So, you might know that today is functionally True/Slant’s last day of operation. That means that a chunk of my writing will be migrating back to these parts.
Don’t take that personal like, I’m not saying I don’t love you. All’s I’m saying is that y’all don’t pay me to write. It’s the economy, stupid.
Anyhow, I thought I would start the transition by flipping what will probably be my last post at T/S over here so as to keep the thread going damn near seamlessly.
Greg Sargent says the following about Anthony Weiner’s rant on the floor of the House last night,
To be clear, I’m all for the kind of passion Weiner is showing here, but let’s direct it properly. Don’t get into a shouting match about procedure. As emotionally satisfying as it may be to watch, raging against the GOP opposition machine’s successful efforts to tie Dems in knots just makes Dems look whiny, weak and impotent.
And in a follow up, Sargent goes on to say,
All I’m saying is that raging against successful Republican efforts to block individual Dem initiatives isn’t enough. Raging about GOP obstructionism in general isn’t enough, either. The point is that Dems need to build an effective larger case that transcends individual issues and reckons more directly with the strategy underlying all the GOP obstructionism.
I think Greg is operating with too blunt a scalpel, here. I understand his point, but I think that ultimately he misses the point of Weiner’s rant, which, I’ll add, didn’t not strike me as even remotely, “weak”, “whiny”, or “impotent”.
By my lights, Harry Reid is engaged in exactly the kind of strategy that Greg is looking for. Calmly and carefully, Reid is bringing a variety of bills to the floor and either chalking up a Democratic win or building a substantial case for Republican obstructionism. It’s a subtle, long-play game and, as mentioned previously, I think Reid is rolling it out just about perfectly.
Some might offer that this reflects more on Senate Republicans than House Republicans, but I honestly don’t think that fine a distinction is going to matter a great deal to the average voter. The point here is to build a case about, as Greg notes, the underlying Republican strategy. What are the members responsible for in regards to their Party.
But, turning Greg’s argument on its head, that type of strategy isn’t enough. It is, as they say, necessary, but not sufficient. As Gallup has hastened to point out with each of their generic ballots that have shown Democrats in the lead, there remains a substantial enthusiasm gap between Republican and Democratic voters.
In short, Democrats have a deflated base that needs to get riled up and find a reason to get out to those polls and vote.
Harry Reid’s cool and calm strategy isn’t going to work in this regard. And while fear of losing the House and the Senate might generate some momentum, voters need more positive reasons to be motivated at the polls and, perhaps more importantly, in campaign offices. This is where Weiner’s rant becomes useful.
Weiner picked an issue he feels strongly about and in which it is hard to find fault: providing medical care for those rescue workers affected by 9-11. It doesn’t get much more altruistic than that in America these days. And Weiner’s point is not so much to argue about procedure, which puts voters to sleep, but rather to reassert the case that Democrats are on the right side of history here. That Democrats are the good guys.
There has been so much conceding and strong rhetoric followed by tepid incrementalism that I think a lot of the Democratic base has started to question just to what extent they are the good guys. And progressives’ full court press, as much as I’ve participated in and agree with it, doesn’t help with that doubt.
What Weiner is as much as saying here is, “We’re the good guys! You’re the bad guys!” And that, frankly, is what rank and file Democrats need to hear leading up to the midterms.
Case in point: check out the reaction that the rant got from Balloon Juice commenters. I know that “respectable” Democrats don’t want to believe that their base contains a considerable number of people who are precisely like the BJ “hooligans”. But those respectable types would be, you know, wrong.
BlaiseP 
Jaybird 
Will Truman 
Russell Saunders 
Elias Isquith 
spivak 
Plinko 
Michael Drew 
Tim Kowal
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This kind of thing definitely has its place. I read Sargent’s critique, and while I certainly think that building cases etc etc sounds smart n stuff, in fact I really don’t really have any idea what the heck he’s talking about. I mean, if you want to run on Republican obstructionism, that consists of listing some things they’ve obstructed and calling them obstructionists. It’s not brain surgery, and it certainly isn’t exclusive of a good-old big-city partisan harangue every now and then to rile up the troops, the subject thereof not being particularly important.
I think Greg is operating with too blunt a scalpel, here.
That’s cool, too.
But if you’re going to stab someone with a screwdriver, you have to jab it in really hard.
I’m surprised that the Disclose Act didn’t get more press.
What a fiasco.
This is a pretty interesting post and it dovetails with something I’ve been discussing at another blog. there was a series of articles in the most recent issue of Democracy Journal which discussed how well Obama and the Dems have done so far. One article by Danielle Allen had the following quote which I really thought was insightful:
”…if Obama is a leader, and not simply an office-holder, he should be able to guide the public in a progressive direction nonetheless. Is he doing so? He has, by and large, not yet begun.
How do we know? The declining poll numbers are not the tell-tale sign; it’s instead the absence of a strong sense of direction. On the principle that a blueprint for one’s friends is equally a blueprint for one’s enemies, Roosevelt famously kept to himself the timing and nature of his tactical moves. But he showed everyone the target at which he was aiming: “A New Deal for the forgotten man.” So did Johnson: “The Great Society.” So did Ronald Reagan, preparing for reelection: “Morning in America.” Obama has yet to tell us where, under his leadership, we are heading.”
The point of course is that direction should come from the White House. The President should be able to set the tone. As I recently said to someone, good ideas should be able to weather any storm. Democrats are doing a lot of complaining about how the Right has subverted their agenda, blah, blah, blah. It ignores the elephant in the room which is that it’s not the negative PR generated by the GOp but they simply don’t have a willing populace. Why? Maybe because their ideas are bad or maybe because the problems they are trying to solve just aren’t as big as they were for other liberal Presidents.
FDR had the Depression. Johnson had Civil Rights. Those are huge issues which impacted every single American in one way or another. What do liberals have today? HCR was close but even then the majority of Americans have decent healthcare and don’t feel the pinch. Gay marriage? An even smaller %. The one issue they could really capitalize on is jobs and they seem either unwilling or unable to do so.
I guess my large point is that it’s bullshit to blame the Right. The Left is going to have to be able to sell the need for smaller reforms because the issues are smaller. They takes better salesmanship. So far I haven’t seen it.
@Mike at The Big Stick, A good point.
Were there a general perception that the recession had somehow been caused by lack of health care or gay marriage, these measures would likely have overwhelming support.
For my part, as a member of a trade union, I pay an exorbitant amount for health insurance, but it covers every member of my local, every member of their families, and all the retirees. (I am a 44 yr-old male, 6′ 180#, 31″ waist– fairly athletic build in good general health.) All I see in HCR is union members subsidizing benefits for non-union workers. Part of my pay will go to the competition to make union membership less attractive.
And I’m not going to see gay marriage as an issue until they come out with a measure against gay shacking.
I’ve heard a lot of this lately, that the issue is really one of messaging; and I’m not so sure that is fully correct. I think there comes a time when they have to ask– Did they really vote for us, or were they voting against the other guy?
Hannity tore this commie-dem clown a new one yesterday but illustrating that the commie-dems had the votes to pass the bill but refused to. Instead they ignored the reprehensible codicils attached to the bill and demanded the GOP join with them. Even stupid commie-dems see through this tactic…I think?
I was a First Responder at the World Trade Center on September 11th and in the aftermath of that attack. I also attended the funeral of Detective James Zadgroda, the namesake of this legislation.
My career ended at the Trade Center. I have been ill for nearly a decade. Many of the medications I use, and the care I receive, are financed in part from grants that this bill would extend. In my case, those costs translate to about $7,000 a year for my family.
From the outset, I had little confidence that this bill would ever become law. Why?
Rich people in this country do not want to pay for this, or any other addition to the entitlement burden – that sum is projected to reach $136 trillion over the next thirty years or so, depending on which apocalyptic economist you embrace. Many middle class Americans share this view, and they should: our income tax brackets are so close that the middle class pay similar rates (and endure much more financial pain) as do the wealthy.
But when I use the term, “rich,” I am referring to those Americans who have attained such financial stature as to (a) control the marketplace and (b) control the political infrastructure that supports it.
These folks are kingmakers in Washington politics, both Republican and Democrat, and their handiwork could not be more evident in the dissolution of the Zadgroda Bill. The Weiner rant witnessed in the House would appear to be a passionate outcry based on some fundamental principle of profound merit, hidden behind the legislative procedures he complained about – liberal spending versus conservative values, Democrats castigating Republicans for heartless cost cutting. The contrived issue, instead, was the notion that undocumented aliens somehow managed to participate in rescue operations at Ground Zero – a zone even those with press credentials could not enter, if you will recall. If certain illegal immigrants were affected, one would think that a solution would not overwhelm the greater good of helping thousands of deserving rescuers.
At work here is a purposed distraction from the truth – that this defeat was a carefully crafted stage show, formulated by wealth, Democrat and Republican, against labor. I state plainly that the influential instructed leadership in both parties to find a way to kill this legislation, while allowing an apoplectic confrontation, tailor made for local constituencies and the national audience, scoring political points on both sides of the isle. It is easy to vote for a bill you know will not pass, and vote no to healthcare for illegals, then argue about it until the real issue fades away, along with the Rescue Worker population. (If you doubt my assertions, pick up Sunday’s New York Times. Nothing is written about this, anywhere in that paper.)
Thus, Congressman Weiner doth protest too much…
That the targets of this farce were First Responders during the deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor makes the entire matter particularly distasteful and more specifically, treasonous.
The end game is as follows: Congress recesses with political momentum that may help their failing confidence numbers, First Responders continue to get sick and die, the Zadgroda legislation is buried and taxpayers (especially those who could afford to pay a little more) get a pass.
We have been trained to believe that it is moral turpitude to ask affluent Americans to pay more in taxes these days. On September 11th, I did not have the opportunity to discuss that point with my rich Wall Street countrymen: they were busy running their asses off in the opposite direction, away from the Towers.
These were the heroes who invented, then wildly profited from, structured investment vehicles and unsustainable derivatives, those benchmarks of corporate greed, requiring a bailout one hundredfold the cost of the Zadgroda Bill. That action passed Congress swiftly, by the way.
I am told that my lifespan will be shortened by my wounds. Rest assured, however, that I sleep well at night, knowing that I performed my duties honestly and I continue to love my country, and will serve her to the last, despite the fact that over the past fifty years she has devolved into an oligarchy. Her citizens have become distracted and misinformed – but not forever.
I will leave this life confident that all of the people can not be fooled all of the time; that the next generation will set this nation aright: a just tax code, sane monetary policy and fair (albeit modest) entitlements for those who chose to serve others, rather than themselves. Only then will the America head straight on that long, arduous road to financial solvency.
@Det. Sergeant John A. Egan, NYPD (ret.), Thank you for your service and sacrifice. You are absolutely right that it is shameful that this issue is subject to such political posturing, especially if it results in failure to provide for the needs of 9/11 first responders.
Thanks, Michael – John
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