bipartisanship

Bipartisan Blight III: Evan Bayh Bye

Robert Borosage — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:59:26 -0800

Evan Bayh abruptly announced he was quitting the Senate days before the filing deadline for his Senate seat, without notice to his constituents, to his colleagues, to his party's leaders or to the White House. He deprived the Democratic voters in Indiana who had voted him into office of the opportunity of choosing their own nominee. Nice work.

So naturally, the pundits are celebrating Bayh as a "good and thoughtful" person, a moderate appalled at the partisanship that has gridlocked the Senate. Perhaps, muses the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus, his departure will be the "wake-up call" the Senate needs to work together once more.

Who could argue with Bayh's complaint? The Senate is dysfunctional. Bitter partisanship divides Washington. Politicians spend their lives raising money, as Bayh with some $13 million in his campaign account can attest.

But absent from this celebration of a departing hero is even a fleeting glance at substance. What has Evan Bayh been championing with his bipartisan common sense? Has he had any success?

The harsh reality is that Bayh has been wrong about virtually everything. And the country suffers not because partisanship blocked action, but because the establishment consensus got too much of his agenda enacted.

Bayh supported the catastrophic invasion of Iraq. He joined the bipartisan celebration of banking deregulation. He favors more military spending. He favored tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in an age of Gilded-Age inequality. He was an advocate of corporate free trade policies that encouraged multinationals to ship jobs to a mercantilist China willing to subsidize them. He's a champion of bipartisanship -- bipartisan folly.

Even in his departing, he got it wrong. Bayh announced on CBS's Early Show that he was looking for a job in the private sector because "If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months." This echoes the Republican assault on the recovery plan as summarized by newly elected Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, that the stimulus plan "didn't create one new job."

Republican spinmeister Frank Luntz would be proud. These are great sound bites. They play to people's anger about jobs, the economy, Wall Street, the bailout, the deficits. But they are both untrue and silly. There is no serious economist, right left or center, who does not accept that the recovery plan generated or saved nearly two million jobs —and forestalled what would have been a far worse downturn, if not a depression. As David Leonhardt summarized in the New York Times Wednesday:

Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody's Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.

The reality, as Martin Wolf of the conservative Financial Times once more details, the recovery act was too small, not too large— and too laden with ineffective top-end tax cuts, rather than public services jobs and infrastructure spending that would put people to work. This, of course, was a reflection of Evan Bayh's bipartisan labors, as he joined with a couple Republicans and the sainted Democrat Ben Nelson to cut the size of the recovery bill that passed the House, adding top-end tax cuts and cutting spending on school repairs and the like, making it far less effective than it might have been.

Since then Bayh has been echoing the growing establishment clamor about deficits and debt. He has championed the notion of a bipartisan commission to report to a lame-duck Congress to vote up or down on a package that would surely include cuts in Social Security and Medicare and tax increases. This is a classic example of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, of conservatives using a crisis to enact measures that would otherwise be politically unacceptable—and that force working families to pay for the failures of the elite.

It's worth repeating, as Martin Wolf summarizes: In the short term, we need more, not less of a boost to the economy; deficits should be higher not lower, as government spending steps in while consumers recover from the loss of over $10 trillion in assets.

Once the economy starts moving, growing employment produces rising tax revenues, and lower spending on supports like unemployment and food subsidies will erase much of that short-term borrowing. In the long term, our unsustainable deficit projections are driven almost entirely by our broken health care system. If the U.S. had the German health care system, or spent the same percentage of gross domestic product as they do on health, we'd have better health, and a surplus as far as the eye can see.

Bayh's complaint about Washington gets some things right. Washington would be a better place were there more civility. The Senate would be functional if it would adopt majority rule. It would be far better if legislators would work together than try to do each other in. Money politics corrupts the Congress. But with all that, we should not forget about policy. The substance of Evan Bayh's bipartisan policies that were enacted helped get us into the mess we are in, and are making it harder to get out of it.

Obama To Progressives: Stop Working to Elect Democrats

Jonathan Walker — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:15:45 -0700

While President Obama has yet to tell his progressive grassroots supporters directly, his words and actions make it clear that he wants progressives to stop working to elect Democrats. The problem is that Obama has a strange, overwhelming bipartisanship fetish. Apparently, getting good legislation passed, truly fixing our health care system, and providing Americans with the best possible care at the lowest possible price is all less important than the approval of a handful Republican senators.

Obama has said so himself multiple times: “The president has told visitors that he would rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a bill that gives him 85 percent of what he wants than a 100 percent satisfactory bill that passes 52 to 48.” In other words, Obama is happy to make our health care system 25% worse solely for the approval of Republican Senators Grassley, Hatch, and Snowe.

The progressive grassroots community worked hard over the past four years to give the Democrats their largest majority in the Senate in decades. Once Al Franken is seated, the Democrats will have a filibuster-proof 60 seats. Despite massive wins (and dismal poll numbers for Republicans), Obama is obsessed with watering down important legislation to win a few votes from any Republican senators.

Since Obama values “bipartisanship” more than getting the best possible legislation passed, progressives are hurting their cause by working to elect Democrats. Every Democratic Senator elected makes the Senate Republican Caucus smaller and more conservative. That means legislation needs to be pushed even farther to the right to gain the support from an ever-shrinking pool of GOP Senators.

As long as Obama values the votes of a few Republican senators more highly than fulfilling campaign promises, grassroots activists should be working to elect moderate Republican senators instead. Obama's action makes it clear that the progressives should support Republican Mark Kirk for Senate in Illinois and Republican Mike Castle for Senate in Delaware.

If every bill is only going to be as liberal as the most moderate Republican senator, working to elect Democrats is counterproductive. Obama should be focused on fixing the country, not undermining the Democratic party by forfeiting to a few Republicans the incredible power of shaping legislation just to gain the label “bipartisan”.

http://jwalkerreport.blogspot.com/2009/06/obama-to-progressives-stop-wor...

Forked Tongues

Digby — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:57:23 -0800

I have been struggling since the election to write the big piece about "what it all means" but others here and elsewhere have said it all so eloquently that I've been stymied. It goes without saying that Barack Obama's win is a great victory for racial progress, and there is no doubt that the country has finally awakened from its post 9-11 trance. But what does it all mean for progressivism? I honestly don't know yet. The contours of this victory are still amorphous to me. I'm watching it unfold with excited interest and hope.

It's much more obvious to me what has changed for the right considering their epic fall from grace--- absolutely nothing. This is because in their minds they didn't actually lose --- liberalism did. Back in 2005 I wrote:

Movement conservatives are getting ready to write the history of this era as liberalism once again failing the people. Typically, the conservatives were screwed, as they always are. They must regroup and fight for conservatism, real conservatism, once again. Viva la revolucion!

There is no such thing as a bad conservative. "Conservative" is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives' good graces. Until they aren't. At which point they are liberals.

Get used to the hearing about how the Republicans failed because they weren't true conservatives. Conservatism can never fail. It can only be failed by weak-minded souls who refuse to properly follow its tenets.

They have certainly lived up to my expectations. Here's Rush:

The way to the light is plainly visible. But everybody wants to be considered the smartest people in the room, so they come up with all these new things like "the era of Reagan is over...[T]here's a blueprint for winning it, 1980, there's a blueprint. McCain is not the blueprint for how Republicans win landslides. Going after moderates, independents, and all these yokels is not the blueprint. The blueprint's there, 1994, taking back the House, the blueprint's there. Why are these people ignoring it?

And if anyone wonders how they plan to go forward, here's Michael Reagan:

It's official: America has its first truly Socialist president... and it's the Republican Party's fault...the so-called "leaders" of our party, who promised us that if we'd just vote for who they put up for election, we'd finally get what we wanted: smaller government, lower taxes, dramatically lower spending, pro-life laws, pro-marriage constitutional amendments, pro-American economics... well, YOU AND I put them in power, and they gave us nothing but BIG GOVERNMENT, BIG DEFICITS, and LIBERAL COMPROMISES.

[We must] EXPOSE LIBERAL CORRUPTION-- With the Democrats back in power in both Congress and the White House, you KNOW that they'll be falling right back into their habits of taking lobbyists' money under the table, trading votes for campaign contributions, spying on and sabotaging Republican legislative plans, covering up their leaders' sexual "flings," and spending taxpayer money on personal expenses like never before. But this time, YOU AND I will be there every step of the way, making sure that no stone is left unturned, every dark corner is filled with light, and every illegal act is paid for with censure, impeachment, recalls, investigations, and jail time for every criminal we expose in Washington, D.C.

Lest anyone believes this thinking is confined to the fever swamps, here's a member of the Senate talking about how he plans to approach this new era:

Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, warned president-elect Barack Obama that he would filibuster U.S. Supreme Court appointments if those nominees were too liberal.

Kyl, Arizona's junior senator, expects Obama to appoint judges in the mold of U.S Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Those justices take a liberal view on cases related to social, law and order and business issues, Kyl said.

"He believes in justices that have empathy," said Kyl, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Phoenix. The attorneys group promotes conservative legal principles.

Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.

Naturally, Kyl was one of those threatening to invoke the so-called nuclear option to end the filibuster when such things were suggested by the Democrats.

I hear a lot of people saying they think the backlash politics of Nixonland may finally be in retreat with the election of an African American president. Let's hope that's true. But it pays to remember that ruthless attack politics have been practiced by somebody in America since the very beginning. And we have an entire generation of conservatives trained in its dark arts. I suspect they'll find a way to use them.

But in the early going, it's clear to many of us that the bigger threat to the progressive agenda lies with the political establishment's frenzied attempt to narrow the mandate to a cramped, incremental centrism. They insist that the country is center-right even in the face of a broad progressive victory and demand that the the new administration must bend over backwards to accomodate conservatives or risk being seen as liberal, which is assumed to be the political kiss of death. They say this in spite of the fact that the Republican Party is less popular than e coli.

Like David Sirota here and others elsewhere, I have been tracking this "center-right" meme that has been building since the election. (In fact, I've been tracking this theme as it's built since the 2006 election.) Here's a fairly mundane, but thoroughly common, case in point. Steve McMahon, Democratic strategist, said on Chris Matthews yesterday that "the middle decided this election and the swing voters are waiting for Obama to address their economic concerns."

That's simply not true. The turnout was only slightly higher overall than last time because Republicans stayed home. But there was hugely increased turnout among Democrats and first time voters who registered as Democrats. Unless McMahon is saying that African Americans, young people and liberals are swing voters, he's just full of it. This was not a swing election. This was an enthusiastic endorsement of the Democratic Party by a majority of voters.

I can see why politicians say they represent the middle; it's a perfectly understandable bit of political rhetoric. But it's kind of a shame that every time I see an allegedly progressive spokesperson on television these days he or she is spinning like a whirling dervish derisively insisting that the left had nothing to do with this election. It's just sad. I guess we've got a way to go before Democrats will proudly own their victories or even give rhetorical lip service to the idea that Americans are progressives and believe in liberal ideas.

Matthews, of all people, actually batted this stuff back pretty vociferously, (which is also sad. If Chris Matthews is now the voice of the liberalism on television, we've got some big public relations problems.) The Republican strategist on Matthews' show, Todd Harris, agreed with him that Obama needed to deliver on his big promises, but offered this warning:

But big doesn't need to be conflated with liberal. He can be big and govern from the center. I think it's important that people not lose sight of what this election was and what it wasn't. What it was, was a historic victory for Barack Obama, what it wasn't was a wholesale realignment of American politics to the left.

Matthews interrupted:

You speak with a forked tongue, Todd. Let me tell you something, when Ronald Reagan won with 51%, when your guy George Bush won with less votes than Al Gore --- you talk about mandates --- he came in there and did exactly what he wanted to do. He came in there and gave tax cuts to the rich across the board. He took us to war in Iraq, the way he wanted to do it. The idea that you should pussyfoot if you're a Democrat, but if you're a Republican you go in there whole hog --- you have a totally ---two standards here. Republicans should take advantage of every victory and call it a mandate, Democrats should go in there and be very cautious --- "gee whiz, I'm sorry for being here, I hope we don't offend the conservatives" ----

Steve McMahon, would you jump in here please?

McMahon: First and foremost, Barack Obama believes there is a 700 billion dollar bailout that Obama believes was too tilted to Wall Street and the financial interests. The first thing he needs to do is get control of that so that some of that money can be redirected to some of the things you talked about. But he also promised health care reform and he promised to insure every American. He made big promises and these are very difficult to do. But there's not going to be enough money to do everything that he wants to do right away. So he's going to have to pick some priorities and I think what's important for Barack Obama is that the priorities he picks are mainstream values and mainstream priorities for the swing voters who got him ten or twelve states that John Kerry wasn't able to win.

Those are the people who delivered this presidency to him, not the left, and he needs to address their economic concerns with big ideas and bold programs but with programs that the country can afford.

Todd Harris: I think Steve is right about that and he ought to be looking for ways to work in a bipartisan way and the first thing that he can do is the enactment of his middle class tax cut. I don't think there will be a single Republican who will be opposed to that. I also think working toward energy independence is something the parties can agree on and on the foreign policy front, working to win the war in Afghanistan, something he talked about and Republicans ought to be able to get behind.

Matthews: Let's go through that. That sounds like a Republican platform...

Funny that.

When Obama says he's going to govern as a post partisan, I'm not sure even he knows exactly what that means just yet. But Democrats and pundits reflexively reassuring everyone who'll listen that the crazy progressives are completely irrelevant is not only a public slap in the face of millions of Democratic voters (many of whom are new and must be wondering who these hated Democrats are) is destructive. All I hear is small bore, boiler plate junk about middle class tax cuts and "stimulus" --- which doesn't mean anything to people. If they succeed in defining it as a crabbed, circumscribed agenda that must appeal to some mythological swing voter while simultaneously placating the walking ids that call themselves conservatives, they are going to shrink this mandate before the new administration has unpacked its laptops in the West Wing. I realize that they want to "manage expectations" but this excessive pearl clutching about bipartisanship is about as inspiring as dirt and could very well lead to a premature loss of confidence among the faithful and a loss of flexibility in the congress.

I obviously don't know what the new administration is going to do out of the gate. They're just figuring that out themselves. But I do know that the villagers are working overtime to make sure that whatever it is will be comfortably restricted to what they think is "center-right." And we know that the conservatives are going to continue their obstructionist tactics and character assassination because they still think that's a winning strategy. If real change is going to come, Obama (and we) are going to have to educate some of them, outwit all of them and ignore most of them, all at the same time.

Bipartisanship Misdirection

Digby — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 12:38:37 -0800

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the urgent need to stop the "partisan bickering" in Washington, with elder statesmen gathering in groups to demand bipartisan cabinets and pundits wringing their hankies about government not "getting anything done."

Glenn Greenwald wrote about the actual record of bipartisanship earlier this week and set forth a long list of recent legislative initiatives in which the Republicans voted as a bloc and Democrats crossed the aisle to pass legislation. It's quite impressive. He concludes:

On virtually every major controversial issue -- particularly, though not only, ones involving national security and terrorism -- the Republicans (including their vaunted mythical moderates and mavericks) vote in almost complete lockstep in favor of the President, the Democratic caucus splits, and the Republicans then get their way on every issue thanks to "bipartisan" support. That's what "bipartisanship" in Washington means...Other than formally disbanding as a party -- or granting a permanent proxy of their collective vote to Mitch McConnell -- how could Congressional Democrats possibly be more accommodating than they already are?

When the Republicans won in 2004, conservative movement leader Grover Norquist made a famous statement:

"Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such."

I could be wrong, but I don't recall any outcry about a lack of comity or civility in Washington over comments like that. People chuckled knowingly and explained "elections have consequences." Only now that Republicans are in the minority and may suffer an epic loss at the polls next fall do we see nearly hysterical op-eds imploring politicians to compromise for the good of the nation.

For seven years, when Democrats were in the minority, there was nary a peep from the "punditocracy" about bipartisanship, despite strict party line votes specifically designed so that Democrats would not cross over (on the theory that the Republican base preferred legislation that featured no compromises with the enemy). Yet since the Democrats won the Congress in 2006, there has been a nonstop keening from the political establishment about how the Congress needs to stop the partisan bickering — even as it is still only the Republicans who vote as a bloc on bill after bill and filibuster at twice the rate of any congressional minority in U.S. history. These critics never name names. And lately, they've been demanding that a Democratic president must be willing to name Republicans to his or her cabinet, implying that Republicans are the ones who've been shut out of the process and must be included for the sake of bipartisan comity.

It's possible that the pundits and elder statesmen simply accept that Republicans can't be asked to compromise. After all, everyone knows that conservatism is defined by its philosophy of principles and integrity (except for all the corruption and hypocrisy, of course.). Therefore, in order that a Democratic majority "gets things done," progressives must be sensitive to that special need, even to the extent that they not complain about obstructionism or pass legislation that the president might veto. That causes unpleasant discord and dissension which can only be cured by Democrats agreeing to share power with the minority and compromise on their agenda.

This new obsession about bipartisanship, which blames both parties equally for the sins of one, comes at the moment of progressive ascension. That is not an accident. Conservatism is still considered the default philosophy of "real Americans" in the political establishment. The blame for any Republican electoral losses are placed at the feet of George W. Bush, not conservatism itself, and this hand wringing about the need for bipartisanship is a way for the protectors of the status quo to keep progressivism in check after a decade of failed conservative governance.

The fact is that conservatives understand how to advance their agenda, whether in the majority or in the minority, always blaming progressives or liberalism for what has gone wrong. The political and media establishments help them do it with "heads I win, tails you lose" calls for bipartisanship the minute the Republicans become a minority. That's why progressives need to make their arguments about conservatism explicitly so that they can begin to expose this game for what it is and make people understand that conservatism, not a lack of "comity" or "bipartisan cooperation" is at fault for the mess this country is in today. If they don't, if history is any guide, a new Democratic president will be under tremendous pressure to not only govern in bipartisan fashion but, perhaps more importantly, put the past behind him or her in order to "bind the nation's wounds" with a call for unity and cooperation which will naturally exclude "looking backward."

And in 20 years we will likely see some of Dick Cheney's young protégés come to power in a new conservative administration determined restore the glorious conservative order that was cut so tragically short. by George W. Bush's mismanagement of the conservative dream.