Whether you are a politician or a political activist there can be a real tension between acting as an advocate and acting as a pundit. To put this another way, sometimes telling the truth about what you think will happen can come into conflict with what you want to happen. Barack Obama got into trouble when he forgot his role as an advocate trumps his role as a pundit.
In Sioux City over the weekend, Senator Barack Obama said that if President Bush vetoes an Iraq war spending bill as promised, Congress quickly will provide the money without the withdrawal timeline the White House objects to. Obama says that’s because no lawmaker wants to play chicken with American troops.
The problem isn’t that Obama told the truth, the problem is that telling the truth showed weakness to the other party. It’s the equivalent of showing your cards…do that and no amount of bluffing will work. Harry Reid’s office has the same problem. Reid talked tough yesterday by agreeing to co-sponsor Russ Feingold’s withdrawal plan. For a brief moment I though I detected the glimmer of a ballsack from the Senate Democrats. But those hopes were crushed this morning when I opened my Washington Post to read this (emphasis mine):
The Feingold-Reid bill calls for Bush to begin withdrawing troops within four months, similar to the language in the Senate’s $122 billion spending package. But it would prohibit funding beyond the March 31 deadline, except for counterterrorism, security and training operations.
Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the Democratic leader does not expect the bill to become the official position of Senate Democrats, given its strong terms, but rather the “next in a series of steps designed to try to force a change in administration policy.”
And here I thought, however briefly, that Reid’s decision to co-sponsor the bill was an indication that this would be the official position of the Senate Democrats. Silly me.
You know what it is? It’s the crappy vote we get as compensation for a complete capitulation to the President. And the vote won’t even pass, and several gutless Democrats will vote against it.
Let me put down my activist hat for a minute and don my pundit hat.
Reid is going to do exactly what Obama predicted…fund the war without restrictions…then he is going to try to make it up to us by bringing Feingold’s bill to the floor. He’ll really try to win us over by speaking in favor of it as an individual senator, while not whipping for it as our majority leader. Feingold’s bill will fail to pass in the senate. It will divide our caucus, anger the base, hand the Republicans a big victory, and accomplish nothing.
That’s what it looks like to me. And I can’t really think of a better example of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The President is weak, the people are behind us, the troops want to come home, Kissinger thinks it’s over.
Reid better make Feingold’s bill the official position of the Democrats. Even better, it should be attached as an amendment to the next (post-veto) supplemental funding bill. And Reid should whip it.
Keep pushing…the Republicans are weak and afraid, and much less united than they appear. And stop showing your damn cards.
I think that Obama’s gaffe shows that he is too inexperienced to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate this time around. From now on, I am not going to think of him much more favorably than I think of Hillary.
Like Kos wrote yesterday, if Hillary had said this, we would be screaming for her head!
The problem with Barack Obama, for me at least, is that I haven’t the faintest idea what he stands for, and this just underscores that point. I have the same problem with Hillary Clinton, though to a somewhat lesser degree and with qualifications, i.e., where I do know her stance, I usually disagree with it.
So far as I can tell, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton stand for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. If there is a single principle that they’d risk their political careers to defend, I don’t know what it is.
I’d feel a lot better if that wasn’t true of the overwhelming majority of the politicians on the national stage. The exceptions always seem to be folks with zero or near-zero chance of ever being elected. But we desperately need leaders whose primary motivation is service instead of fame and admiration. At the rate we’re going now, presidential politics have more in common with reality shows than reality.
shit…..I do NOT feel like going back and editing my most recent post.
This is getting maddening to watch….
it’s funny because you have a quote from Manley too, but it is slightly different. I think your overall point stands. But unless Reid attached Feingold’s bill to the supplemental and passes it, who the hell cares what he thinks about the bill on a personal level?
true. It was just last week when I laid out 4 different scenarios if Bush vetoes. I think the one I deemed least likely was 2 separate bills.
sigh….at least my prediction on Rove/Miers testifying under oath and Gonzo resigning are still holding up.
for now.
I had been wondering if Reid had caucused the Dems before co-sposoring that bill. It seemed a bit odd that Obama would have said what he said had Harry Reid asked him if he would support the Feingold bill. I am not sure where the goal posts are on this one, personally I am willing to let Bush defund the war so long as he has appropriations bills to veto, and am glad that this recess gives the press two weeks to talk about it before Bush vetoes.
Then again, the House has yet to show any of their cards on this one, that is where any appropriations have to come from. Bush has already threatened to veto supplemental so the Speaker Pelosi has two or three weeks to plan her next move based on that and seeing reassurance that the American people are behind her.
First, thanks for the seder dinner…a very nice experience. But what’s with all the wine? Is it a religious holiday or a drinking contest?
I think the action in the house is presently over the reconciliation. The House may not approve of a bill that can pass the Senate. It actually helps if they think it will be vetoed anyway.
What I don’t like is this lame attempt at gamesmanship. Our fallback position can not be advertised as capitulation, even if that is our fallback position.
That’s braindead.
supposed to be a holiday tradition, but turns into a drinking contest.
With all that Matzoh, you need to wash it down with something….
If our plan is to capitulate as soon as Bush vetoes the current bill, then we should at least let the Administration and the rest of the country sweat a little in the meanwhile. BTW a possibility just occurred to me, what if some of those votes for the timeline were secured in exchange for a nice tame supplemental with no restrictions on the second round.
I still think that we should go through the process at least one more time, and see if we can’t successfully blame Bush for defending the troops.
To be fair, you did a fair amount of extracurricular drinking after the Seder was over. I hope that Maneshevitz didn’t give you too much of a hangover.
it did me no favors.
I wonder if the House will vote for the reconciled supplemental bill if they keep seeing this garbage getting spewed by Senators. It’s not only the President they are showing their cards to, but the progressive caucus in the House, too. And I assume you meant, ‘not defending the troops’.
My old man explains it by pointing out that Jews aren’t known for being big drinkers (See proverbs, wine is mocker, strong drink is raging), but that celebrating freedom from bondage is well worth getting shitfaced. I think that Passover may be the only Jewish holiday that includes so much drinking except for maybe Purim.
Dad’s not particularly observant, so I may be off a little.
To be fair to Jim Manley, who he showed his (or Reid’s) cards to was not so much the Rethugs, but us.
The Feingold bill was never a serious threat to Shrub, because, since the bill is not a funding bill, Shrub would be under absolutely no pressure not to veto it.
My main disappointment at this point is that Feingold is not talking about filibustering a supplemental authorization bill. The point of filibustering, of course, would be to bypass Reid.
actually, the Dems officially want Bush to sign the bill once it comes out of reconciliation. So there isn’t much point in talking about future filibusters at this point in time. Feingold couldn’t sustain one anyway.
I was thinking about what happens after the current supplemental is presented to Bush, assuming he vetoes it.
We all knew that Reid is pretty conservative; more generally, it should not be a surprise to us that the Congressional leadership is not acting to end the US presence in Iraq in a timely manner. They are dragging things out, just as Congressional Dems did with Vietnam.
I am disappointed that there is no sign that progressive Congressional Dems are ready to stage a revolt. It would happen no sooner than in one or two months. By that time, who is to say that they wouldn’t have enough votes to sustain a filibuster? The Overton window has been moving faster than we expected, as you just observed.
Sorry, I meant as clammyc just observed.
Whatever Reid’s equivocating may entail, Obama can do all of us a favor, himself included, and learn to keep his mouth SHUT. The whole world doesn’t turn around him. You’d think he’d be more than satisifed with all the attention he has been getting.
Clinton: Not Ready to Surrender on War Bill
When he ‘said’ this: “Obama says that’s because no lawmaker wants to play chicken with American troops.”
He’s an RNC commercial sometimes.
I have to disagree. My Democrats would lose a lot of political ground with voters if they take a vote that can reasonably be portrayed as “defunding the troops”. The scenarios write themselves, especially when we consider the fact that most media outlets support President Bush’s position.
Generally, my view is that once you knock the other guy down you step in the boots. Hobnails prefered.
But this would blow up in our faces.