The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Thoughts on How to Go on Offense

    By AmericanDreamer on Wed, 11/03/2010 - 11:58am |

    The modern-day GOP (since around 1980) has never had any reservations about interpreting Democratic victories in whatever the hell way they want to.  They have never ceded sole rights to defining any electoral mandate to the Democrats when the Democrats have won elections.  Nor have they felt any obligation whatsoever to concede a single thing to either a newly elected Democratic President or a recently elected Democratic Congressional majority. 

    I hope that, in his first public statement once the returns are in, Obama will say that the voters have spoken and have made it clear that they believe his Administration and the Congress in Washington have not been firm enough in correcting the problems that enabled the big banks to trigger the mess we are working our way out of, and have also not done enough to create jobs.   And then go on to say he will be asking Congress to press stronger measures to more fully deal with the financial crisis as well as a major green infrastructure jobs bill to put hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work and build the economy of our future.

    I don't think Obama should take a combative tone but rather a humble one, suggesting he has heard the discontent and will work to do better going forward.  It's known in political insider circles as "letting others have your way."  If he were to take a pugnacious tone towards the Republicans after last night that would not go over well.

    There are several potential benefits in taking this tack.  The Republicans will be outraged at this interpretation of what the voters have said.  Obama should calmly ask GOP leaders which of these items he has mentioned do they disagree with, and why?  When he does this, he helps better define who he is going to be going forward.  And he will force the GOP Congressional leadership to signal to the public more of what their real agenda is. 

    Going on offense on these broadly popular issues could help widen and hasten some of the wedges in between the GOP establishment and the movement radicals that are going to blow up later anyway. 

    Also, the Republicans when they are incensed with rage look really, really bad.  Clinton knew this and understood how to exploit it with Gingrich in particular.

    I don't know.  On the one hand, Obama could sit back and wait for the hyper-aggressive GOP House to put him and the Senate on defense.  He could just lay back and go with that and see how that works out for him, see if the GOP overreaches, gets only some of what it wants on policy changes, and hope they self-destruct sooner rather than later. 

    Or he could go on offense by using this moment to better define himself going forward, and his opposition.   Hmmm...

    Comments

    After the election - November 8, 2006

    Pat Toomey, then president of the Club for Growth, now senator-elect from Pennsylvania: "There's no doubt in my mind it was not a repudiation of conservatives but it was a repudiation of the Republican Party."

    Rush Limbaugh: "Republicans lost last night but conservatism did not...You have a defensive, gee-I'm-afraid-of-my-shadow, Republican Party, Rockefeller-type Republican Party, you're going to get this result more often than not. You go pedal-to-the-metal conservative and the evidence is clear: it beats liberalism, particularly a liberalism afraid to be honest about what it is."


    by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 11/03/2010 - 12:15pm

    Thanks--two among innumerable other examples that might be cited.  If there is anyone out there who thinks last night was a mandate to further deregulate Wall Street and take it easier on the big bankers, and also cut taxes on wealthy people, well, that doesn't pass any laugh test.  Any Democrat who yields to that operational interpretation of last night just has no clue about how to advance a progressive or just common sense agenda, I'm sorry to say.

    Americans (majorities) are operationally liberal, philosophically conservative.  Define what liberalism will get you--jobs now and a strong economic foundation going forward, and removing the power of the big banks to crash the economy with their recklessness and irresponsibility--and it beats what the GOP and Tea Party are offering right now. 

    People are just pissed right now.  They feel like no one in Washington gets it, no one has anything that looks like a plan for what to do.  They are not remotely of the belief the GOP has anything like an affirmative plan to make things better, so they figure WTF, if the federal government is going to be ineffective and also waste gobs and gobs of my money bailing out the thug bankers and obviously is not on my side or the side of ordinary Americans--screw it, I'll take a tax cut. 

    Give the public two really strong things you're going to do, that are explainable, that are common sense, and watch what happens.  That will be the beginning of digging ourselves out of this latest debacle.


    by AmericanDreamer on Wed, 11/03/2010 - 12:29pm

    Cutting your nose off to spite your face is a concept I have never understood. It seems childish to me. Get pissed at your situation and run off and do something to make it worse. This is not something thinking adults should do.

    In discussing the results with someone I love (and I'm not naming names) this morning, I was reminded that many people who voted yesterday had no idea what they voted for. This person voted for Jerry Brown, but for Fiorina, as well. I asked why, and they said "I heard a lot of bad stuff about Boxer." When I explained Fiorina's background with HP, and asked if that was what they wanted for CA, the person was horrified at how they had voted, and asked, "Well how is a busy person supposed to know what is true and what isn't?" Repeat that all over the country, and it is easy to see how this landslide happened.

    Dems are TERRIBLE at messaging. I don't understand why. Maybe it is because they try to educate people instead of coming up with bumper stickers that stay in people's mind, when the truth just doesn't.

    There is probably a way to overcome this. It is possible that the people who had buyer's remorse over Obama will now have buyer's remorse again, and reverse next time. The repub party was supposedly dead after the 2008 election, and they have risen again. So, it gives me hope that a tattered dem party may be able to do the same. It is just too disheartening for me to believe that "America, home of the not-so-free and the selfish" is REALLY what the American people as a whole really want, in spite of what this election seems to say.


    by stillidealistic on Wed, 11/03/2010 - 1:30pm

    1. Banks-Finance-The Rich.

    2. Jobs-Houses.

    Yup. I'd be happy as a pig with that agenda, and I'd spin the election results the same way. 

    The Democrats in Congress should start up as much legislation as possible which is explicitly designed to show these assholes for what they are - rich, greedy, hateful bastards who don't give a damn about the middle and working classes.


    by quinn esq on Wed, 11/03/2010 - 1:42pm

    Paul Begala, who, unlike me, has personally and FTF advised US Presidents, including telling them when they are wrong, has this up at HuffPost, very similar in spirit and even some specifics to what I am trying to say in this thread: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-begala/a-centrist-democratic-age_b_777955.html

    The differences are that he concedes an ideological point by characterizing his agenda as "centrist".  I see no need to do so by labeling the issues he identifies as "centrist", as lmany self-described liberals, independents, centrists, radicals, porcupines, anteaters, ghostbusters, and even ordinary citizen Republicans (as opposed to elected Republican officials), agree with one or both of those "planks".

    Also, after jobs #1, he has dealing with the corruption in the political system as his #2 issue, whereas I have cleaning up the remaining major big bank and Wall Street messes as my #2.  I agree the corruption issue is near the top.  The CW is that "process" issues such as this one don't always sell that well, because they don't directly affect the day-to-day lives of voters, only, perhaps, indirectly so.  But there's no question it needs to be addressed, apart from the questions of how, specifically, and how much rhetorical emphasis or priority from the Democratic party's leadership is best attached to it.

    His recommendation is very much in the vein of "letting them have our way", which is what I'm saying. (what Orlando from afar is reading as a non-concession concession).


    by AmericanDreamer on Sat, 11/06/2010 - 1:30pm

    Related on greening the economy, see this article in the current issue of The American Prospect, by Monica Potter, "Green Job Search". 

    http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=green_job_search

    Her argument is that so long as dirty energy remains cheap there won't be enough of a market for green jobs to get very far.  Taken to reinforce the need for cap-and-trade legislation.

    I realize this goes completely against the insider and pundit talk of the day, and against CW, but I hope that if the President accepts this argument he will resubmit cap-and-trade legislation (perhaps along with a complementary large public green infrastructure jobs bill), explain to the public why it is a necessary step to protect earth our only home, create jobs, get our economy back on track and start to grow our way out of the deficit, and ask it to ask Congress to pass such legislation. 

    The worst that can happen is the Republican House ignores him or bashes him.  If they bash him I think they will end up worsening their standing with the public. 

    I say he's still better off for having made the case and defined the debate on his terms, forthrightly and publicly.  This would suggest that he in fact does have a vision, or at least an idea, for how to create jobs and get this economy moving again in a way that helps address climate change.  The people who oppose need to be challenged to assert their idea and distinguish it from the Bush Administration policies that exploded the deficit while leaving us with zero net job growth in 2000-2009, the first decade in which net US job growth was less than 20% since the 1930s, and the failed Hoover Administration policy of contracting the economy during a Depression thru premature job-killing deficit reduction.  


    by AmericanDreamer on Fri, 11/19/2010 - 9:48am