I hear a lot of lazy talk about how the president isn’t a fighter and doesn’t even try to get stronger bills. But we don’t know what goes on behind the scenes:
As a chairman who spent months shepherding both healthcare and energy legislation through his committee, [Henry] Waxman doesn’t express much sympathy for Democrats who took weeks, if not months, to decide how to vote on the high-profile bills.
He tells a story he heard about President Obama showing some tough love to a wavering Democrat, whom he did not identify. The member, Waxman said, told the president: “ ‘If I vote for what you want, I’m just going to lose.’
“And the president said, ‘Look at you, look how you’re reacting. It’s almost as if you’ve lost already. You’ve got to have fight. You’ve got to fight for what you want to do here, and then you’ve got to fight to get elected, and convince your constituents that this is what is in their interest and it’s important.’ ”
So did Obama get the lawmaker’s vote? “I’ll tell you after the election,” Waxman quipped.
Waxman shares my view of the administration.
Unlike many on the left, Waxman is “very pleased with this administration.”
Waxman has worked extensively with the White House during the 111th Congress. Phil Schiliro, Waxman’s longtime aide, now serves as Obama’s chief liaison to Congress.
“I give [the administration] high marks,” he said. Waxman lauded Obama’s skills both as a public spokesman for his ambitious agenda and his behind-the-scenes handling of Congress.
“My frustration,” Waxman said, “is more with members of Congress than with the administration.”Specifically, he is fed up with the Senate and what he calls “the tyranny of 60 votes.”
But it isn’t just the Senate that is annoying Waxman.
“I think a lot of the House seats we’re going to lose are those who have been the toughest for the Democrats to pull into line — the Democrats that have been the most difficult,” Waxman said…
…As Waxman sees it, the fractious coalition of Democrats that House leaders have cobbled together to pass sweeping healthcare and energy bills is not markedly different from the bipartisanship of the past, when Democrats partnered with centrist and liberal Republicans, whom Waxman says are “practically nonexistent at the moment.”
“We’ve been trying to get the Democratic conservatives together with the rest of the Democratic Party, so in effect we’ve gotten bipartisan support among Democrats in the House,” the chairman said with a laugh.
His idea, which I am not sold on, is that the Republicans will lose some of their cohesiveness by winning some marginal seats. And that will compel them to set vulnerable members free to cross the aisle. Essentially, under this theory, the ideological balance of Congress won’t actually change much even if a bunch of ‘D’s are swapped for ‘R’s. I see very few moderate Republicans winning primaries (or even running in them) so I doubt Waxman is right in his analysis. Maybe in the Senate we might see the moderate caucus grow by one or two members, but I don’t see it happening in the House at all. Some of our marginal Democrats don’t seem to understand the need to stimulate the economy by any means necessary, but they’re a far sight better than the Republicans who would replace them.
His idea, which I am not sold on, is that the Republicans will lose some of their cohesiveness by winning some marginal seats. And that will compel them to set vulnerable members free to cross the aisle.
This seems to be a common affliction of Democrats in Washington, D.C. Speaking of which, has Gerlach voted with the Democrats on any bill of substance? If he hasn’t, that will put a lie to Waxman and all the others who keep thinking that way.
I’ve always been a fan of Waxman. He’s someone I highly respect. He always has something to say that’s either of value or very insightful.
I agree – I’d like to know what Waxman’s smoking if he thinks that’s going to be the result.
Conservative Dems will be ousted and replaced – not with moderate Republicans but with Republicans who will vote the party line no matter what. Those Republicans may lose their jobs in two years (it would surprise me if they don’t, barring the results of resdistricting that will be happening, because they are in marginal districts where party affiliation is weak) but they won’t buck the party line. Because the Republican Party of today is not the Republican Party of the 1990s at all and members are not allowed to buck the party line – especially junior members from districts where a “liberal Dem” was just chased out of office.
Well, Waxman wasn’t talking about liberal Dems, I don’t think. The marginal districts would be places with incumbent DINOS (or the mythical “moderate”, if you prefer), who would lose to Reps who can’t afford to sign on with the insane fascist GOP majority.
He may be underestimating the honesty of the media and overestimating the attention span of the voters, but I don’t think his view is untenable. I assume he has a decent grasp of what particular districts he’s thinking of.
I agree with you that the lost seats won’t be filled by moderate Republicans, but his point still stands that the coalition of Democrats in both Houses is akin to what was once upon a time the sort of bipartisan coalition that could pass bills.
And, needless to say, Waxman’s comments point to the fact that the Sirotas of the “progressive” world of course ignore political realities and will continue to choose not to see how a super smart, results-oriented politician like Obama plays it close to the vest in public and no doubt is doing all sorts of maneuvering behind the scenes.
Seriously, it’s time to put aside the bashing and put some of that childish energy into an all-hands-on-deck fight against the other party. There will be plenty of time to bicker among ourselves after the election, up until Obama cruises to re-election in 2012.
He is right that the Democratic coalition is more like the bipartisan coalitions of Dems and Republicans that would crop up prior to Newt Gingrich’s Contract on America crap. But he’s wrong to think that situation will occur again in our lifetime – that set of coalitions came about because of the lopsided nature of our political parties and geography in the US – the Republican Party was shut out of politics in the South until the Civil Rights Act, and that dramatically affected the nature of both parties.
The kinds of coalitions that Waxman is talking about used to be possible but they were an anomaly. But now the parties are breaking down much more on ideological lines – or more to the point there is one party that is a single united ideological party and a second party that is a broader collection of ideologies some of which overlap with the ideology of the Republican party. All those folks who in earlier eras might have been Republicans joining a Dem coalition are now just Dems in the first place. The political fallout of the Civil War is finally almost complete (at least I hope so).
And if progressives try to primary/organize against these wavering conservative dems, we’re “retarded?” Can’t have it both ways. If the problem is Congress rather than the administration (which I think it is) than why aren’t the white house and progressives organizing together to provide the carrots/sticks to help persuade them? And I’m not really sold that Obama’s language above is evidence of toughness. That’s probably the softest “sell” I’ve ever heard of in a negotiation- it boils down to “you should do what I want you to do because its in your best interest…” OK. thanks. How about this one after the conservative congressman says voting a certain way will hurt his election chances: “Speaking of elections, the DCCC is running really low on campaign money this year. But we’ve got a lot of challengers within striking distance- they’d be great solid dem votes, I’d hate to not be able to give them the funds they need to give it a go. How are you doing with your fundraising by the way?”
“Some of our marginal Democrats don’t seem to understand the need to stimulate the economy by any means necessary, but they’re a far sight better than the Republicans who would replace them.”
Well, some of them are a lot worse than that.
The argument doesn’t make sense to me, though. Almost by definition, these Dems are in districts where voters are willing to send slightly liberal candidates to the House. Why would they suddenly shift to raging teaparty loonies? In IL, for example, there won’t be some Bachmann clone winning Kirk’s old seat.
I guess you can argue that once in, they’d count on obfuscation to cover up their rightwing extremist loyalties, but they’d certainly know they were risking their chances of reelection. So I think Waxman’s theory is respectable. There would be significant upside if his notion came to pass: The Dems would have fewer turncoat Dems to try and “protect” by never engaging in ideological combat. Which, to my mind, would do much to restore some hope that they are indeed fighters for change.
Dave, with a really small handful of exceptions, the Republicans have demonstrated over the past two cycles almost no sense of self-preservation. Moderates were swept out and then mainstream Republicans were swept out, and then right-wingers with corruption issues were swept out. We’re left with a group of people who could probably survive (Vitter, Ensign) being caught with a dead girl or a live boy. And the people winning primaries right now are totally unhinged, even in seats like Kirk’s (although I am not familiar with the candidate in that race). Look at their unity in Congress. They aren’t afraid to lose or of losing.
Exactly. They are more afraid of losing their conservative cred than they are of losing their seats.
It’s almost like there’s an entire industry of wingnut welfare that whispers “don’t worry – if you lose your seat in an election we’ll make sure you have a job” in their ears. I don’t know if that’s actually what’s going on – if there some kind of safety net catching these people and propping them up until they can take a lobbyist job somewhere – but given how self-destructive they can be in Congress right now it seems like some kind of fix has to be in.
If they’re really that self-destructive, what are we worrying about?
Because they can pick up enough seats in the short term (2 years) to do a lot of damage. Especially with the country sitting where it is right now.
The GOP’s long term goal is to get rid of the welfare state by any means necessary. If it means destroying the government to do it then so be it. You can do a lot of damage in 2 years – especially if the country’s already heading downhill and you just have to keep saying “no” a lot.
Boo, I think that’s kind of the point. In the kind of marginal districts I think Waxman is talking about, Bachmann-style loonies just aren’t going to win. If they were there wouldn’t be a Dem incumbent in the first place. Again, there is a danger that candidates like Kirk’s wannabe replacement will find ways to rile the nuts while soothing the Dem/Indie voters, but that’s a mighty hard stunt to pull off.
I think the picture of the GOP candidates you paint is precisely the Dems’ secret edge, which won’t come into full effect until the heat of the late campaign season.
The key thing is that in districts like that – where everything is a bit of toss-up and there are a lot of independents – who shows up to vote is key. When times are bad the people who want to throw the bum out will show up and the people who are voting for the lesser of two evils to keep the guy in office may or may not.
So until things stabilize (either because times get good again or the district lines are redrawn to make a more stable district) the seat can flip back and forth between elections. And it doesn’t matter if the opponent is crazy because the depressed turnout for the incumbent is going to sway things.
Now this backfires if the opponent is TOO crazy and if it becomes public knowledge that she/he is nutty. Because then the folks who will vote for the lesser of two evils will find motivation to show up just to vote against the crazy person. But “being a Republican who is going to vote on party lines” isn’t really in the “TOO crazy” camp for most people – it’s more a baseline expectation these days. So the idea that moderate Dems who occasionally cross party lines will be replaced by moderate Republicans who might cross party lines the other way just doesn’t hold water – they’ll be replaced by Republicans who are willing to vote lockstep with other Republicans and who don’t run their mouth off about how they want to defund the Department of Education or eliminate the fluoride in the drinking water.