No, not yesterday's elections. I'm talking about losing well on legislation, so that we can win (or at least avoid getting clobbered in) next year's elections.
Matt Yglesias says the White House is
I'd say Matt's understating it. Trying and failing, if done right, can work much better than refusing the try altogether.
We're going to have a set of midterm elections next year, with every House seat and something like 38 Senate seats up for grabs. The real economy, the one that people live every day, is still going to stink, and the basic reaction of people will naturally be to blame it on the President's party.
There are really only two things that Obama can do about this: (1) do things to make things better for people (the stimulus, the GM/Chrysler bailout, and hopefully health care reform), and run on these things, and (2) try to do more things that make things better for people, then run against the legislators who stood in his way.
But the only way to run against the Congresscritters who kept you from helping people is to force these things to a vote, even if it's 'just' a cloture vote. If no votes, then no names of recalcitrant legislators on votes. It's that simple.
So yeah, let's put together a bill, and have a vote, on a second stimulus. And let's try again on cramdown. And an extension of unemployment benefits. And anything else that the White House can think of that would make a difference for working (or involuntarily nonworking) Americans in the short run.
Sure, we'll lose. But if the Administration puts all of its muscle behind these bills, and still loses, then they'll be able to convince the people of this country that this Administration fought the good fight for the people, but were blocked by the Republicans. And that can be the campaign issue in the fall of 2010.
Besides, in politics, it's almost always wise to take the fight to the enemy. The more the GOP has to play defense, the less room they'll have to do the only thing they're really good at: attack.
Sounds good. But also if you don't get cloture on a real health reform bill, then just do it with reconciliation. I'm not sure why reconciliation was good enough for the Bush tax giveaways to the rich but apparently isn't good enough for health care reform.
Posted by: Ron E. | November 04, 2009 at 01:15 PM
I'm mystified by that too, Ron. I gather that it has something to do with reconciliation being specifically budgetary reconciliation, and apparently aspects of health care reform that don't affect the budget would technically be ineligible for consideration under reconciliation.
My attitude is, fuck that technicality. If I recall correctly, the Senate parliamentarian makes the call of what qualifies and what doesn't. But the majority party picks the parliamentarian, and can fire and replace him at any time. So if need be, you go out and get a new parliamentarian who takes a liberal attitude about reconciliation. Apparently the GOP did something similar when they controlled Congress during the Bush years.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | November 04, 2009 at 02:09 PM
try to do more things that make things better for people, then run against the legislators who stood in his way
Then you face the dilemma of running against senators you need in the Senate.
On the whole, while I believe I understand the logic of this stance, I don't think it would work. I think the White House is right to fear honestly attempting, yet losing.
Clinton did that.
If the Dems. try and fail they will again have to run against a GOP arguing that putting the Dems. in charge of Congress is a huge mistake because they're incompetent.
Posted by: oddjob | November 04, 2009 at 02:50 PM
If the Dems. try and fail they will again have to run against a GOP arguing that putting the Dems. in charge of Congress is a huge mistake because they're incompetent.
Well, they are.
Posted by: Stephen | November 04, 2009 at 03:25 PM
I've been meaning to write a post on this as well. The Obama administration needs to think about what is going to get people out to the polls in 2010 and work energetically to continue and expand upon a progressive majority in Congress.
I would introduce legislation aimed at directly providing jobs to people as soon as possible, with a special emphasis on jobs for young people. I would also pump out more job-related aid to the states to stop layoffs of public employees. I would dare the opposition to stop me.
Posted by: Sir Charles | November 04, 2009 at 04:56 PM
SC, yes!
to do this could both play to the "self-reliance" "hand-up" ethos and educate people about the reality of their country. the obama campaign was great at having everything at its fingertips. surely, the administration should, by now, have a record of every WPA program, complete with photographs, so that everyone in every locale could be made to realize how much "hand up" "make work" shaped their world for the better.
Posted by: big bad wolf | November 04, 2009 at 10:10 PM
The problem I see with this tactic is that if the administration tried and failed because of legislator obstructionism, it would then have to run against Senators and Congresscritters from its own party.
We already gave the Dems super majorities; these prove to be bought and paid for by the rich, quite willing to screw the rest of us.
Posted by: janinsanfran | November 04, 2009 at 11:57 PM
it would then have to run against Senators and Congresscritters from its own party.
We already gave the Dems super majorities
Exactly.
Posted by: oddjob | November 05, 2009 at 02:48 AM
if the administration tried and failed because of legislator obstructionism, it would then have to run against Senators and Congresscritters from its own party.
Obama might have to support a primary challenger or two (fine with me!), but the GOP isn't going to nominate candidates who are more likely than our Business Dog Dems to vote for a second stimulus, or cramdown, or anything else that would help working people. So it's not like he'd put himself in the position of having to say, "Vote for Evan Bayh's Republican opponent so we can pass X, Y, and Z."
I think we're safe there.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | November 05, 2009 at 08:32 AM
I am feeling much more pessimistic than usual this morning -- and, admittedly the mood may pass. But I'm getting discouraged enough that I was almost tempted to write a 'typical Republican troll' type piece -- the kind that goes "Where's all that hopey-changey stuff you were promised?"
One thing that we all had when we worked for Obama was enthusiasm. For me, and I think for many of you, he was the first Presidential Candidate -- well maybe Clinton the first time -- we'd voted for more to see him elected than to keep the Republicans out of office. (And as the Republicans, Becks and Hoffmaniacs continue to institute a sanity test for incumbents -- act sane and we'll run a challenger against you -- we have to keep supporting him for the 'old reason.')
We had certain expectations, and if we'd been told that we'd have the majorities we would, that he'd have the mandate hiws majority gave him, we would have known we'd be on the way to them right now.
We'd have a new health insurance program, maybe not a single-payer one, but one with a strong enough public component that single payer would be an obvious 'next step.' Hell, we'd at least start with sCHIP and build on that. (For those of you who haven't seen it, even in the HouseBill sCHIP will be ended in 2013, with no funding for further authorization.)
There might be still troops in Iraq, but the "Iraq War" would be a memory.
DADT would be gone, DOMA would be repealed, and there would be considerable progress countrywide on marriage equality. (Obama refused to even make a statement on Maine's Prop 1.)
With his statements about the importance of science, I would have expected at least the use of the 'bully pulpit' against anti-evolutionists, against quacks, against the sort of insane textbooks Texas looks like foisting on us all.
THAT'S why I voted for Obama and not just against McCain.
And I expected another thing, the parade of young brilliant, innovative thinkers that followed FDR to Washington -- and, to a much leser extent JFK.
Well?
Oh, some things WILL get done, more or less, to some degree. But somehow Obama, who spent two years building our support, has decided he doesn't need our enthusiasm any more. Yes, we might write and rally for health-care reform, but we should have had a true "Obama-care" measure -- that might have been changed in Congress but which provided a framework we should have been rallying for, we should have been enthusiastic for.
DADT and DOMA will go, but by the time they do, Obama would have lost all the 'leadership points' he would have gotten for it.
Iraq will be quiet, maybe we'll be lucky and Afghanistan won't explode in our faces. But maybe it would have been helpful if he'd set it up to have his OWN "Mission Accomplished" moment.
Again,
WELL?
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | November 05, 2009 at 11:56 AM
Damn HTML, though I'm not sure I mind that was italicized.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | November 05, 2009 at 12:00 PM
I must admit I expected the political folks in Obama's White House to have more of a clue, and to understand things like Presidential elections being more about the median voter, and off-year elections being more about the base.
This is particularly relevant because 2010 is a big opportunity on the Senate side - there will be a fair number of vulnerable GOP-held seats up for grabs, and it's the last year for awhile when that will be the case, in the wake of the Dem successes in 2006 and 2008.
So if Obama wants to pick up a few Senate seats, so that we don't need every last one of Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln and Kent Conrad and Mary Landrieu to get cloture, 2010 is really his last big chance.
And he needs to fire up the base in order to win a base election like 2010.
Yet it seems he's bought into the usual Dem nonsense that the base doesn't have anywhere else to go. Sure, they don't - as long as they show up at the polls in the first place. And that's the thing about base elections: there are lots of people who will almost certainly vote for Party X if they show up - but the hard part is getting them to show up.
The GOP base will have a reason: they're pissed that the Dems are in power. For them, that's enough.
But the Dem base needs to be persuaded that their voting for Obama in 2008 made a difference, beyond just ending Republican control of the White House. Or at least, can make a difference, if they give him a couple more Senators. (I'm not worried about the House: almost all our 2010 losses there will come out of the Blue
DogsPussies, so we'd have to lose a lot of seats to change the dynamic.)And the problem isn't people like us not voting: we'll drag ourselves to the polls, regardless. It's whether people less politically engaged, but Dem-voting, will show up. And it's whether people like us - like you've been saying, Prup - will volunteer our time and energy to make sure that less politically engaged Dem voters get reminded to vote, get offered rides to the polls, all of that.
Maybe the no-drama team really does have a plan for 2010. Maybe they decided in advance that they couldn't keep the base excited for two solid years, so they decided to save all their base issues for 2010.
But I'd feel better if the outlines of that plan were starting to manifest themselves.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | November 05, 2009 at 04:19 PM