Morning Must Reads: Moment of Victory

Thanks to Northern Iowa our brackets are shot to Hades.

“David Sanger writes in the New York Times that Obama succeeded at reshaping American social welfare — a feat the last two president’s failed to accomplish — but at the cost of his promise to overcome partisanship in Washington.”
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He tried at the expense of the Bill. I have heard enough of this, the GOP lost, ask me if I care .

Martha Coakley avoids witness protection program.

‘Obama succeeded…but at the cost of his promise to overcome partisanship in Washington.’

Obama never had a chance. The NY Times is reporting that McConnell prepared and committed the republicans to the obstruction strategy two weeks BEFORE Obama’s inauguration (link).

wrt Sanger, I lost my Rolex on the way into work this morning and I was really bummed until I remembered I never had a Rolex. You can’t lose something that was never there, and if Obama has realized this, his legislative efforts will go a lot smoother. I also wouldn’t be surprised if more Republicans start splitting off from their failed leadership in coming votes, but we’ll see.

…but at the cost of his promise to overcome partisanship in Washington.
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Yes, the Republicans roundly defeated Obama’s ‘War on Partisanship”. Way to go wingnuts! Chalk one up for the…ummm…well, ah…

“–Ross Douthat and Matthew Continetti note that Democratic health reform is now testable in both fiscal and human terms. They both predict time will vindicate their objections to the legislation.”
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You can not know what is down the road unless you take it. Sitting on your hands, being timid, afraid to move, not taking a risk never accomplished a thing.
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A leap in life expectancy? It doesn’t work that way, so they will use that to object to the passage of this Bill.

Great link, thanks.

Thanks for the link. I saw this story last week and it’s a good one. From the story:

“We came in shellshocked,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. “There was sort of a feeling of ‘every man for himself.’ Mitch early on in this session came up with a game plan to make us relevant with 40 people. He said if we didn’t stick together on big things, we wouldn’t be relevant.”

These bunch of clowns have only ever cared about power and doing the bidding of their corporate sponsors. If that isn’t abundantly clear by now, you’re not paying attention.

At the cost of what?
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One less bedtime story for the kids, in my opinion.
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FYI, the stock market isn’t having a problem with the proceedings either…

Adam Sorensen:
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David Sanger isn’t much of a political analyst if he uncritically regurgitates Pete Beinart’s DLC nonsense.

“Let’s face it, he’s failed in the effort to be the nonpolarizing president, the one who can use rationality and calm debate to bridge our traditional divides,” said Peter Beinart, a liberal essayist who is publishing a history of hubris in politics. “It turns out he’s our third highly polarizing president in a row. But for his liberal base, it confirms that they were right to believe in the guy — and they had their doubts.”

If Sanger really believes that Pete Beinart is a “liberal,” then perhaps he needs to be introduced to fellow Times columnist and (at least in Sanger’s calculations) Pol Pot follower Paul Krugman.
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Pete Beinart is not a liberal, Pete Beinart is a centrist, regardless of how Beinart chooses to describe himself today. Beinart is remarkable solely for possessing the effrontery to redefine liberalism in his own DLC image, as opposed to the rest his ideological brethren who are still falling over themselves to run away from the word “liberal.”
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A clue to that fact would be in Beinart’s revealing characterization of the Republicans’ decision to maintain party discipline on the health care vote. Pete maintains that Obama “ failed in the effort to be the nonpolarizing president,” instead of considering that such a holy centrist grail might be impossible, even idiotic to attempt, given the radical rightism of a Republican party accountable to its base. For centrists like Beinart, bipartisansism can never fail, it can only be failed.
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That Sanger defines the American left as that which Beinart represents says a great deal about a willingness to put ideology above an accurate description of the policy choices facing the American people. It’s almost like the Republican right’s attempts to move discourse rightward by dishonestly labeling the bipartisan fetishists who constitute establishment Democrats as “socialists.”
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Here’s Beinart in The Daily Beast revealing his DLC sympathies in more explicit fashion (link to Beinart’s weepy blathering):

In the late 1980s, [Third Way Democrats] responded to [the election of Reagan] by creating the Democratic Leadership Council, which pushed the party to the right on welfare, taxes, trade, crime and defense. They claimed vindication when a president of the DLC, Bill Clinton, became president, and claimed double vindication when, after Clinton pushed for universal health care and got creamed in 1994, he won reelection two years later by triangulating against the liberals in his own party.
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For this generation of Democrats, which includes Al From, Mark Penn, Joe Lieberman, William Galston, Elaine Kamarck, Dick Morris, Ed Koch, Jane Harman, Evan Bayh, and to some extent Bill and Hillary Clinton, being a liberal is like walking past a bear. Move cautiously and reassuringly and the bear will purr contentedly. But make any sudden or threatening gestures, and you’ll be mauled because, fundamentally, the bear distrusts liberals. As Galston and Kamarck wrote in their famed 1989 essay “The Politics of Evasion”—a document that helped define the “don’t scare the bear” wing of the party—Democrats can pass liberal programs “but these programs must be shaped and defended within an inhospitable ideological climate.” To pretend that the American people are liberal at heart is to evade political reality, with devastating results.
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By the late 1990s, “don’t scare the bear” Democrats pretty much dominated Washington.
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Whether health care reform passes or not, Obama has embraced polarization over triangulation. He has chosen Karl Rove’s politics of base mobilization over Dick Morris’s politics of crossover appeal, with consequences not merely for how he campaigns for Democrats in 2010, but for he campaigns for himself in 2012. And that’s a disaster for “don’t scare the bear” Democrats whether Obamacare passes or not. The reason is that the DLC wing of the party is much more top-down than the MoveOn wing. It has always wielded influence primarily through elected leaders rather than grassroots activists. But today, Obama is the only leader in the Democratic Party who really matters. As the retirement of Evan Bayh illustrates, there are few nationally prominent DLC-aligned politicians left. (The one person who could have rallied that faction of the party against Obama is now his secretary of state). The DLC wing’s best hope for relevance, therefore, was that Obama himself would restrain the party’s base, that his White House would nurture a new generation of centrist candidates.
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That hope is now gone. From top to bottom, Democrats have decided to bet the party’s future on the belief that Americans prefer bold liberals to cautious ones. Now it’s up to the bear.

Sanger should be questioning Beinart’s analysis, not accepting it as the gospel.
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Beyond the shameful, laughable description of the Third Way Democrats in the DLC as “liberals” –an inaccuracy to rival Glenn Beck’s “communist-fascist” characterization– the ultimate point Beinart implies is that real liberals, the netroots, etc, will be rightfully to blame when health care reform proves not to be popular enough with the American people to save the Democrats in November.
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Beinart’s assertion, that Obama somehow chose the activist base of the Democratic party over establishment, centrist Democratic leadership, is ludicrous on its face. Perhaps someday he will explain in greater detail how enacting (by Obama’s own description) the Dole-Daschle health care reform plan was a concession to the popular left. Maybe Beinart thinks that “f*cking retards” is a term of endearment.
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David Sanger’s “analysis” amounts to the reiteration of the dubious claims of an admitted member of the DLC wing of the Democratic party, and yet you’ve listed Sanger’s piece here to day as a “must read.”
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Why, Adam Sorensen?
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What specifically about Sanger’s shockingly uninformed and uncritical analysis seemed “must read” to you?

Where are all of the nutters this morning? Are they all in bunkers planning for Michael Steele’s “end of the Republic”? Shouldn’t they be here predicting doom in November for the Democrats and the loss of our liberty? Ah say I love the smell of fearful trolls in the morning!

What did I miss?
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Republican Senator John McCain said Monday morning that Democrats have not heard the last of the health care debate, and said he was repulsed by “all this euphoria going on.”

I am repulsed by this guy!

I’ve noticed an entertaining habit the gopers have developed when they’re asked about bipartisanship. They always cite the bipartisan votes that happened when they were in power as reasons to return them to power. The argument seems to be that to get bipartisanship you have to have dems voting for republican legislation. Never the other way around.

Well, you have to remember that John McCain has to either give up the fight to marry his horse, or health-care reform for the American people. It’s a matter of priorities.

I’m not supposed to be happy I can immediately enroll my eldest son in my plan?
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May John McCain toast my heart over an open campfire on a long, loooooooong stick!

His his horse is also repulsed by him

I have a few observations I’ve discussed with my brolaw yesterday:
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1. The GOP has lost it’s single biggest weapon to club Obama with.
2. As time goes on, and others realize that commies and socialists and gun-snatchers haven’t appeared, howling at their door, and begin to hear of the benefits to their friends and neighbors (and possibly themselves) that will accrue, the popularity of the action will rise.
3. The GOP is now pretty much bereft of anything they can use to keep their base in a state of hydrophobia.
4. With the Bunning Fiasco, the last few weeks represent a watershed. Workable strategies now exist for Dems to take the offensive and begin work on a number of issues that the GOP will find to be very unhealthy, politically, to oppose.
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So if the Dems can nurse and grow this backbone they seem to have finally located, things will get a bit brighter in the future.

I was going to try to take on that loss of bipartisanship cr@p, but stuart did it so well that I’ll stay here on the sidelines and cheer him.

but at the cost of his promise to overcome partisanship in Washington

Oh, barf.

And he was so mean to those nice Republicans, I declare it’s a shame.

The Rolex analogy works.
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‘I also wouldn’t be surprised if more Republicans start splitting off from their failed leadership in coming votes, but we’ll see.’
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I would be surprised. I hope you’re right, though. You’d think the gopers would have learned something after shutting down the government and then impeaching Clinton. But they didn’t.

John McWhat? Oh, you mean the guy who suspended his campaign to state that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong”? The guy who was tricked by Paulson into believing that the bank bailouts were not for banks at all? The guy who picked Cariboo Babe as his replacement for the most powerful job in the world? The guy who run more planes into the ground than he owns houses? You’re talking about the chairman of the grumpy old senators caucus? Lindsay’s and Joe’s best friend? The only living dinosaur that both lost against Bush AND Obama?

I almost can hear him between now and November: “Guess who brought you universal health care, ended the worst abuses of insurance companys and made it possible that kids can stay on their parents plan until they are 26 … THAT one.
And guess who voted against it ….”

John Sidney “Chickens**t” McCain. Soon to be former Senator from the great state of Ari(an)zona.

More from Mr. Grumpy –

“There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year,” McCain said during an interview Monday on an Arizona radio affiliate. “They have poisoned the well in what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/88285-mccain-dont-expect-gop-cooperation-the-rest-of-this-year

Not sure how we will be able to tell the difference after all the cooperation thus far.

Agreed. For once I miss rusty. Is he packing his bags for Costa Rica. Thanks to Rush, will Costa Rica be the new Galt’s Gulch, not Colorado? My condolences to the locals down there if true. You guys are going to get an unusual wave of expatriates.

To respond to myself…
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If bipartisan means that everyone agrees with everyone else, then bipartisanship is anti-American.
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If bipartisan means you discuss issues rationally and try to reach a compromise, then Obama practiced bipartisanship.

“500 words” –

Food, finally! The Obama team applauds Amy as she arrives with trays of cupcakes and cookies. They think she’s in tears (literally) from appreciation …and they’re right, although she whispers softly to herself, “Wow, only two or so guys from the swamp commentariat regularly show me any kindness.”

Good god, that Sanger piece is awful. He absolves the Republicans of all blame for their blind obstructionism, ignores the painful, painful and repeated attempts to reach across the aisle only to get called everything short of the n-word, and definitely more than enough calls of ‘traitor’…and yet it’s Obama’s failure because he couldn’t be ‘post-partisan’.

Is Sanger doing some of that ‘Beck Beat’ reporting that the NYT promised or something?

more “500 words” –

The Obama team wildly cheer just after the video call from the Costa Rican ambassador. They learn that a wave of obnoxiously rich cigar-chomping Yankees in tropical-themes shirts is landing in CR this morning. They’re looking to buy real estate and move there permanently, something about “going Galt.”. Of course, Obama was super-polite during the call, explained “Atlas Shrugged” to the ambassador, and didn’t applaud until after hanging up; to do otherwise would’ve been rude.

MIss? Like a bad case of crabs maybe. I just wanted to see the despair and hear the ridiculous vitriol, same reason I watched C-span last night! Seeing hypocrites like Boehner decry the bill only makes its passage all the sweeter.

“…but at the cost of his promise to overcome partisanship in Washington,”

One of several “promises” he never intended to fill. Though, unlike the others created to screw liberals, this one was designed to punk centrists. Choke on it, Beinart, you must be getting used to it by now.

“What did I miss?”

Apparently, Mr. Sorensen, you missed learning proper grammar.

“a feat the last two president’s failed to accomplish” should be “a feat the last two presidents failed to accomplish” — no apostrophe.

“Matthew Yglesias and David Frum both write the bill’s passage is Republican’s Waterloo” should be “[...] the bill’s passage is the Republicans’ Waterloo” — apostrophe goes after the S, not before, due to the use of the plural.

This may be just a blog, but you work for TIME, man. Bring your A game.

Apparently, Mr. Sorensen, you missed learning proper grammar.

Really? Grammar and spelling? Perhaps you could contribute something of substance next time.

Emil, good luck here. You’ll need it. All of the reporters have made spelling and grammar errors. Playing spell check is often a fun game here …which is highly ironic, given our horrific spelling and grammar errors.

‘Is he packing his bags for Costa Rica. Thanks to Rush, will Costa Rica be the new Galt’s Gulch, not Colorado?’
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Not if Costa Rica’s lucky! The Ayn Rand enthusiasts would be disappointed anyway. Costa Rica spends a lot on a good public education system and on public health care.

They also have careful land management policies (that have served them well). The ‘Atlases’ had better be careful how they plan to develop their gulch.

It will be interesting to watch whether the GOP can continue their lockstep opposition after being handed this kind of defeat, but they are controlled by talk show pundits that have financial incentive to keep the base riled, so they just might all go over the cliff together.

I made the same analogy to a friend yesterday. Pelosi was herding cats. Lemmings are much easier to herd right over the cliff……..maybe Beck et al. can get it done.

diecash1, how much can one seriously contribute to a list of links? On the other hand, I’ve been a TIME subscriber since I was 16 and worked as a journalist for my college newspaper. If my little weekly rag was able to print without a single spelling mistake, then there’s no excuse for anyone writing under the TIME banner making them. I see it as a disservice to readers not to properly edit comments.

In other words, I’ll contribute something of substance on posts by writers who at least take the time to check that what they say is well-written. Karen Tumulty and Amy Sullivan, for example.

deconstructiva, I seriously don’t mind mistakes made by commenters. They don’t get paid for their comments.

how much can one seriously contribute to a list of links?

The post is a list of the morning’s top stories with links and commentary. What exactly would you expect it to be?
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While the mistakes don’t impress, you allow them to detract from the substance of the posting and that is my point. Regardless of the errors, one can still contribute something substantive to the discussion.

I just love hypocrisy. “Hey, NOW we’re gonna be REALLY obstructionist!” I mean, what the hell?
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I would really like the GOP to back away from the crazy cliff and work at governing. 24-hour news-cycle politics might score short-term points, but careful planning, hard work, diligence, leadership, and a willingness to work with the opposition get you things like what happened last night.
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I probably would have voted for McCain in 2000. And I’m scared to think what could have been.