Ruth Marcus Echoes The Village Blogosphere In Call To Dems To Drop The Public Option

By Big Tent Democrat, Section Media
Posted on Wed Nov 25, 2009 at 08:01:18 AM EST
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Our good friend John Amato critcizes WaPo's Ruth Marcus for urging Democrats capitulate on the public option. I have a problem with John's criticism for two reasons. First, Ruth Marcus does not believe in a public option. Why should she argue that Democrats should hold the line for a policy she does not believe in?

But my real criticism of John is his willful blindness regarding the fact that more influential people in the Media, who CLAIM to believe in a public option, say precisely the same thing Marcus does about the public option - that Dems should give it up. Yes, I am talking abvout the Village Blogosphere - Josh Marshall, Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, Kevin Drum and others to come (just watch). Why is John silent about these voices, whose positions are much more disingenuous? Their voices are much more influential than Marcus' and their lack of forthrightness about what they really think about the public option seems to me to be much more worthy of discussion than Marcus' urging a course of action in line with her stated policy views. I am not a fan of urging people to not argue for their policy views. I am strongly in favor of urging people to argue HONESTLY in favor of their policy views.

Speaking for me only

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Ruth Marcus Echoes The Village Blogosphere In Call To Dems To Drop The Public Option | 3 comments (3 topical)

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Shot by both sides (none / 0) (#1)
by lilburro on Wed Nov 25, 2009 at 10:25:07 AM EST

I am feeling that to keep the PO in the bill we are going to need a game changer though.

: Principles and practicality ... (none / 0) (#2)
by nyrias on Wed Nov 25, 2009 at 02:32:35 PM EST

those are always interesting choices.

Why pay attention to Marcus and Klein? (none / 0) (#3)
by Donald from Hawaii on Wed Nov 25, 2009 at 03:23:10 PM EST

Truly, I have better things to do with my time than further aggravate my blood pressure with such pompous gasbag musings, and I imagine that you do, too.

Having both lived there and worked on Capitol Hill, I can tell you that "The Beltway" and "The Village" represent a truly self-absorbed culture that looks upon the rest of the country as rubes and hicks from the boonies and sticks. I really want as little to do with them as possible, as far as my personal interaction is concerned.

Originally created in the 1790s to quiet rising antebellum tensions between northern and southern states, the District of Columbia is a political anachronism that today answers only to itself. For all practical purposes, D.C. became obsolete as an autonomous enclave with the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War, and its continued existence as such serves only to shield the city's movers, shakers, wheelers and dealers from a lot of otherwise very necessary outside scrutiny.

Formerly a cottage industry, D.C.'s corporate lobbyists have become an ever-growing corrosive malignancy on the federal body politic, with a demonstrable ability to both trump public opinion considered contrary to corporate interests and preclude sorely needed national dialogue, as exemplified by Ms. Marcus' increasingly out-of-touch columns on the public option.

Speaking for myself only, I think the only real way to curb D.C.'s unilateral intransigence and excess is to change this out-of-balance equation fundamentally, by compelling its Beautiful People to also be accountable to the rest of our citizenry.

We can begin by considering the abolition of the district itself and the city of Washington's cession to the State of Maryland. Ottawa is the Canadian national capital, and performs its federal functions fully within the context of its place as part of the province of Ontario. Why can't Washington do the same as part of Maryland?

If Ruth Marcus, Ezra Klein, Tom Daschle and Dick Armey want to tell the rest of the country at large what's best for it, I think it far better that they also learn to live and cope with the folks at City Hall and the State Capitol on a regular basis, just like us rubes and hicks.

Aloha.

P.S.: Mother Jones' Kevin Drum is not a resident of "The Village", but rather of the endless white-bread suburbia that is Irvine, CA (Orange County). While their interests sometimes dovetail, the only real similarity between the two regions is that both are in dire need of collective psychotherapy at a group rate.