I’m really not sure what the president can or should do about the sluggish economy. Economists like Paul Krugman have been asking him to stimulate, stimulate, stimulate, when that clearly isn’t something Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are going to allow him to do. At least, they’re not going to let him do it in any kind of straightforward or optimal way. I understand Krugman’s concern about the president adopting some right-wing rhetoric about the economy, but, at the same time, there’s little advantage to asking for things that the opposing party can swat down with no effort. And, it’s better to take credit for doing something than to sputter impotently about how the Republicans won’t do what is necessary.
Tackling the budget deficit at a time of high unemployment is counterintuitive, to say the least, but this process was largely dictated by the disastrous 2010 midterm elections that swept the Republicans into power on a platform of massive austerity. The trick for Obama is to structure cuts that affect employment so that they don’t take effect for a few years. At the same time, he needs to get some kind of short-term stimulus as part of the deal. How much is he willing to give away to get a below the radar stimulative bump? That’s the question.
In his remarks today about the monthly jobs report, the president offered up some weak tea. Yes, we need to spend money on our infrastructure, and patent reform would be nice. It’s possible that trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea could boost trade and create some jobs. And, while Krugman is certainly correct that the Confidence Fairy is not going to magically appear and create a bunch of jobs, getting our budget on a more stable footing should have some benefits. The thorny question is how to avoid further job loss while making some big cuts in government spending. It’s possible to accomplish that, but the structure has to be right.
Obama has proven to be adept negotiator in the past two rounds (in December and April), but the stakes are a lot higher this time around. What I’m hoping to see is some creative thinking. I’m hoping to see something no one is discussing included in the bill. Something that provides some short-term stimulus.
I say this because looking at what’s visible right now, the government appears to be about to respond to bad jobs numbers by destroying a bunch of jobs. And that doesn’t make any sense.
You still seem unable to admit that Obama and the Dems had their chance to be transformational and completely blew it. Now the payment is due and nobody’s got a rabbit to pull out of the hat.
The US economic and political systems are where the Soviet Union’s were a couple decades ago. In that sense, we are in a post-political age, because all that can be done within the core system is to prolong the disease, with a few dollops of drug-induced relief thrown in here and there. That’s why I can’t be too hard on Obama: real change is beyond the capacity of American beliefs and habits. It’s a bit much to expect any president to be a true revolutionary, no matter how much one is needed.
how were they going to be completely transformational?
What was the awesome opportunity they blew?
And please don’t tell me it was the chance to pass a Recovery Act three times as large.
Exactly. Boo! Obama was handed a large BOS (bag of @#$) and expected to do something with it.
Regardless of who won in ’08, you would have seen the same general response to the economy that Obama has pursued. Let’s face it: The R’s only found religion when they lost power in ’08 and many are 80% going along with the TEA PARTY only because it’s politically expedient. They would have done exactly what Bernanke requested, no different, maybe even worse. Bottom line is the last three years did very little, and merely shifted the massive insolvency of the private sector mortgage market onto the balance sheet of the Fed and Treasury. (We should all ask who the winners and losers are, and what mechanisms allowed this to happen… and address those mechanisms!)
Unfortunately with this economy we’re well past the point of no return. We’re the proverbial junkie whose bottoming out. Things are so internally rotten that Krugman’s prescription really is no better than suggesting we goose the junkie with some new, extra potent funk to get him going again. It might work for a few months / prolong the misery another couple of years… But what’s the point when the only solution is for the junkie to get clean?
There wasn’t some magic policy they could have passed. I’m talking about death by a thousand cuts. You know the litany, so there’s no point going over it again: starting with single-payer, for example. Proposing much higher taxes for the upper brackets. Putting some people other than the perps in charge of economic policy. Getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan much quicker. Easiest of all, ending or severely crippling the Senate filibuster (which would have given us Van Jones as the “green jobs czar).
In general, questioning the Reagan contagion that put the country on its current path to self-destruction. You want to talk about specific, isolated legislation. To me, that’s insufficient and unworkable in the absence of a real challenge to the status quo. We’ll never agree on the role of good leaders. Being warmed-over Clinton ain’t it, IMO.
And I left out: prosecuting and punishing the thieves who destroyed the economy; if you want a huge transformative opportunity, ending the banksters’ free ride was it. Instead he put them on the payroll.
Not pushing for a bigger stimulus. His first offer to the GOP should have been a 3 trillion dollar stimulus, take it oir leave it. He should pushed for the Bush Tax cuts to expire (at least on the upper 1-2 %) — in 2009. He should have gone high. He went low. That’s why he blew it.
he would have been laughed out of town if he asked for $3 trillion.
First of all, his own advisors told him he needed $1.2, not $3.
Secondly, as Bernstein and Romer have made clear, they couldn’t have spent that much money even if they had it.
Thirdly, they just barely got the bill passed as it was. Thank God Arlen Specter was under the mistaken impression that he could survive politically by supporting it.
That’s not a fair criticism, Steven. And, no, even at $1.2 trillion, the stimulus wouldn’t have been enough to change much at all. Bush killed the economy and it could not have been revived by Obama or any other president merely by passing a slightly bigger stimulus bill.
And he did push to have the Bush tax’s expire. He traded an extra year for START, DADT repeal, an UI extension, and some modest stimulus. That was savvy negotiating.
I agree with Steven. Obama asked for too little. He was at the height of his political power just after the near-landslide election and all the positive vibes from his Inauguration, and he should have offered at least twice what the majority of his experts were advising, or more. Then he and his aides, using persuasive media assets like Krugman and Reich, would have gone out and sold their arguments to the public: that this was not a time for half-measures, that just paying for two new tires on a broken-down car is not an adequate solution, that we risked years of being in recessionary non-recovery if we don’t act boldly now.
But bold doesn’t seem to be in Obama’s nature.
And we’ll never know whether he could have just squeezed by with a much larger stimulus had he and his admin actually tried.
The problem is that the under the table “stimulus” that was enacted was in December…well, not well designed.
First off, unemployment insurance shouldn’t even be thought of as stimulus. That’s crazy. It should be thought of as preservation, a total rear guard maneuver to keep people afloat. It should be thought of as basic decency.
And payroll tax cuts just aren’t gonna fly in a deleveraging cycle. You need to go above and beyond helping folks pare down old debt. Because while people need to clean their own balance sheets, once wage and employment trends slack and get hung up below trend, they never recover without extraordinary help. And there are no private sector miracles coming. No technological boom.
The recession caught us at the worst possible moment in our evolving economic cycle. Bush was president at the worst possible time. So much momentum was lost. And now we’re kind of fucked. The rest of the world is pulling back (except for Germany, which is using its good fortune to write harmful policy for its neighbors, so that’s fucking fantastic), they aren’t gonna lift us up.
Our global elites have failed us.
Exactly how I feel, the entrenchment of Bush’s incompetence and ideological approach to governing allowed by his second term are going to continue to fuck us over even 4 years down the road.
Bush’s dimwittery notwithstanding, you need to add to that the abysmal evolution of Fed policy from the 1980s through to Greenspan’s resignation.
This train was heading for a derailment long before Bush II started doing his bit to help it along.
First off, unemployment insurance shouldn’t even be thought of as stimulus. That’s crazy.
Huh?
Not only is unemployment insurance stimulatory, but it works in a way that has a text-book economic name: automatic stabilizer.
Yes, it’s common decency. It’s also a method by which the government cranks up spending, in a manner that puts money into the pockets of the people most likely to spend it, when the economy goes into recession.
Martin,
The GOP does not want any stimulus in this round, unless its an extension of the Bush tax cuts or more corporate cuts or the elimination of capital gains tax or something on that order.
Boehner may or may not cut a deal, but rest assured it won’t be a deal with any real stimulus spending in it. The GOP wants to tank the economy and blame it on the Democrats, or they want social security and medicare cuts and blame it on the Democrats.
exactly.
and everyone, except the democratic party, knows what happens if the democrats allow president obama to cut social security, medicare, and medicaid: The republicans will promptly begin campaigning on the fact that the democrats cut social security, medicare, and medicaid. I saw this movie in 2010.
Also, “common sense” as in what’s best for the economy or the country has got nothing to do with it as far as the GOP (and conserva-dems) are concerned.
The Republicans would rather see the country burn, see unemployment hit 30% or higher, see food and fuel costs go through the roof, so they can run on the outrage of their base at Liberal Big Guvmint, because as we all know, whatever happens, the dominant GOP spin, which will amplified by every media outlet other than the three liberal hosts on MsNBC, will be “it’s the liberals fault. They and Obama destroyed America!”
No, he has not proven himself to be an adept negotiator. He’s proven the opposite. The Republicans want one thing: tax cuts for rich people. They are opposed to the Social Safety Net not because of government or the free market, but because they know that in order to fund it that it must be funded in large part by the wealthy (in pure physical dollars, not percentages of income).
Obama gave away that card for entirely too little. They want that more than anything. It was his trump card. He used it on bullshit that he could have gotten done via executive order and verified by Congress later (or as we’re currently seeing, via the courts) and stuff that would have passed anyway (unemployment benefits). Hell, he may have been able to get them to sign off to a carbon tax if he gave them tax cuts for the wealthy later on.
But no. Now he has no negotiating carrot for them other than shit that will absolutely destroy him in the elections.
Irony:
Also, don’t give me this bullshit:
January 2009 5 days before he was inaugurated:
I don’t understand why the “kick the can” comment is a problem.
His point is that President Obama has consistently expressed a desire to “reform” entitlements, balance the budget, etc. This wasn’t “forced” on him after 2010. President Obama has long wanted to do this, and as we’re seeing now, he wants to do this stuff facts on the ground be damned.
Well, I want to reform entitlements and balance the budget, too. Those things are definitely a higher priority for me than the average progressive. And I want those things done while a Democrat is president. I am not in favor of kicking the can down the road at all, and I actually find it a plus that the president is serious about doing something rather than chickening out.
The problem is the timing. This is far from an ideal time to be cutting the budget. It will be very difficult to do in a way that doesn’t exacerbate unemployment. That’s my main concern. I also regret that we don’t have the power to make these cuts and reforms entirely on our own terms, because the result is suboptimal policy that hurts too many vulnerable people.
But, if we’re going to do it, I will be at least glad that it got done now rather than never.
Depending on details, of course.
Why are you so convinced that “dealing with it now” will mean that the Rubes will stop coming back for more?
They will not stop until it is gone.
I don’t think the Republicans will stop pursuing their Galtian dream no matter what we do. That’s not my motivation for wanting a sustainable safety net and a responsible budget. We’re $14 trillion in debt as it stands right now. And it’s only going to get worse. Much worse. I don’t disagree with spending more in a down economy. But in the larger picture, we do have to fix our runaway deficits.
The default progressive argument is that we shouldn’t do anything about our structural deficits because we can’t fix it fairly as long as the Republicans have any say in the process. But that’s a gamble. It’s a gamble that we won’t continue to face worse and worse choices, and it’s a gamble that the GOP won’t cease enough control to ram home a solution on their terms.
I would not be doing this right now. But it needs to get down sometime very soon, and with a Democrat in the White House. So, I guess what I’m saying is, I am worried but not appalled, as so many progressives seem to be.
Fix deficits: raise taxes on the rich. Cut defense spending by ending useless wars. Go to a Single Payer insurance plan (more savings!)
We don’t need to fix social security, we need to fix income inequality.
Income inequity is ruining people.
Thank you for stating that.
I totally agree that we should fix Social Security by, in part, taxing wealthy people.
But, we can’t do that, apparently.
It winds up being a kick the can argument.
Now, Obama has said that he will not sign another extension of the Bush tax cuts. That alone will do a lot to improve our fiscal situation. But it’s not enough to makeup for the whole we’ve created.
As I’ve stated elsewhere, I think Social Security is broken because what it basically is doing is acting as a subsidy for deficit spending in the general budget. Without SS surplus money, Congress would either have to raise taxes on rich people, cut spending, or go much deeper in debt.
We’re not creating a surplus in any sense of the word; we’re just creating a promise that our politicians feel they can’t keep.
Fix the funding mechanism and I’ll agree that it doesn’t need reform.
I am having a horrible homonym problem tonight.
Must…read…before…posting.
We both know that it is health care costs that are destroying the country. You know it, I know it, the president knows it (and has acknowledged it). Obama does not share my vision for how we should fix this. He is not my ally. I fight for the issues, not the pols. If Obama decides to align himself more on our turf, I will fight for that issue (and in so-doing, him as well).
I’ll agree to this if and only if we control both houses of Congress. We do not. I would take the gamble and wait until after 2012. If we lose the Senate, then 2014.
That is a gamble worth taking. Even then it’s a hard pill for me to swallow. We both know that when everything is fixed that they’ll give away free money to rich people again. If we don’t win in 2012, what difference does it make? They’ll have a super-majority on the Supreme Court anyway.
Basically what I’m saying is, this president has not given me reason to just “trust him,” and I’m acting out as a citizen. Whether that’s what he wants and is doing this on purpose for that reason, I don’t know. I don’t really care, either. It’s just how things roll: you support me on policy, I support you.
But as much affection as I have for the Greenwald/Hamsher view of “how things are” as of late, I do not share in the “way” that they handle themselves. For example, Angry Mouse’s interview with Pfeiffer was downright amateur (why did Kos pick her to handle it anyway?). I think there is a way to criticize and be heard rather than be seen as annoying rabble.
Well, I want to reform entitlements and balance the budget, too.
It’s funny, BooMan: when Bush tried to privatize Social Security, and use deficit reduction as his fig leaf, every progressive in the world was saying “There’s no Social Security crisis! There’s no need to reform Social Security expenses. If you wan to see a real long-term deficit problem, look at Medicare. Medicare’s going to run into all kinds of budgetary problems.” That was the progressive line during that debate.
But now, if you dare to raise exactly that point, exactly the same people who were saying that start acting like those LaRouchies at the Town Halls, pretending that even talking about how to save money in Medicare means you want to kill grandma.
the Social Security privatization battle was the beginning of my discomfort with the progressive blogosphere. And it was precisely their rhetoric that SS was perfectly fine that made me uncomfortable. You can search the archives and you’ll see I never engaged in that rhetoric. I gritted my teeth because it was working to protect against privatization, but I always thought it was dishonest and I never partook in that argument.
I didn’t intend to accuse you of doing so, but to agree with your comment. I hope you didn’t interpret what I wrote as an attack on you.
I’m actually a lot more comfortable with that old rhetoric from progressives about Social Security. While Social Security may not be “perfectly fine” in its future financing, the problem is very small, very remote, and needs only tiny adjustments which don’t even need to take place particularly soon.
At least when compared to many other huge budget problems we’re facing, including Medicare in the out years.
People apparently want to forget what you mentioned. They also want to forget that he, for whatever reason, has some kind of affection for Pete Peterson. And we know what Pete Peterson’s goal in life is.
Obama’s affection for Pete Peterson was the result of having to get Kent Conrad on board for health care reform. Conrad chairs the Senate Budget Committee.
Now that Conrad is getting scared of actually cutting Social Security and Medicare, Obama is upping the ante on him. Conrad’s is one of the committees that any agreement will have to go through.
That’s just one of the subplots in this kabuki.
No, Obama was the only elected official to show up for the opening of the Peterson funded Hamilton Project back before running for President(like 2006).
Thanks for pointing these facts out. There is this constant theme of “poor Obama, the powerless President” in comments here and on many of the blog posts.
There are all kinds of things the President can do. The laws passed by Congress allow great leeway, and that is quadruply true of those passed in the wake of the 2008 stock market crash. The unspent TARP funds and the HAMP program were practically blank checks that Obama CHOSE to give to the rich bankers who funded his campaign instead of actually helping the little people who voted for him.
Furthermore, the Bush/Rove/Cheney administration were very adept and redirecting funds towards what they wanted rather than what Congress intended. From giving EPA funds to friends for “education” to shoveling military funds to other friends, they pushed the rules to the limits. Obama COULD do this, too. He COULD choose to create more jobs with the massive military budget, but he lets the military revolving door managers decide what to do.
We are where we are because the Obama administration leadership believes in Reaganomics. Period.
The sad fact is that I agree with the “weak President” theory in many instances where Glenn Greenwald would call me an apologist.
I do believe that the Presidency is weak in an era where Republicans have him by the balls in every which way, leaving him with little to zero leverage on any policy. Where he did have leverage was the tax cuts for the wealthy. And he gave away the store for nothing.
“Obama has proven to be adept negotiator in the past two rounds (in December and April),. . .”
I’d agree with you regarding April; December I’m not so sure. Part of my problem with him continuing the Bush tax cuts was that it would raise the projected debt and increase Republican leverage when it came time to raise the debt ceiling. Yes, we got some stimulus, but was it really worth it if it results in contraction now? So my opinion of how Obama did in December won’t be fully formed until I see what happens now.
December, he got START, he got DADT repeal, and he got UI extension. He got some stimulus, too.
Under the circumstances, it was a good tradeoff.
You make a good point about the budgetary outlook that resulted, though.
START and DADT repeal were things the DoD wanted. The UI extension, if it had been blocked, would have been fully blamed on the GOP.
The GOP got exactly what they wanted – the tax cuts for the rich AND they passed the measures the DoD wanted but which they needed a fig leaf when they went back to their base to explain why they had to vote for those things.
If Obama is a great negotiator it is because the trade-offs he’s making are the ones he wants to make, not because he’s going to bat for the Democratic base and getting the best he can — because he’s definitely not doing that.
I think it was pretty shrewed to give the R’s their tax cuts. The economy was headed further into Sh*%sville, (as is now becoming more explicitly clear) and he can now look back and say “so this is what extending Bush’s tax cuts brings us? In 2001 we got a housing bubble that collapsed into crisis, and by extending them the economy has languished. Maybe we need another plan.”
Except HE was the one that caved on the tax cuts. It’s pretty hard to now sell that as a Republican sin.
Except that we already had nearly 10 years of evidence of what the Bush tax cuts could (not) accomplish.
I acknowledge the fact that thanks to the 2010 midterms* President Obama does not have the best, easiest, and most ideal economic tools at his disposal. I get that. What I vehemently disagree with, however, is the implication that the Obama Administration can do literally nothing about the economy. Bullf–kings–t: difficult or tricky or “merely rhetorical/theatrical” options are NOT the same thing as literally no options.
First, BooMan, I’m pretty sure you took part in that “could vs. should” argument from over a month ago (if I’m wrong, then I apologize in advance and strongly recommend you Google those posts by Jared Bernstein, Brad DeLong, Paul Krugman, and especially Mike Konczal). You saw some very respectable economists come up with ideas that do not require Congressional involvement. Do not feign ignorance of those options. You can critique them, you can talk about why they may not work, you can talk about why it’s politically risky/wrong. But it is dishonest to pretend these options don’t exist and there’s nothing to be done and oh well let’s just rally round him and get him reelected. F–k that mentality, and f–k the horse that mentality rode in on.
No, none of the options would be easy or ideal, and it’s questionable how feasible or effective some of those ideas would be. But hard/marginally effective is not the same thing as impossible (and I’d argue there would still be some political/rhetorical value in publicly discussing them, even if they’re not tried). It’s just not the same thing, and it is incredibly angering watching the Administration refuse to even explore these options.
Second, I am getting tired of these inherently contradictory posts vomited up by those who would instinctively defend the President. Specifically: you cannot on the one hand say “I’m really not sure what the president can or should do” while on the other hand agreeing that his economic rhetoric is wrong. Well…if his rhetoric is wrong, then by definition that is something he can do, and he can do that immediately.
You think it won’t matter? Fine, I (and 2008 “words matter” candidate Barack Obama) disagree, but if it doesn’t really matter then there’s no reason not to change it. Otherwise, you’re contradicting yourself- if you condone not doing anything about the rhetoric, then you imply that it does matter on some level.
Regardless, bad rhetoric is bad rhetoric, and it’s a very easy problem to fix. That’s something he can do. But, the criticism of President Obama’s consistently neo-Hoover economic remarks is strangely muted when people like BooMan or John Cole are forced to address it. Just my opinion, I’m happy to be wrong about that last.
Finally, throwing up your hands and saying there’s nothing we can do may be acceptable for a blogger, but it is lazy and cowardly and cruel for the Administration to do so, to the point that it is unbecoming of the Presidency itself. President Obama deserves the criticism he is receiving and (unless he changes his tune quickly and visibly tries some stuff) will continue to receive.
Please stop pretending there’s literally nothing to be done by President Obama. That does nothing but insult and anger, well, pretty much everyone who is economically hurting who don’t get a hardon for “their team” winning. That’s a lot of people, IMO, and I include myself in that group. As a liberal who is on the verge of becoming unemployed by 2012, I will be very angry (and unapologetically so) at the Democratic Party and the President if they continue to dishonestly and lazily pretend there’s nothing to be done.
I and the rest of the American people deserve more and better from President Obama.
(*on which BTW I would not hold the Obama Admin faultless- delivering overly cautious responses to economic issues will always kill incumbents. Always. And if a too-small Stimulus was inevitable, then claiming it was anything but was a fatal political mistake. To not understand or to downplay the importance of the economy in the context of reelection is political malpractice.)
The point Booman and others are making is that it isn’t all about the President. He’s not the problem here. The problem is the Congress, Governors, and state legislatures.
I wish I could believe that Obama is screwing this up for us. I really do. It would be very comforting to me to believe that because it implies that all we have to do to fix the problem is replace Obama.
But that’s not reality. As someone who works out on the streets and tries to persuade people day in and day out, I know firsthand that what we’re fighting is a fundamental ignorance and laziness in the population enabled by a complacent media. And I also know that the work I do makes a difference, one person at a time. And that this is going to be the work of several decades.
If you want Obama to do something, give him the space to do it. The vast majority of people don’t care about his rhetoric. They don’t even know what he said about the economy or what his policies are. That’s your opening to influence them.
The economy is stuck because the elites are making out like bandits at the moment. Krugman, Roubini, and others who look at the financial markets are saying that the problems that brought about the 2008 collapse are building up again because there has not been honest reform of the financial industry. (Leave aside the political reasons for that for the moment.)
So unemployment has crashed consumer demand and the threat of unemployment has crashed what business calls “consumer confidence”. Private debt (such as credit card debt) is decreasing; it would almost have to if people are at their limits and being downgraded. So the consumer contribution to demand for the future is pretty much zilch.
Businesses are either sitting on cash because they don’t see consumer demand or looking for operating cash they can’t get. So real business investment is going nowhere as the paper economy gets bid up and up.
Government is not stimulating; it is retrenching, led by state and local government. And the federal government instead of backfilling state government finances is itself retrenching. Not much hope until the first of the year there.
Exports have become the Obama administration’s last option. It is true that US balance of trade is marginally better. Trade agreements could produce markets for US goods and services, but only if they have strong labor and environmental standards, which multinational corporations and their Republican sockpuppets oppose.
Structurally, there is absolutely nothing that the President (any president, even FDR) can do about the economy. Zilch. Nada. So Obama is talking optimism and waving his arms (understatedly). And he is obligated to talk the GOP talking points on the economy or give credence to the charges that he is a flaming socialist.
Meanwhile, the Blue Dogs continue their treason by voting with Virginia Foxx. They are why the Democrats missed their chance to be transformational.
So stop the fixation on the President. He is fundamentally irrelevant to domestic policy and pretty much always was, given the divisions among the Democratic caucus.
This negotiation is going to fail for the same reason that the Minnesota state government shut down. A majority (218 Republicans) in the House want it to fail. Accepting a bargain with Obama is the last thing they want. And you can see that by how they keep moving the goal posts.
Treasury is investigating what powers they have if the debt ceiling increase does not happen.
Until all this clears up, any action on jobs is not going to happen.
The transformation happens when Obama breaks Republican obstruction and lockstep voting. This is politically something that cannot be done by a direct frontal assault. Unless it is a breathtaking pivot. And Obama is averse to breathtaking moves, favoring steadfast plodding.
The government has already responded to bad jobs numbers by destroying jobs.
The clear fact is that the government cannot create jobs in the private sector, either by fiat or bribery. And the private sector is living in the huge illusion that they can make money without customers.
Well, I agree with most of what you said, except that I find it hard to bet against Obama–I really agree with what Booman said about Obama being a skilled negotiator. I also think he’s a clutch hitter.
I also don’t think he’s limited to being a plodder. Getting what he got in December was a crazy pivot. Getting ACA passed was the same, and even the temporary budget was impressive. He surprises, so I’m not betting against him on this one.
And, he rarely comes out for something in a full-throated way and loses. This is part of Booman’s point about supporting lost causes and getting cut down: it doesn’t achieve anything, it just makes you seem weak. But when Obama takes on something fully (because he feels he HAS to win), he wins, and the impression that he is caving and beatable in the run-up to the win is a tool he uses.
Also, too, I don’t think people have used the word kabuki in this thread enough, so kabuki kabuki kabuki kabuki…
I understand what you’re saying.
I don’t think you’ll see the pivot, just like it was not seen in the ACA or December. The appearance is the plodding “no drama Obama”. The drama is completely apart from him. Not to mention the gnashing of teeth in the progressive blogs.
I also think that he’s a drift-into-a-crisis to get motivated sort of guy. He doesn’t seem to get going until the shit is about to hit the fan. That drives his supporters nuts.
I have said. Check back October 1 as to what happened.
The fundamental fact is that the Congress is so disconnected from the popular will that we are condemned to be spectators.
I’m not sure it’s kabuki. Kabuki is a set form with a known ending.
I guess that’s what I don’t understand in your argument.
To me, milking big concessions out of the GOP in December was unexpected and surprising in several details, so I think of that as a pivot.
Getting a better deal out of ACA after the Brown victory than I would have expected even had Brown lost (by using reconciliation for certain parts of the bill and getting better subsidies than would have passed the 60-dem majority in senate, plus sander’s trading of public option for health centers funding) seem like they fit the bill of both the unexpected and the surprising.
Come to think of it, going for a longer-term solution to the deficit issue seems like pivot because it is unexpected.
It would help me if you would give a successful example of another president achieving a successful pivot, and also defining pivot a bit as you see it.
Meanwhile, it is the plodding that Obama does that allows him to pull off these surprise snatching of a partial victory from the jaws of defeat, because he accumulates the information and relationships that allow him to be nimble at critical moments. The urgency of now is to start work building now on something that is urgent in the short, mid, and long-term (like the grassroots movements you mention below). If you are preparing systematically, you are way ahead of most people, and you can do something unexpected. I don’t think he waits for things to happen to him so much as he understand the limits of the system you explain in bone-grinding detail above, and then makes a good to a very good move within those constraints.
Nixon going to China was a pivot. Everyone knew it. It completely undid the practical opposition to the Vietnam War. Everything after that was symbolic.
None of Obama’s pivots have gotten public recognition. Which is why certain progressives discount them. And all of them so far have empowered rather than weakened the opposition, which is what has everyone on edge now.
I agree with your last paragraph as to the dynamics of the strategy.
Your stark and very pointed analysis has once again made me more depressed than I thought I could possibly be.
It appears like the only thing to do is wait for the entire house of cards to fall and try to rebuild from the dust and scattered carnage that remains of a once great country.
Our politicians have failed us and we have failed ourselves. The system is horribly broken.
The weakness is not so much the President as the Congress, the governors, the state legislatures, the secretaries of state and attorneys general, the elected judiciary (and the appointed judiciary that we can’t do anything about), the county councils and commissions, the city councils, the township councils, the school districts and snow removal boards. Not that there aren’t a lot of functional ones.
And the weakness is the formal (campaign finance) and informal (“exchanged fovors”) influence of money on politics to the exclusion of the popular will. It’s why progressives hate the current crop of politicians and why conservatives (outside the elites) hate government.
Is there any way to solve the problem other than admit power inherently corrupts? Clearly both R’s and D’s are more enamored about having the lever in their control at any costs vs. reforming it.
People power beats money power every time. And the money goes into media to divide the people. The way to solve the problem is the way Van Jones is trying to do it. Creating a people powered movement that cuts through the ideological bullshit arguments. Create it from the grassroots. Create an agenda. And then go find independent candidates who will work on the agenda.
It flips from a candidate recruiting volunteers to a movement recruiting candidates and delivering them the votes without a huge media expense.
The achilles heel of the current Democratic strategy is the need to buy media time from the very media that directly supports the Republican Party and its agenda. The solution lies in strategies that deliver votes but starve the media.
The achilles heel of the progressive third party movement is geographical reach at the grassroots. Forty years of just voting for presidential candidates has bred in bad habits for third party supporters. Local offices are the most important offices in any election; they require fewer votes to win; they deal with people on a day-to-day basis; they establish political reputations for higher office. Third parties tend to short-circuit this development part of a strategy.
Things I know:
1. The President is wise not to demonize the GOP. The punditocracy is getting along on that just fine. It is much harder to get a deal done when one side or the other is put in the position of having to accept public defeat.
He will get a better deal if he refrains from attacking these people publicly. In fact, if he can get them comfortable that he’s willing to work with them on terms they’ll find acceptable, he can get the best possible deal.
I know more stuff but this seems like enough for now…
Dems are not going to surge is the grassroots are demotivated.
Other than that, I tend to agree with most of what you say.
“Is the GOP in a stronger or weaker position than they were a year ago?”
Considering that a year ago they were in the minority in the House and had only 41 votes in the Senate, I would say they are in a much stronger position now.
is precisely what Obama needs to do. He should stand up and tell the American people what NEEDS to be done and call the Republicans anti-American, defeatist, obstructionist cowards when they swat it down.
But he lacks the backbone.
Yes, it’s been clear for two years that you desire fruitless impotent whining from the president above any other consideration. What I have never understood is why you think constantly demonstrating your powerlessness and, effectively, running down your actual policies, is a winning strategy on any level.
is a winning strategy on EVERY level.
Adjusting your goals to what an ignorant opposition will deign to give you is the definition of “powerlessness”.
It worked for Truman.
Did it?
I take it you mean in the 1947-48 Do-Nothing Congress, and the ensuing presidential and congressional elections?
Okay, I really don’t know what you mean.
We had to wait until Obama, 60 years later, to get anything resembling national health insurance. He had to wait 16 years for real civil rights laws. We never repealed Taft-Hartley.
But, hey, North Korea is still getting what they deserve.
Yes, Truman fought hard for his Fair Deal against strong conservative opposition from conservative Republicans and Democrats, and didn’t get it all through Congress, so by your measure, I guess, he was a whining failure. He certainly wasn’t popular. Here, from Wiki, is what his failed Fair Deal resulted in:
“Although Truman was unable to implement the entirety of his Fair Deal reform program, a great deal of social and economic progress took place under his administration. A Census report confirmed that gains in housing, education, living standards, and income under the Truman administration were unparalleled in American history. By 1953, 62 million Americans had jobs, a gain of 11 million in seven years, while unemployment had all but vanished. Farm income, dividends, and corporate income were at all-time highs, and there had not been a failure of an insured bank in nearly nine years. The minimum wage had also been increased while Social Security benefits had been doubled, and 8 million veterans had attended college by the end of the Truman administration as a result of the G.I. Bill.[7]
“Millions of homes had been constructed through government financing, and progress had been made in slum clearance.[8] Poverty was also significantly reduced, with one estimate suggesting that the percentage of Americans living in poverty had fallen from 33% of the population in 1949 to 28% by 1952.[9] Incomes had risen faster than prices, which meant that real living standards were considerably higher than seven years earlier. Progress had also been made in civil rights, with the desegregation of both the federal civil Service and the armed forces and the creation of the Commission on Civil Rights. In fact, according to one historian, Truman had “done more than any President since Lincoln to awaken American conscience to the issues of civil rights”.[7]
Further, “Lyndon B. Johnson credited Truman’s unfulfilled program as influencing Great Society measures such as Medicare that Johnson successfully enacted during the 1960s.”
Wow, what a loser!
Let Bartlet Be Bartlet
If only Obama had the advisers that Bartlet had.
Ah, fiction. It is always so much easier and neater than reality.
The fact is that we are not privy to the advice of Obama’s advisers in the same way that fiction makes us privy to Bartlet’s advisers.
Leaks to Politico, the Hill, WaPo, and the NYT don’t count as candor. But it is amazing how much discourse about politics, and in the progressive blogs, turns on those leaks.
We really won’t know what is in any agreement until the legislative language is rolled out. And then committees in the House and the Senate take a whack (pro forma or real) at it.
And if the public backlash is strong enough, anything done now can be undone in 2013. Along with the unpopular portions of the Affordable Care Act.
No, but we do know that if Obama doesn’t see a way to win logically by the numbers, he will not fight.
you just want to believe that.
It’s true, Obama hasn’t lost many battles he has chosen to wage.
But I have a very big exception for you.
He fought very hard to get the House to pass a Cap & Trade bill. Dozens of Democrats voted for the bill and then were savaged for it in attack ads. The bill never had any prospect of being passed by the Senate. But Obama figured he’d find a way. The Senate never even took it up for debate.
Dozens of Democrats were weakened up and eventually lost their seats. And for what?
Progressives behave like the president should go through the same exercise on every issue. Why?
It’s political suicide.
Because he thought he could win in the Senate. I disagree that it never had any prospect of being passed by the Senate. Not the House’s bill, for sure, but they could have passed something. It would have been a shitty bill, too. But something could have happened.
Moreover, if you want to go that route, I say that it wasn’t the president, but Pelosi. That also shows that if you fight for the votes that were not initially there — and they were not there in the House at first glance — that they can be gained. And you know what else? The President gave away the entire store on that debate, and it’s why nothing could be passed in the Senate! The Republicans had nothing to negotiate over. So again, I fail to see how you’re right on this issue.
If you want to make-believe that House members lost their seats over cap and trade, you can believe that, but it’s not reality.
Reminder:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/11/101011fa_fact_lizza
Not to mention that if Obama was serious the EPA would already be regulating it. But instead the EPA continues to delay action, and the only person who took climate change seriously was Carol Browner, who has since left.
Some House members lost over the issue, many more were damaged as part of a larger problem in the turnout and messaging wars.
You’re right that the WH made a few blunders in the Cap & Trade negotiations, but Lindsey Graham was always playing Lucy and the football. You must know that. Right?
Of course he was. But then why try to get anything done whatsoever by that logic?
Emanuel made it quite clear: if we can’t get 60 votes, we’re not going to even try.
So, Emanuel didn’t play Charlie Brown for you and you’re upset.
That’s just weird.
This is going in circles and I’m confused lol:
1.) You claim Obama doesn’t always use logic of political gridlock to get things done, and occasionally fights and loses.
2.) I disagree, and in most instances would side with the President’s judgment on that (which, in general, is why I accept that the health care bill was the best we could get).
3.) Your evidence for why I’m wrong is that he pushed for C&T in the House, despite knowing that it couldn’t pass through the Senate.
4.) I cite Emanuel, who makes it clear that they did NOT push hard for it, and it was Pelosi who pushed for it (they went with climate change and health care at once, seeing if either of them stuck).
5.) I believe that if it were pushed for, and if negotiations went down properly that something could have passed in the Senate (as in, this was something worth fighting for vigorously, despite possibly losing, as we did have decent odds on winning). There was plenty of leverage to be used on this issue to sway them to sign onto a bill.
So which is it: either the President fought for it hard and lost, or he didn’t fight for it because of the logic of 60 votes. You’re trying to have it both ways by citing that as evidence that he does, on occasion, fight for things even against horrible odds.
I’m not going to deny that Pelosi fought hard for climate legislation, but she didn’t do it in a vacuum. The WH helped her. It was one of Obama’s top priorities.
Nor am I going to deny that he made some missteps during the Senate negotiations that made it harder to pass something.
What I am arguing is that the president fought for climate change when it wasn’t ever going to pass.
It wasn’t immediately clear that McConnell was really truly pursuing a total war, with total obstruction, and every quiver in his arrow put in use. By the time the climate bill passed the House, it was obvious it would never pass the Senate. The mood of the country had turned, the Tea Party was in full force, and Democrats were running scared.
To tell you the truth, Obama would have been wisest to tell Pelosi to forget the whole thing. But he didn’t. He made speeches. He used his radio address. He pushed for it. But when it became obvious that Lindsey Graham was playing them for fools, they moved on to other things.
And that’s what they should have done because the Senate Republicans and many Senate Democrats were in no mood to pass any kind of climate legislation.
You’re quibbling about when they quit. I say they quit too late. You say that they should have wasted more time on it and got a worse beating, and left other things undone.
Fuck that.
Let’s just say that episode perfectly describes Obama. Especially the VERY end of the episode where Leo yells at the president.