State Of The Union Set, Outlook Still Grim For Coakley

Maybe this will result in the filibuster finally being killed and some decent legislation being passed. Hopefully the Dems know if they accomplish nothing after Brown is elected they will never see an electoral majority again.

Hopefully if she loses it will be close enough that the challenges, courtroom antics, recounts and whatnot can be stretched out until fall. Minnesota went on for 7-8 months didn’t it? If the margin precludes dragging it out…well, sh!t happens.

I hope the Republicans realize that two can play the obstructionist game. Of course, should they gain control in the future and a democratic minority do the same to them, as they are doing now, they would scream like stuck pigs and question the Left’s patriotism.

Michael, Brown winning is an upsetting thought to me. Worse than that will be the days of speculation by the bobbleheads and “journalists” in the traditional media about what this all means. Just as they declared Dems dead after 92 and Reps dead after 08, they will be saying that this is the death knell for the Dems. Obama will not be able to accomplish anything else this term. His reelection is doomed. Health care reform is dead….
The progrostinations will go from one villager empty head to another. Cliches will arise and cause all of you to froth at the mouth and admire each others wisdom. And, of course you will be wrong.
Michael and Joe try to have an original thought on this election.

should they gain control in the future and a democratic minority do the same to them…

…then a bloc of New Democrat centrists led by Ben Nelson will join up with the Republicans in order to proclaim their promise not to ever filibuster.
.
Remember the “Gang of 14″?
.
Until we get rid of the New Democrats in the Democratic party and especially the leadership, it will always be this way.

SZ: Truer words were never said. I’m not much in favor of purity tests because it always brings to mind the Nazis or Joseph McCarthy, but I would like to see the blue dogs lap up a bowl of anti-freeze (or else lose in November).

I’m not much in favor of purity tests because it always brings to mind the Nazis or Joseph McCarthy
.
That’s why the New Democrats love to say “purity test”, because that’s the image they’re going for.
.
Listen, if you know that some politicians are virtually always going to make ineffective or just plain policy that leads to all Democrats having to live down that failure, and you know that the reason that these politicians consistently act against the interests of the American people is because they believe in Third Way centrism (just like Republicans believe in conservatism), then it’s not a crime to want to stop New Democrats from screwing up our government.
.
It’s not “ideological purity”, it’s being able to clearly see cause and effect between Third Way centrism and bad government, and then having the determination to act on that knowledge.
.
Don’t let them have a free pass to use pejoratives like “purity test”. Call it what it is: a “competence test.”

That should read:
.
if you know that some politicians are virtually always going to make ineffective or just plain bad policy that leads to all Democrats having to live down that failure…

Never fear dear liberals. Perhaps the election of Scott Brown signals a return to more bipartisan work within the Senate. A return to more sane and rational legislation. Perhaps a health care reform bill that is truly, health care reform.

MS, doesn’t “plurality” mean “more than any other group, but less than a majority”? I think you misused the word there.
.
And as for “hostile” Republicans–well, let’s not forget what his words were when Boehner approached him about ideas for the “stimulus”–”I won”.

stuart it looks like it only takes 1 or 2 Senators to hold up the business of the nation. Any Democrat who cooperated with the Republicans, after their mass obstruction of this president, would only be painting themselves as a weakling. My guess is we are in for decades of gridlock.

newfreedom,
That’s way too logical for liberals on this blog.
They believe they are so right in their beliefs that change must be done by liberals alone. The idea that some conservatives might have some ideas that could make HCR and some other policies even better is totally foreign to libs.
They don’t understand that the best team is always made up of people with diverse talent and ideas. That’s how you win in the world sports, and life in general.

Any Democrat who cooperated with the Republicans, after their mass obstruction of this president, would only be painting themselves as a weakling.

You and I might think that, but we’re not centrists.
.
We’re not the kind of people who would proudly put out this ( link to collaborator ideologues’ press release ):

DLC | New Dem Of The Week | June 1, 2005
.
New Dem of the Week: Ben Nelson
.
U.S. Senator, Nebraska
.
When a bipartisan group of 14 Senators gathered last week in the Capitol, they struck a blow against polarization and a short-sighted effort to radically change the U.S. Senate. Their compromise on judicial nominations, temporary though its effects may be, represented a triumph of common sense. Seven members from each party came to a genuine and sound agreement and they did it in the midst of a nearly poisonous atmosphere that had been threatening to grow still worse. In doing so, they prevented the Senate’s Republican leadership from changing the chamber’s rules to require up-or-down majority-wins votes on every nominee to the federal judiciary and averted a looming “nuclear option.”
.
Chief among the deal’s architects was Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson. In his success, he revealed both a respect for bipartisanship and a faith in sane politics over partisan orthodoxy. For weeks leading up to the impending confrontation, he worked quietly to cobble together and bolster up a group of leaders who crossed party lines and advocated a reasoned stand down.

The New Democrats have what appears to us as a bizarre fetish, but is actually a real, honest-to-god political philosophy that makes them compromise at the cost of policy.
.
Centrist ideology says that the politician who defies “partisan orthodoxy” and screws over liberal Democrats is a noble, courageous individual. They deliberately make bad policy because of this freakish ideology, just the way that the neo-conservatives do the opposite of the smart thing whenever they can.
.
Because they live in such a bubble, reinforced daily by the out-of-touch national political press corps, and because the Democratic party operatives always hold out the Tea Partiers as the people we must always vote against no matter what, they get away with this fantasy.
.
Maybe, when we stop hating the popular right so much, we can then get around to realizing that the centrists will always do the wrong thing for the country, too, and then they’ll pay a political price for their weird ideology.

When one set of people think the government should build a bridge, and another set of people think the government should stay out of the bridge-building business, compromise is the truly insane position to take.
.
It takes a complete fool or an ideologue to reach the conclusion that the best policy would be for the government to build half a health care bridge for twice the money.

Stuart the Democrats will just have to take a page out of the Republican playbook and make sure not a single Democrat ever breaks rank, to vote with the Republicans.

3xfire3: nice generalization. Do this: list some ideas conservatives have promoted to improve HCR. Seriously. Almost everything I have seen has been criticizing what the Dems have done. Fine–that’s the reason we have a two-party system. But aside from tort reform, what have the Republicans offered? And Obama said in his address to Congress that he would welcome Republican ideas, including tort reform. He said this on national television. The response? Joe Wilson shouting “You lie!” and Republican senators like Grassley talking about death panels and killing grandma.
.
newfreedomblog, I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not. “[A] return to more bipartisan work within the Senate”? Scott Brown must be the Messiah if he’s going to pull that off. Seriously? Are you saying that the Republicans have been bipartisan? What, bad old Nancy Pelosi just kicked them in the teeth and slammed the door shut?
.
The Dems have dithered and the centrists have squandered a lot. I have real issues with the Democratic leadership. But the Republicans have united in a solid block against Obama, against anything that might give him any kind of legislative victory. Anything. They’ve put pure politics ahead of even barely decent governance. And now they have the audacity to sell the idea that they’ve been shut out of the process by the Dems. It would actually be impressive in terms of discipline if it weren’t so callow and cynical.

Not that I know anything, but my prediction if the Dems lose their 58 + 2:

No health reform for at least the next 20-30 years. Probably longer, because now health reform will really be the new third rail of politics. Nobody will want to touch this. (Too bad, I kind of liked the idea that Americans could buy health insurance without being tethered to their current employer until the end of time.)

No climate change legislation. (Possibly irrelevant, because I think it will take a clear global catastrophe before we will do anything about climate change. When Florida is under water, we may start to act.)

The people who think it will be done in reconciliation or by killing the fillibuster are being naive, I suspect. If the Senate had the will to do that, they would have the will to pass the legislation in the first place.

But aside from tort reform

To be fair, the GOP also wants to kill off employer-provided coverage. That counts as an “idea” of sorts.

SZ, this is where I have a problem. What is the way forward? I’ve heard politics defined as the art of compromise. You argue that the centrist Democrats compromise almost compulsively, and do so at the expense of good policy. But are you suggesting that compromise is always bad? Because then we’ll just have competing groups based on pure ideology. It would be like Congress were run by both the Hitler Youth and the Young Pioneers, or the SS and the Red Guards. What’s the alternative? Where is the fine line between creating good (not perfect, but good) policy/legislation and becoming an ideological or corporate whore?

The people who think it will be done in reconciliation or by killing the fillibuster are being naive, I suspect. If the Senate had the will to do that, they would have the will to pass the legislation in the first place.
.
Unless you think a lot of this has been political theater. Going with reconciliation from the get-go would seem like real “closed door” politics. People are upset at what’s going on now, with the final days of HCR taking place behind closed doors. So we’ve had a real public process. Which is another reason why I think complaints that Reid and Pelosi have “shut the Republicans out” are so contemptible. Even if they have, it’s after months of trying to entice GOP cooperation or even intelligent debate. Think about that: this stuff has been debated for months. (Decades, actually.) And where are we now? Watching the Democratic leadership panicking because they backed an awful candidate in Massachusetts and some right-wing clone could potentially win and scuttle HCR.

No health reform for at least the next 20-30
.
To me, this statement rests on the assumption that we can take another 30 years without reform.
.
I don’t think we can. That’s what drove this big effort in the first place, the fact that health care is more or less unsustainable in its current form here in the US.
.
I would say it’s off the plate for two to four more years, until everyone smacks their heads and says, “oh yeah, we got to get this done.”

Of course, I may need to take off my rose-colored glasses here.

sacred: Haha! I sent the very same comment/question into Josh at TPM today!
.
Heck, even if it buys Reid just another month, maybe then he can get his sorry ducks in a row and pass this thing…

Stuart is right. “Centerist” Dems have caved to the Republicans time and again. Filabusters did not work or were not used be Dems when the Reps had control. Witness or Supreme Court which has been taken over by the extreme right. Witness the Bush tax cuts. Witness Medicare part D.
The problem is that there are corporist tools in the Dem party that are more than happy to join with the Reps to keep their K Street constituents happy.
We know there are no moderated Republicans left in the Senate (Snowe and Collins are hardly moderate). There are few liberal Senators left. Boxer, Sanders, Whitehouse, and Brown are a few that might be classified as liberal. But they are far out numbered by the Feinsteins, Nelsons, Bayhs, Lincolns, Pryors, etc. These are corporate tools.

Will someone tell me what the Republican party has done in the last 10 years that was to the benefit of the middle class and poor?
Forget about keeping us safe from terrorists.
I am talking about jobs, education, tangibles that effect our daily lives.

Art, Social Security has been the “third-rail of politics” for a simple reason: It is extremely popular. HCR, in principle, remains extremely popular…just not the specific legislation being proposed by the Democrats.
.
The idea that HCR would be dead for 20-30 years if it fails now is simply a bogeyman that has been used to scare liberals into capitulating to corporate demands. There is no basis for believing it.
.
If HCR fails this year, are your premiums going to come down? Are prescription medications going to be cheaper? Of course the answers are “no.”
.
People are going to continue to demand solutions to these problems. Politicians won’t have the luxury of kicking the can down the road for another 30 years. How many politicians do you think will get elected or re-elected by failing to promise to address the issue? Or by failing to deliver on promises to pass HCR?
.
No, if HCR dies this year it will be revived in 1-5 years by whichever party feels like staying in power for more than 5 minutes.

First, thanks for reading my arguments.

You argue that the centrist Democrats compromise almost compulsively, and do so at the expense of good policy.

I’m arguing that members of the New Democrat Coalition compromise ideologically, which means compulsively in practice. They do so the same way that conservatives push tax cuts as a solution to every problem. It’s ideological.

But are you suggesting that compromise is always bad? Because then we’ll just have competing groups based on pure ideology. It would be like Congress were run by both the Hitler Youth and the Young Pioneers, or the SS and the Red Guards.

No, I’m not suggesting that compromise is always bad. Of course not. I’m actually suggesting that we, the left, compromise with members of the popular right upon occasion to stop the centrists from doing the wrong thing. Since the Paul-ites want to end the occupations, and are as pro-Bill of Rights as we are, it might be possible for the left to temporarily ally against the center when they continue foreign adventures or spy on American citizens without warrants.
.
It is possible and desirable for liberals to compromise with conservatives when it comes to limiting the power of the state, or on specific legislation (Wyden-Bennett is an excellent health care reform bill in the Senate, and is co-sponsored by a Republican). It’s a centrist lie that we are incapable of compromise. We just don’t satisfy our ideological impulses that way.

Because then we’ll just have competing groups based on pure ideology. It would be like Congress were run by both the Hitler Youth and the Young Pioneers, or the SS and the Red Guards.

That’s what it’s like now, except it’s the neo-conservatives and the Third Way centrists. Liberals are reduced to shutting up about good policy for political reasons, because they’ve been successfully outmaneuvered by the New Democrat Coalition time and again. The centrists say “It’s either us or the neo-conservatives, take your pick, liberals. It could always be worse than us.” Unfortunately, as this health care process, the ineffective stimulus, the bank bailout and the escalation of foreign occupations demonstrate, it’s not that it’s worse, it’s just a different bad.

What’s the alternative? Where is the fine line between creating good (not perfect, but good) policy/legislation and becoming an ideological or corporate whore?

The alternative is promulgating an understanding amongst Democrat rank and file, and the population generally that the Third Way bloc has a distinct political philosophy, and that leads to predictable (bad) results in government. That way ordinary people can understand what their choices are, and be able to demand more options than just conservative or Third Way. It means Democrats can finally solve the problem of having a tiny minority of ideologically centrist politicians running an overwhelmingly liberal party (that represents major population centers in the country with left-of-center voters). It means that liberals can get on with solving the divide between “benevolent welfare/social justice” liberals and “Social Security/trust-busting” liberals.
.
Obviously it’s not possible to create perfect legislation in the majority of circumstances, but “perfect vs. good” isn’t what we’re talking about. It’s “Third Way vs liberal.” It’s “NAFTA vs no NAFTA.” It’s “Health Insurance bailout vs Health Care Reform.” When you adopt the center’s “perfect vs good” frame, you blur the distinction between the different political philosophies, and their resulting policy. It’s like saying that the Bush Administration’s abstinence-only policy or “health savings accounts” or Social Security privatization isn’t perfect, but it’s good. It’s not. It’s just different policy.
.
The alternative is being the alternative to conservative policy and messaging, instead of leaving it up to the centrists to fail again and again, as they have for two decades, now.

Well said, sqr1.

Another question would be:
.
“What have Republicans and movement conservatives done in the last 30 years to convince middle class and poor voters that they’re sympathetic to the interests of those populations?“

Perhaps if Brown gets elected, we might actually see someone have to filibuster rather than get away with just threatening one. Filibustering isn’t easy. I would love to see Republicans filibustering. It would certainly put a face to their incessant and petulant obstructionism.

“It takes a complete fool or an ideologue to reach the conclusion that the best policy would be for the government to build half a health care bridge for twice the money.”

.
I am glad you agree with me, and Obama, Pelosi and Reid are wrong.
.
Now, perhaps our elected representatives can put a bill together which does resolve the health care problems, without selling our souls to the devil.

The problem with compromise is that, much like bipartisanship, it’s a noble idea in theory, but in practice, it usually always boils down to ‘Democrats must cater to the Republicans’ every whim or else.’

And many Third Way Dems and moderates are all too eager to compromise on good legislation even when it’s not necessary, because their need to live up to the ‘bipartisan’ ideal. However, as we’ve seen, many times all this does is give the Republicans a carte blanche to obstruct endlessly without ever having to truly put forth ideas of their own. And centrist dems, without fail, will side against their more liberal colleagues because the result ‘wont be bipartisan’.

I don’t see how breaking the so-called ‘supermajority’ will actually force Republicans into filibustering. All this will do is make Dems even more gunshy into tossing anything that they can’t get 60 on and watering down things to the Republicans’ whims even further, because even if they never really had a supermajority in practice, the psyche effect on the spineless idiots that comprise the Democratic Leadership in Congress will buckle every freakin’ time.

They’re not spineless.
.
They got the legislation they wanted and think is best for the country.

If HCR fails this year, are your premiums going to come down? Are prescription medications going to be cheaper? Of course the answers are “no.”
.
One could have said the same thing in 1993.
.
But I also think that the process so far has not just been political kabuki, and that Democrats have actually tried to reform health care against the concerted efforts of the GOP, a handful of Centrist Dems, and Joe Lieberman. (And yes, the Dems also f##ed up big time, as per their usual MO.)
.
Politicians won’t have the luxury of kicking the can down the road for another 30 years.
.
But does that belief rests on the underlying assumption that the United States will, when push come to shove, work to resolve its own problems? That once things really really get bad, then we’ll see some movement on the issue?
.
Whereas my view is that the United States system of governing is fundamentally broken, and that we’ve lost the ability to respond to systemic crises. I think it’s quite possible for the health care system to collapse altogether, as we drift into 2d-world status.
.
How many politicians do you think will get elected or re-elected by failing to promise to address the issue
.
I think the political calculation will be that it’s safer to make vague promises and do nothing, than yo take the risk of trying to push through actual detailed legilsation.
.
But I hope that you guys are right and I’m wrong! And if I am, I’ll be the first to admit it.

If they got the legislation they wanted, why were there fights about it? Why did Cantwell introduce a public option ammendment? More kabuki?
.
I mean given that they need 60 votes under current rules, and they really only have at most 57 or 58 in favor of reform, with some bribery to get the last couple of votes.
.
The blue dogs drive me #####ing insane, but it’s not like the entire Senate caucus is comprised of blue dogs. It’s the tyranny of the supermajority.
.
I dunno – maybe the Dems really do need to get a sharp stick in the eye before anything meaningful happens. All I know is, the Palin administration will not be an enjoyable four years!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/18/AR2010011803982.html?hpid=topnews
The above is an article about the abuse of phone monitoring during the Bush administration by the FBI.
There was an article today in Harpers that addressed torture at Gitmo.
Everyday new information comes out about the break down in Constitutional protection that happened during the Bush years. Unfortunately it was done with the cooperation of a docile press and a group of gutless Democrats.
No one has answered my question on what the Reps have done for the poor and middle class during the last 10 years.
Better yet, as Stuart asked how did middle class Americans become bamboozled into believing the Reps were working for them.

SZ, thanks so much for replying. Lots to think about here.

Thomas Frank’s book makes an argument:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_the_Matter_with_Kansas%3F.

Change, you say? The change became concrete when Barry Obama spent 72 hours reading My Pet Golf Cart on Maui instead of doing his day job.

He will now be running faster to the “middle” than Kobe Bryant against the Spurs.

I doubt America will believe any more of his Chavezian head fakes.

Hope & Hemp Huts!