Category: Democrats

Meyerson on Democrats & Unions

No nation has ever been home to a middle-class majority absent a sizable labor movement. In their failure to advance labor’s prospects, the Democrats condemn themselves to a future of fewer Democratic voters and their nation to a future of mass downward mobility.

Harold Meyerson is right – it’s about damned time Democrats were responsive to the needs of working Americans in labor unions. Meyerson points out that Carter, Clinton and now Obama have all turned their back on labor’s key legislative and policy needs. And to what end? A declining labor movement, a declining middle class, and a reduction in benefits for American workers. Political timidity is, in this case, a clear recipe for economic failure in America.

Moreover, labor is a key constituency for the Democratic Party and one that is ignored at their own peril. I’ve made the case in the past that the primary reasons Democrats won big in 2006 was because of labor’s bodies for field turnout and voting and the netroots messaging in opposition to Republicans. While labor’s war chest is a fraction of what big business brings to the political table, it is still the biggest constituent of the Democratic coalition. At a time when Democrats political prospects for 2010 don’t look good, giving the middle finger to one of your political firewalls is not a good idea.

Ben Nelson

So, is Ben Nelson going to jump ship to the Republican Party some time before January 2011? After all, his opposition to some of President Obama’s key legislative issues (health care reform and labor reform) is now being compounded by his opposition to President Obama’s nominees. Steve Benen writes of Nelson:

In other words, a senator who claims to be a Democrat will not let a Democratic Senate vote, up or down, on some of a Democratic president’s nominees. It’s not enough to vote against them, Nelson wants to prevent his own Democratic colleagues from voting on them at all.

This doesn’t look like the actions of a Senator who is planning on staying within his party’s good graces for years and years to come.

Now, to game it out, Nelson is too junior on Ag, Appropriations, Armed Services & Rules to benefit from a seniority bump by switching parties. He’s exercised a lot of control over what happens with this Democratic caucus by being one of the last votes for any issue; switching parties would probably remove him from the cat bird seat of swing vote largess.

The real question regarding Nelson is whether Harry Reid or the White House will start getting tough on him. Will he be punished for opposing Craig Becker? Will he be forced to pay a price for demanding such a high price on his support for health care?  If Senate leadership and the administration don’t get tough on Nelson, I’m sure he’ll be happy to keep being a problem child for years to come. But if Reid and Obama show some backbone and decide to stop getting pushed around by Nelson, they may give him an excuse he’s looking for to bolt the party and go help out the GOP full-time. That outcome may matter to some Democrats, but it certainly wouldn’t bother me a lick.

Fifty-nine

It’s remarkable: one year ago, when the Obama administration started, Democrats had fifty-nine votes in the Senate (though two were in the hospital (Kennedy & Byrd) and one, Al Franken, would not be seated because of frivolous Republican lawsuits). At the time, we were at an historic moment where big ideas were not only necessary, but possible. As such, the administration and Congress charged forward with plans for economic stimulus, labor reform, and health care reform.

A year later the economic stimulus has begun to work, labor reform has been moved to a back-burner about 900 miles from the President’s kitchen, and health care reform is perceived as a legislative impossibility…because Democrats have a mere fifty-nine votes in the Senate.

Fifty-nine votes is not a hurdle today any more than fifty-nine votes, which really meant fifty-six votes, was a hurdle in January, 2009. Fifty-nine votes, when used as a stated or implicit excuse for not accomplishing Democratic goals, is pure bunk. Not getting things done is solely going to be attributable to failures of leadership by the White House and the Democratic Senate leadership team. What is leadership? Partly it’s making an effective public case for a policy issue. Partly it is making clear to your caucus that they are safe to support the agenda you want them to support. Partly it is whipping votes through horse-trading, cajoling, and threatening senators to vote the right way. As far as I can tell, none of these things have been happening, particularly since the loss of the special election.

To wit, see this article in today’s New York Times. While it has an optimistic title, “Obama Maps a Way Forward for a Health Overhaul,” the title actual is belied by the text of the article, which includes this line: “Mr. Obama still did not chart a specific legislative strategy for moving a bill through Congress.” I’d hazard that it’s hard to “map a way forward” without “chart[ing] a specific legislative strategy”. I suppose Obama’s map for health care legislation since the Massachusetts loss look something like this:

  1. Have a real debate on the issues
  2. ????
  3. Sign the bill into law!

This isn’t leadership. Fleshing out #2 would be leadership. And let’s be clear: Harry Reid could do a whole lot to fill in the details here, but he isn’t either. The blame isn’t all Obama’s, but a preponderance of it, at this point in time, certainly is. After all, he was one of the loudest voices for saying that when Democrats had fifty-six functional votes in the Senate that this was the moment in history to pass health care reform. That he cannot muster the same confidence when he has three more voting Senators in the Democratic caucus is a disaster of, to borrow his word, historic consequences.

Democrats are looking for excuses to fail, but I for one do not buy it and I’m tired of it being sold to me by people who I and millions of people like me in the Democratic base have spent years working for, donating to, and voting for. Forget explaining to me why forty-one is greater than fifty-nine – this bit of idiocy is so solidified in Democratic conventional wisdom that nothing can dislodge it now. Explain to me why fifty-six is greater than fifty-nine.  Maybe then I’ll understand why this President and this Party have effectively abdicated their responsibility to get done the things they promised us they would get done.

Obama & The Overton Window

There are all sorts of post-mortems on the Massachusetts Senate race today and what it means for health care reform. But Peter Daou, former Clinton internet operative, has a must-read post on the larger questions of how the Obama administration has failed to achieve its goals after one year. Daou concludes:

Progressive bloggers have been jumping up and down, yelling at their Democratic leaders that the path of compromise and pragmatism only goes so far. The limit is when you start compromising away your core values.

This is really key. Compromise is not a path to victory, nor is bipartisanship. Going out and starting a panel to cut social security and entitlement programs is not what the doctor is ordering. Passing health care reform, improving it immediately through reconciliation, and then moving on to a strong jobs and infrastructure package, on the other hand, is what is needed. The administration and Congressional Democrats need to show America what successful Democratic governance looks like…and that answer can’t be “similar to Republican governance.” They have to draw contrast, move the Overton Window to the left, and find new ways to make this country work.

Deep Thought

Life is easier when WordPress doesn’t eat 1,000 word posts.

Shorter Me: If New York has had a carpetbagger for a senator and a rep who moved far to the left after being appointed senator, why would a carpetbagger who claims to be moving to the left be so bad? Answer: Harold Ford Junior is the Chair of the DLC and shouldn’t be trusted, while Gillibrand is backing up her words with votes in the US Senate.

Goodbye Blue Dogs?

Campbell Robertson of the New York Times, reporting on the intense fear Blue Dogs have about being Democrats these days, writes:

In the deep-red states of the South, it is very hard these days to be a Blue Dog, as members of the group of 52 centrist House Democrats are known. Suspicions about the Obama administration’s expansive view of government power have made the Democratic label so toxic in some parts of the South that merely voting like a Republican — as many Blue Dogs do — may no longer be enough.

First, Blue Dogs are conservative Democrats, not centrist Democrats.

Second, the problem described here can’t be one of Blue Dogs suddenly finding the Democratic brand toxic. After all, the whole motus operandi of the Blue Dogs, as described by Robertson, is that they vote like Republicans and then tell their constituents about it. That is, they convince their constituents that when they vote for a Blue Dog, they are getting a Republican with the power of a member of the Democratic majority. Conversely, Parker Griffith, a Blue Dog who jumped ship to the GOP last month will now have to try to get through a GOP primary that he isn’t likely to do well in.

“Bright and Parker won, despite the poor showing of Obama, because they are conservative and therefore not open to attack from Republicans on social issues like abortion, prayer, guns and taxes,” John Anzalone, a Montgomery-based Democratic pollster, wrote in an e-mail message.

Mr. Anzalone argued that Mr. Griffith’s calculation was likely to end up hurting him, since he now has to face a Republican primary, while Mr. Bright’s conservative record could potentially expand his base.

Blue Dogs get a great deal by being part of a large majority, with a large enough bloc of coherently unified conservative ideologues who frequently bring the Democratic Party to its knees. They get millions of dollars of cash from the DCCC to support their re-elections. And they get this backing from the party, often in districts where if they ran as Republicans they would likely face strong primary opponents. Why would these Blue Dogs be ready to jump ship from the Love Boat the Democratic Party has them sailing on?

I’m sure there will be at least another Blue Dog or two who either bolts the party or decides not to run for re-election. That’s all well and good, in my book. But it’s silly to think that this band of conservaDems who have masterfully gotten everything they want from a more-liberal national party are so politically inept as to think they are going to start bolting en masse to become GOP back benchers.

Stories like this by Robertson really just promote the narrative of Democrats in disarray. As I’ve tried to lay out here, I don’t think that is the case, even if it is a common meme pushed by Republican operatives and DC insiders.

Natasha Chart’s Open Letter to Dem Electeds

Natasha Chart, one of my favorite progressive bloggers, has posted a real gut-check of an open letter to Democratic elected officials. In it, Chart eviscerates the do-nothingism of Democratic office holders, who spend their time lying to the base about what they will do for them if elected, then painting corporate victories in office as progressive ones. Chart charges that Democrats must cease demanding the base to stop believing our lying eyes.

What I’m certain of is that if an illusion must be maintained at all costs, it will eventually cost everything.

It’s already cost us affordable health care, and likely much of women’s access to reproductive healthcare, in your proposed insurance reform. Like many other registered Democratic voters, my plan for health care reform, or health insurance reform, whatever, was to get you elected. Because you said you wanted it as much as I did. You had watched your own loved ones suffer, and heard the heartbreaking stories about people made to endure tremendous hardship or even death, at the hands of bureaucratic executioners working underwriting desks at Aetna, Cigna, etc. You told us you wanted to work for us and make the negotiations over reform transparent, because you were on our side.

And even if the bills you came up with are being hailed as must-pass progressive legislation, I think you know you lied to us about what you were going to deliver. You lied. There’s no point pretending it isn’t so, either to myself or anyone else. You just lied.

The stock market isn’t lying about it. Health insurance stocks are up, because the people with a lot of money and power in this country know who won this fight. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t your typical voter. I might not be the equal of anyone in the investor class in your eyes, but I think I at least have the right to as much truth as they do, and they know you lied to me for their sakes. I’m sure they’re very grateful.

I could go on about the bank bailouts, your disastrous bribes to polluters masked by trite pennies thrown at renewable energy, failed promises to the LGBT community, the abandonment of the unions, yadda, yadda, yadda. But why? You started selling us out when you took over Congress in 2006 and you never stopped, not with the trifecta, not with your damn 60 votes, not with the earth-shattering momentum of the most successful small-donor fundraising campaign in the history of the whole *ing world.

Natasha goes on to a place where I wouldn’t go – telling officials to stop actually doing anything, just collect their paycheck and go home. I think there is a step where we push for accountability and the keeping of promises that is too important to skip.

Nonetheless, Chart’s letter is a searing indictment of what we’ve seen out of Democratic elected officials over the past three years. There’s only so far the people whose activism and small-dollar donations carried these officials into office will go when they feel like they’ve been lied to. Now I don’t expect any significant number will flip to the GOP or go join the Tea Baggers, but people suggesting this is a possibility are only insulting the convictions of progressive base activists. Instead, I expect people to tune out, become cynics, and refocus their efforts back into the issue campaigns they care most about.

For a long time I believed, like Natasha, that the best way to accomplish a progressive agenda — spreading human rights, health care, equality, and rebuilding the middle class — was best accomplished through elected strong Democratic majorities. A majority, I thought, was a better vehicle for achieving our goals than stronger single-issue campaigns.  In many ways, the growth of the progressive online movement and the campaign for “More and Better Democrats” is predicated on this assumption. Sadly, we have consistently seen that this is not in fact a recipe for achieving progressive policies.

The alternative electorally is to push for “Better and Better Democrats,” something that has been discussed by me and many others over the past two years. To be even more pointed, progressive change can only be achieved when the blue parts of this country are made bluer. Elected officials need to, at minimum, mirror their districts. No more Blue Dogs in D+20 districts.

The balance between electing real progressives to office and increasing our energies and resources towards the issue campaigns that we really care about is a tough one. After all, environmental and energy policy reform can’t be done blind to the needs of labor law reform.  There must still be a strong enough progressive compass that groups working independently of each other still move in the same direction.

The last issue is simply that for movement issue activism to be successful, elected officials have to be convinced to listen to the base. They have to be committed to keeping their promises from the campaign trail. How can these results be achieved? That’s less clear. Do promise-breakers need to be primaried? Will it help to make examples of turncoats? Or will it only cause the wall between Democratic elected officials and the base to be raised higher? These are tough questions and answers may not be forthcoming without some field testing of different strategies.

Processing Health Care Compromises, A Strategic Look

It’s important for people who work in politics, policy, and activism to recognize what world it is they are operating in. This sober understanding should influence how strategies are formed and tactical choices are made. I think we’re approaching a point in the health care reform fight were the online progressive community needs to evaluate what world we are operating in and chart a course forward accordingly.

When Barack Obama was elected President, with a huge majority in the House and fifty-nine Democratic caucus seats in the Senate, we were told, “Now is the moment for health care reform.” There was a presumption that this was an historic time, whose existence was not only unprecedented but unlikely to ever come again. As such, passing health care reform in the first year (or so) of the Obama presidency became essential to his administration’s chances for success.

What was ignored in this evaluation, though, was an assessment of the actual landscape of the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

In the House, conservative Blue Dogs and New Democrats have not exerted the same degree of influence as their conservative Democratic counterparts in the Senate. Nonetheless, Blue Dogs have spent the better part of the last year screaming for a deficit-neutral bill with a low price tag. These efforts have effectively kept the entire discussion of health care reform costs, which experts say should be in the neighborhood of $1.2-1.3 trillion over ten years, to around $800-900 billion. More recently, conservative Democrats in this coalition forced the House to accept the repugnant Stupak Amendment, which rolls back the right to choose further than any other legislation since Roe vs Wade.

In the Senate, Democrats started with only fifty-nine members of the caucus, including perennial problem children Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu. Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd began 2009 fighting life-threatening illnesses and were almost exclusively not in attendance. Arlen Specter switched parties, temporarily giving the Democrats a 60 seat caucus on paper, pending Al Franken taking his seat. But Al Franken wasn’t seated until July of 2009, only weeks before Ted Kennedy passed away.  In the final months of his life, Kennedy was rarely on the floor of the Senate and could not be counted on to vote outside of extraordinary situations.

Illness, death, and delayed seating has prevented Democrats from actually having 60 members of the caucus, effectively from Day One of the Obama administration until late September, 2009, wiping out nine months where health care reform was truly possible within the confines of a Democratic caucus alone (on paper). The result was for every piece of legislation in the Senate up until September, the Democratic leadership had to count on at least some number of Republican votes to move forward. That is, the landscape was not what everyone had been told.

From Employee Free Choice to health care, moderate Republicans like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins became the real arbiters of what legislation might look like. Even with sixty votes in the caucus, conservatives like Lieberman, Ben Nelson, and Lincoln have effectively had veto power over what the contents of reform legislation are. To anyone following this process closely, it should be clear that having sixty seats is not the same as having sixty votes. A super majority is no magic tonic that will ensure the passage of a liberal Democratic agenda like the one President Obama was elected to enact.

Or, to put it a different way, the Conventional Wisdom which said 2009 was the critical moment never to be found again to pass national health care reform legislation was fundamentally wrong. The cohort of conservative Democrats in Congress – in the House, but most especially in the Senate – is simply too large for this moment to be realized as it had been envisioned.

But the responsibility for where we are does not lie solely with the conservative Democrats in Congress. The administration and the Senate leadership has either not been able to or has refused to create caucus discipline on procedural votes on health care reform. No conservative Democrat has been punished for their public opposition to progressive policies. No force has been exerted to bend Lieberman, Lincoln, Landrieu, or Nelson to the will of the caucus. The conservative Democratic senators have grabbed the veto pen and no one has taken it back from them. This is a very large contributing factor to the unwinding of the idea of this being the time to get health care reform done.

What’s troubling is that the continued slowness of reform makes Democratic electoral successes less likely. While it looks like conservative Democrats are in trouble, with progressives in good shape, electoral fear is clearly influencing people in DC to continue to frame health care reform as something that must get done, regardless of policy content.  From a realization of good policy standpoint, the defeat of conservative Democrats should make progressives  in both chambers stronger relative to the size of the caucus, which is a good thing. But if there isn’t a path to sixty votes in the Senate to get cloture on procedural votes, then policy implementation hits a wall, especially as long as the Democratic leaders of the Senate, White House and particularly the progressive bloc in the Senate are so strategically inept.

Taken all together, it’s hard to see that this is in fact the time that health care reform must happen, or even can happen.  At least not how so many progressives expected it to happen, let alone how President Obama campaigned on changing health care in America. That is not to say that I don’t think reform legislation should be moved now, but the range of what is actually possible to achieve seems to be getting smaller and smaller, a reality that needs to be recognized so strategies could be adjusted accordingly. Single payer is long gone. A meaningful, robust public option seems almost equally as far from achievable. The various compromises being discussed won’t get the job done, but they will be better than the current scenario, in most likelihood.

There’s no reason Democrats need have been so weak this year.  But they are. And it has horrible consequences, both in terms of the quality of health care reform that is achievable and the chances for future growth of the Democratic majority.

Now is a time for activists online to recognize that what we thought we bought in 2008 — and in the elections of 2004 and 2006 — was not what was advertised. A sixty seat majority does not equal sixty votes. The possession of large political mandates for change requires agents who are willing to strategically and forcefully use accrued political capital to marginalize and disempower conservative elements of the Democratic Party. These things are possible, but they are not possible with the selection of officials we have currently placed in office. Expectations must be adapted and so too must the strategies and tactics we use to try to influence these officials.

What does this mean for where we are today? Well, as I said the other day, it means we have to find new ways to be effective at moving the positive progressive agenda.  I’m not certain that becoming obstructionist or trying to tear down the watered-down legislation that is moving is a good move, as it is not likely to garner support from progressives in Congress. Instead, I think campaigns like the Progressive Bloc strategy orchestrated by Jane Hamsher and Chris Bowers to try to hold a line in the sand on the public option is best. It involved elected officials from the left becoming more strategic, while simultaneously building close relationships between politicians and the activist base. Perhaps that means selecting a number of specific policy comments of substantially smaller grade than the public option and seeking to hold lines there, as Stupak and Nelson have done on rolling back choice rights. The value of this method is that it involves slowly helping to redefine the political landscape within which we are operating.

It’s not news to say that the large majorities in Congress and control of the White House are not the promised land progressives hoped for.  There’s certainly a lot of desire to throw up our hands now and say, “Screw these Democrats.” But that won’t help this country. Finding ways to continue to gradually build strength, build relationships, and build playbooks for effective advocacy strategy, on the other hand, allows us to change the reality we’re working in. Keeping hope after the year we have seen is hard, unto fundamentally challenging the ability for dedicated progressives to have any faith in Democratic elected officials. But the consequence of not continuing to work for real, progressive policy change is too dire to drop our hands. In the words of Al Gore, our disappointment must be overcome by our love of country.