Well, if there was any doubt that Chuck Schumer is in charge of messaging for the Senate Democrats, I guess that’s over:
Moments before a conference call with reporters was scheduled to get underway on Tuesday morning, Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, apparently unaware that many of the reporters were already on the line, began to instruct his fellow senators on how to talk to reporters about the contentious budget process.
After thanking his colleagues — Barbara Boxer of California, Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, Thomas R. Carper of Delaware and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — for doing the budget bidding for the Senate Democrats, who are facing off against the House Republicans over how to cut spending for the rest of the fiscal year, Mr. Schumer told them to portray John A. Boehner of Ohio, the speaker of the House, as painted into a box by the Tea Party, and to decry the spending cuts that he wants as extreme. “I always use the word extreme,” Mr. Schumer said. “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.”
A minute or two into the talking-points tutorial, though, someone apparently figured out that reporters were listening, and silence fell.
There wasn’t anything damaging since the Republicans really are extreme, but it demonstrated how things work in Washington. I don’t really have a big problem with it, but it falls far short of how Madison et. al., envisioned the Senate. It’s supposed to be a body of 100 independent high-minded individuals. It’s kind of sad to see them calling in to find out what their argument is for the week. But this is a body that employs morons like Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl, ideologues like Jim DeMint and Rand Paul, and soulless hacks like Jim Inhofe and Mike Lee. It’s not like it has been living up to its reputation anyway.
I, for one, am kinda glad to find out that Democrats actually have talking points. It certainly doesn’t feel that way when I scan the headlines on Google News or some other aggregation site. I’m just a little mystified by this mysterious caucus… Aren’t they–these senators–part of the caucus? Did some PR flunkies who work for the caucus give these points to Chuck? I’d like to know their names and email addresses so we can try to influence them since they’re the ones in charge and our congress critters don’t listen to us very often.
How dare you accuse Inhofe of being merely a soulless hack when the word ‘moron’ is being bandied about as well? Low blow.
Seriously, there can’t possibly be a dumber senator than Jim Inhofe.
I’m all for transparency, but why is this being reported? Isn’t that context pretty clearly off the record?
I think if something is off the record, the person being interviewed has to specifically say that this is “off the record.” This was just eavesdropping, nobody was being interviewed. The surprising thing is that for a while no one realized there was press within earshot. Aren’t the press supposed to identify themselves? I hope the reporter was wearing a press badge.
It would be fairly standard, once Schumer (or whomever) realized there were reporters on the call, to state that those comments, prior to the beginning of the formal call, were off the record. Either that wasn’t done, or it was ignored by someone.
Not a big deal to me either way, but reporters I’ve known tended to take the position that anything not requested by the source and agreed to by the reporter to be “off the record” wasn’t off the record.
(That’s why Samantha Power had to resign from the Obama campaign. In a heated moment she called Hillary Clinton a “monster”, then immediately asked that her statement be off the record. Too late, so it wasn’t.
I’m glad they have someone with sense who knows how to make talking points actually distributing them.
What Dems need is more message discipline, not less. The public is confused by multiple messages. The parties have specific points to offer. Republicans do theirs in a disciplined, choreographed manner which makes them look intelligent. Democrats do their in an incoherent mess of turgid crap, and they look like idiots. Please, more message discipline.
After a recent conversation about how much lying was emanating from the various governments regarding the Japanese nuclear disaster and the fire this time in North Africa and the Middle East, a young friend sadly said to me “I guess we have to get rid of everything we learned in high school.”
Apparently you have not yet learned this lesson, Booman. As Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens so accurately stated over 100 years ago, “Those who respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made.”
The government of the United States…in fact, every government of which I have ever heard during my time on earth…is not “high-minded” in any way, shape, manner or form. Not the Senate, not the House, not the executive branch, and overall not even the judicial branch. None of it. Its stock in trade is lying in the pursuit of power, and the appearance of any kind of “high-mindedness” is the result of one of two things.
1-Self serving hype, like the swill that we were force-fed in high school civics classes
or
2-The “high-mindedness”…a term that is totally inadequate to its task in this context…of evolutionary forces at work. Evolutionary forces that transform the lead of human effort into the gold of evolutionary change. The real alchemy. As MLK Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Yup. Somehow the self-serving efforts of the gutter dwellers who populate politics are guided by the “what works best” concept of evolution on a long, gradually upward path. (Oh so gradually!!!)
Life will try anything.
And what “works”…what works best…is what wins. It is then subsequently labelled “high-mindedness.” Had Madison et al been crushed by the British it would be the revolutionaries who were branded the villains and King George would be considered the high-minded one.
And…in many respects they were villains, those American revolutionaries.They were slave holders; they were proponents of genocide; they were white supremacists and considered women to be an inferior sex. The politics that were being played during the American Revolution were as down and dirty as the politics of empire today. Until we realize this simple fact we can do nothing but impotently sit on the sidelines and complain about how the game is played.
Bet on it.
Reality politics are what is necessary. Not the platitudes of high school civics courses.
“100 independent high-minded individuals?”
Please.
A bunch of successful hustlers.
Then and now.
AG
P.S. And speaking of reality…your site is going to be broken by the spammers if you are not careful. Careful, diligent and hard-working, Booman. On my own site I spend about 20 minutes a day keeping the roster clean. If you cannot afford an anti-spam system of some sort, you must do it yourself or this site will stop growing. New people will come, see the roughly 2/3rds spam posts in the “recent diaries” section and run…not walk…away. Bet on it. It’s a time-consuming task, but you must do it.
Not to get into a debate on constitutional theory and origins (it’s too early in the day for that), Madison, et al, did see the Senate as a check on the popularly elected House, and may well have had hopes that it would be filled with “independent high-minded individuals”.
However, Madison in particular was keenly aware that they were crafting a government “of men, not of angels”, and therefore expected those men to act frequently on the basis of base self-interest, and to form “factions”. As a result, they crafted the constitution so that the government would (they hoped) harness those tendencies towards self-interest and faction into republican self-government.