us today. From day one Liberals went along with many of them only as a way to preserve a viable public option within the overall Health Care Reform package, since you have to give up something to get something blah blah. For one thing, sundry formulas that directly impact private industry's bottom line were negotiated and agreed upon early in the process on terms Liberals might not have ordinarily agreed upon, with the understanding that there would be a real public alternative preserved as a result of those concessions, one that would offer real competition to private industry, forcing it to think long and hard about continuing to price gouge their policy holders.
What resulted was a classic shell game. All of the liberal concessions went right to the bank and got cashed, while liberals held onto their legislative I.O.U. Now the shuffling has stopped and the shells have been lifted and there is no Public Option under any of them, let alone a robust one. There is no medicare buy in either. Instead we find restrictive language on abortions.
A response to dedelste's comment, here, the thrust of which is "Are you accusing the Democratic party of plotting to sabotage health care reform?". It hopefully will provide most of an answer to that question, as well as others.
In Chris's early October diary "Wall Street Bailout Thwarting Democratic Realignment" , a couple of commentators talked themselves into a fact-free Versailles kool-aide fest, confusing Versailles Dems with the Democratic base.
Texas Dem began with a comment that I might argue with, but that held a modicum of truth:
Labor atrophied, and the Democrats went from being a party of labor
to being a party of labor AND of business AND of half of the rich.
That is the real source of the "Democrats divided" meme. The true left base is not large enough in this country to rest a party on, so we have a party built on labor AND on business, which can barely function.
Democrats don't propose restoring the Reagan Brackets because a significant fraction of their donor base would revolt. Until we get a party built only on unions and working people without any rich people required (they can join out of conviction, but not to defend their interests), then even the obvious cannot be done.
I don't remember the details of when Obama waffled on rolling back the Bush tax cuts vs letting them expire (after the primary, or did Hillary do it too?), but that was the tell.
Actually, the Democratic Party was never a party of labor, labor didn't simply atrophy, the left was purged from it during the McCarthy Era and the business-friendly labor leadership that remained misrepresented labor even when it was still strong, and even today the Democratic Party is not the party of "half the rich." But ever since the early 80s, the party has gone out of its way to court Wall Street, and Obama has done the same to a ridiculous extent:
Given Obama' vast small donor base, he could have kept his distance from Wall Street. Instead, he's turned the other way around. But the comment thread quickly diverged further and further from reality:
This donor base that would revolt...
...why are they Democrats to begin with?
"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- oward Zinn
by: Master Jack @ Mon Oct 05, 2009 at 20:08
Social issues
by: DTOzone @ Mon Oct 05, 2009 at 20:30
So the Dems have been reduced to...
...being the Abortion Party.
Lovely.
"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn
by: Master Jack @ Mon Oct 05, 2009 at 20:34
yes...sorta
that's how they rose from the 1980's doldrums...by winning over socially liberal fiscal conservatives in the Northeast.
and similarly, the GOP is the Christian party.
by: DTOzone @ Mon Oct 05, 2009 at 23:02
In fact, the Democratic electorate has not changed significantly since the 1980s in the ways alleged, and the gap between Democratic and Republican voters on a state-by-state basis is quite distinct on economic issues compared to social ones. Details on the flip.
I will feel bad for people living in states that opt out of a public insurance option. However it won't help them one bit if people in NO states are given the choice of a public option instead. Understand that I write this as someone who strongly supports establishing a Single Payer, or Medicare for All, public health insurance system in America; NOW. Sure I support that, but I also know that there isn't a prayer of a chance of making that happen, not now.
Call the system unfair, call the game rigged, unless someone has the power to change that system or nullify that game it will be go on being played under the rules in effect. I am not a defeatist, I am a fighter, and mine has been one small voice among many pushing the fight forward in the current session of Congress. I have witnessed our ability to move a mountain, against all seeming insider odds, to keep some form of a public option alive, to expose and reject the false promise of a "trigger to nowhere" being offered us as a sleeping pill instead. Our power is real. And so is the mountain. Our ability to move it slightly helped crack the aura of it's permanent invincibility. But that mountain is still there, pushed a few yards further down the road.
If you haven't had a chance to read Chris' great post this afternoon on teachable moments for other Dems from this episode with Rep. Alan Grayson, go ahead and take a look. One of the most salient points that stands out to me is that too many Dems in Congress don't know that there are all of us out here on the 'tubes ready to back someone who stands up like Alan Grayson did. As a result, there are many who don't speak their mind and challenge the Republicans' rhetoric and policy... or if they do, they quickly walk it back with an apology.
Tonight with Ed Schultz (who is VERY fired up and applauding), Grayson stated that point in another way. Take a look:
"We need Democrats with guts." It's not just hot air- Grayson is a living, breathing example of what happens when you have guts. He has an extra $100,000+ over the last 24 hours with which to continue doing battle in Congress, and that means something to other members. Blue America's "Carrots AND Sticks" action, which raised over $400,000 in just days for House members who stood firm on the public option, is another example. It's one of the best ways those of us out here can communicate that we support those who support us.
A fascinating article was in the WaPo yesterday morning about Democrats having more trouble raising money than they expected. I haven't had the chance to really look closely at the numbers to compare how flat the big dollar fundraising was as opposed to the small grassroots donations but according to the article "The vast majority of those declines were accounted for by the absence of large donors who, strategists say, have shut their checkbooks in part because Democrats have heightened their attacks on the conduct of major financial firms and set their sights on rewriting the laws that regulate their behavior." It also said that:
Other Democrats and their aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal party strategy, said that rhetoric toward big business has grown so antagonistic that it has become increasingly difficult to raise money on Wall Street, particularly after the controversy about bonuses and executive compensation.
I am going to write today not from my populist blogger perspective, but from my intensely pragmatic Democratic strategist perspective. This is a complicated and important issue that Democrats, individual candidates, and we as a party, will have to wrestle with in the coming years.
Until we pass a public-financing bill for elections (a topic I will come back to), it is a very tough thing for a congressional candidate to not get the money they have raised in the past from big business. Wall Street is the wealthiest and most generous industry in cultivating politicians, so their withholding of dollars is a particularly hard hit, but other business special interests are going to be withdrawing or threatening to withdraw their campaign cash as well. If a public option is passed, insurance execs will be pissed, so a lot of their money goes away. If a serious climate change bill were passed, a lot of energy industry money goes bye-bye. It's a serious problem for Democrats, and it's what makes real change in Washington so damn hard.
I have raised a ton of money for Democratic candidates over the years, and I have worked on a ton of campaigns desperate for cash, so I would never minimize how hard it is to walk away from all this money. But tough as it is, the alternative in my very pragmatic view is quite a bit worse for Democratic prospects. The alternative is to downplay our rhetoric about change, and downplay our efforts to make real change- because let's face it, it's not mostly the rhetoric these business interests are worried about, it's the policy.
That path leads us to mushy rhetoric that doesn't address the real anger voters have at Wall Street and insurance companies. And it leads to policy choices that avoid dealing with the really deep and fundamentally important problems in our society. If we fail to take on the power and profits of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, the smartest economists who most accurately diagnosed the problems that created the financial collapse last year say we are in for another major financial collapse in the not too distant future. If we fail to deal with these big banks after the bailouts they were given, the anger about those bailouts will boil over with voters in a hundred different ways.
Or take health care. The poll I referenced in my last post is absolutely stunning, and should strike terror in the hearts of any Democrat who is thinking of voting for an individual mandate without a public option: voters oppose a mandate on its own 64-34, but support a mandate with a chance of a public option or private insurance 60-37. And I think those numbers understate the sentiment. If you pass a mandate to buy insurance without creating real competition for private insurers, you know they will raise their rates and continue to screw people, and voters are going to be very angry.
The problem with the big money in politics is that politicians will start doing things that voters don't like in order to get those checks. It leads to weak messaging and twisted policymaking, doing things that make no sense to average voters.
The ultimate answer is public financing of campaigns, ending this terrible dependence on special interest big money. It would make it so much easier for Democrats to do the smart thing politically and the right thing in terms of policy, to really make the transformative changes this country has to make. In the meantime, I am convinced that if we have to choose between losing that money from the bankers and the insurance execs, and doing the most sensible thing politically and policy-wise in every other way, the hard, cold, pragmatic path is the latter. We can find other ways to raise the money we need and win elections.
Media reports and insider buzz make it increasingly clear that key people at the White House have become obsessed with Olympia Snowe on health care, and are willing to do pretty much whatever she demands in order to get her on board. The price is looking more and more like this incredibly bad trigger proposal she has been pushing, a trigger that quite literally is written to automatically never trigger a public option. You see, Senator Snowe is writing language into an amendment that is literally a Catch-22. The legislative language says that a public option will be set up in a state in which health care is not affordable to 95% of the state's residents, but it defines affordability as after the new tax credits that are written into the bill to make health care affordable. Not only would this be an incredibly weak public option (doing it in one state will mean it can't get the market power to compete with the big insurers), but it would be a public option that is written by its definition to never be triggered. This is a trigger specifically, intentionally designed to kill the public option.
Some senior White House staffers are now beginning to try to sell this trigger to progressive groups as the compromise version of a public option, saying the White House doesn't want to have a floor fight in the Senate, and that they can always fix it in conference committee. That way they can pick up Snowe, satisfy that desperate urge for being officially bipartisan (even though Snowe can't bring a single other Republican with her), and not have to worry about procedural hassles in the Senate. But by finally winning Snowe over, the White House is risking something far more politically dangerous: an ugly fight within the Democratic Party, further erosion of Obama's standing with his base, the specter of more primary fights.
The AFL-CIO, Howard Dean and Democracy for America, bloggers, MoveOn.org, progressive media figures, and the tens of thousands of people coming to Obama rallies and cheering wildly for a public option will figure out quickly that this trigger proposal is a farce specifically written to kill any chance of a public option. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus already are angry at having legal immigrants thrown under the bus by Baucus, all will explode.
As someone who spends every single day working hard to build and strengthen the bridge between the progressive community and the White House, I feel like the White House is triggering a bomb to blow the bridge up from under me (pun fully intended).
This trigger will never trigger a public option, but I can tell you what it will trigger: a civil war inside the Democratic Party just when you most need unity to pass health care reform. I am convinced that there are deals that can be struck that will bring progressive and moderate Democrats, House and Senate Democrats together on a good strong health care bill that will pass. But a trigger designed to never trigger isn't even close to being one of them.
If you're not a centrist machine Democrat, never give money to any national or state Democratic organization. I really think that this should be an absolute principle. If at some point we're in a position where the Dems need us and come asking, then we can deal. But not while they're treating us with contempt.
I've long believed that such an attitude was just a matter of common sense. If you give money, it should be bundled, to help send a message. And nothing says "Kick me, I'm stupid" like sending the message, "Anything the party bosses want is fine by me."
If there's any silver lining to the long list of abuses heaped on the Democratic base since Obama took office--a sampling of which I cataloged earlier today in "Versailles Dems Ongoing War Against Dem Base "--then that silver lining is this: the foolishness of just giving money to the Democratic Party, no strings attached, has become starkly apparent.
As John went on to elaborate:
We do have this weird situation where the parties are rich, and the single-issue groups are rich, and they work independently. But the groups which want to change the party so that it will do things differently are poor.
I was in a single issue Central American peace group around 1980 which was moderately effective, but to all intents and purposes we were asking the Republicans and many Democrats to abandon one of their central foreign policy commitments. Major issues can't be dealt with that way; they're not details that you're asking to be changed. In order to win a big issue you have to take over the party AND win an election.
I had intended to write a more elaborate diary this weekend about extra-party institution building, but there's a certain power in just keeping things simple--and nothing could be more simple than pooling our money and refusing to support the Democrats without getting real power in return. That's how the corporate special interests play the game, and we're simply chumps if we continue making ourselves utterly irrelevant by giving them money no matter what.
It's time to pit a stop to that. Now! If we start building independent campaign funds now, they will only have a greater and greater impact, the closer we get to the midterms in November 2010.
The continuing tragedy of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath is the starkest possible reminder that America has lost its way from the vision of what it ought to be-a vision that Ted Kennedy articulated for almost half a century in the US Senate.
In his speech to the 1980 Democratic National Convention, Kennedy said:
It is the glory and the greatness of our tradition to speak for those who have no voice, to remember those who are forgotten, to respond to the frustrations and fulfill the aspirations of all Americans seeking a better life in a better land.
We dare not forsake that tradition.
We cannot let the great purposes of the Democratic Party become the bygone passages of history.
What happened to New Orleans with Katrina, and what has continued in the aftermath to this day is that "the least of these" have been forgotten.
Matthew 25:31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
37 "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
40 "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'
41 "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'
44 "They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'
45 "He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'
46 "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
And it is moral certainty that America cannot rise so long as New Orleans remains fallen.
That is the heart of the Gospels, and the heart of what it means to truly be a Christian. And as Kennedy said, it is the heart of what it means to truly be a Democrat and an American as well.
Rahm's Just A Symptom Of What's Wrong With The Party
A healthy political party wouldn't let a putz like him within 30 miles of real power.
You keep a diverse party together by giving everyone something important that they want, and asking them to sacrifice something less vital. You don't ask all the sacrifices to come from the same people all the time, and you damn sure don't yell obscenities at them when they push back.
This is true regardless of the fact that the folks you're favoring are the least fucking loyal party members, and the ones you're screwing are the most loyal. You're supposed to do it the other way around--another symptom of how failed the Democrats are.
I thought it was worth highlighting again, because it goes right to the heart of the matter about how the Democrats are trying to govern by violating such a fundamental precept of politics. It is, quite literally, insane of them to be acting like this.
I've never quite gotten over our terrible struggle with the liberal suits in the Sixties, who still blame us for the destruction of the Democratic Party, and have absolutely no intention of ever letting the likes of us help to rebuild it.
The good news, I suppose, is that it's still considered impolite to blame Fanny Lou Hamer, or Martin Luther King for upsetting the liberal applecart. Blaming DFHs, though, remains forever in fashion. Swine like Rahm Emanuel take particular delight in it, and why wouldn't they? Without phantom menaces like us lurking in the darkness beyond the DCCC, no one with the slightest commitment to sanity would ever accept the absolute inevitability of their domestic War of Assassins with the Republicans, or their worship, in the national temples of foreign policy, of American manifest destiny in its most decadent and violent forms.
This gets it exactly right. The corporate wing of the party is permanently at war with the party's activist base. Permanently. One might have hoped that Obama would have brought about some sort of truce. After all, it would have been the smart, prudent, pragmatic thing to do.
Democrats are still quite popular in the Northeast and unpopular in the South, but they've lost significant ground in the West and Midwest since late February, four months ago, even though Republicans, who are far less popular, continue losing popularity as well. If the GOP's intention is to disgust people with politics, in direct opposition with Obama's attempt to bring sweetness and light, the GOP seems to be succeeding--and Democrats in general are paying the price, both in party popularity, and in the popularity of congresional Democrats.
The last DKos weekly poll in July shows more of the same. Here are the latest figures, showing Congressional Democrats barely hanging on to a net favorability of +3 outside the South, with the party itself at -3 favorability naitonwide. Nobody likes the GOP outside the South--12% favorable is the best they can do regionally, but now the Dems have lost almost all their regional net favorability:
And here are the changes from late June, which show both parties losing support almost equally:
