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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (125438)	11/23/2009 1:33:58 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541915

LEVERAGE.... Jonathan Cohn wrote a good lay-of-the-land piece last night on the state of the health care reform fight, noting, among other things, the "unambiguous." "unyielding," and "obstinate" efforts of center-right Democrats undermine the Senate bill. But Cohn's point about reform's champions is the one I keep mulling over. To be sure, Liberals can flex their muscle, too. Bernie Sanders made very clear, in his own statements over the weekend, that he wasn't guaranteeing to give his vote -- particularly if conservative Democrats (and former Democrats) extract even more concessions. Sanders is right to play hardball like this, but, at the end of the day, it's hard to imagine he'd cast the vote to kill health care reform. He simply cares too much about the people even a weakened bill would help. The same goes for Sherrod Brown, who's emerging as a leading voice for progressives. Their interest in helping their fellow man is, in strategic terms, a great weakness. I not only think this is right, I think it's a dynamic that will inevitably shape the debate over the next month (or more). We're dealing with a series of upcoming negotiations in which conservative Dems' indifference gives them leverage. In other words, Lieberman, Nelson, & Co. don't much care if this once-in-a-generation opportunity implodes, while reform advocates care very much. These rather obvious bargaining positions create a playing field that is anything but level. Put it this way: imagine there's a big meeting with every member of the Democratic caucus in both chambers. You stand at the front of the room and make a presentation: "If health care reform falls apart after having come this far, tens of millions of Americans will suffer; costs will continue to soar; the public will perceive Democrats as too weak and incompetent to act on their own agenda; the party will lose a lot of seats in the midterms and possible forfeit its majority; and President Obama will have suffered a devastating defeat that will severely limit his presidency going forward. No one will even try to fix the dysfunctional system again for decades, and the existing problems will only get worse." For progressive Democrats, the response would be, "That's an unacceptable outcome, which we have to avoid." For conservative Democrats, the response would be, "We can live with failure." This necessarily affects negotiations. One contingent wants to avoid failure; the other contingent considers failure a satisfactory outcome. Both sides know what the other side is thinking. Yes, progressive Democrats can force the issue, keep the bill intact, and force Nelson, Landrieu, Lieberman, and Lincoln to kill the legislation, in the process making clear exactly who was responsible for the debacle. But that's cold comfort -- the goal isn't to position center-right Dems to take the blame for failure; the goal ostensibly is to pass a bill that will do a lot of good for a lot of people. The push for more "compromise" isn't going to be pretty. —Steve Benen 10:00 AM

To: Dale Baker who wrote (125438)	11/23/2009 6:13:36 PM
From: KonKilo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541915

The winger strategy of fouling the nest so throughly that not only does the nation become ungovernable, it also becomes so buried in crap that no one can see through it, has become clear. The question now is how best to counter the nihilism. 23 Nov 2009 03:51 pm What Is The Malkin Clique So Excited About? andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com Nate Silver sighs: [Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit] is talking to his colleagues about making a prettier picture out of his data, and not about manipulating the data itself. Again, I'm not trying to excuse what he did -- we make a lot of charts here and 538 and make every effort to ensure that they fairly and accurately reflect the underlying data (in addition to being aesthetically appealing.) I wish everybody would abide by that standard. Still: I don't know how you get from some scientist having sexed up a graph in East Anglia ten years ago to The Final Nail In The Coffin of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Anyone who comes to that connection has more screws loose than the Space Shuttle Challenger. And yet that's literally what some of these bloggers are saying! The key to these bloggers' mentality is simply to find some tiny thing and focus all attention on that in order to persuade people that the bigger reality is untrue or irrelevant. This is not an argument; it's a technique. It's a technique to persuade people not to examine all the evidence, since the source of the evidence - secular humanist scientists - are evil suspects and against God and in favor of making your gas bill higher. You can't actually persuade people that way, of course. But you can fortify their resistance to examining all the evidence. Permalink :: TrackBacks (0) ::

To: Dale Baker who wrote (125438)	11/23/2009 6:24:31 PM
From: KonKilo	Respond to of 541915

23 Nov 2009 01:51 pm Why I Remain Bullish On Obama andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com He's taking the usual slew of tactical hits as his opponents try every single line of attack and pound every day, squeezing every ounce of agitprop from the news cycle. His numbers are gliding downward (although not by much), his foreign policy gains are structural and have as yet no tangible results, a critical Mid-East ally, Israel, is doing all it can to destroy his credibility with the Muslim world, his health insurance reform is still not passed, the debt is simply staggering (and the GOP's willingness to blame it all on him is as shameless as it can be convincing to those who know nothing and think less), etc etc. And yet I remain absurdly confident that he is on the right path. Why? This rare moment of Beltway perspective helps explain: No pain, no gain? In a way, last week epitomized President Obama’s 10 months in office. There was lots of seemingly short-term pain — members of Congress calling for his Treasury secretary to resign, more P.R. snafus over the stimulus, the chattering class criticizing his Asia trip, and his approval rating dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup’s poll. But there also was long-term gain — the Senate on Saturday moving one step closer to passing health-care reform and a growing economic consensus, via the New York Times, that the stimulus is working despite all the P.R. headaches it has caused. Indeed, this short-term pain/long-term gain for Team Obama occurred during the presidential campaign. For all the hits they took (Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, “bitter,” the PUMAs, Bill Ayers, Landstuhl, even Joe the Plumber), they were always working toward the prize (270-plus electoral votes). And remember this: If you simply judged the last three months of the 2008 campaign by which campaign “won” the daily news cycle, McCain came out ahead. That’s perhaps the best example of the short-term/long-term. I think Obama's handling of the economic crisis has been about as good as it reasonably gets; I think his handling of Iran is equally adroit; I find his relentless emphasis on reality in Afghanistan a good sign; I suspect the only way to get health insurance reform is the way he has attempted; I think the stimulus was necessary and sufficient; and I think unemployment will be coming down when he runs for re-election. On those issues I differ with him on - accountability for war crimes and civil rights - I can see the cool and cunning logic of his moves so far. The depth and complexity of the problems he faces remain immense. Perhaps he will prove incapable of surmounting them. But his persistence matters here. And we are not yet a year in. He is strategy; his opponents are tacticians. And in my view, their tactics are consigning them to a longer political death than if they had taken a more constructive course. I could be wrong on all this, of course. History makes fools of us all. But this is my take as of now. And my relief at his being there remains profound. Permalink :: Trackback (0) :: Sphere It! ::