Glenn Greenwald and Ed Kilgore both have very good pieces up today on the impoverished left/right dialectic that dominates the media coverage of politics, and its inadequacy when it comes to discussing the dynamics of the health care debate. The sight of pundits yucking it up about the "Democratic circular firing squad" have become as tedious and threadbare as those counseling "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Both of these admonitions have at their heart the notion that "liberals" are being irrational, unreasonable and rigid in refusing to accept the Senate health care bill.
But in the very next breath, they will then promote statistics that say the tea parties are more popular than either the Democratic or the Republican party, and wonder if it's an opportune time for a third party candidate. (From the "right," of course, because who would take the "left" seriously.) At no time do the synapses firing in their brains make the connection that both the "lazy progressive bloggers" and the tea party activists are saying almost the exact same thing about the Senate bill.
Ben Smith printed a letter from a "liberal blog denizen" (who curiously didn't want to use their name) that I think represents the White House/media thinking pretty well:
The trick is to put a package together that some visible element of "the left" is out there opposing, but that actually has the support of everyone who matters on the left. SEIU isn't opposing the bill. NAACP isn't opposing the bill. Important thought-leaders like Paul Krugman aren't opposing the bill. Surf over to MoveOn.org and you'll see they're highlighting some "f*** you Joe Lieberman" stuff, but not seriously trying to push liberal Senators to vote "no" (indeed, during an earlier iteration of the argument they espoused the view that any filibustering Democrat deserve a primary challenge.). But members who want to feel like they're doing some meaningful triangulation get to point to Jane Hamsher on MSNBC denouncing the whole thing and feel like they're getting one over on the left.This is probably the most useful role that the existence of a large and feisty activist blogosphere can play during a non-election time. Their existence and their passion shift the whole public conversation to the left. They make it possible for governing from the center to be *seen as governing from the center* rather than having a replay of the Clinton years when centrist governance came to define the left-most pole of the possible.
Because blogs/Dean have been needling the White House's health care shell game, they've turned their attention toward discrediting those messengers and trying to use it to their advantage. I understand the impulse -- when you go into a comment thread of a blog post, the person who disagrees with you is the one who is going to get the emotional rise out of you. But it's a huge mistake to overweight that, because you wind up doing what the White House is doing right now: standing with their backs to a tsunami rising over their heads, of which Howard Dean and the blogs are only a small symbol.
And the media, who are eagerly lapping up attacks on Dean and the crumbs being tossed out of the White House press office, only reinforce that blindness.
There is an enormous, rising tide of populism that crosses party lines in objection to the Senate bill. We opposed the bank bailouts, the AIG bonuses, the lack of transparency about the Federal Reserve, "bailout" Ben Bernanke, and the way the Democrats have used their power to sell the country's resources to secure their own personal advantage, just as the libertarians have. In fact, we've worked together with them to oppose these things. What we agree on: both parties are working against the interests of the public, the only difference is in the messaging.
Harry Reid and Dick Durbin put on a nice show for the credulous. As Durbin said when he was trying to build his email list, "The question is no longer if we will have some sort of public option in the final health care reform bill, but instead what form it will take." But the very same day, he was also warning about "60 votes" on MSNBC, and it was Durbin who whipped Lieberman's vote for PhRMA to kill Dorgan's drug reimportation bill (after Harry Reid kept it off the floor for 7 days until PhRMA could twist enough arms to defeat it).
The end is the same as it was when Medicare Part D passed. Remember how Democrats made a big show of passing negotiation for prescription drug prices when they knew George Bush would veto it? We saw how long that lasted. When it comes to true differences in the parties, only the set dressing on the road to capitulation seems to change.
With unemployment at 10%, the idea that you can pass a bill whose only merit is that "liberals hate it" just because the media will eat it up and print your talking points in the process is so cynical and short-sighted it's hard to comprehend anyone would pursue it. It reflects a total insensitivity to the rage that is brewing on the popular front, which is manifest in every single poll out there.
Yet time and again, we're told "Obama retains his popularity with liberals" and that "screeching liberal bloggers" aren't having an impact. Nobody seems to notice that the "screeching liberal bloggers" are reflecting the very same sentiments of the vast majority of the country, whether the very small segment of the population who self-identify as "extremely liberal" holds the President responsible or no.
Rahm Emanuel has convinced himself that Ron Brownstein is a "liberal" and dismisses all of this as "the progressive backlash against the progressive backlash." He's betting that any inadequacies will be forgotten come November 2010 if the Dems can claim a "w" by passing any crap bill and slapping "health care" on it. And that if Congress just spends the next year naming post offices, any objections that Americans might have to paying 8% of their incomes to private corporations who will use the IRS as their collection agency will just disappear.
It's scary to think that people this obscenely stupid are running the country. All the while, the painfully obvious left/right transpartisan consensus that is coalescing against DC insiders of both parties appears to be taking everyone by surprise.
Follow Jane Hamsher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/janehamsher
The President and Congress should join us in the Obama plan if it passes in anything like the current form after the House and Senate combine legislation.
Give up your taxpayer funded public health insurance option today. Wait for 2014 for your new awesome plan to kick in. America will save millions in what is costs us to provide you with proper health insurance, and you will make your support of the private insurance industry direct and meaningful. You will also send a message to Americans that you believe what you say, that the plan is a good one. If it is right for America, then it is right for you.
Obama has struck me as one very cold person since his last rally here in Bozeman, Montana. It was empty and a rehash of exactly the same words, the same props, and the same staging as an earlier rally in Butte. I know campaigns retread things because of money and time, but this was like a very dead re-run and it was insulting. His indifference no longer shocks me; that happened when he unabashedly and unapologetically embraced Rick Warren and the aftershocks just kept on coming on every other issue. I am more surprised by the utter indifference of Congress since many of those people claimed to be progressive and some their electoral fates will be decided sooner.
In either case--2010 or 2012, I agree that Rahm Emmanuel has placed the wrong bet. We will not be back for more.
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Why push people into an insurrection? What does Obama gain?
Healthcare? Republicans say NO.
Jobs Bill? Republicans say NO.
National Energy Policy? Republicans say NO.
One of Obama and Reid's worst mistakes has been spending...no, WASTING...the last year trying to appease these boorish thugs.
Will Obama and the Dems pay for their cowardice? No doubt...but even so, I guarantee you their "misery" will pale in comparison to what those of us who have NO healthcare and NO jobs face EVERY DAMM DAY. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
So maybe we should not cheer too much if it goes down. There are a lot of people like me. Besides, I want this as my only Christmas present.
The greatest problem we face today involves the virtually unlimited ability of right-wing ideologues to get their utterly faith-based message replicated, and then accepted, by a significant segment of a woefully-informed, poorly-educated American people.
For instance, if "competition" in the insurance market (as in, allowing for-profit insurance companies to sell across state lines) were a magic bullet, then insurances premiums wouldn't be skyrocketing at present in states like New York and California - states where virtually every insurance provider in America already operates! But they are.
This idea has already been tested, and it has failed. But I never hear either a Democratic or Progressive advocate make this specific point, in this specific way, on one of the cable networks. I never hear someone on our side demand that a conservative or corporate controlled DINO explain then and there why their magic bullet has failed, in real world terms.
We progressives have needlessly lost the messaging phase in this war - and that's why large scale health care reform is going down to defeat.
It is tempting to change to Independent for all the good it does to be a 45 year voting Democrat, but I've decided to remain a Dem if only to drive them nuts. I have generally supported the reelection of Democrats even those with who I disagree, but it is plain that Obama and our current Congressional Democrats are little different from the Bush/Cheney WMD Liars and Torture Advocating Federal Criminals. Obama seems more like Bush every day. Our freedom and right are in just as much danger now as when Bush and Cheney were in office. Obama's refusal to protect our Constitution and Rule of Law by prosecuting those Bushies that obviously committed Federal Torture Conspiracy Crimes is proof.
Please, everyone SIGN THE PETITION
calling for Torture Prosecutions at ANGRYVOTERS.ORG
http://ANGRYVOTERS.ORG
If you and I cannot hold them responsible for the heinous crime of Torture
we will never make them hear us on any topic.
.
If Hamsher were truly afraid of this healthcare bill, she would find articulate intellectuals to run this country.
She's selfish. The millions of newly covered insured patients are unimportant to her as long as her perspective is correct.
I can tell you one thing... we will be voting in even larger numbers in 2010 and 2012 and it won't be for those who passed this incredibly expensive reform..
http://showdowninamerica.org
I see no rising populist tie between the left and right.
What is more scary is to think that the people running this country are NOT obscenely stupid. Because if it is not stupidiy then they are obscenely corrupt, obscenely unamerican, obscenely viscious, obscenely insane, etc.
We provide their paycheck and yet we can't fire them. It won't do any good to replace them come election time because all the candidates have already been selected for us by the corporate conspiracy.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossibe, make violent revolution inevitable." ....JFK
This bill is a good example of why governing from the center ultimately does not work. This administration should have set an agenda that one side would find unacceptable, but it didn't. It kept trying to placate the right, and ended up losing the ardent support of the left. And the right has only one agenda, regaining power.
It's time to put this bill to swim with the fishes, where it belongs. Passing it won't be the success the Democrats think it is. They are SO out of touch with what is going on.