Yglesias to Taibbi: "People who want change need to correctly identify the obstacles to change."

[Clio the Leo]

Blame Obama First

Matt Taibbi has the latest in the endless series of articles and blog posts by everyone under the sun claiming everything in the world would be great if only Barack Obama were more left-wing. Taibbi is a much better writer than most people, so his contribution to this literature has a great deal more panache. That said, not only does his piece have the various factual problems noted by Tim Fernholz but it suffers from the same basic conceptual flaw as the vast majority of this literature—it ignores congress.

For example, the name “Ben Nelson” doens’t appear in the article. Nor will you read about Olympia Snowe. Nor Blanche Lincoln. Nor any of the other pivotal actors in the senate, whose decision to vote “yes” or “no” defines the limits of what’s possible. Near the end of the article, Taibbi seems to be finally getting on track. He notes that the draft financial reform legislation is actually pretty good.
<snip>

Having briefly zeroed-in on the problem, which is not Obama or his Wall Street crony advisors, but rather the members of congress who take okay ideas and make them worse, the very next sentence is “The White House’s refusal to push for real reform stands in stark contrast to what it should be doing.”

The implicit theory of political change here, that pivotal members of congress undermine reform proposals because of “the White House’s refusal to push for real reform” is just wrong. That’s not how things work. The fact of the matter is that Matt Taibbi is more liberal than I am, and I am more liberal than Larry Summers is, but Larry Summers is more liberal than Ben Nelson is. Replacing Summers with me, or with Taibbi, doesn’t change the fact that the only bills that pass the Senate are the bills that Ben Nelson votes for.

The problem here, to be clear, isn’t that lefties are being too mean to poor Barack Obama. The problem is that to accomplish the things I want to see accomplished, people who want change need to correctly identify the obstacles to change. If members of congress are replaced by less-liberal members in the midterms, then the prospects for changing the status quo will be diminished. By contrast, if members are replaced by more-liberal members (either via primaries or general elections) the prospects for changing the status will be improved. Back before the 2008 election, it would frequently happen that good bills passed congress and got vetoed by the president. Since Obama got elected, that doesn’t happen anymore. Now instead Obama proposes things that get watered down or killed in congress. That means focus needs to shift.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/12/blame-obama-first.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+matthewyglesias+%28Matthew+Yglesias%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

[impik]

1. Hallelujah! Voice of reason!

[OHdem10]

2. Right on point.The focus has to be on the Congress Members.

Continue to elect Conservative Democrats and we will get
Republican Leaning Legislation.

The Congress writes the Legislation and sends it to the
President for his signature. The President can cajole and
press but the Senate and House pretty much do their will.
I think we have seen this.

More attention to whom is elected in House and Senate.

To complicate things, the more Republicans are elected
the more the Democrats will cave and legislation will be
even more RW.

[JVS]

3. This article ignores the fact that although the branches of government are separate...

the party structure does not allow the different branches to function in isolation. As president, Obama is also high ranking within the party, and is expected to corral their support and cause grief to those who don't support him. If Obama gets credit as a shrewd horse trader when Arlen Specter got pulled over to our side of the aisle, then he also gets blame when he is unable to get the democratic senators to pass reasonable legislation.

[ima_sinnic]

13. +++1 yes, Congress does not work in a vacuum & reps are not independently voting on things

it's all a big game of favors & influence, & my opinion is that Obama is not playing that game well, or at least not in a way that benefits larger Democratic goals and principles. He seems to be taking a back seat and letting the bus steer itself, or be hijacked by right-wingers.

[Clio the Leo]

14. Yes Mr. President!

HERD those cats! :crazy:

[swilton]

17. I agree with your post JVS

With the mandate that Obama had in the 2008 election, he had the power of the electorate behind him to push the recalcitrant Senators. And on the issue of health care reform and the issue of regulating the banks, he had public opinion behind him.

[truedelphi]

4. In on e of his earlier pieces on the HCR legislation, Taibbi knocked both the

Overall Legislative process as well the President.

I do think that if it was possible for President Roosevelt to assemble a Congress that spent its first 100 days keying in on the causes of the Great Depression, then Obama might have been expected to act in as masterfully a way.

He needed to hit the ground running, while focusing on the two issues - the economic collapse and the need for Health Care Reform.

Instead Obama deliberately destroyed his momentum by running around the nation talking to every RW Teabagger out there, and offering no strong succinct messages about HCR but rather his wishy washy lobbyist' wuss expressions.

"Well uh, the public option is only a tool, and we don't even know if the public option is going to be in the final version of the bill," was one of his typical responses. Imagine if Roosevelt had said, "The only thing we uh have to fear, is gee, I don't really know what Congress will decide about that one!?!"

When you contrast his wishy-washy Tea Bagger appeasing statements from July 2009 with his statements about his deep regard for the Single Payer Universal initiative, that was the more gallant Obama of 2004, one is easily able to see that the "public option" is not the only tool.

[JVS]

5. There is a major difference between FDR's situation and that of Obama.

Although the economy has been lackluster for most of Bush's term, the collapse of last fall was a surprise. We'd been in a recession since 2007, but the collapse was a surprise. For example, the 2008 primary had happened before it became an issue. In contrast, FDR's campaign happened after nearly a full term of economic crisis beginning in 1929. As such, FDR and the entire party were more geared toward addressing the issue. There had been a long time to realize that action was necessary. Even with Obama going into economic crisis mode, there simply was not enough time between the the collapse and the election for the profile of the democrats going into the senate and house to be effected by the crash. On the other hand, a good politician should be able to use the urgency of a crisis to force action. If Bush was able to exploit 9/11 to trash the constitution, Obama should have been able to use the collapse of our financial system as an opportunity to reconstruct it in a more appealing fashion.

[truedelphi]

7. I am sorry but if someone like Autorank could figure out the type of policy

Matters that the collapse involved, while working a full time job and having other interests, then surely Obama might have been expected to be a little more up on this. After all, Obama was only campaigning for the most important job in the "Free World."

If you google "autorank" + "democraticunderground" and then one by one the months of last summer, (I mean 2008, not 2009) you will see that on this one alone board there were many posts about how the housing market and its derivatives were going to be the lead in to yet another Federal
Reserve-inspired bubble's crash.

It was NOT a surprise to me when the economy tanked in late Sept 2008. I had been told by people on this board. And they were not presuming themselves to be so high and mighty that they should run for President!

[JVS]

8. Yeah, but the political process still wouldn't have been fast enough to change what the...

composition of congress would be. We have a problem with a bunch of fiscal conservative, pain in the ass, anti-labor conservadems. In order for them to be booted out via primary we'd have needed the collapse to happen at least one year earlier than it actually did. Otherwise there just isn't the chance to put up more progressive alternatives.

[truedelphi]

11. In fact, the political process was largely in Obama's hands.

He made such Bankster-related appointments that I am still reeling from whom I thought the man Obama was and who he turned out to be.

He oversees who sits as Treasury Secretary and he chooses from a short list of whom should be put in at the Fed.

The fact that Bernanke is an AIG pawn and that Geithner acts as though he still works for London sticks in my craw.

The answer as to why ever they received their economic "knighthoods" stuns me. In more civilized times, in a more civilized naiton, they would be prosecuted.

But we do not have the rule of law that acknowledges Justice. We have the rule of law that awards Corporate Personhood and its billions of dollars, rather than We the Free citizens of a Free Republic.

[JVS]

12. Oh, I'm totally in agreement with you there. Obama's appointments have been awful.

I just wanted to point out that FDR did have a better chance to bring along helpful legislators in 1932 than Obama did in 2008. I offer no excuse for these appointments though, because they just suck ass.

[truedelphi]

27. Glad we have some agreement. And it is something to consider - the timeline of

Our Earlier Depression.

This one kicked butt so heavily as much damage was done in just some short months. (While like you say, the Earlier Depression took years.) Largely because the fallout from housing bubble breaking in Fall 2007 had already swamped the unemployment lines.

I think another thing to consider is the lobbyist pressure.

Back in LBJ's day there were fewer than 800 lobbyists. So I imagine that there were many fewer than that in FDR's day.

And currently we have 7,000 of those jack rabbits floating about Washington DC.

[Clio the Leo]

15. What are your thoughts on the general notion....

.... that members of Congress seem unable to work with one another to get anything done. It was discussed a a lot at Teddy's funeral (by members of both parties) and the President talked about it a bit in "Audacity." 20 years ago, Senators and Reps would socialize with members across the aisle and seemed more open to the idea that to get anything done there had to be both GIVE and TAKE.

Since 1994, the two parties see their respective roles as trying to completly choke the other one out and that behaviour is starting to infect the Democratic party. Not only will the GOP NEVER for any of the Dems major legislation, the Conservadems facing the same pressure at home, fight against the more progressive legislation.

I really think that was a big factor in why the President ran for office ... he couldn't get anything done in the Senate.

[girl gone mad]

6. Taibbi's most recent article was largely about Obama's own cabinet..

being stacked with once and future Wall Street executives and their greedy enablers.

Sorry, but you can't just blame congress for Geithner, Rubin and Summers. You can't blame congress for the administration's decision to allow the big banks to loot the treasury to the tune of several trillion dollars. You can't just blame congress for passing a fake reform bill, when Obama's economic team had a heavy hand in pushing through the various loopholes and amendments that watered it down to near-beer potency.

[caraher]

18. Right

He can't pick his Congress but he can choose his cabinet, and look at those choices. Congress didn't make him do that.

[tblue]

9. So Obama's helpless, a victim? The buck stops elsewhere? Lower our expectaions? Me no agree.

Yglesias is saying a) Obama is incapable of succeeding with this Congress. He just doesn't have the ability, the talent, the strength, the tools, the persistence, the whatever? And b) we should stop expecting so much?

Don't give me that.

So when Obama's singled out Senators Snowe, Grassley and Baucus -- and not one single liberal -- for their work on HCR, Obama chose them against his will. Really?

I'm sorry, I give the president a lot more credit than that. Maybe I believe in Obama more than Obama believes in himself. How easy was it for LBJ to push Congress to enact civil rghts legislation? It wasn't. The president, especially one elected with a mandate, can do a lot -- if that's what he wants.

[Cha]

30. He did not say anything at all about Pres Obama being "helpless"

he said it's disinfreakin'genuous to not take in the whole picture. But, that wouldn't occur to those who feel the need to take a daily dump on the President.

[carincross]

10. Taibbi Answers Tim Fernholz

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/12/12/on-obamas-sellout-bailout-tarp-rubin-goldman-sachs-robert-bob-tim-geithner-hamilton-project-derivatives-financial-reform-citibank/
On Obama’s Sellout Matt Taibbi
"There is indeed a factual error in the piece — a minor biographical detail that identifies Bob Rubin’s son Jamie as a former Clinton diplomat. There is in fact a James Rubin who was a diplomat in the Clinton White House, but that James Rubin is not the James Rubin I’m referring to in the piece. … But the basic argument of the article was that an enormous number of people with ties to Bob Rubin and/or other Wall Street insiders had assumed positions of responsibility in the Obama transition and White House. … The 'factual' issues he addresses are mostly areas in which we agree on the facts and he disagrees with me on how they should be interpreted. … It is my job to point out that many of the same people who bear direct responsibility for the financial crisis were given positions of great power in the Obama White House, and that in many important ways the Obama appointments represented a resounding reaffirmation of the status quo."

Matt goes into some detail talking about his sources, including his conversations with various members of Congress.

I would simply note here that I continue to be astounded that Obama has had no place among his financial advisers for Nobel laureates Joe Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, or economists James Galbraith, Dean Baker or Robert Reich. And remember, it was during the Rubin/Summers reign that Glass-Steagall was revoked - precipitating the financial crisis of 2008.

[JTFrog]

16. K&f'nR

[Enrique]

19. no one's in denial about Ben Nelson

I don't see the point in Taibbi "exposing" Ben Nelson's role, Joe Lieberman's, or Congress. The Left has been bashing them for years already and they have zero support among progressives.

Regarding Obama, however, I think it's time for progressives to wake up, and that's what Taibbi is doing.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

20. And god knows no president could influence what a senator votes for...

More baby-Obama in the bulrushes BS. Boo Hoo. Poor Obama, a waif beset by so many troubles.

The president utterly fucked up every aspect of the message and agenda during the period when the president is supposed to be leading and shaping public opinion and now the fact of those failures is presented as natural law.

What Ben Nelson was going to vote for in 2009 was a political VARIABLE, not a fixed scientific reality.

Obama is a smart and nice man but an very, very, very poor politician.

Since everyone went on record that he was the greatest politician in human history they are now reluctant to acknowledge that Obama hasn't led anyone anywhere and instead invoke Panglossian BS about how whatever Obama does must the the best possible outcome.

[freddie mertz]

23. Funny, when he ran, he made some pretty strong claims his ability to change politics

About his ability to bring disparate sides together, cross party lines, find solutions for the greater good.

I never took these claims particularly seriously, since I had no illusions about the character of the Republicans.

And they have turned out to be, as expected, obstructionist demagogues on each and every issue of note.

What dod not necessarily anticipate was the complete inability of the president and the Dem leadership to "herd the cats" in the two Houses, especially the Senate.

I also did not expect Obama, who came across as a pretty serious and independent leader on the campaign trail, to leave the details of HCR almost entirely in the hands of the dysfunctional Senate.

It has been a sobering, disappointing experience to watch this unravel so quickly.

[girl gone mad]

24. What, you don't remember the campaing slogan..

"Change We Can Believe In (Unless Congress Doesn't Like It)"?

[cliffordu]

21. K&R....

[GeorgeGist]

22. Coward

[Krashkopf]

25. The OBSTACLE - Obama's big mistake - was putting freemarketeers and banksters like . . .

Summers and Geightner in charge of things in the first place.

"Chicago School" economics democratic values (small "d" AND big "D") are mutually exclusive ideas.

[emulatorloo]

26. It is a good article. Thank you n/t

[Cha]

28. Good on all those who point out the fact challenged taibbi.

[mkultra]

29. I love Hulio Yglesias

his middle name is truth.