Accountability As Nightmare?

By Big Tent Democrat, Section Other Politics
Posted on Fri Oct 23, 2009 at 02:58:15 PM EST
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Ezra Klein has a strange idea of what nightmares are:

Imagine Reid puts Schumer's national opt-out plan into the bill. The bill comes to the floor, and it loses Snowe and one or two centrist moderates. Byrd is sick and unable to vote. The Schumer plan needs to come out of the bill. But even though the bill can't get 60 votes to proceed, Reid's office also can't find 60 votes to strip the public option out of the bill. The liberals won't go for it. The left is organized against it. There's no reason 55 Democrats should bow to the wishes of five centrists and a Republicans on a popular provision. Indeed, maybe some mischievous Republicans even join the liberals in defeating the motion to strip Schumer's proposal. The bill is just stuck in limbo: It doesn't have the votes to move forward or backward.

(Emphasis supplied.) This is a nightmare why for Ezra? Not because the public option will be defeated, but because it WON'T BE DROPPED. For some of us, Ezra's dream scenario is the real nightmare:

[Y]ou probably can find 20 or so Democrats willing to suck it up and water down the bill in order to ensure it eventual passage.

This is a point I will continually make -- on the public option, the Village blogger wonks (Klein, Yglesias, Cohn, Drum, etc.) are NOT your allies. They are your adversaries. Read them accordingly.

Speaking for me only

< Sam Stein: Obama "Keen" On Bipartisan Support For HCR | Another Explanation Of Obama On The Public Option >

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Accountability As Nightmare? | 7 comments (7 topical)

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They are drunk in love with (5.00 / 3) (#1)
by Anne on Fri Oct 23, 2009 at 03:25:44 PM EST

the politics of it, and so is Obama; none of them give a flying fig about the policy itself. If it's good, if it's bad - who cares? Winning is all that matters.

I'd rather stick needles in my eyes than read Ezra, but what really gets to me is that the political calculations he's writing about are probably the ones they are talking about behind closed doors at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; that, as near as I can tell, just makes Ezra the messenger - it is Obama who is the adversary.

Ezra and many of the Village wonks are not activists, but are being used to a fare-thee-well to help the WH shape and gauge the political machinations needed to "win," but those machinations are also what the activists need to mobilize to push back against.

Less than one year in, Obama feels safe, but just because there is no presidential election until 2012 does not mean that political repercussions will not be felt by all Democratic House members and those Senators up for re-election in 2010.

But maybe that doesn't even scare him, since he'll just have more Republicans to cozy up to.

Argh.

That's why the best outcome.... (5.00 / 1) (#2)
by lambert on Fri Oct 23, 2009 at 04:05:40 PM EST

... is a legislative FAIL. Since nothing kicks in 'til 2013 anyhow, who really cares about any of this except Democratic strategerists? Let the Dems do a bit of suffering at the polls, toss a few centrists in marginal districts overboard, and we'll come out, ultimately, with better policy and a more cohesive party.

All that the bills on offer do, besides bail out the insurance companies, is kick the can down the road, not least because they don't save any money.

Why won't that d_mn PO quit? (5.00 / 2) (#3)
by Fabian on Fri Oct 23, 2009 at 06:36:36 PM EST

I can't claim credit for that, but it all goes back to partisanship for its own sake. Power to the Party and use the little people until it's time to ask for votes and money again.

They are not getting a cent from me (5.00 / 2) (#4)
by suzieg on Fri Oct 23, 2009 at 08:38:53 PM EST

Some democratic committee to re-elect democratic senators called me last night and I told her politely to go to hell.


: Every penny I would have given (5.00 / 1) (#7)
by Militarytracy on Sat Oct 24, 2009 at 09:00:50 AM EST

is now going to struggling bloggers who represent ME. I've just decided. I don't invest in Ponzi schemes.

Bipartisan head fake? (5.00 / 1) (#5)
by good grief on Sat Oct 24, 2009 at 12:31:02 AM EST

Wonder if "bipartisanship" and Obama's chivalric pursuit of Snowe's Republican vote (about which there is such media mystery) is simply a cover for his protection of the insurance industry by putting off a public option under a trigger (he is now said to favor, perhaps since early on) which we know will probably never get pulled. "Bipartisanship" -- appealing "across the aisle" with the pretense of gentlemanly embrace and broad-mindedness -- is the ideal head fake to hide his true interest in a corporate agenda and the filling of his campaign coffers. Even if he loses Snowe, he has pursued her and for this he gets credit, or so the strategy is said to go: Per WaPo "The Fix," Chris Cillizza (9-16-09)

The White House has long believed that the average voter is less concerned about whether large numbers of Republicans support the Administration's priorities than whether the President is making an honest effort to attract GOP support.

"Honest effort" sounds like a benign motive but I question whether it is the opposite. After all, the direction toward a corporate agenda is to the right, so it's a natural move for Obama not just in the act of "reaching across" but in being seen that way by the public (as good guy) and by his corporate backers (as their guy).

What a slick operator.

: There's an idea. (none / 0) (#6)
by Fabian on Sat Oct 24, 2009 at 07:16:09 AM EST

Bipartisanship as the ultimate cover.
The only problem with that strategy is that Obama can't find anyone but Snowe to play along. This charade has been going on for months now and Mister Charisma himself has not managed to woo even one more Republican. Why not try appealing to Voinovich's "better nature"?