My Life as a Corporate Whore Apologist

Man, am I getting the shit kicked out of me over at Amanda's place.  Yikes. 

Comments

[Corvus9]

I just saw that. I thought about lending a hand, but I just bought new shoes. So.

For the record, I think Amanda totally misread your critique, and her commenters are even crazier than yours, but you shouldn't have lead off by losing your temper. I am not sure it would have mattered with that crowd, but it probably didn't help.

[Sir Charles]

Corvus,

You're right of course -- I shouldn't have lost my temper, but I have a hard time not responding to some clown threatening me.

I do think Amanda misread me, which I pointed out a little further down the thread. I actually was going to post one right after the other but got a phone call in between, so led with my fist so to speak.

On the other hand, I think the commenters more or less made my point in a scary kind of way.

[big bad wolf]

they did make your point. of course, they won't understand it from themselves either.

i thought amanda had a useful point about low information voters, but i think that point just reinforces why the vituperativeness, claims of betrayal, and false equivalences on our side will cause damage. if we just yell and bare the wounds our righteous souls have suffered, the low information voters hear the noise and think, oh, they are all the bad, i'll do the opposite of what i did last time to balance the damage i did last time.

what we have to do is work, slowly, boringly, patiently, and positively to make low information voters understand the differences and to internalize our values as the norm. this is hard to do, but it absolutely cannot be done by invective. people don't respond to being berated by anyone, not even the base.

the base, the base, the base. there's something about invective-filled lectures and prophecies of doom that makes the name the base seem vaguely familar.

[low-tech cyclist]

SC - I only read a sprinkling of the comments over there (I don't have a much higher tolerance for left-wing crazy than for right-wing crazy), but the comments mostly seemed to fall into two camps:

1) It's not high-information voters like us you have to worry about; it's the people who are too uninvolved to comment on blogs.

2) The Dems are only slightly less corporate-whorish than the GOP, and I'm not gonna bother voting in 2010, if ever.

Seemed like there were a lot more 2's than 1's, but maybe that was the fault of my sampling. At any rate, it seemed like there were more than enough 2's to undermine the 1's argument. Like you say, the commenters made your point for you.

[Corvus9]

One of the biggest problems I see with Amanda's critique is that she fails to account for the porous nature of political coalitions. There is no wall between the mainstream Democratic voter and the progressive base. The opinions Netroots A-List influences the mood of the base, whose anger leads to the depression among widespread voters. Because people talk to each other outside the internet, at work and home and such. And if the base is depressed, than the depression is being passed onto the average voter. You see the inverse on the Republican side. The Far Right is super-pumped, and thus enthusism among most Republicans is really high. We are actively hurting our own side by being so negative.

Now, I think Amanda has a good point about how this is in part the Congressional Democrats' fault. Politicians need to give people something to be excited about, and if they don't they are (in part) at fault for the resulting losses. But that doesn't mean that we Lefties should take an unrealistic view of what it's possible, or not celebrate the various gains that have actually been made, because not doing that only hurts us, in the long run.

On this note, this is probably as good a place as any to apologize to Raf. Sorry, Raf. You were right, I was talking past you with that whole rant about what you said being really illiberal. I was wrong on the internet. In my partial defense, you were responding in criticism to Sir Charles wholly reasonable critiques of the various gatekeepers of the online left, and so I assumed that your rhetoric was mainly in service of bolstering their point of view, a point of view that I still reject and maintain that denunciation of. But your point about there needing to be some policy victories that Democrats can point out to the average voter is a fair one.

Of course I think there have been various policy victories that can be pointed too, which Sir Charles and Nathan Newman outlined earlier, and those should be emphasized, as well as the only way to get more is to keep on keeping on. If that's not enough for your friends, Raf, well, so be it, but the point should still be argued, because otherwise, the American people are screwed.

[Corvus9]

Ah, I see in my effluence, BBW has made my point before me.

[big bad wolf]

corvus, while you and raf got a bit askew, i thought you had a good insight. achieving progress is not about point scoring in the way that much of the current vituperation views point scoring. personal vindication matters not at all. neither the adoption of my plan in my specifics nor revenge matters. progress that benefits people matters. too much of the decrying i am reading (i don't know why i'm reading it, ari)is too personal, too concerned with scoring points and settling scores.

raf is very thoughtful and made many good responses, explaining why he thinks particular achivements are necessary to engage voters. that he did so does not invalidate your insight that point scoring is not a progressive value.

[Corvus9]

Oh, I agree, BBW, and I stand by that insight. But the rightness of the overall insight doesn't mean I wasn't misreading Raf's own stance and conflating it with the subject of my critique, and I should apologize for that.

[low-tech cyclist]

Corvus - just for anyone unfamiliar with the reference, I've provided the obligatory link: "I was wrong on the internet."

[Corvus9]

See, l-t c, I just assumed everybody here was familiar with all internet traditions.

[Raf Noboa]

And this is as good a point as any to second your point, Corvus, that point scoring is not a progressive value - at least, not to me.

As for all the rest...[sigh]

You know, I've been horribly unable to sleep all this past week. Matter of fact, I only slept for an hour last night, after drafting all these responses. Bear with me, because what I'm going to write is going to be a bit stream-of-consciousness.

As I was arguing with you guys last night, and demanding that the bill be killed, I was arguing with other friends of mine, asking them whether that was really the wisest course of action.

Then, today, I took a long walk around Denver, luxuriating in the sunshine and warmth for the first time in ages, all the while keeping an eye for Obama's presser with Senate Dems in the afternoon.

And it struck me-I know why I was angry, and probably why others (Markos, Amanda, etc) are angry as well.

For the last ten months, we've all been working together to pass a public option as part of health care. A public option, incidentally, that the President said that he supported.

And yet, there's been no acknowledgement by the President of our efforts, or even of our concerns. None. Zip. Zilch. It's as if he was taking our efforts, and our support, for granted.

At the same time, Obama was bending over backwards to assuage Lieberman's concerns, and Nelson's, and the rest of that sorry gang of turncoats.

Now, granted, these senators hold the balance of power, and I'm not saying they should be ignored. By all means, listen to what they have to say, and adopt their recommendations if you must.

But we're the ones that are going to sell health care reform to our friends and families. We're the ones that supported Obama when everyone else was in Hillary's camp (although, to be fair, many were neutral, for their own reasons).

And all this time, Obama and his advisors have acted as if we're just going to line up behind any old health care reform bill, fired up and ready to go to the beat of another Will.I.Am joint.

As I write this, Howard Dean is gearing up to mobilize his supporters to sink this bill. As I write this, the White House is gearing up to sell women down the river, despite the fact that Nelson lost his vote on his amendment.

Where do we draw the line? When does the White House listen to our concerns? Because from where I'm sitting, it sure doesn't look as if they're going to bother with that. And that's only going to lead to further disillusion.

The true mark of a leader isn't leading your followers where they want to go. It's getting them to follow you willingly where they don't want to go.

So far, Obama's failing spectacularly. He needs to turn it around-and fast.

[Raf Noboa]

To elaborate a bit: Obama needs to turn to us and say something along the lines of, "Listen, I tried to get the public option. I tried, but the math didn't work out, and you know it doesn't work out. All the same, this bill wouldn't be here without your hard work and your dedication. And I promise you, we will take up the public option when we get the chance."

Etc., etc.

Then he needs to turn to Nelson and tell him that he lost. He got a vote on abortion, and he lost it, so he can take his concerns and shove 'em where the sun don't shine.

Instead, what we're getting are lots of thanks to Nelson and Lieberman, who really couldn't give a damn whether health care reform becomes a reality.

[Corvus9]

And another thing (sorry, I have been kind of punchy lately) that I see wrong with Amanda's post is the blame she places on Rahm.

Rahm gets way to much shit from the liberal blogosphere, which I am pretty sure is due to the turf wars they fought with him for credit of the expansion of the Democratic Majority and for perceiving him as not obtaining Reps that were as liberal as possible—basically more of the turf war bullshit that I have been lately decrying.

The fault that Amanda places on Rahm for the recent maneuvers is not his fault, nor is it the president's. It's Harry Reid's and the Activist Base. The activists insisted that Reid put the public option in the base bill, and Reid complied, over the White House's objections. The White House's plan was to get a bill without the public option out of the Senate, then combine if with the House's. This would have left an unamendable Conference bill with some version of the public option. To filibuster this bill would have been to kill health reform, and the hope was that no democrat would want that label on their neck. Thus, even Nelson and Liberman would uphold cloture at that point. Putting the public option in the base bill put it on the chopping block, and while even Nelson was willing to deal, Lieberman decided to go full Sociopath, because those who wanted this the most are the people he hates most in this world. Getting the bill done before the New Year requires acquiescing to his demands, so the White House, through Rahm, decided it was time to cut their losses, or else this would drag on forever.

This wasn't a policy dispute. This was a tactics dispute, and while we will never know if the White House approach would work, we now know that the liberal/Reid approach didn't. Liberals shouldn't blame Rahm when they fuck up.

[Raf Noboa]

Corvus: FWIW, I think you're right. Also, fwiw, I think that the public option was a MacGuffin. That's to say, it's something that was there to divert attention from the larger bill (exchanges, subsidies, so on), and to be used as a throwaway bargaining chip.

Then, what ended up happening was that the larger fight for progressive power became conflated with the fight for the public option. This despite the efforts of Ezra, Matt Y., and others (including myself) to decouple the two.

So it's no wonder that progressives (including myself) are feeling a deep sense of loss. That's to be expected. What's infuriating (and I say this again) is that the White House seems willfully ignorant of this.

They need to tend to their garden, and not be all celebratory about this. There's going to be more than enough chances to celebrate this bill when bill-signing time comes (and they can give Lieberman and Nelson all the pens, for all I care). Right now, the base needs to be attended to, and base opinion leaders in particular.

I don't know why this is so hard to cogitate.

[Corvus9]

Raf, I would advise against seeking positive reinforcement from the president, or taking any of his gladhanding statements without a grain of salt. Everything he does he does in front of his entire audience, the whole country. there is no time and place we he can give secret encouragement, because part of him being effective with the center is by not being too chummy with us. The center holds that stuff against him a lot more than we do. Yeah, that sucks, but that's just the lay of the land. We just have to accept it as a unavoidable consequence of being right all the time.

Also, whenever Obama says something like "Senator Leiberman and Nelson (or, earlier, Grassley) have been very helpful in this process," Those statements should probably be read as "I don't want to choke Senators Grassley, Liberman and Nelson to death for flummoxing my agenda. Honest." Those statements are just a way of trying to keep tempers down on the hill, either to make some compromise, however unlikely, possible, or to not burn bridges they will need in the future, like on Climate Change. Yes, it's demoralizing to hear them, but just keep in mind they are a necessity of our modern political system, and they should be ignored by all people outside the bubble.

The way I see it, the left's job is to just buck up and take the abuse and be the rock of support that is necessary to keep the ball moving. Yeah, it sucks, but really what other choice to we have? I mean, that doesn't result in a hundred thousand unnecessary deaths.

[Raf Noboa]

The way I see it, the left's job is to just buck up and take the abuse and be the rock of support that is necessary to keep the ball moving. Yeah, it sucks, but really what other choice to we have? I mean, that doesn't result in a hundred thousand unnecessary deaths.

Hey, I recognize what you're saying, and don't think that I haven't made some variation of this argument in the last 48 hours.

But if there's one thing that's been bloody obvious, it's the left's unwillingness to just buck up and take the abuse, as illustrated by Nader 2000, for example, and Howard Dean inveighing against health care reform this evening.

You can say that the left, such as it is, in all its disparate forms, should know better. You can also tell Obama that when the left makes threats, they have an annoying habit of carrying through with them, however counterproductive it might be.

That's the flip side of arguing for trophies, however minor, over the next few months. You have to give people a reason to swallow their qualms, and "buck up, pal" just isn't going to cut it.

[Raf Noboa]

I'm reading the comments over at Amanda's, and will likely continue through to the end.

More than the anger, what really strikes me deep is the pervasive disillusionment and despair coursing through the commentary.

As I've mentioned before, that's going to be the biggest obstacle Obama will face in rallying the troops next year. That said, I think that Obama will make a course correction, much as he did several times during the campaign (more than any recent candidate in my short lifetime, Obama was the chief diagnostician and leader of his campaign).

But it's got to be addressed.

[Sir Charles]

Raf,

You've got to try not to lose sleep over this stuff, because it will kill you. For twenty-seven years I have dwelt in the Village and if I couldn't turn it off at a certain point I'd either be a dead man or I would kill someone.

I also fully understand your anger -- shit, I'm angry. If you don't think I don't spend at least a few minutes a day motherfucking Ben Nelson, cursing Joe Lieberman, or wanting to throttle Evan Bayh, well, you don't know me. I yell at my television. A lot. I had to stop watching "Morning Joe" because I really hated beginning the day with the veins on my neck throbbing.

This has been a very frutstrating moment. And I don't think Obama is blameless. I think he has missed some opportunities and been a little too bloodless on occasion. I think a more populist touch would have been welcome, particularly regrading the economy.

Having said that, I think you also have to forgive him for not fully grasping how completely fucked the economy was and not fully understanding that the Republicans were totally insane. I think the bipartisanship gambit was largely that -- a rhetorical device aimed at inviting cooperation but giving him space to denounce the GOP when they went hyper partisan on him.

This is going to be a very difficult time. But I think we need to stick together on the left and try to keep our energy and spirits up. I am pretty confident that if job numbers start rebounding that everything will look pretty different in a hurry.

[Corvus9]

Also, get some kind of healthcare passed. This bill has been like passing a kidney stone. Once it's out we will feel a lot better, I imagine.

[Joe]

Sir C, when you read the comments at Pandagon, try and keep in mind that many of the commenters there are doubly discouraged, doubly disillusioned, and doubly angry because most are not only progressive social democrat types by also committed feminists. While the loss of any public option or medicare expansion hurts most social democrats deeply on an emotional level, there isn't the same emotional attachment to protecting abortion rights among many progressives. Many/most of us are pro-choice, but our attachment to this issue is not as visceral as that of the readers of Pandagon (probably because most liberal men will never face the prospect of an unwanted pregnancy). Liberal feminists not only have to deal with the Lieberman double cross and the disappointment surrounding it, but another gut wrenching experience on the horizon regarding "Stupak Language" in the Senate Bill. I think you have to take some of the really vituperative language with a grain of salt and some sympathy knowing that for feminists, a whole new set of demoralizing disappointments looms when it comes to abortion rights debates in the Senate.

[ari]

Having just returned from an excursion to the comments at Amanda's place, I'm completely unsurprised by what I saw and totally heartened by the fact that I recognized so many of the pseuds over there. The progressive blogosphere is a tiny little pond; even its big fish are, relatively speaking, minnows swimming amidst a very large, very diverse American electorate. Which, in moments like this, is somewhat reassuring.

That said, you shouldn't have lost your temper, Charles. Tsk tsk.

[Sir Charles]

Joe,

I'm shocked that you are not more familiar with my oeuvre :-)

http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2009/11/abortion-rights-are-not-a-tangential-issue.html

As I explained to Raf, I totally understand the anger and frustration, indeed feel it at a very visceral level. I am just opposed to self-defeating anger.

I can think of few things that would give me greater pleasure than kicking Joe Lieberman in the balls, unless it would be to get the chance for a swift follow up on Bart Stupak. Motherfuckers both.

[Sir Charles]

ari,

It's a Boston Irishman thing. You wouldn't understand. :-)

[ari]

Also, even on the fucking West Wing, a show that was as much a progressive wet dream as anything else, the administration constantly had to horse-trade away the perfect for the only-okay. Don't these blog commenters watch television?

[Sir Charles]

ari,

Not nearly enough clearly.

Hey, can you ask Eric to do a post on FDR's disastrous 1938 campaign to purge the anti-New Dealers from the party? I think it would be timely and informative.

[Davis X. Machina]

We're on course to get FDR's economics-of-1937 (return to worrying about deficits) and FDR's politics-of-1938 (taking aim at the conservative side of the coalition, missing, and spending two years fighting off the counter-attacks)

Happy days.

[Raf Noboa]

Charles: Yeah, I dig where you're coming from. And that's good advice to a young buck like me on the losing sleep side.

On a broader level, I think another part of the reason you see this level of anger is because people are grieving. In the case of women, as Joe mentioned, doubly so.

Don't laugh; the last time I saw this level of activity on the netroots was during the Lamont campaign (which I worked on), and before that the Dean campaign.

In each instance, people had a chance to process their emotions and come to terms with the inevitable loss.

Not so much here; in this instance, people were whipsawed on a near-daily basis (the public option lives! no, it's dead! no, it's back! no, it's dead, but we got Medicare expansion! no, Lieberman (!!!) killed it!)

So you're seeing that process play out in light speed:

- Denial (no, we can rescue the public option! Everyone, man the barricades! To arms! To arms!)

- Anger (fuck it! fuck the bill! fuck Obama! let it die!)

- Bargaining (well, what if we try reconciliation? you think, maybe? worth a shot!)

- Depression (fuck it, all these guys are sellouts. I'm never voting again.)

- Acceptance (this bill is better than nothing. We'll get them next year.)

You have to respect this process. You can't harsh on it. And telling someone who's grieving to grow the fuck up and get over it is exactly the wrong thing to do.

Unfortunately, I don't think enough people are going to recognize that, and relationships are going to be unnecessarily damaged.

This is where Obama needs to be less like Spock and more like Kirk.

As for dismissing liberals, Corvus, I disagree. We won 53% of the vote, and Obama's coalition was overwhelmingly made up of urban, youth and minority voters-precisely the people who are being most turned off by the current process.

I'm sick and tired of having to coddle people who refuse to recognize I'm every bit as American as they are. I fucking bled and toiled for this country.

Maybe you don't have Obama talk to liberals, and assuage their concerns, but dammit, someone's got to do it. I distinctly recall that the previous President had no problems assuaging his base, if only with rhetoric, when it needed doing.

[big bad wolf]

raf, i'm going be a cranky guy here and say i think you can and have to harsh the process. this is not therapy; it's life. i am sure you know that as a veteran campaigner. things come at you hard and they change fast. adjusting and moving on are what one does. unloading on others in a public space, not so much.

[Sir Charles]

Raf,

Hang in there buddy. It's a long battle.

What bbw and I are both tryng to say to people -- and he and I pretty much define the generation of crushed liberal dreams that came of age in Reagan's first term, is that you can't overindulge your emotions. You really can't. You've got to remain lucid.

Seriously, I often feel like I was born on the ass end of history -- who the fuck else could decide in 1982 that working for unions was his life's mission. And yet, we keep rolling that rock up the hill and hoping (and working) for better times.

We've at least got a glimmer of light amidst the darkness. In 1984 when St. Ronnie was running up his 49 state win, I couldn't imagine ever having a president I could half way stand.

Having said that, I agree that Obama needs to give a little emotional succor to those who worked their asses off -- myself included. It's overdue.

And the health care debate has, in and of itself, been infuriating -- controlled as it was by mental midgets and unprincipled assholes like Lieberdouche.

Interestingly, when I got home tonight I took the contra position and suggested to my wife that Lieberman was a bridge too far and we should kill the bill. Now my wife has the rare skill of knowing the Hill as well as anyone I've ever met, while also being a zealous, unapologetic reproductive rights advocate. And she just said --"you're crazy. We've got to have a bill. Those assholes know it and it sucks, but we've got to have a bill."

I think she is right notwithstanding her choice of marital partner.

[Corvus9]

As Rahm would say, "the only unacceptable outcome is failure."

[Sir Charles]

DXM,

Nice. I'm wincing.

[Raf Noboa]

Charles: thanks for understanding. Also, thanks for putting up with my massive disappointment and anger initially.

At the end of the day, I agree with your wife: we've got to have a bill, if only so that we have a foundation to build on. The rest will come in time, if not soon enough for any of us.

OK, gotta take a nap now. There's much work to do, and many miles to go.

[arbitrista]

I haven't waded through Amanda's comments, but I think it's a perfectly reasonable concern that "loose" voters - ones who aren't strongly committed to voting - are going to be deeply discouraged by the apparent weakness of the health care bill that's coming out of the Senate. Think about from this perspective: for the first time in a generation Democrats have a President elected with a popular majority with large majorities in Congress and a discredited opposition, and this extremely weak tea is all they get. Whoever's fault it may or may not be, that is going to have very real political consequences. Unlike a lot of the more optimistic "wonky" sort, I don't have hope that the health care bill will get incrementally better over time. After all, what policy has over the last 30 years? No, I think 2009 was Obama - and liberalism's - high water mark for the forseeable future. And we failed.

[Sir Charles]

arbitrista,

I understand the concern about "loose" voters -- that's kind of my point to some degree -- if a lot of young people (usually the most inconstant voters and a key to Obama's victory) get the sense that supporting Obama and the Dems is meaningless, they will sit things out.

I don't think I'd look at the last 30 years as the guidepost to our future. The last thirty years have been a nightmare for liberalism. The next thirty don't have to be.

[big bad wolf]

i would say too that, even over the last 30 years, there have been some existing programs that have been strengthened and made better. (some have been weakened, no doubt). the improvement or expansion of existing programs tends not to be big news, the way a struggle over a new area of legislation. incrementalism that results in real improvement is easier once a structure is in place.

that said, raf, of course it is disappointing and frustrating that we will get so little. but a little is more than none. and encouragment we high information/high activity folks have to learn to live with very little of. i get practice at this every day in my job---at best public defenders are perceived as part of the required furniture of the courtroom, at worst an active nuisance.

[Sir Charles]

I believe Henry Waxman has done an extraordinarily good job over the last three decades of slipping through improvements in various programs more or less under the radar.

[Corvus9]

Kind of curious for a show of hands here: does anybody think that they'll come back for the public option under reconciliation? Or is this all we get for the foreseeable future?

[ikl]

Not too soon - I'm guess that there is not too much appetite to revisit health care again soon among prospective votes 41 through 50 in the Senate or among votes 180-218 in the House. But if the Dems don't get slaughtered in the 2010 elections, I would imagine that there might be in 2011. Or perhaps in 2013.

I think expanded subsidies plus some sort of new revenue source or a Medicare buy in might be more likely than a "public option" of the form on the table now in the House as far as reconciliation goes. Just a guess though. One good thing about passing the bill is that it will create a political constituancy for improvements in options on the exchanges.

[Corvus9]

One thing I am wondering is if they get the insurance reforms passed, but get no credit with it from the public, they might have to go back to the well for reconciliation, just to dig them out of the public relations hole they have spent the last six months digging. It is very easy to make these reforms look bad, even if they lower health costs for the average household, and the popularity of the public option might actually be politically mandated, just to avoid losing seats next November.

[low-tech cyclist]

Corvus9 asks: "Kind of curious for a show of hands here: does anybody think that they'll come back for the public option under reconciliation? Or is this all we get for the foreseeable future?"

I hate to be a wet blanket, Corvus, but I think this is all we get in this Congress. There might be some minor technical improvements attached to another bill next year, but nothing on the scale of even a weak public option or a modest opening of Medicare to those under 65.

I think Matt Yglesias had it right in saying:

But people sometimes write about this as if there are 57 Senate Democrats itching to do a health care reconciliation bill, being held back by Barack Obama and Harry Reid. As best I can tell, though, the reason the Senate leadership keeps taking reconciliation “off the table” is that there’s very little support for it among the caucus. For starters, Kent Conrad, who’d be in charge of a reconciliation bill, seems to be against it. For another thing, there are doubtless many Senators who are much more comfortable being one vote out of 60 or 61 for a bill than they are of being one vote out of 50 for a bill that “Republicans and moderate Democrats” oppose.

[Sir Charles]

Corvus,

I'm going to join the "not in this Congress chorus." In fact I posed this question to someone who does a lot of work on the Hill and she looked at me like I was crazy. Basically her take on it was that the Senate is exhausted (there's a lot of really old dudes there you know) and that if they were going to go the reconciliation route that they would have to jump on it right away in January and there simply isn't the energy or institutional stomach to hop back on this merry go round.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Slightly off topic -- though very relevant to the whole discussion -- is both Obama and the Dewmocratic congress doing good -- but non-headline making -- things. While people are rightly considering the 'big ticket items' the fact is -- as Sir Charles noted 'way back when' -- there have been a lot of surprising small gains.

For example, the budget bill -- in the portion devoted to DC -- has always had a number of 'riders' forbidding them from implementing -- or using federal monies for -- things that some Congressman don't like. For example, medical marijuana or needle exchanges. As "Law Dork" -- Chris Geidner -- writes in Metro Weekly this year's appropriation for the District removes all of these riders, has passed both houses of Congress, and is on Obama's desk.

(There is some question whether individual laws that had already been passed, but that the DC City Council was prohibited from implimenting need to go before Congress for the mandatory 30-day period. As regards to medical marijuana, apparently the bill was passed so long ago that it may need to be rewritten, but Eleanor Holmes Norton, at least, thinks that the overturning of the rider itself means that the City Council does not need further approval.)

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

"Dewmocratic" is not some hidden slap. I just attended the Yglesias Skool of Typing.

[Sir Charles]

Hey Jim,

Yeah, the DC stuff is pretty pleasing. As a resident here it's always a little galling that we do not have control over our own polity.

I think we will also be seeing a lot of adminsitrative stuff that is very favorable in the coming months too -- but to some extent the administration is till filling positions. It's amazing how long some of this stuff takes.

[Joe]

I kind of hope the Bowers/Kos/Hamsher team really tries to push Congress to do the Public Option and/or Medicare Expansion in this Congress. The Congress after 2010 is probably going to be much more conservative (no Dodd, Reid, Bennett, maybe no Gillibrand, maybe no Robert Byrd), and I can't see the Administration spending any political capital to push the public option.

[Sir Charles]

Joe,

I wouldn't write off any of those Dems yet -- it's still really early. Let's see what the economy looks like in another 6 or 7 months. I think that will be the key.

I still think we've got a good shot at NH, Ohio, and Missouri pick ups too.

I am fairly confident that Reid and Durbin really don't feel a need to jump because Bowers, kos, and Hamsher say they should. The Senate is a weirdly insular place and I think the agenda will largely be set by what the caucus writ large has the stomach to take on. I am guessing reconciliation and the public option won't be it. I think if there is one thing that might be electorally driven it will be some sort of jobs bill.

[Joe]

Sir C, Dodd and Reid are goners. I don't say that with any pleasure because I really think Dodd, especially, is a very good senator who made some bad decisions and took money from the wrong friends. I also think Reid is being turned into a scapegoat in regard to the healthcare bill shortcomings and the bank bailouts. But neither of them rise above 45% reelect in any poll I've seen in a long time. There's just no way incumbents can come back from that kind of deficit. Look at Corzine. Although I agree the Administration could care less about liberal bloggers, senators and congressmen do. Grassroots pressure may have an effect in this case with Congress. Also, I think the insurance mandates decoupled from the public option are going to be tremendously unpopular (especially when coupled with the bank bailouts). Forcing everyone to shell over money to an unpopular private industry just creates horrible optics-- Especially after giving hundreds of billions of dollars to banks and big companies which deserved to fail.

[Sir Charles]

Joe,

I think Dodd's battle is uphill -- he is a scapegoat on whom people can vent their anger. It would probably be better if he stepped aside. I think a generic Dem could probably hold the seat much more easily. Still, he has been around a long time and has levels of good will that I don't think Corzine could ever claim. (Although the thing that may kill Dodd in the end was his ill-considered presidential run and his "move" to Iowa -- shit like that really doesn't fly with the home folks.)

Reid is probably only in troupble because of his leadership position. I've posted before on what a mistake it is for the Dems to pick their leaders from marginal states. It paints a big target on them -- ask Tom Daschle. Still, the guy has been around a long time and I think he's got the ability to bounce back.

In both cases, once they have an opponent on whom to go negative their prospects may improve.

What big companies do you think should have been allowed to fail? GM? Chrysler?

As for the banks, I think people on the left are really underestimating how dangerous this situation was. Paulson and Bernanke certainly gave away too much -- and maybe the Obama team should have made more radical changes to what had been started, but the banking crisis was quite real and I suspect had a couple of more big players gone down like Lehman things would have been substantilly worse than they've been, which is bad enough.

[Joe]

I don't think GM, Chrysler, or the big banks should have been allowed to fail for the reasons you set out in regard to the banks, and because of the damage to Michigan and the Midwest state economies for the car companies. But I am saying those companies and banks deserved to fail. The big banks made a series of bad choices and the bankers profited from those failures with big bonuses. You're supposed to go out of business when you make terrible, reckless decisions. GM and Chrysler should have been lobbying on behalf of health care reform a long time ago (to reduce their employee health care costs) and should have been redesigning their lines for fuel efficiency for years instead of fighting CAFE standard increases. Instead, they manufactured Hummers and stood by as the Chamber of Commerce and insurance industry stifled health care reform in the 1990's. I think what was done needed to be done, but that doesn't mean that the car companies and banks didn't deserve to fail.

[Sir Charles]

Joe,

I don't disagree. However, had they failed, the amount of suffering, especially in poor Michigan would be incomprehensible. As it is, I think GM may be showing signs of life. Maybe they can finally get a decent management team in there.

The failure of major U.S. industry to back a single payer system is inexplicable and more proof that economic notions rooted in rational actor theory are a fairytale.

Walter Reuther tried to get the Big Three to do this back in the 1950s and they wouldn't, much to their ultimate harm.

[Corvus9]

Class consciousness is just stronger up top, Sir Charles.

[ikl]

Hate to say it, but Dodd is looking dead. It's Connecticut, so you can't count him out until the end, but this is a fairly easy hold if Blementhal is the Dem nominee instead. If Dodd doesn't improve by February, someone important (Biden?) has to explain this to him very clearly.

Reid seems more alive to me. For one thing, unlike Dodd, it is not clear that he'll have a particularly strong opponent. He also seems like he has been more carefully about taking care of business back home than Dodd has. Of course, with Nevada's unique demographic situation, lots of folks don't know him so well especially in the more Dem leaning areas (i.e. Los Vegas). He also is likely to have a big financial advantage (not so clear that this is the case for Dodd against Simmons).

[Sir Charles]

ikl,

The more I think about it, the more I think that you and Joe are right, that Dodd has to be told to hang it up. It's actually another time when I wish Ted Kennedy was around -- they were very close and I bet Kennedy could have made that pitch. (Although I don't know if he could have been that cold-blooded.)

Anyway, I think he needs to step aside for the greater good. He's actually been a pretty good Senator, but he seems to be damaged beyond repair.