Ryan Lizza’s latest piece in The New Yorker is about how climate change legislation failed in the Senate, but it’s also about how you pass a big, contentious bill in the Senate. And the way you do that is largely to placate powerful business groups so that they won’t wage holy jihad against your efforts. One of the more enlightening things (at least, for me) about Lizza’s article is that the polluting industry was, pretty much across the board, willing to cut a deal that would include meeting the 17% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020. They wanted to eviscerate the Waxman-Markey House version of the bill, but they were all basically bought off during the negotiations over the Kerry-Lieberman-Graham bill. And the K-L-G version of the bill was on course to win the support or neutrality of even the Chamber of Commerce. What killed the bill was a combination of bad luck, competing priorities, sloppy coordination, and (most importantly) an increasingly toxic environment caused by the Party of No strategy of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Koch Brother-financed Tea Party movement.
The main problem that Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham faced was not that they couldn’t strike a deal with the polluters that the environmental movement could support. The main problem was that the couldn’t convince any Republicans to join in in the effort. Under ordinary circumstances, if the Chamber of Commerce said it was a bill they could support, a few Republicans would feel free to support the bill. If Big Coal and Big Oil said they weren’t going to lobby against it, that would give members a free hand. But, the strategy of denying Obama any legislative victories, combined with the carefully cultivated Cult of Climate Change Denial strategy of the Koch Brothers was enough to get the base of the Republican Party riled up into an insensate froth. Any Republican who even hinted that they might cooperate with Obama was treated to abuse:
The next day, Graham was holding a town-hall meeting in the gym of a high school in Greenville, South Carolina. His constituents were not happy. One man accused him of “making a pact with the Devil.” Another shouted, “No principled compromise!” One audience member asked, “Why do you think it’s necessary to get in bed with people like John Kerry?” Graham, dressed in a blue blazer and khakis, paced the floor, explaining that there were only forty Republicans in the Senate, which meant that he had to work with the sixty Democrats. A man in the bleachers shouted, “You’re a traitor, Mr. Graham! You’ve betrayed this nation and you’ve betrayed this state!”
Soon afterward, Graham called Lieberman. He was concerned that Kerry might drag him too far to the left, and he knew that Lieberman, a close friend with whom he had travelled during McCain’s Presidential campaign, could serve as a moderating force.
This should be a sobering lesson for progressives. Remember that the only reason this bill was being pushed by Kerry and Lieberman was because the chairperson of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, Barbara Boxer, doesn’t have the friendships or legislative chops to move a contentious bill in the Senate. To be honest, Kerry doesn’t either, which is why Lieberman became central to the deal-making.
Much of Lizza’s piece focuses on the sad spectacle of Kerry, Lieberman, and the White House making one pathetic capitulation after another in an effort to pass a bill that could reduce carbon emissions by the targeted 17% by 2020. There’s the offshore drilling, and the subsidies for T. Boone Pickens, and subsidies to the nuclear industry, and much more. There’s the gymnastics they went through to craft a cap and trade bill that couldn’t be called a ‘gas tax.’ And all of it is really aimed at avoiding the kind of media frenzy that killed ACORN and the effort to close Guantanamo, and that surrounds the PARK51 mosque. Simply put, if the right-wing wants to kill something, they have the media resources to get it done.
I saw that Benen, Klein, and Yglesias recently debated whether this is a center-right nation. Well, I’m here to tell you that it sure as hell is a center-right nation. It’s not just the Senate rules, or the cost of campaigning that makes it so. It’s also the ability of the right to create hysteria whenever they want to. It’s a miracle that health care reform passed.
Having watched the right’s response to Pres. Clinton, and now Pres. Obama, I would not underestimate their ability to create hysteria whenever they want.
Having said that, if the US Senate had something approaching majority rule, then Lindsey Graham’s constituents wouldn’t matter when it came to energy and climate legislation. Jay Rockefeller’s constituents would (including Big Coal). Mary Landrieu’s constituents would (very much including Big Oil).
The legislative calculus would be similar—cutting a deal with the relevant business lobbies (energy in this case, Pharma/AHA/AMA for health care), negotiating with the most recalcitrant members of the Democratic caucus (Ben Nelson, Lieberman, Landrieu, etc.—the specific members vary with the issue), crafting a political and media strategy for dealing with right-wing opposition both in and out of Congress. The difference would be getting to 50 votes (Biden to break the tie) versus getting to 60 votes.
All that matters now is keeping the right-wing from gutting the EPA. If we can keep them from doing that, Big Oil and Big Coal are going to be begging for cap and trade. They won’t survive very long under the EPA’s rules, and a good chunk of the entire coal industry is going to be shut down right away when the rules start kicking in.
That’s why they were willing to get a deal. With C&T scheme, they’d get money to do what they had to do to meet the carbon reduction. Now they’re stuck with jack shit.
The Republicans only have themselves to blame. They created this toxic environment. I don’t know why Huckleberry thinks it’s over for him as far as the Tea Party is concerned. He’s going to be primaried whether he got a deal done or not.
Yeah, how can he possibly survive a South Carolina tea party challenge? Jim DeMint will be all over that, for one. Maybe Graham saw the writing on the wall and was actually trying to get something decent done for the world before he got drummed out of office.
Graham is one of the few Republicans who:
A.) Believes in climate change and that it’s humans who are causing it.
B.) Realizes that if we don’t act that the next generation is going to be fucked over.
C.) Despise A & B he possesses the same quality that every career politician has: a need to survive.
So he stopped the deal and moved the football because he thought he’d get kicked out. I suppose this is where the limit to his intelligence holds, as I don’t know why he thinks he has any chance at surviving this environment. He’s been considered one of the most liberal Republicans this entire session; whether that’s true or not will not matter. He’s in the Tea Party sights, and when Bob Bennet isn’t conservative enough for you, no one is. He’s done, and if he has any care in the world about his grandchildren, he should face reality and get a bill through during lame duck. There’s no stopping this genie now that it’s been released. There’s no going back.
despite*
Well, who knows, maybe he will go the Murkowski/Lieberman route and try to run as an indie in 2012. Might actually get South Carolina Dems to vote for him if it’s a choice between Graham, an Alvin Greene, and a DeMint.
if what it takes to pass legislation is “placating big business”, then i would argue we’re not so much a center-anything nation, but a deeply corrupted nation, and one that grows more cynical by the day.
this is the odd thing about you and me, brendan.
In general, you are the cynical one; I am the optimistic one.
But, on another level, I think I am more cynical. The deals with big business don’t really drive me nuts because I kind of take them as a given. I am always aware of the structural obstacles to progressive aims, so I am not surprised by the sausage-making and capitulation. When it works to create something positive, I am happy. When we give away the store and get nothing, that’s when I get pissed off.
I’d like to see the system changed so it isn’t so rigged, but I think it’s always been rigged. I judge Obama by what he can squeeze out of the lemon. I know that doesn’t stack up to the whole Change You Can Believe In slogan, but I believe in it because he’s the best, most-progressive minded president since at least Truman. I don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth, especially when he is getting things done.
Maybe it’s not so much optimist/pessimist as idealist/pragmatist?
that may be part of it. Like booman, i’ve always know the game was rigged too, but these days it seems more rigged than ever before, and I think this is reflected in the condition of the country, including the stacked courts, the worthless hysteria-driven media, the bitter divisions, the hate-mongering, and everything else.
my dad (and my grandmother) used to joke that both parties steal, but the democrats leave a little for you to steal too. i don’t think that’s true anymore.
I was back in Canada this weekend, and it was so nice to be surrounded by a culture that values decency and its own people.
adding: i agree that booman is actually a lot more cynical than i am.
Doesn’t everyone operate under this view? It’s always been this way, especially since the end of subsistence farming. From the railroads, oil barons and bankers of the 19th century to the present, it’s been this way for a long time.
The Myopia of Anti-Washingtonitis
Yeah .. but are we gonna point back to any accomplishments 40 years from now like we do FDR’s New Deal, or LBJ’s domestic accomplishments? Will be see more of a shift to Medicare for all?
I don’t know, but I was going to lose my health insurance before the health care bill.
We have center-right electoral, political and media institutions. The American population is not center-right, countless polls and studies have demonstrated that. This is why it was so tragic for Obama to not focus more on institutional reform. It means always fighting every battle with your arm tied behind your back. What’s more, Obama clearly campaigned on and was given a mandate for institutional reform.
Institutional reform either a.) proceeds with at least the partial support of the institution, or b.) it doesn’t happen, or c.) it involves tanks.
One of those three.
Exactly. While the population at large is still more conservative than one in Western Europe, it is at the same time to the left of current policy. But many Americans are so misinformed by the ruling elite and its mighty media wurlitzer, they repeatedly vote against their interests. Thus we have right-wing policies being cared out by what is theoretically our government.
More a case of ‘have reinterpreted their interests’, I think.
They’ve been able and willing to swap a reduction in the certainty their lives, and in their standard of living, for participation in a rousing morality play, in which they get to play both the hero and the victim.
People throughout history have given up food, shelter, even their lives, in service to a good enough narrative. Religion, nationalism, the Internationale… if it’s a good story, offering you a good role, or the pivotal role, people will throw over everything to embrace it.
The Manichaean struggles in which the right offers voters a role — against vice, change, Moslems, Them, for America, Jesus, normal people — are compelling enough to trump economic self-interest, which is not a very compelling story.
“Center-Right”..or….
“Center? riiiiiiiiight”…
As the GOPers say….vote early, vote often….
Krugman pretty much nails it.
Op-Ed Columnist – Fear and Favor – NYTimes.com