Jonathan Chait

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Gun Savvy

by Elias Isquith on April 23, 2013

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Alec MacGillis takes a subtle shot at a Jonathan Chait post I recently praised, and upon reflection, I think he’s right.

While praising former Chief of Staff Bill Daley’s recent jeremiad against the four red state Democrats who voted against Manchin-Toomey, MacGillis writes that “[s]ome liberals still seem inclined to cut the Gang of Feckless Four a lot of slack.” The link goes to this single Jonathan Chait post.

As a brief reminder, here’s the essence of Chait’s argument:

You’re not going to win reelection in Arkansas by compiling a Chuck Schumer–esque voting record. You need to pick your battles. Red state Democrats need to cast votes against their party sometimes, or else they’ll be replaced by somebody who will vote against it all the time. That is a moral argument, and while it can be taken too far, the Senators in question are not taking a terribly unreasonable stance. As Politico reports, one Senator told the administration, ‘Guns, gays and immigration — it’s too much. I can be with you on one or two of them, but not all three.’”

If you’re picking your battles, background checks are as good an issue as any to lay down. For one thing, as I’ve suggested, guns loom disproportionately large in the political world of red state Democrats. Guns are the way they signal home state cultural affinity, giving themselves a chance to get their economic message heard. Their A rating from the National Rifle Association is powerful shorthand. And yes, the NRA is crazy and partisan, and was opposing a bill it used to support and that most Republicans support. But none of those facts overcomes the blunt reality of the A rating’s political value.

What’s more, this particular gun vote was an especially good time for Democrats to defect. None of them cast the deciding vote; it fell six votes shy of defeating a filibuster. The bill was already a compromise of a compromise, something that would have stopped a tiny fraction of gun crimes. Even if it passed the Senate, it faced steep odds of passing the House, where it probably would have died, been weakened further, or even turned into a law that weakened existing gun laws.

But MacGillis, who reports popular backlash against New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, is right to skip the savviness and get right to channeling the voters’ anger. And for the first time in a long time, it looks like that outrage is grassroots and real:

[T]here are signs that the reaction against the vote will be stronger than what has followed prior setbacks for the cause. First, of course, there was the angry cri de coeur from Gabby Giffords. On Friday came spontaneous protests around the country at district offices of senators who voted no. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has set up a number for people to text so they can be patched through to the office of a senator who went the other way. “In years past when we lost on a vote, we had to generate [reaction], we had to push people,” says Brian Malte, the group’s director of mobilization. “This time it’s just directing it to the right place. It’s ‘I’m so angry, what should I do?’”

However, my praise for MacGillis’ piece doesn’t mean I find Chait’s argument any less persuasive. I think the above Chait blockquote captures, more or less, the explanations these senators are telling themselves and close confidants. And they’re good explanations! But they’re not excuses — and it’s reasonable for voters to demand more.

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The Elephant in the Room

by Elias Isquith on April 20, 2013

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If you haven’t heard, the explanation currently in vogue for why Manchin-Toomey failed is one of scope. The president’s simultaneous push on immigration, gun control and gay rights is too much liberalism for red state Democrats to handle. One senator told the White House he could only tag along for one — two, tops — of the three issues. Fortitude is finite, it appears. And Obama’s asking for too much.

Jonathan Chait may not agree with this reading, but he finds it persuasive on the basic political level. Greg Sargent focuses more on batting-back anonymous appeals to “courage” and argues that Manchin-Toomey and the impending immigration bill are both middle-of-the-road as could be:

[B]acking Toomey-Manchin shouldn’t even have been difficult in the first place: “proponents had bipartisan cover; the key provision was written by two conservatives; and the polls were entirely one-sided.”

…

In the case of Republicans, significantly more of them are expected to embrace immigration reform than supported Manchin-Toomey. But of course, this is only happening because Republicans got slaughtered among Latinos in the last election, and know the party needs to repair relations with Latinos or flirt with demographic doom. It isn’t happening because Senators suddenly decided our broken immigration reform system has gotten so bad that the problem must be solved, so they’re ready to take a tough vote to fix it.

Well, the polling does indeed indicate the background check bill was a no-brainer. But as Sargent knows all too well, public opinion ain’t actually worth too much in the American political system. The NRA would be the absolute poster-child for this; what other lobby better shows that a small group of highly dedicated activists is more powerful than an approval rating, no matter how high? So when senators display political cravenness, pointing to a poll showing support is a mile wide — but an inch deep — they’re not totally bullshitting.

Another thing: while Democratic senators have to strain a bit to make this argument fit, the fact is that even if all the Dems had voted for Manchin-Toomey, it still would’ve fallen short without at least a couple GOP votes. And GOPers have very good reason to be afraid to take that plunge; because even if the gun absolutists are small, their influence in Republican politics and primaries is anything but. Until the White House figures out a way to convince Republicans they need not tremble at the thought of displeasing their base, gun control — as well as immigration reform — will be finished from the start.

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The Democratic Nays

by Elias Isquith on April 18, 2013

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I was upset when I wrote my last post, and I think it reflected as much. Blame the president; he ginned me up. But with some time to cool down and think about the situation from a slightly greater distance, it’s hard not to conclude that Jonathan Chait — who says he would’ve voted Nay if he were a red-state Democrat, too — is right:

You’re not going to win reelection in Arkansas by compiling a Chuck Schumer–esque voting record. You need to pick your battles. Red state Democrats need to cast votes against their party sometimes, or else they’ll be replaced by somebody who will vote against it all the time. That is a moral argument, and while it can be taken too far, the Senators in question are not taking a terribly unreasonable stance. As Politico reports, one Senator told the administration, “Guns, gays and immigration — it’s too much. I can be with you on one or two of them, but not all three.”

If you’re picking your battles, background checks are as good an issue as any to lay down. For one thing, as I’ve suggested, guns loom disproportionately large in the political world of red state Democrats. Guns are the way they signal home state cultural affinity, giving themselves a chance to get their economic message heard. TheirA rating from the National Rifle Association is powerful shorthand. And yes, the NRA is crazy and partisan, and was opposing a bill it used to support and that most Republicans support. But none of those facts overcomes the blunt reality of the A rating’s political value.

…

The background check law’s failure is maddening not because passing it would have made an enormous difference, but for the opposite reason: it is such a tiny, obviously sensible step. The tininess of the step, in comparison with its disproportionate political symbolism, is why it was a perfect case for red state Democrats to defect.

A key element of the whole brouhaha, the thing that alternately makes the failure of Manchin-Toomey trivial and significant, bearable and brutal, is the paltriness of the measures that were proposed. This was one of the themes of the president’s comments yesterday. And it’s the thrust of Gabby Giffords‘ op-ed in the Times today.

For gun safety’s supporters the experience is the worst of both worlds — it gets harder to argue the bill will help at the same time that the pressure increases to water it down even more. The result is a failure whose victory was already going to be primarily symbolic. And nothing sucks more in politics than a symbolic loss.

But Chait is right about the raw politics of the matter. Senators in certain states simply aren’t as afraid of voters as they are of the NRA. And even if the bills put up for a vote are seemingly innocuous, as was the case for Manchin-Toomey, voters who’d support them don’t care nearly as much as those who’d oppose. Obama touched on this in his remarks yesterday, too.

This is why I say sometimes, despite the fact that it makes me feel uncomfortably like a libertarian (wink), that a broader cultural shift needs to happen before or alongside significant changes to US gun law. Until that happens, the incentives for politicians — especially those in red states — will remain fixed.

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The Grand Bargain’s Best Last Chance

by Elias Isquith on April 13, 2013

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I’ll be honest: when it comes to President Obama’s willingness to use Social Security as a bargaining chip, my outrage reserves are tapped. I understand why people are upset over the New York Times report that Obama’s budget will include cuts to Social Security; and I wouldn’t ask folks to be quiet since causing a ruckus is the essence of activism. I’m also on-record (a.k.a. the internet) in my belief that progressives should go total Tea Party-level obstructionist in the face of such a cut.

All the same, I related to Jonathan Chait’s response to the news, which was to call Barack Obama’s willingness to trade Social Security for higher taxes no news at all. Obama’s said as much for years. Examples are easy to find, and Digby has been tracking them since at least 2009. What they all show is that this news is not news. And it’s certainly not a reversal; or at least it’s not a reversal from the position taken at the beginning of the first term. As long as he’s been president, he’s been this way.

My take on the partisan politics is similar to Chait’s, too. There’s a flailing characteristic to the leak. For one thing, the proposal is a textbook case of lipstick on a pig politics; Republicans already turned this framework down during the fiscal cliff negotiations. As Chait puts it:

Mainly this appears to be a message strategy aimed at advocates of BipartisanThink, who have been blaming Obama for failing to offer the plan he has in fact been offering. The strategy is that, by converting their offer to Boehner from an “offer” to a “budget,” it will prove that Obama is Serious…

[T]his strikes me as completely ridiculous.

It is completely ridiculous. But if Republicans were to actually realize what’s within their reach — getting a Democratic president not only agree to cut but offer to cut Social Security — and took yes for an answer, the ridiculous would become the real all too quickly.

But a Grand Bargain can’t become law unless it gets through the House. And no bill that conservative Republicans regard as a sell-out to Obama would get out of the House without significant Democratic support. Without the Party’s Progressive Caucus’s support, the numbers even on the Democratic side don’t add up.

What it all means is that if third time’s the charm when it comes to Obama’s Grand Bargain, there will be an empire’s worth of pressure on Congressional liberals to get with the program — even if the program is cutting a sacred Democratic-created program. The logic will somewhat approximate that described so memorably by Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight and his monologue about “the plan”:

On that score, Greg Sargent of the Washington Post reports progressive leader Raul Grijalva laying down a line in the sand, refusing to vote for a cut, full stop. But it unfortunately sounds like Grijalva is speaking very much for himself:

Asked if he would vote against any deal containing Chained CPI, Grijalva said: “I’ve made the commitment that if this is part of it, I will not vote for it. I can’t support it.”

However, asked if he thought a sizable bloc of liberals would vote No, Grijalva demurred, and — in something that will bring back bad memories for the left — cited the health care debate as an example. “At this point, I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve been through this before with the public option. The motivation will be there to close ranks and support the president.”

Oh, Tea Party Republicans, don’t fail us now…

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Jonathan Chait Has Sinned

by Elias Isquith on March 20, 2012

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Look, I know that a lot of people left-of-center really like Obama and really hate institutions like The Washington Post and everything they represent. That’s fine; I get it. But can we please not toss our critical thinking abilities — much less our reading comprehension skills — aside in an effort to, I don’t know, not give Fred Hiatt the satisfaction?

By which I mean, I think this post from Zandar at Balloon Juice is very not good. He’s complaining that a recent Jonathan Chait piece is the height of narcissistic and illogical left-wing Obama-bashing. (Keep in mind that he’s writing about Jonathan bleeping Chait):

Chait argues that President Obama wanting a deal—any deal, mind you—led him to treat the GOP as good faith partners when they were clearly not.  Republicans, he goes on to say, were going to screw POTUS and the country no matter what Obama did. This is where Chait’s argument turns into purist whining: There was nothing President Obama could have done that would have changed the outcome of the GOP screwing us over (indeed, the GOP is now signaling that it will simply ignore the debt deal), and at the same time he didn’t do enough to change the outcome. It’s just meaningless stupidity, brought about by the “liberal” Washington Post unloading this hit piece on the President, and Chait absolutely takes the bait, re-fighting the same arguments we had in 2010 and 2011 about “but if Obama had done THIS and LISTENED TO HOW SMART I AM…” five minutes after saying there was nothing he could have done.

If Chait was upset about the end-result of the debt-limit deal, because it resulted in Republicans “screwing us over” (not sure what this means, but whatever) then I guess Zandar might have something resembling a point. But that’s not what Chait was writing about. Rather, what Chait was writing about — and I thought this was abundantly clear throughout the post in question, but hey — is that the deal Obama was seriously considering accepting was incredibly, insanely, indubitably, and intensely awful… at least by anyone but Paul Ryan’s standards.

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s Chait’s final paragraph, which Zandar seemingly did not read despite quoting it in his riposte:

The obvious reality is that there never has been any way to get House Republicans to agree to a balanced deficit deal. Even the capitulation Obama offered — $800 billion in semi-imaginary revenue, all raised from the non-rich — was too much for them to agree to. Locking in that low level of revenue would have required huge cuts in spending, making a decent liberal vision of government impossible. The Post is making the case that there was a potential deal, and Obama blew it by failing to properly handle the easily-spooked Republican caucus. What the story actually shows is that Obama’s disastrous weakness in the summer of 2011 went further toward undermining liberalism than anybody previously knew.

I would think that anyone who cares about liberal policy would find nothing particularly controversial or disagreeable about Chait’s contention. I mean, part of the reason one calls oneself a liberal is because one doesn’t thrill to the idea of raising the Medicare eligibility age, reducing Social Security benefits, and cutting sundry other Democratic Party-endorsed programs all in the service of lowering taxes for the 1%, right? I mean, it’s quite a distance between finding all of that unacceptable and finding every little thing the President says or does to be capitulation like we’ve never seen. The anti-Obama amplifier does, in fact, go to 11.

Ah, but screw all that. You see, these questions? They’re just the enemy, trying to break us apart!

There’s nothing productive about this civil war re-enactment other than Chait scratching his own “Tell Obama what to do” itch that so many of our professional pundit class seem to suffer from.  But generating that itch was the entire point of the Kaplan piece.  Chait performed admirably, attacking the President from the left.  After all, attacks from the right aren’t working too well, since the wingers keep putting most of their ammo into their own feet.  Whenever the left is winning, we have to be demoralized into our own worst enemies, and we’re damn good at it.

My mother always to me: when you’ve got nothing to say but snide both-sides-do-it criticisms of tribalism, it’s time to wrap up the post. So a-wrapping I go.

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