Day: November 2, 2010

…granting ad arguendum that the 111th Congress engaged in liberal overreach, which Senators who win today would have lost had the Affordable Care Act included a public option linked to Medicare? The answer seems to me to be nobody. Which Senators who win today would have lost had the 111th Congress passed a cap-and-trade plan through reconciliation? Here, it looks like Patty Murray. Would a “scaled back” health care plan have saved Blance Lincoln? Clearly not.

Matt Yglesias makes a point that far too few will. They fail not because of some mythical “liberal overreach” (which really translates into “not enacting a GOP-approved slate of policies”) but because they operate from such a terrified, defensive crouch that every policy that emerges seems horribly compromised in some respect.
I’ve said all along that even one signature policy plus a bunch of spectacular failures at the hand of GOP obstruction is better than a whole passel of half-measures and partial, piecemeal victories that each require 25 minutes of explanation every time they’re brought up, and, of course, that most of the party ultimately just runs away from anyway.
For the thousandth time: It is better to be strong and wrong than weak and right. Maybe we’ll learn that over the next two years. Maybe not.

Comfort the Afflicted

This is almost too obvious to point out, but this type of story is great for [former half-term governor Sarah Palin]. It feeds her narrative about how she’s the prey of pointy headed coastal lamestream media elites who have nothing but disdain for her and all the real Americans she speaks for. Having unnamed Republicans express concern about her presidential candidacy only sweetens the deal, allowing her to position herself in opposition to GOP elites in addition to lamestream media ones.

Indeed. What’s worse is that fools like Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen are likely looking at her silly “they’re jokes” line and congratulating themselves for afflicting the powerful and furthermore likely see any pushback on the part of Greg Sargent or others as yet more evidence of “complaints from both sides…so we must be doin’ our jobs!” So sad.

Comfort the Afflicted

To the extent that Democrats do worse even than the economy explains, one can point to a number of factors. Given that the stimulus was inadequate — which was obvious early on — Obama could have tried to warn Americans of a long hard road ahead, and placed blame on Republicans; instead, the WH kept pretending that things were going swimmingly, never once acknowledging that the original plan wasn’t sufficient (they still haven’t). Remember the Summer of Recovery?
Worse, since the fall of 2009 the White House has systematically adopted Republican positioning on the budget; remember how the State of the Union included a freeze in domestic spending?
Policy on other fronts seemed almost designed to cede populist sentiments to the right: not even a hint of tough positioning against Wall Street, totally limp policy toward China, and more.
On the organizational side, it’s still mind-boggling how the White House deliberately shut down the whole network of grass-roots organizing that helped put Obama there in the first place. All that idealism, all that energy — and they were told to go away and let Rahm Emanuel do his deals in peace.
So again: it was mainly the economy, with the effects of a bad economy reinforced by Obama’s consistent policy of undercutting both messages and movements that might have helped Democrats weather the economic storm.

Paul Krugman, giving us some non-BINGO based analysis.
I tend to agree, but word it differently: shit sandwich. That the GOP was not forced to eat one each and every legislative day is your two-word, non-BINGO analysis of the 2010 cycle. Instead, the Democrat whisked in, grabbed said sandwich, slathered the contents onto his hands and said: “Look what you almost stepped in, GOP!”
Time and time again. This is why they fail.