Josh Marshall: It’s Meta Politics
I’m just sharing today what some pundits are saying about the Massachusetts Senate race and Obama’s path forward. Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo weighs in:
The central problem the president is laboring under is the fact that the economy remains in a shambles. And unemployment remains at a toxic 10%. Beyond that though the Democrats are suffering because they have shown voters an image of fecklessness and inability to deliver results at a moment of great public anxiety and suffering. Big changes provoke great anxiety, especially in such a divided society. But Democrats are not just having dealing with the ideological divisions in the country — which is what the Tea Party movement is about. They’re also losing a big swathe of the population that is losing faith that the Democrats can govern, that they can even deliver on the reforms and policies they say are necessary for the national good. As I wrote earlier, this is about meta-politics. If the Democrats, either from the left or the right, walk away from reform, they will get slaughtered in November. They’ll get it from the people who want reform, from the people who never wanted reform and from sensible people all over who just think they can’t get anything done.
What the Democrats — and a lot of this is on the White House — have done is get so deep into the inside game of legislative maneuvering, this and that ‘gang’ of senators and a lot of other nonsense that they’ve let themselves out of sync with the public mood and the people’s needs.
The president needs to find way to say, we’ve heard you. We’ve gotten so focused on working the Washington channels to get this thing done and we need to be more focused on the public’s mood and urgency. Well, we’ve heard you. We’re going to stop playing around and get this thing done. And then we’re going to work on getting Americans back to work. We know the urgency of the moment and we know you expect results.
I’ve written this quickly. I would not consider it a polished version of anything the president should say. But I think the gist is right. This is the biggest testing time the president has yet faced. It could be a key turning point in his presidency. Over the next forty-eight hours the president is going to come under withering pressure to walk away from reform. It’ll come from the left and the right, and in various different flavors. It will come from shocking directions. The president is going to have to find a way to say, No. We’re doing this. He’ll need to stand down a lot of cowardly and foolish people in his own party. He’ll have to stand down the vast and formless force of establishment punditry and just say, No. We’re going to do this. And he’s going to have to make the case to the public, not necessarily convince all those who have doubts about health care reform but make clear that he thinks this is the right direction for the country and because he thinks it’s the right thing to do that he’s going to make it happen.
I hope Obama is listening to people like Joah Marshall instead of the usual media gasbags. Stopping his agenda now would be a disaster for him.
Tags: Josh Marshall, MA-Sen, Talking Points Memo
Ezra Klein makes a point:
I agree with Ezra. They can’t drop health care now.
If it is the Senate’s HCR or nothing, I choose nothing. No reform is better than the Senate’s fake reform. Obama and the Dem leadership painted themselves into this corner.
If the current HCR fails, they lose politically.
If it passes, they lose when Americans find out what a fraud it actually is.
The solution?
Use reconciliation to fix it first, including a public option and negotiated drug prices. Then sign the Senate bill.
I remain stumped on how failing to pass an unpopular bill hurts Democrats. It might not help them, but I doubt it’s any worse than passing said unpopular bill would be.
It hurts them, Geezer, because they will have failed to pass real HCR. Americans don’t want the status quo, but they don’t want this bill either. In the long term it is better for America if this bill fails.
Wasting a year talking about health care reform and then killing it = electoral disaster. Pass it and move on, but they MUST MUST introduce the House changes in the Senate.
I think the choices in order of worst to best are the following:
1) drop hcr altogether
2) pass Senate bill and then do nothing else
3) pass Senate bill, pass popular provisions through reconciliation
I should also add – more dithering on hcr is an electoral loser as well. I think Dems options are pretty narrow right now.
Despite the election’s bad results for Democrats the Delaware GOP will not benefit at all. They still cling to the genetic wisdom of flawed duPonts like Copeland even though he gave up a safe senate seat to join Bill Lee and then get slapped around by Denn. Not to mention the 20 employees business whiz Copeland has laid off.
The Delaware GOP is the ultimate circular firing squad who try to maintain the facade of being in charge while they ignore realities.
Tom Loss aka Tom Ross and others don’t get it.
When will they embrace a non elitist Republican who likes unions, favors universal health care, favors drug treatment and is skeptical of corporate america?
Not likely too soon. Let’s hope the Mass election wakes them up a bit. Brown was a normal guy not a whack job.
Pass the bill:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/fools-on-the-hill/
Steve Benen:
I can see the attack ads now: Dems voted before HCR before they voted against it. This crap will write itself.
They really don’t have a choice.
Silly. All the Dems have to show that the repubs and conservatives killed real HCR – which, in fact, they did.
But that would require an actual spine and saying mean things about republicans.
BTW, the vast majority of the American public disapproves of this HCR bill.
“Tom Loss aka Tom Ross and others don’t get it.”
Wasn’t this the same “clever” nickname someone with a different handle pinned on Ross a couple of days ago? Sheesh, Protack lovers, don’t you EVER learn? Nobody in the state feels this way except a handful of you losers. Come back and sing this tune AFTER you’ve won something. Until then, you’re not convincing anyone but yourself — and I have a feeling you’re not convinced, either.
The DEMs will have to go for HCR immediately and there’s a really decent plan on how to do it:
“Ron Pollack, a longtime health care insider and executive director of Families USA, has floated a variation on this theme with the administration and congressional aides: a two-step process that would reassure House members their wishes would be met in the bill.
Under Pollack’s proposal, the House would take up the Senate bill only after the White House and congressional leaders struck a deal on key issues, such as taxes and the subsidies to purchase insurance. They would incorporate those changes into a separate budget reconciliation bill.
The House would pass both the Senate bill and the reconciliation bill, possibly on the same day. The Senate would then take up the reconciliation bill, which would require only 51 votes for passage.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31635.html#ixzz0d5gbReEI