What’s Next?

I was talking with David, who’s staying with me for a few days until he gets a more permanent situation together, and it reminded me of something that I haven’t had the chance yet to talk about on my blog.

I have no idea what’s going to happen after mid-terms.

Okay, two scenarios.  In the first, Democrats actually manage to hold onto control of the House and… do what exactly?  They’re definitely losing Senators, so unless they get rid of the filibuster (which they unambiguously should, it sucks), their legislative agenda is going to look a lot like the climate bill.

In the second, Republicans gain control of the House and… do what exactly?  The Republicans have been tearing themselves apart in the crazy Olympics, which is good when all you need to do is obstruct stuff and wreck the economy for political gain.  But as a governing agenda?  I guess they’ll just continue to mess with Obama (if you thought it was bad in ’95…) until they get a really likely President, but then what?  They’re really just running on elitism and xenophobia at this point (at least at a national level, I’ll concede that lower-level Republicans probably have more variation).  I don’t think they’d have anything remotely as ‘productive’ a couple terms in the executive as Bush, and that’s saying something.

It’s been a number of months since we’ve seen anything other than financial reform pass.  Since then it’s really just been craziness and uh… more craziness.  And the gross distortion of history.  And more craziness.

I guess my point is, when is the craziness going to be replaced by us being back on track to do anything?  I mean, I hated what they ended up calling health care and financial reform, but they did ‘em.  Climate change?  I dunno.

This isn’t even to say that I think it’s all going to be bad, it’s just that both parties are in such disarray that I find the next couple years completely incomprehensible and unpredictable.  I have my own theories and hopes (more later), but I gotta say, the trajectory of the last couple years took me seriously by surprise, and I continue to struggle to have any faith in my predictive powers.  I guess I’ll just take Krugman and McKibben’s word for it, they’ve been pretty prescient.

What do you think?

Peace,
Joel

This Is Gonna Get Interesting

If Dennis Kucinich got the concession that Jane Hamsher and Chris Bowers think he may have gotten, he will have just gone from a like to a love in my book.  And I’ll need to sign up for Markos’ twitter feed again to see how he handles it.

If on the other hand he got a promise from the folks that brought you the Lieberman compromise, well, as Jane Hamsher says, there’s gonna be hell to pay.  Not so much by me, because I didn’t contribute and am too emotionally bombed out to get more frustrated right now, but you know, by the folks who contributed $16,000 to him for taking his stand.

Just for my own amusement, here’s the Lando Deal again.  If only we had a Darth Progressivus, man, we’d be unstoppable:

Peace,
Joel

At The Risk of Irritating Theda Skocpol

Equating reproductive rights activists and forced childbirth activists’ objections as ‘extremist posturing’ is simply lazy logic, it’s disrespectful, and it’s exactly the kind of thinking that is devastating the Democratic Party and our opportunity to make real change here.  While we’re in the trade of questioning each others’ motives, as Ms. Skocpol does, it looks like she is suffering from a case of overexposure to talking-points, and ought to consider listening closer to the people she criticizes.

I happen to agree with her, I think we ought to pass health insurance ‘reform’.  As a matter of fact, so does a leading progressive, who she ignores in her attack on Adam Green, who has been pushing for Grayson’s proposal to push for a public option in addition to the easier to pass, but utterly insufficient bill under consideration.

But her disdain for progressives who believe that private insurance and corporate authoritarianism are the nature of the problem, and for those who believe that reproductive choice is a human rights and economic issue central to self-determination and welfare for all (not just women) shows that she has no respect for these things as core values, and advocates for those who hold them to abandon them because frankly, she and Obama know better.  It also shows that she has no interest in listening to the things ‘our side’ has actually been saying and fighting for for months, with little upper level support.  What a leader.

Peace,
Joel

ps. it is here that I am particularly wary of the Coffee Party, despite it’s very real potential for good.  Some on ‘our side’ have already taken to calling others among us obstructionists despite being the ones pushing for the best version of the bill.  This inability to distinguish between principles and posturing will be a strong signal that as above, the individual or movement in question is uninterested in doing more than serving as yet another uncritical stenographer of the official story.  I hope that doesn’t turn out to be the case, but it bears keeping vigilant for.

On Leverage

Now this guy gets leverage. Maybe we need him negotiating health care reform?

Yep:

The simple truth is that, in Washington, you can’t endorse, or even stop fighting, a bad bill and then expect Congress to improve it to your liking. When people say, “This bill is full of problems, but you should pass it and try to fix it later,” all that the leadership in Washington hears is, “The bill is good enough so you have zero reason to change it.” If a group says it is unwilling to oppose a bill no matter how terrible it gets, they are signaling to members of Congress they have no reason that they should not be ignored.

If you make it clear you’ll pass anything you’ll get… anything.  There is of course the opposing view that you need to signal buy-in to get a place at the table.  But in a ‘good-faith negotiator who really wants to improve health care’ competition between Joe Lieberman and Sherrod Brown- well it’s not a competition.  So progressives should theoretically, if they’re respected members of the coalition, be able to oppose until it meets their satisfaction, and be treated as legitimate actors (as Lieberman is- nobody harps on him for ‘obstructing health care’).  Unless, as I suspect, they are not respected members of the coalition.

Peace,
Joel

“That’s Not What I Said!”: How Our Political System (And Everyone In It) Hates Debate, And Fucks Over Everyone (But Especially Progressives), Part II

I’ve been struggling all day with figuring out how to make this point, but I think I got it.  Let me return to the post that originated this cluster: “Kill The Bill” Does Not Equal “Death To Health Care Reform”.

What did Dean (who I think, speaks best for those of us who advocate for killing the current iteration of the Senate bill) actually say?  His entire op-ed makes for a great read, but the key sentences are these:

“If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill.” [after which he explains, clearly in my opinion, why]

“To be clear, I’m not giving up on health-care reform“

“Improvements can still be made in the Senate, and I hope that Senate Democrats will work on this bill as it moves to conference.”

“I reluctantly conclude that, as it stands, this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America.” [Emphasis added]

So we should keep going, but where it’s at right now is unacceptable, and we really need to keep working on it.  I’d say that sums up the views of about 60% of the electorate.  Pretty intuitive and agreeable.  Right?

Kerry:

I can promise you, if we follow that kind of advice and give up now, just because the bill is not all we want it to be, we surrender the very reforms that people have spent their lives working for, reforms that the Democratic Party has been proposing for decades, reforms that many of us in the Senate today ran on and promised we would work together to achieve…

This week, for example, Howard Dean wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that real health care reform needed a public option that would ‘…give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage.’ I was surprised to read that because back in 1993, then-Governor Howard Dean called Medicare ‘…one of the worst federal programs ever and a living advertisement for why the federal government should never administer a national health care program.’

Go to the Boondocks video above, 30 seconds in.  That Iraqi convenience store owner?  That’s how I feel.

So.  Congratulations swift-boated, once-potential-President, you’ve joined a noble rhetorical crowd.  Ditto to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (and Barack Obama’s Wart).

Seeing this kind of deliberate misrepresentation from the people we want to be our allies is incredibly disturbing.  I’m not talking about bloggers, who can say whatever stupid shit they want (even though they misrepresent us too), I’m talking about key members of the leadership responding to key individuals who represent a major constituency and want to register a legitimate grievance.  You’re going to go and not even listen to what we’re saying, but imply ad hominem attacks citing an out-of-context quote from sixteen years ago (since which, as David Sirota indicates, Dean has changed a great deal) and employ straw man arguments to the effect that we’re suggesting that health care reform end outright?

Whose side are these people (centrist leadership- I’m not talking about decent, respectful ones like Kilgore) on?  Why does nobody call Lieberman an obstacle?  Why is muscling employed against progressives like Dean (they don’t have to against elected progressives, who have yet to register a complaint), where accommodation is employed favoring centrists like Nelson?

I think the dynamic at play speaks for itself: when push comes to shove, the centrist leadership gives people like Lieberman and Nelson (who are so far on the spectrum that they may actually be Republicans) what they want because obviously Republican ideas are the default, and forget core progressive principles as needed, because they are a nice add-on but not essential.  Because they can take us for granted, either because they take us to believe essentially what they believe (misunderstanding that we are a different community), or as being so cowed by their awesome power that we’ll go along with what they say.  Either way, they take our differences as the difference between a parent and child.

We are not respected players in this coalition.  We will not get anything from them until we are.  And frankly, I think we will not gain respect until we teach them that the satisfaction of the bare minimum of our goals is essential to their successful governance.  Expect nothing progressive until that happens.

Kill this bill.  Build power.  Continue the fight.

Peace,

Joel

“That’s Not What I Said!”: How Our Political System (And Everyone In It) Hates Debate, And Fucks Over Everyone, Part I

Steve Benen’s argument (as I interpret it anyway), that the ‘kill the bill’ debate provides a constructive hashing out of the differences within the Democratic party rests on three fundamental premises: 1) the quality of that debate (when Benen says quality, he’s saying it’s based on policy ramifications rather than politics and name-calling) is substantive, 2) that the Republican debate is clearly not substantive and ineffectual, and 3) that Democrats want largely the same goals.  These premises are not wrong, but they guide us close to reality in how off they strike me as being.

1. The Quality Of The Debate Is Good.  This is frankly a charitable assessment of the situation.  There are too many examples so I’ll point to two that are representative from the centrist side: Nate Silver (who Benen specifically cites) and the White House (the most important player in this drama).  Nate Silver’s piece is titled “Why Progressives Are Batshit Crazy To Oppose The Senate Bill”.  Robert Gibbs (Obama’s Press Secretary) is straight dismissive and mocking of Dean, widely recognized as a major-league health care advocate.  I mean fuck, he supported the watered-down SOB a month ago!  Yet now his critique is irrelevant.  Lest I lay all the blame at the other side of the debate, I invite you to check out the blogs I frequent: OpenLeft and FireDogLake.  I love them to death, but we should not pretend that progressives are more high-minded on the regular when it comes to verbally abusing our centrist brethren.
2. The Republican Debate Is Clearly Weak And Pathetic, And Does Not Shape The Ongoing Intra-Party Struggle.  Ah, if only I could say with certainty that it didn’t.  The thing is, while their debate is pretty facile, it’s still managing to guide our intra-party discussion.  I’d cite something specific, and I’ll dig if a commenter wants to, but I think the fiasco this summer of trying to get Olympia Snowe to sign on is a big indication that their ideology still has a stranglehold over the proceedings.  This is especially the case when we concede major ground to Lieberman and Ben Nelson, who may be Democrats, but they sure argue for shit that looks pretty Republican to me.
3. Democrats Largely Want The Same Goals.  Well, that depends.  We all want ‘health care reform’, but as I’ve argued long and repeatedly, when it comes to defining that reform, it suddenly looks like we are gunning for very different things.  A failure to recognize that- that there are some things that for each party are essential to the proceedings- mars discussion from the get-go, as I’ll explain in the next post.

This is unfortunately a longcomplicatedbutbrutallyimportant tm point, so I’m gonna have to finish up in a second post.  Sorry!  I really am trying to keep it pithy.  But, as I think this second post will indicate, part of what’s destroying the quality of the debate (and the entire tree of democracy) is too much ‘pith’ and not enough substance.  Pith is fun to say.

Peace,

Joel

“Exemplifies Divisions In The Democratic Party”: What’s Really On The Table Here

One of the things that I think is actually really constructive (and incredibly painful) about the Obama presidency is that it is an eye-opener and a chance to tackle a question we haven’t had to deal with for eight years.  What do Democrats really believe?

As it turns out, a whole lot of things.  Many of those things are incredibly, almost diametrically opposed.  Let’s explore!

Steve Benen and Glenn Greenwald (and Ed Kilgore, and Jake McIntyre, who he references) (fuck, I need to start citing/reading more POCs and women, this is just ridiculous…) all argue, in various ways, that there is a big split among Dems about whether to ‘kill the bill’ (though I hope I showed in my last post how ‘kill the bill’ does not equal ‘death to health care reform’), and that split serves to flesh out major ideological differences among us.

Jake doesn’t explore so much as point out what is to me a very revealing parallel: that the fault line between those who think we should pass the Senate bill as is, and those who think that that bill does not qualify as true reform and must be changed before it’s passed (whew) mirrors the line between those who “grudgingly backed the invasion of Iraq and those who fought against the war seven years ago”.  He also argues that this line reveals the fundamental difference: “When all is said and done, the wonks trust Democratic politicians to protect our interests. The activists don’t. That doesn’t mean that we don’t like certain Democratic politicians, or that we don’t cherish our wonky brethren. It just means that we’re not willing to get fooled again.”

Ed Kilgore has a great piece that elevates his sense of what the split is.  It’s complicated so I’m gonna suggest you read it yourself, but to sum up, one side of the Democrats believe that a tightly regulated and subsidized private sector approach can better accomplish progressive policy aims.  This is waaaay different than Republican unabashed ‘privatization’.  But it is also different from other-side Democrats, who believe in actual strategic nationalization (say single-payer, or more aggressive management of TARP-funded banks) over ‘strategic regulation and subsidization’.  Like I said, great analysis that deserves hearing, though I differ with Ed on precisely the ideological bases that he describes.  I’ll come back to him though, as parts of his piece tie in just beautifully to my next post.

Finally, Greenwald largely agrees with Kilgore, though his emphasis (which comes, I think, from Glenn and I standing at a different ideological location from Ed) is different.  He argues that the difference is in an allegiance to corporatism, which favors the merge rather than takeover of public and private institutions (centrist Democrats) versus an antagonism to corporatism, which favors the use of public institutions as a watchdog and firm guide of private institutions, with a strong safety net and human development mechanism (progressive Democrats).

Steve doesn’t identify the nature of the difference, but makes the point that hey, at least we’re seeing a constructive debate between centrists and progressives.  Because obviously, the Republican ideology has been proved intellectually bankrupt and fantastical once and for all.

My next post will deeply critique both of Benen’s points, which I wish I could believe were true.

Peace,

Joel

“Kill The Bill” Does Not Equal “Death To Health Care Reform”

But you wouldn’t know it from hearing the dialogue currently occuring between Democrats.

I’m gonna hit this more in other posts, but first thing’s first.  Read Howard Dean’s Washington Post Op-Ed, it’s great.  Check the whole thing because I think it’s really worth it, but I’ll excerpt the key passages below (for yall lazy Saturday heads):

If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill.

Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these…

Yet Washington has decided, once again, that the American people cannot be trusted to choose for themselves. Your money goes to insurers, whether or not you want it to.

To be clear, I’m not giving up on health-care reform…

Improvements can still be made in the Senate, and I hope that Senate Democrats will work on this bill as it moves to conference…

In Washington, when major bills near final passage, an inside-the-Beltway mentality takes hold. Any bill becomes a victory. Clear thinking is thrown out the window for political calculus. In the heat of battle, decisions are being made that set an irreversible course for how future health reform is done. The result is legislation that has been crafted to get votes, not to reform health care.

I have worked for health-care reform all my political life…

I know health reform when I see it, and there isn’t much left in the Senate bill. I reluctantly conclude that, as it stands, this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America. (All emphases added)

In future posts today, I’ll look at how this argument exemplifies division within the Democratic party, and how the backlash against it exemplifies the tragic state of our political discourse, a discourse that is disempowering, destructive, and dictatorial.  Have fun yall, shit’s gettin hairy.

Peace,
Joel

I’m Not Pissed At The Administration

because ‘they’re not delivering fast enough’.  I’m pissed because they make colossally poor choices that belie either enormous foolishness or a vision for America that I completely disagree with.

The decision to cut government spending in an effort to bring down the deficit, rather than create jobs indicates to me that the administration is unambiguously out of touch with the needs of the moment right now.  This is not just because job creation (which at least the House is looking into, by diverting remaining Wall Street bailout money to a Main Street bailout, job creation bill) is morally right.  It is.  But it is also pragmatic.  The governing party (Democrats, for what’s looking like a limited time only if they keep pulling shit like this) cannot expect to be able to accomplish anything when the public’s number one concern- their economic survival- is not being adequately addressed.

Not just the public- the base, the people who are the only hope for the Democrats to remain electorally viable.  Bob Herbert has an illustrative op-ed up that shows that the people most harrowed by job loss and economic instability are the exact same people who delivered Obama to the White House- young people, low-income people, people of color, and women.  This is exactly what I was talking about with health care and the Stupak amendment (again, Natasha says it better).  It is not just wrong to fuck over the weakest people in society, it is incredibly stupid asking them to constantly sacrifice for success when you don’t deliver them much in the way of rewards for that sacrifice, and expecting them to keep turning out.  That is an abusive relationship, and while it can last for a while, it is not ultimately sustainable.  In short, I am pissed because the administration, in kowtowing to Republicans and Blue Dogs (who only care about the deficit when its a matter of spending that heals rather than kills), is not just acting like a dick, it’s squandering its opportunity to remain in power.  I wish the Democrats wanted to win as much as I want them to.

This has nothing to do with how fast we’re going, this is about where we’re going.  A kind of unrelated note, but I wish people would stop dismissing my criticism and anger that way.  Change is made by the pissed.

Update I: Digby (on the constant call for sacrifice from the wrong people) and Chris Hayes (on deficit doublethink) totally rock at explaining this point as well.

Update II: Holy shit, just realized this was my 100th post.  Man, it’s been a crazy fucking year.

What Does Reform Really Mean? And Is It Progress?

So yesterday I made sure to make it clear that I acknowledge that some good is coming out of health care reform, even though one of the major constituencies of the Democratic party is getting unambiguously thrown under the bus.  You remember them, those rights-cherishing women?  But let’s forget about them for now (lord knows Bart ‘words can’t describe how much I hate you’ Stupak and even Barack Obama’s press secretary had an easy enough time doing it, despite Obama’s claiming he’d take the Stupak amendment out of the merged House-Senate bill).

No, right now I’d like to take the opportunity to look closely at the ramifications behind the rhetoric, what we all mean by reform, that thing we’re fighting for.  And whether one definition is worth the sacrifice being made, against their will, by low-income women.  This is a critical issue in the age of Obama, and I think is the defining one for why progressives are royally pissed: what qualifies as change these days anyway?  And what are the pragmatic ramifications of a diminished definition of change?  More below the flip: