Believing Democrats are sincere in their talk about compromise is naive

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It's a standard tact to insist that our party is ready and willing to work with the opposition. Most voters still say they expect our politicians to work together, so it makes sense to promise it.

Of course, saying they'll compromise doesn't change the nature of the opposition and obstruction the Democrats face - and it makes no sense to suppose they already don't know republicans are a lost cause. One of their best tactics, however, is to paint the opposition as obstacles and highlight their own efforts as sincere and earnest. It's not unheard of to use that posture as a wedge to get voters to insist republicans act in their interest. In the recent health care debate we saw republicans lured far enough along in the process for our party to push the legislation to the finish line.

I don't buy the talk about bipartisanship any more than the republicans must. Despite all of the criticisms about timidity or naivete, the majority of our legislators play to win. The republican promises to use their offices to obstruct Democrats and unseat the President are not in any way popular with the majority of voters or anything for our party to emulate or match with our own do-nothing pledges.

Our political system provides for both protest and compromise. There is little room for either party or the presidency to dictate. We'd better hope, for our democracy's sake, that someone we send to Washington finds a way to get something done in the time we're paying them to serve.

I'll accept the President's standard of compromise as he described it to progressive bloggers this week:

PRESIDENT: ". . . there has not been, I think, any issue that we've worked in which I have been willing to sign on to a compromise that I didn't feel was a strong improvement over the status quo and was not the best that we could do, given the political alignments that we've got."

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