Eugene Robinson: What If? So What?

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/what_if_so_what_20101025/

What If? So What?

Posted on Oct 25, 2010

By Eugene Robinson



Come on down, everybody in our studio audience, and play the exciting new game that may be about to sweep the nation, or at least the Democratic Party: “What If?”

What if President Obama and the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill had pushed through an authentic, righteous, no-holds-barred progressive agenda, perhaps with a thick overlay of pitchfork populism? How different might the political landscape look? Would predictions for the party’s prospects on Election Day still range from gloom all the way to doom? Or would triumphant Democrats be preparing to leave the GOP—or what remained of it—dazed and confused?

This question is being asked, in all seriousness, by thoughtful progressives. They argue that the Obama administration’s political mistake wasn’t pushing its liberal program too hard but not pushing it hard enough. And they contend that the White House seriously misread both the public anger and the national interest when it came to dealing with Wall Street’s greedy excesses—punishing miscreant bankers with love taps rather than cudgel and mace.

snip//

So, contestants, what if?

Sorry, but it doesn’t wash. The problem is that for all the talk of changing the way Washington works, you still have to get actual legislation through an actual Congress. In the House, Democratic ranks are swollen with Blue Dogs and other moderates, many of them elected in swing districts as part of the 2008 Democratic landslide. The votes for a full-fledged progressive agenda—single-payer health care, for example—simply were not there.

In the Senate, the terrain was even less favorable. With the Republican caucus voting no as a bloc, passing any piece of legislation meant making concessions and compromises to keep together the needed 60 votes to bring a bill to the floor. The votes weren’t there for a health care bill that would have been cleaner and more transformative than the one that passed, or for climate-change legislation with teeth, or for new rules that could really transform Wall Street’s toxic culture, or for ... fill in the blank.

All right, studio audience, then what if the Democrats had gone all bipartisan and tried to meet the Republicans halfway?

Puh-leeze. They did try. What they discovered is that there’s no halfway point between “do something, anything” and “do nothing at all.”

OK, folks, let’s try one more scenario. What if Obama and the Democrats had devoted every waking hour to the three issues that Americans care about most: jobs, jobs and jobs?

Well, unemployment would still be painfully high; there’s no way the economy could recover 8 million jobs so quickly, no matter what Washington did. And health care reform would still be a distant dream.

Those who play “What If?” are unconstrained by political and economic reality. President Obama and the Democratic leadership, to their misfortune, enjoy no such freedom.

[Syrinx]

1. I love Eugene Robinson, but he is uncharacteristically snarky there

I pretty much agree with his point though.

It's not that Obama and the Democrats have been weaselly in carrying out their agenda. They haven't. As the recent Tim Dickinson article in Rolling Stone documented, Obama has been the most effective president, in terms of passing legislation, since LBJ.

Their problem, in my estimation, is that Democrats are too easily spooked. They need to campaign, full-throttled, on their historic accomplishments, in order to get a decisive majority in the senate, so that every motion is not delayed and destroyed. Instead, they've been running away from their achievements.

They seem to believe the right-wing media propaganda that this is a right-wing country. It isn't. But it can be confused into thinking it is.

They need to be more aggressive. Paint the Republicans as the nut-cases that they are. Go on offense, for god's sake, instead of being so goddamn defensive.

Attack the insane a-holes, and expose them for what they are.

But I could be wrong. :shrug:

[babylonsister]

2. Your points are good but address their midterm campaigning

style, or lack thereof, where Mr. Robinson isn't talking about that, but the admin in general and the limits they could go given who and what they have had to contend with.

[Bitwit1234]

7. I think the Democrats that are in office are also too nice

and I mean that literally. They do not go out and try to ram their message thru like the Republicans do. And in this political time that is what we need above all. We need Democrats to get up and fight the republicans as loud and as long as they can.Giving in isn't helping them is it. So they might as well ram their message home. It will help. But you can't tell them that, and I hope this election learns them a lesson. That to get what you want for the people you have to be willing to FIGHT THE REPUBLICANS FOR IT. And sadly the Democrats in this congress, anyway are way way too nice.

[pnwmom]

3. Thanks. Great post. n/t

[FSogol]

4. K & R n/t

[Stuart G]

5. K and R

[impik]

6. Sometimes i think that ER is the last sane pundit on Earth