Modifying the filibuster rule: Senate Democrats actually act like Democrats!

Lat week was a good week for Democrats!

The Senate abolished the filibuster rule for judicial and Executive Branch nominations except for the Supreme Court at Senate Majority leader Harry Reid's demand. Francine Kiefer in Senate takes 'nuclear option' on filibusters: What does that mean? Christian Science Monitor 11/21/2013), "Reid’s proposed change to the rules bulldozes the filibuster and replaces it with simple majority approval for all executive and most judicial branch appointees, from agency heads and their assistants to federal judges."

This was long overdue. The Republicans were ready to do the same in 2005, and the Democrats would have been well-advised to let them do it. Instead, the "Gang of 14" constructed a classical "bipartisan" solution in the Beltway Village's meaning of the term, i.e., the Democrats agreed to do pretty much what the Republicans wanted and declined to call their bluff on the the "nuclear option" of amending the filibuster rule.

Andrew McCarthy & Mark R. Levin, writing for the segregationist National Review at the beginning of 2008 (McCain and the Gang of 14 01/18/2008) were very much upset with the Republican members of the Gang of 14 that brokered the deal that kept the filibuster rule intact:

Besides preserving their privilege (which allows a single senator, for absolutely no reason, to prevent a president from fulfilling his constitutional obligation to appoint officers of the United States, without whom the government cannot function), McCain and his confederates were most determined to avoid accountability. That was the essence of the Gang of 14 deal. The senators pretended, in a bluster of high-minded twaddle, to resolve the controversy without disturbing the chamber’s procedures. It was nonsense.

At the time, the president had made ten nominations that Democrats (and some Republicans) blocked. Three of them had been so abused by the senatorial intransigence that they finally withdrew their names from consideration. Of the remaining seven, the Gang of 14 agreed there would be a vote on only three. It then went on to preserve the filibuster, purporting that it could only be invoked in "extraordinary circumstances."

The editors of that same segregationist journal wrote in Nuclear Fallout 11/21/2013 after last week's victory for democracy, howled about the dreadful consequences they expected from this move:

The filibuster is not sacred writ, and we are on record supporting procedural changes to overcome partisan obstruction. The more serious concern here is that the Democrats are attempting to pack the courts, especially the D.C. Circuit court, with a rogue’s gallery of far-left nominees. That is worrisome in and of itself, but there is a deeper agenda: Much of what President Obama has done in office is of questionable legality and constitutionality. The president no doubt has in mind the sage advice of Roy Cohn: "Don't tell me what the law is. Tell me who the judge is." He is attempting to insulate his agenda from legal challenge by installing friendly activists throughout the federal judiciary. That is precisely what he means when he boasts, “We are remaking the courts.” Republicans are in fact obstructing those appointments; unlike the nomination of John Roberts et al., these appointments deserve to be obstructed.

The filibuster is a minor issue; the major issue is that President Obama is engaged in a court-packing scheme to protect his dubious agenda, and Harry Reid’s Senate is conspiring with him to do so.

Roy Cohn was the bizarre mob lawyer who kick-started his career for his sleazy staff work for Joe McCarthy, a man National Review founder William Buckley admired and defended.

Michael Gerhardt and Richard Painter described the Gang of 14 agreement and its results in "Extraordinary Circumstances:" The Legacy of the Gang of 14 and a Proposal for Judicial Nominations Reform (Revised; American Constitution Society; Nov 2011).

On May 23, 2005, seven Republican and seven Democratic senators banded together to block a movement that would have changed the Senate forever. Because the Senate at that moment was otherwise almost evenly divided over a radical plan to revise the rules of the Senate to bar judicial filibusters without following the Senate’s rules for making such a revision, the Gang of 14, as the senators became known, controlled the future of judicial filibusters. They each agreed not to support a filibuster of a judicial nomination unless there were “extraordinary circumstances.” For the remainder of George W. Bush’s presidency, the agreement held, and there were no filibusters of judicial nominations. But, in the past two and a half years, several developments have threatened the continued viability of the agreement of the Gang of 14: Five members of the Gang are no longer in the Senate; Democrats took control of both the House and the Senate in 2006 and managed to hold onto a majority of seats in the Senate, albeit by a thinner margin, in 2010; and delays and obstruction of judicial nominations re-intensified after President Obama came into office. Perhaps most importantly, the remaining Republican members of the Gang of 14 have each found “extraordinary circumstances” justifying their support of some judicial filibusters.

In other words, the Republicans agreed to drop some of the most conservative nominations the Democrats were filibustering at the time, and the Democrats agreed to basically not filibuster any new ones, and the Democrats stuck to their agreement. (In other words, please let us keep the filibuster and we promise not to use it!) As soon as the Democrats got a Senate majority and a Democratic President was nominating judges, the Republican didn't bother themselves with the 2005 agreement and used the filibuster to an unprecedented extent against judicial nominations. Why not? It worked well for them during the Clinton Administration. Gerhardt and Painter describe the results as of the time of the paper:

However, in President Obama’s first two and a half years in office, his judicial nominations have been subjected to various delays and obstruction, including a successful filibuster upheld by each of the remaining Republican members of the Gang of 14. Almost 50 of the President's judicial nominations are still pending before the Senate, including 12 to the federal courts of appeal, while 84 judicial vacancies remain, 31 of which are considered emergencies based upon, among other things, extremely high caseloads. We cannot square this state of affairs with what the Gang of 14 had originally wanted or with any credible, neutral standard of "extraordinary circumstances." The Gang of 14 had hoped that their bipartisan compromise would facilitate judicial appointments and remove ideological differences as a ground of objection to a nomination as long as the nominee’s views were within the mainstream
of American jurisprudence and he or she had sound character and no serious ethical lapses. Instead, judicial filibusters, among other means of obstruction within the Senate, have been persistently directed at judicial nominees on the basis of speculation and distortion. These tactics have prevented the federal judiciary from operating at full strength, and have made the process of judicial selection unpredictable for everyone concerned, including the White House, the Senate, and the nominees. [my emphasis]

A recent Rick Perlstein piece reminded me that the very useful term High Broderism, which bloggers had used to designated the Beltway Villagers' idolatry of a phony centrism that was understood as Democrats conceding to Republicans, has fallen into disuse since its namesake, David Broder, passed away.

But High Broderism lives on. And its adherents were predictably disturbed at suchy a shameless display of partisanship (by the Democrats!) as the amendment of the filibuster rule this past week. Here are Sleep Mark Shields and David "Bobo" Brooks, declaring their allegiance to the faith on their Political Wrap (PBS Newshour 11/22/2013), Shields and Brooks look at long-term impact of Senate's 'nuclear' rule change :

Shields starts off by declaring it obviously a bad idea. But then proceeds to explain all the good reasons that the Senate Democrats have for doing what they did. Bobo was even more incoherent, and of course has a big sad because of the baleful effects it may have of sacred Bipartisanship:

Yes, they made a big mistake.

There's -- Mark's right. There's no question there's been a deterioration of norms, but that's no reason to basically begin the erosion of the institution of the Senate, what makes the Senate special. When you go to the Senate dining room and you look at the senators, they actually do talk to each other across party lines. They have working relationships. It's not great. It's not the way it used to be.

But they basically have working relationships. And they were able to pass legislation, even immigration reform, a couple weeks or months ago, because they have to do that, because to get a lot of stuff passed, including nominations, you have got to get 60 votes. And it's very rare that one party has 60 votes. So, they're used to working across party lines, in a way they just aren't in the House.

And so, if you take away that 60-vote thing, starting now with some of the nominations, but probably going within a couple of years to the Supreme Court nominations and maybe the legislation, you basically are turning the Senate into the House. You're basically beginning the erosion of what makes the Senate special, beginning the erosion of minority rights.

You're creating a much more polarized body over the long term. So, if you think partisanship and polarization are in short supply, well, then this was a good move, because we're going to have more of it, I think, in the medium and long term.

Here in the real world, of course, the Republicans have transformed themselves into a crassly segregationist party and are too busy howling at the moon to worry about all this responsible government nonsense. But Bobo and Sleepy Mark both cherish one of the Scriptural tales of High Broderism, the one about how Tip 'n Ronnie (Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill and Republican President and Saint Ronald Reagan) used to argue over politics during the day and then get together and have a bear together that evening. One enduring legacy of the Tip 'n Ronnie beer drinking is that the Social Security retirement age was raised from 65 to 67. Which is fine by Mark and Bobo, since they both support the Grand Bargain for "entitlement reform" to cut benefits on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid again.

When Mark is off, they usually fill his spot with Ruth Marcus, Bobo's Washington Post colleague, who by Beltway standards is somehow considered a liberal. She usually begins her responses by some form of, "I agree with David ..." It's a real Bobo and Bobita show when she's on. In her column, Bobita was, of course, agreeing with David (In filibuster fight, the Democrats go too far Washington Post 11/21/2013):

Still, the Democrats’ move is a mistake.

Not when it comes to executive-branch nominees — eliminating the filibuster in such cases makes complete sense. A president, Republican or Democrat, deserves deference in deciding how to staff the government. If a president picks the wrong person, that’s his or her problem. The harm won’t last long. ...

Judges are different, and this is where the Democrats erred. Their move — unlike previous proposals — eliminated the filibuster except for Supreme Court nominees. The simple reason for subjecting judicial nominees to a higher hurdle for approval: lifetime tenure. ...

... eliminating the possibility of filibustering lower-court nominees will fundamentally change the calculus of judicial appointments. Presidents will understand that in picking judges they have to count only to 50, which will embolden them to press the envelope, ideologically and otherwise.

Republicans will be empowered to pick more conservative judges, Democrats more liberal ones. Perhaps this will make for a more vibrant judiciary. I fear it will create one that is more polarized and possibly less well-qualified.

Because judges might start doing things like handing the Presidency to the loser in national elections, overturning long-standing and important precedents on issues like segregation and campaign finance on narrow majority votes, and so on.

If the Democrats approve Republican Presidents' judges loyally and the Republicans routinely block Democratic appointments to the bench, that would certainly avoid that awful partisan division. The whole federal bench would be Republican. And I'm sure the Republicans will only approve judges of the same high quality as Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia.

Bobo himself used a similar gambit on the Newshour:

I would say the most defensible thing that the -- part of this law is the White House personnel. I agree with Mark on that. The president really should have wide leeway to choose who he want. I can see sort of getting rid of the 60-vote thing for the administration personnel.

I find it much harder to defend the idea of getting rid of it for the judges. And, believe me, the Supreme Court judges, that will be -- that 60-vote thing will be gone in short order because of this.

This way Bobo and Bobita can give a nod to the Democrats - gee, maybe had more of a point on Executive Branch appointments - but actually supporting the Republicans on judicial nomination part, which is the more critical one. Shields does his version of the same thing. High Broderism at work! Both sides are blame (but the Dems a little more). And the priesthood of the order get to mourn for the decline of sacred Bipartisanship.

James Fallows provides a perspective on the filibuster from someone who's more in touch with the real world, California Gov. Jerry Brown (California's New 'Problem': Jerry Brown on the Sudden Surplus, and the Filibuster The Atlantic 05/26/2013):

We can't have a country based on the 60-vote standard. This is serious.

We've never had to have 60 votes for appointments or day-to day-decisions. Really, you can't govern that way. That's a radical change.

How can you govern? Does England have 60? [JF note: Obviously a rhetorical question. His point is that the U.S. has the drawbacks of parliamentary democracy, including political polarization -- without the benefits, namely the ability to get things done.] I think that 60 votes could end America's ability to govern itself. We have to get rid of it.

That 60 votes is bad.

The US Senate includes two Senators for each state. They are popularly elected. But the Senators' representation is based on state, not population. Utah has just as many Senators as California or New York. So the Senate has a built-in over-representation of smaller, more rural states as it is. And those states tend to be more "red" in the exceptional American political color-scheme: more conservative and more Republican. The filibuster rule gives an even smaller portion of the general population the ability to block any legislation and Supreme Court appointees, which are still subject to the rule.

It needs to be abolished for those things, too. But I don't want to detract from the Harry Reid's and the Senate Democrats' real accomplishment this past week. It's very good to see.

Gerard Magliocca in The Not-So Nuclear Option Balkinization 11/21/

The Senate today voted to change its rules and end the power of the minority to block a judge or an executive nominee through a non-traditional floor filibuster. I applaud this change, as readers of the blog know that I am a critic of modern filibuster practice. It is worth noting, though, that all this change does is bring us back to where we were about ten years ago. Filibusters of lower federal court and executive nominees were basically unknown prior to the Bush 43 Administration.

Stan Collander's Nuclear Option Increases Chances Of Another Shutdown, Sequestration (Capital Gains and Games 11/22/2013) raises the question of how this will affect the Republicans' approach to the upcoming rounds of sequestration and debt-ceiling decisions:

I have talked for several years about how the tea party sees working with Democrats (and some non tea party Republicans) as collaborating with the enemy. It thinks of compromise in religious terms ... as "a sin."

The Senate's action yesterday didn't just reconfirm that to the tea partiers, it almost certainly exacerbated it. If they didn't before, the tea party certainly now thinks of the Democrats either as a tool of the devil or the devil incarnate.

I'm guessing that Reid took this prospect into account in the filibuster vote. I think he and the Democratic Caucus in the Senate have reached a point - if not a tipping point, at least a moment - where they just got tired of pretending the Republican Party is acting as anything but a wrecker Party in Congress.

Collander seems more bothered by that prospect than I am. That's because I expected the Republicans to be hardline obstructionists on those negotiations anyway. Reid's removal of the filibuster for non-Supreme Court appointments are a clear sign to any Republicans still thinking soberly enough to see it that he could further undercut the Republican institutional power in the Senate by getting the Democratic majority in the Senate to abolish the filibuster for legislation, as well.

It's also important to remember that abolishing the filibuster for nominations is a real victory for the Democrats. A huge part of the Republicans' strength the last few years has been to exploit President Obama's obsession for bipartisan solutions to slap him and the Congressional Democrats around on one thing after the other. It is very good to see the Democrats strike back in a visible and effective way on this. And the whining from Republican blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and Rand Paul emphasizes that it was an effective strike. It's something that Democratic progressives have been wanting to see for a while.

Joan McCarter addresses the likely Republican counterstrike over the budget and debt-ceiling negotiations that Collander references (The potential silver lining to the post-nuclear Republican obstruction Daily Kos 11/22/2013). She agrees that Republican obstruction could get worse, but will a skeptical qualifier about how much worse could we expect them to be than they already are:

If there's one thing that's a given that the Senate will experience post-going nuclear, it's ongoing and probably even escalated Republican obstruction in other areas — if it could get worse, that is. That's a given, and a given that Senate Democrats have been very much aware the whole time, and won't be surprised to see. They will still use up every bit of debate time they can wring out of the still-existing rules and procedures to delay every nomination for as long as they can. They will still filibuster every piece of legislation for whatever reason they feel like.

She points out that Republican efforts to block judicial nominees will likely shift to the Judiciary Committee now, which is likely to be a good thing because the Reps will have to air their frivolous reasons for opposing the President's qualified nominees:

But now Republicans are going to have come up with real, valid, substantive reasons to oppose a nominee. They won't be able to do it just to block President Obama, or as in the case of Robert Cordray at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to nullify some law they don't like. If they really want to stop a nominee now, they're going to have to bring something real, and that's nothing but good for our government.

Tags: filibuster, harry reid

Health care reform - or what's left of it?

As of just past my normal weekday bedtime, even the bloggers who have been following this the closest don't know what kind of deal the Senate Democrats have worked out on the public option in health care reform. Which in itself is an indictment of how badly the Senate Democrats have performed on this issue. From the statement that "Give 'em whine Harry" Reid put out late Tuesday, it looks like the Senate Dems used the filibuster as an excuse to cave to the insurance companies and sell the public down the river on the public option. Which in this context means, a health care reform that may literally be worse than none at all. If Brian Beutler's report is right and the public option is now reduced to a trigger, aka, has been eliminated from the plan in all but name, the Senate has agreed to gut health care reform. If this is what the Senate passes, I'd rather see the House Progressive Caucus kill the whole thing than pass a plan that would magnify the current problems instead of solving them. Which is what individual mandates to buy health insurance without the public option would be.

It's not over until it's over. But the Democrats' performance over this has been genuinely pathetic. And since we know from the "Gang of 14" incident over judicial nominations that the Republicans wouldn't hesitate to flush the filibuster rule over something important to them, the filibuster is no excuse. If the public option and health care reform with it go down, it's the fault of President Obama and the sad excuse for a Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Yes, the Republican Wrecker Party has been totally negative. But the Democrats have their 60-vote majority that would be enough to overcome a filibuster even without abolishing the filibuster rule which they should do in any case.

If health care reform goes under - and passing a castrated, industry-friendly version is the same as it going under or even worse - it's a whole new political ball game in the United States. And I don't think any of us have an idea of what it's going to look like. Except maybe Jerry Brown, who seems to be able to see decades ahead on some of these major things.

The Democrats have no excuse for failing on health reform. No excuse.

Tags: democratic party, harry reid, health care reform

Time to flush the filibuster rule

I've been griping about the Senate filibuster rule all year. Now that Joe Lieberman - remember Joe, the "Independent Democrat" who defeated the Democratic Senate candidate in Connecticut and who supported John McCain for President even during the primary season and was welcomed by to the Democratic caucus with open arms after the 2008 election? - is saying he will support a Republican filibuster against any meaningful health care reform, it's time for President Obama and Harry Reid to cut out the excuse-making and whining and pandering to the insurance lobby and get a health care reform bill passed with a solid public option. And if they need to abolish the Senate filibuster rule to do it, Wednesday sounds like a good day for that to happen. If not tonight.

In 2005, the Republicans threatened what the pundits called the "nuclear option", i.e., abolishing the filibuster rule by majority vote in order to overcome Democratic filibusters of some of their worse judicial nominees. That bold Maverick McCain got all mavericky and joined in with 13 other members from "both sides of the aisle" and put together a "bipartisan" lovefest of the kind that the Cult of High Broderism adores. The result? The filibuster rule was technically preserved. And the Republicans pretty much got everything they wanted. Another way to put it: the result was that the Democratic filibuster was defeated by effectively abolishing the filibuster rule for that vote.

To his adoring press fans, this was another sign of McCain's mavericky maverickness. That is, he wouldn't agree to vote with the Democrats to preserve the holy filibuster rule. But he would do a mavericky stunt to abolish the filibuster on this issue and get the Republicans what they wanted. Some Republicans were still grumpy at the Maverick for doing this, as explained in this article by Distrust of McCain Lingers Over ’05 Deal on Judges Carl Hulse New York Times 02/25/08

Even some colleagues now backing Mr. McCain consider the judicial agreement a sore subject. “We had the votes to put both parties on the spot that whoever is president, Republican or Democrat, has a right to appoint and we have the right to vote up or down,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and a former Judiciary Committee chairman.

Mr. McCain and his allies say they remain proud of the deal they cut because it avoided a potential constitutional crisis in the Senate and led to the confirmation of two Supreme Court justices named by President Bush, as well as several federal appeals court judges. They say there is no certainty that Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican who was then the Senate majority leader, had the votes to win approval of his rules change, which was dubbed the nuclear option because of the chaos it was predicted to cause.

With the possibility of a Democratic White House and Congress in the future, Mr. McCain said protecting the right of the minority party to force the majority to produce 60 votes to confirm an objectionable judge might not seem like such a bad idea.

“Find me a Republican senator who now supports 51 votes for the confirmation of a judge,” Mr. McCain said. [my emphasis]

Or, to put it another way, if give-'em-whine-Harry Reid had been so desperate to nominally preserve the filibuster rule, he wouldn't have to deal with Republican filibusters today.

But Reid's one-day stand as a Democratic partisan on Monday seems to have relieved him of those unnatural partisan impulses. After getting kicked in the teeth by Joe Lieberman, after sniveling in the dirt to get good ole Joe to stay in the Democratic caucus, Reid if full of praise for his old buddy Joe. And as Alex Koppelman relates in Reid: "Joe Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid's problems" Salon 10/27/09, Reid is still oh-so-grateful to Joe for helping him get rolled in 2005 on the "nuclear option" threat:

"I don't have anyone that I have worked harder with, have more respect for in the Senate than Joe Lieberman. As you know, he's my friend. There are a lot of senators, Democrat and Republicans, who don't like part of what's in this bill that we went over to CBO. We're going to see what the final product is. We're not there yet. Sen. Lieberman will let us get on the bill, and he'll be involved in the amendment process," Reid said.

"Some of you will recall one reason that we were able to solve the problem with the nuclear option -- I write about it in my book -- is I called Joe Lieberman to my office and said, 'Joe, I want you to join -- I want you to join the enemy and get us out of this deal.' And he did. I have the greatest confidence in Joe Lieberman's ability as a legislator. And he will work with us when this gets on the floor, and I'm sure he'll have some interesting things to do in the way of an amendment. But Joe Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid's problems." [my emphasis]

Two thing urgently need to happen in the Senate: the Democrats need to abolish the filibuster rule so they can pass real health care reform, and the Democrats need to can Harry Reid as Majority Leader.

Tags: harry reid, health care reform, joe lieberman

Cheer and a half for Harry Reid

I believe in recognizing good news when it happens. At the same time, I definitely learned to restrain my enthusiasm on anything related to Harry Reid's leadership. Since Reid has been a sad excuse for a Majority Leader so far. With a theoretically "filibuster-proof" 60-vote Democratic majority in the Senate, with a popular Democratic President in the White House and the ability in any case to abolish the filibuster procedure with a simple majority vote, Reid has spent an unbelievable amount of time and energy whining about how he can't get anything done.

But apparently on Monday, he had an unusual rush of Democratic partisan energy. I was listening to C-Span in the morning and heard Reid in what I took to be a live Senate session defending the limits on executive compensation at bailed-out financial firms and sounding like an actual, living breathing Democrat! I was impressed in spite of myself.

Then later in the day, he announced that the Senate health care reform bill to go up for a vote will include a public option, although with a state opt-out provision. This was a pleasant surprise to me, because I expected that give-'em-whine-Harry might go for a phony "trigger" version of the public option. I don't think the state opt-out is good policy.

But purely as a political ploy, it may make some sense. For Blue Dog Dems who want to vote no on the final bill in order to preserve their, uh, good relationship with the insurance lobby, this could be a ploy to let them vote for cloture to shut off a Republican filibuster but then vote against the final bill. Then the Senate bill with the state opt-out could be reconciled with the House bill with a full public option by compromising on a full public option, which could then be passed on a majority vote in the Senate.

Still, a Republican filibuster is no excuse for not passing a solid health care reform. The Republicans effectively abolished the filibuster in 2005 with the "Gang of 14" manuever over Bush judicial nominations. The Senate Democrats can abolish the filibuster altogether by simple majority vote. No excuses on this one.

We don't yet know the details of Reid's proposed public option with the state opt-out. I don't see any redeeming features to it as policy. For one thing, on a practical level, it will almost certainly mean that my original home state of Mississippi, the state that needs health care reform most of all, will effectively wind up without it. The nominally Democratic legislature loves to roll over and whimper for the insurance lobby. And the Republican Gov. Haley Barbour is a reactionary who would surely push for Mississippians to be denied the public option.

Paul Krugman in An Incoherent Truth New York Times 07/26/09 laid out the basic premises of what would make a private-insurance-based program of the type being debated in Congress work:

Reform, if it happens, will rest on four main pillars: regulation, mandates, subsidies and competition.

By regulation I mean the nationwide imposition of rules that would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage based on your medical history, or dropping your coverage when you get sick. This would stop insurers from gaming the system by covering only healthy people.

On the other side, individuals would also be prevented from gaming the system: Americans would be required to buy insurance even if they’re currently healthy, rather than signing up only when they need care. And all but the smallest businesses would be required either to provide their employees with insurance, or to pay fees that help cover the cost of subsidies — subsidies that would make insurance affordable for lower-income American families.

Finally, there would be a public option: a government-run insurance plan competing with private insurers, which would help hold down costs.

Without the public option, what would result from the other pillars being in place would be that individuals would be required to purchase insurance but that insurance companies would still have broad discretion to set prices and evade coverage, e.g, by imposing high deductibles. This would reward the insurance companies and punish individuals without solving the actual coverage problems. That kind of reform without the public option would be a bad program, which is why the Congressional Progressive Caucus has insisted they would vote against such a plan.

I haven't heard anything yet that would convince me the state opt-out plan would be much better. David (dday) Dayen in his new gig at the News Desk feature of FireDogLake and Jane Hamsher and others at the main FireDogLake page are keeping their readers on top of this, as is Joan McCarter (McJoan) at DailyKos. As David explains in Not Enough Details To Make A Determination Of The Opt-Out 10/27/09, there are a lot of ways an opt-out policy could be constructed, some of them worse than others. But it seems to me that any state opt-out deprives the states opting out of the benefits of the program while stiffing their citizens who would still be subject to the mandate to purchase insurance. They get the obligations without the protections. That would limit the cost-control aspects of the national plan, depending on how many states with large populations opted out. If only less-populous states like, say, Mississippi and Wyoming opted out, then it would "only" be the people in those states who would be dumped on.

And how often could a state opt in and out? Annually? Every time a Republican Governor takes office? As a business structure, that doesn't sound like a very practical approach.

In the political aspects, the Democrats would be depriving their Party of a great deal of the long-term strategic political benefits of health care reform. Health care reform if done right will be a major instance in which a "active government" program will make tangible improvements in people's lives. It will be the best kind of argument against the anti-government ideology that conservatives (and even many liberals!) have promoted for the last four decades. And if the Democrats are ever going to make major inroads into the Republican's Solid South, it will take reforms like this to do it. If Katrina and the Republican national government's pathetic response to it didn't send voters in Louisiana and Mississippi rushing to the Democrats, we can't expect other "acts of God" to do it.

But if there is a state opt-out provision, Republican-dominated Southern states will opt out, depriving their publics of the tangible benefits of the health care reform while sticking them with the costs of the individual mandate and leeway the insurance companies have to exploit it. That will then confirm to their voters who otherwise might be persuaded that active Democratic government programs could have constructive effects that "Democrat big gubment" is actually bad for them. And, if the Democrats are foolish enough to let something like this go through, those voters wouldn't be entirely wrong in coming to that conclusion.

So, one-and-a-half cheers for Harry Reid on this one. But what counts is delivering a solid health care reform with a robust public option available to everybody, including people in Republican-dominated states.

Tags: harry reid,, health care reform

Now we're talking!

This has seemed an obvious perspective to me for a while now. From Brian Beutler, Progressives Prepare to Pressure Reid to Include Public Option in Senate Health Care Bill TPMDC 10/01/09:

Major progressive organizations see a golden opportunity to resurrect the public option, and are preparing a campaign, which will include television ads in Nevada, to pressure Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to get on board. ...

"If Harry Reid does not have the leadership skills to get 60 votes for cloture and give a Democratic president an up-or-down vote on health care, progressives will help defeat him in 2010, even if that means Republicans take that seat," said the head of one progressive organization, who's still working out the detail of the campaign. "There is no use for Reid's vote if 60 Democratic votes means nothing on cloture, and no use for Reid's leadership if his leadership is so blatantly ineffective."

That might not be such a troubling threat if Reid, who's up for re-election in 2010, wasn't suffering at the polls.

It's not clear why Beutler should have granted the person saying that anonymity. But the concept makes sense. We don't have a liberal/progressive party in the US. We have the Democratic Party, with a popular/progressive wing and a corporate-conservative wing. The Republicans are a reactionary party; conservative is not really a good description of their Party. The only way for liberals to increase their clout is to target Blue Dog Dems in primaries. And insist that the Party leaders respond to the needs of the Party base.

Reid's Majority Leader status is a conceptual holdover from the decades in which the Dems, for whatever reasons, felt they needed to have majority leaders who projected a "moderate" image. What that meant in practice was selected characters like Harry Reid from less secure Democratic seats who often felt they needed to vote with Republicans on important issues to show their centrism. Not a good criteria for a Party majority leader in Congress. Nancy Pelosi is working out much better.

Tags: harry reid, democratic party

Health care down?

This is bad news that the vote on the health care plan was successfully postponed, thanks to Blue Dog Dems and "Give 'Em Whine Harry" Reid's lack of leadership in the Senate. The opponents had been banking on postponement as their main strategy, giving the insurance lobbies more time to pick the thing to death and load it up with more favors to the industry. Bill Moyers and Michael Winship give a sobering assessment of the state of the fight for a normal health financing system in Obama's Health Care Struggle -- Waterloo or Water Down? CommonDreams.org 07/25/09.

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint put his foot in his mouth when he said publicly, "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." And Obama was right to jam him on it. The Dems have been far too reluctant to hold the Republicans accountable for what their own leading members say. While the Republicans hold the Dems accountable for things they didn't say or for things they had no control over (e.g., the "Betray-us" flap).

We also see in this heath care fight how the particular dysfunctionality of our Establishment media are more likely to facilitate Republicans goals than Democratic ones. Our "quality" PBS network gave us an example in Friday's Newshour Political Wrap segment with the generally Republican Party-liner David "Bobo" Brooks and the increasingly hapless Mark Shields, the McCain fanboy who is supposed to look like the "liberal" in their little weekly discussion. Or I least I suppose that. Maybe the Newshour doesn't even care any more that the segment has become a weekly spectacle of two stodgy-minded white guys repeating slight variations on the Beltway Village conventional wisdom on the issues of the day.

Speaking of which, I'm beginning to wonder whether the San Francisco Chronicle's Carolyn Lochhead is just the pseudonym of some service that complies the Village CW into articles every few days. If not, she's doing a remarkably good job of it on her own. Here she offers us the Village line on health care, i.e., deficits! deficits! Oh, it's all so expensive!:Obama: Health reform must not worsen deficits 07/25/09. She reports:

"We're not going to set up something that's not fully paid for," Obama said. "... That's been my criteria from the start."

Wonky and cerebral in a White House interview with The Chronicle and a small group of reporters from other metropolitan newspapers, the president showed a determination to see through what he called his chief domestic aim since announcing his candidacy for president more than two years ago on a cold February day in Springfield, Ill. [my emphasis]

The Village press is fixated on the deficit, for which the Republicans not coincidentally acquired an urgent new concern as soon as a Democratic President was elected. That's normally the only time most of them make any pretense of caring about it. Sadly, the Democrats apparently actually do care about the deficit. And they've spent decades now talking up their "fiscal responsibility" credentials. It's long past time for them to knock it off.

Our sad excuse for a press corps is clearly getting really bored with having a President who gets all "wonky and cerebral" and stuff. Not like getting insulting nick-names from Shrub Bush. Or swinging on the tire at McCain's vacation home.

Shields and Brooks put the Village attitude proudly on display Friday. Brooks was happy over the delay in the health care vote, because that's the Republican Party line and current legislative strategy: delay is good. Bobo:

The public part, not so great. I mean, if you had to rate how they're doing, inside Washington, they're actually doing pretty well. They've got all these committees working on the bill, and the big story is they're not going to pass it this summer. We're going to have to wait until the fall until -- and so that seems like a big setback.

But when you actually look at what the committees are doing and the substance of the bills, there's actually much more overlap that I would have thought. And so I think, you know, they're going to get the Blue Dogs, the centrists.

I would suspect within Washington right now there's a very good chance they will get health care reform because of the way the bills are cohering.

Outside of Washington, the public part, that's where the danger is. If you look at where the American people are, a slim majority now say -- disapprove of Obama's approach to health care. Among independents, 66 percent think it's too big government.

So public support is eroding. But among Democrats in Washington, there's a procession going on. [my emphasis]

There has been some slippage in the polls on the particular plan. Not surprising, with a press corps like this. Of course, they prefer to frame everything in terms of the horse race. But it bothers me that Brooks seems so confident that the Blue Dogs will get their way, i.e., gut the bill. And he none too subtly suggests that the reg'lur folks out there, the ones for whom our celebrity pundits likes to pretend they speak, aren't so hot on this whole fixing health care nonsense, that it's just something the out-of-touch Dems in Washington are focused on.

Shields was in full Village whiner mode, which is more and more often his schtick. Acting as Obama's theater critic, he explained that Obama bored him and his fellow Villagers with all that wonky and cerebral talk about health care:

MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: ... I think, first of all, Jim, that the president on his own presentation this week did not have a good week.

JIM LEHRER: He did a bunch of television interviews, including one with us.

MARK SHIELDS: With us.

JIM LEHRER: And then he had his news conference. He's been everywhere.

MARK SHIELDS: But the news conference was the wall to wall. That was the national -- I mean, people who were wise enough and shrewd enough to watch the NewsHour saw something else.

But in that presentation, I really thought that -- all I could think of was, Adlai Stevenson once said when he was introducing John Kennedy -- remember in classical times, whenever Cicero spoke, the people reacted and said, "He spoke so well." But when Demosthenes spoke, the people said, "Let us march." And after the Wednesday presentation, there was nobody saying, "Let us march."

JIM LEHRER: No marching?

MARK SHIELDS: It was a listless, overly academic -- and at a time when you really need to distil [sic] and to explain to people and to inspire and motivate them and educate them, I think the president, who was a great professor, according to everybody who sat in his classroom, failed the test on Wednesday night. [my emphasis]

Maybe Shields should just start taking a nap before he listens to these press conferences. Maybe he wouldn't be so inclined to nod off then.

If it's not about sex or race or a famous pop star, it's hard for our celebrity infotainers to get excited about it. I mean, it's not like they're really news analysts or anything. They just play them on TV. But maybe Shields should take a nap before taping his Newshour segments, too, because he's starting to become overly frank about how little he and his celebrity colleagues in the Village press actually care about the health care issue:

MARK SHIELDS: It is working in Washington. Washington right now is going through convulsions. It always happens just before Congress goes into recess, that, "Oh, my goodness"...

JIM LEHRER: They suddenly say, "Oh, my goodness. We've got to"...

MARK SHIELDS: "This is a crisis. It's all -- if it doesn't pass." That has nothing to do with anything.

The reality is, the worst thing that could happen is for either House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to bring a bill to the floor and have it fail in the votes. The fact that they didn't bring it to the floor is not going to be cause for, you know, great concern in the nation.

Five out of six people in the country have health coverage. Three out of four of them, according to most polls and pollsters I talk to, are satisfied. They're not thrilled with it, but they're satisfied with it. And that's where the president and the case has to be made in the country, that, look, this is in the national interest.

It's something that's bigger than me personally. But at the same time, I'm not going to be punished and I'm not going to come out of this worse. But, you know, I think that's where the job remains to be done.

You have to listen to this segment to appreciate the "I don't give a s**t" tone with which the "liberal" Shields delivers this. This context of this remarkable comment was in describing the message that Shields was saying Obama needs to get across, but it's not much of a stretch to assume that he was really expressing his own attitude: "It's something that's bigger than me personally. But at the same time, I'm not going to be punished and I'm not going to come out of this worse."

One of the characteristics of the American celebrity TV commentators is that they assume the conceit that their own thinking - eccentric as it is, shaped by a remarkably weird form of groupthink - is typical of "the American people". So much so that when one of them says, "The American people think ...", the correct translation into regular English is usually, "I and my fellow celebrity pundits think ..." So even leaving his statement in the context he apparently wanted, it gives a remarkable insight into how Shields and his fellow Villagers see the health care issue. My own summary of the Village consensus:

I've got good health care. Everyone I know and consider significant has good health care. So it doesn't matter to me what they come up with on this health care thing, as long as I don't have to keep listening to a lot of boring talk about insurance and the annoying tales of all these losers who don't have good health care. Borr-rring!

Shields is really out of touch, intellectually and emotionally, from the realities of the health care problem. Not only to polls consistently show overwhelming concern about the state of health insurance in the US. But it's an all-too-typical concern for people, even those who have half-decent coverage today who Shields thinks should care as little as he does. For people who lose their jobs - and despite the oblivion in which people like Bobo and Shields apparently live, it's happening to a lot of people right now - health insurance often is a more urgent concern than the loss of their old paycheck.

And Village press rules strongly forbid Bobo or Shields to use any of their commentary time to talk about the sad performance of our broken-down press in covering the health-care issue. But that Brooks/Shields segment puts that problem on display. Or, as Shields smugly put it: "I'm not going to be punished and I'm not going to come out of this worse."

Tags: harry reid, health care reform, mark shields

I have a dream...

... that the Senate Dems will dump Harry Reid as their Majority Leader. We need a real Party leader there. Not someone who rushes to surrender on an absolutely central program.

Senate Delays Health Vote Until Fall; Pressure Mounts on House CQ Politics 07/23/09: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday the Senate will wait until September to take up a health care overhaul, but the Finance Committee will vote before the August recess."

Tags: harry reid

That sure didn't take long!

"Give 'Em Whine Harry" Reid, alleged Democratic Majority Leader in the Senate, is already rolling out his excuses for why he can't get Democratic programs through even with a "veto-proof" majority of 60. From What’s So Super About a Supermajority? by Carl Hulse New York Times 07/01/09:

“We have 60 votes on paper,” Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said Wednesday in an interview. “But we cannot bulldoze anybody; it doesn’t work that way. My caucus doesn’t allow it. And we have a very diverse group of senators philosophically. I am not this morning suddenly flexing my muscles.”

If we could get a real Senate Majority Leader in his place, I'd gladly hand Give-'Em-Whine Harry to the Republicans. That would give the Dems "only" a 59-vote majority. But anyone who was willing to act like a real partisan leader could get pretty much all the Democratic programs through, including Obama's appointments, with a majority like Reid has had this year. Then they wouldn't have to whine. Or promise not to flex their "muscles", a statement premised on the claim that Reid actually has any real Democratic "muscles" to flex.

The batty notion that the Dems should choose majority leaders from marginal Democratic states is just nuts. The Nancy Pelosi model is much better. As a Democrat from San Francisco, the only electoral challenge she would really have to worry about would come if she weren't partisan and progressive enough.

Tags: harry reid, democratic party, democrats

60-vote Democratic majority in the Senate

This is great news! State Supreme Court rules for Franken, 5-0 by Pat Doyle Minneapolis Star-Tribune 06/30/09.

The question remains: why didn't "Give 'Em Whine Harry" Reid and the Senate Democrats raise enough hell over this to make it a constant political issue in the stenographic reporting of our national press corps? Because in the same position, the Republicans certainly would have. It would have been okay if Reid had whined about that issue. But he only seems to whine about why he can't get things passed that the Democratic base want to see passed.

Now he has his "veto-proof" 60-vote majority. The filibuster threat was already a paper-thin excuse. Now Dems should just laugh and hoot if he uses that one. And Obama's White House has shown on the war supplemental and the climate bill that it's willing to muscle legislation through the Congress if it's something they are serious about getting passed.

And this means the Dems have no valid excuses at all not to pass a decent national health care plan. None. Though some of them are trying hard to find them.

Tags: al franken, democrats, democratic party, harry reid

It's nice to hear I'm not the only one who thinks this

Greg Sargent at his Plum Line blog picks up on a paragraph buried deep in a New York Times story talking about how House Democrats are ticked off at the timidity of "Give-'Em-Whine-Harry" Reid's leadership in the Senate (Report: House Dems Angry With Reid For Caving To Centrists And GOP 06/08/09). Someone gave me the very helpful hint a long time ago that some of the best material in news articles is often stuck near the end. Greg writes:

Apparently some of what’s driving this is Reid’s run for reelection [in 2010 in Nevada]. He has repeatedly shown he’s determined not to be painted by Republicans as too liberal. As a result, he has let Republicans frame the debate on key issues, even though they don’t even have candidate to run against him yet; one example was Reid’s decision not to fund the closing of Guantanamo before a plan is in place for relocating the detainees. [my emphasis]

This notion of picking a Party leader in the Senate or House from a marginally Democratic district to project a more moderate image is just cracked. The Party leader needs to be an effective partisan, not someone feels its imperative to posture as only a partial Democrat to keep the folks back home happy enough to get re-elected.

It's especially damaging at a time like this, with a new, very popular Democratic President replacing a Republican administration that had become highly unpopular while a world economic crisis is going on; that provides a great set-up for being able to push through major reforms and the nominees that the President and the Party want.

The Times piece also says that the (unnamed) Democratic House critics of Reid framed their criticism as that they "accuse Reid and his lieutenants of repeatedly placating Republicans to avoid a filibuster". I've been amazed how how willing Give-'Em-Whine-Harry has been to pull out the filibuster excuse. If he can't overcome a filibuster with 59 Dems in the Senate, I can only wonder what his excuse for inaction would be if he had 63 or 65 Dems. In any case, the Senate can abolish the filibuster rule with a majority vote.

But even though the Times article hypes it as a budding problem for Obama, it's hard to know how serious it is because it's not a quote from someone on the record on that point.

Tags: democratic party, democrats, harry reid

No excuses, Harry

From Brian Beutler, TPM 05/13/09: Reid Admits It: 'I Don't Have Votes For Johnsen...Yet'

Last night Reid made it explicit. "Right now we're finding out when to do that," Reid said, according to Roll Call. "We need a couple Republican votes until we can get to 60."

That 60-votes business is nothing but an excuse. The Republicans were ready to abolish the filibuster rule back in 2006 to get their nominees through. But Harry Reid is using the filibuster as an excuse for not being willing to get a key Obama nomination approved. This 60-votes line is a fake. Reid heads a 59-vote Dem majority, since he allowed rightwing Republican Arlen Specter to become a Democrat with apparently no conditions at all. Specter even said after his "conversion" that he would still vote against Dawn Johnsen. I'm sick of this excuse. Reid doesn't need 51 60 votes to get her approved. He needs 51. Time for him to deliver. Tags: democratic party, harry reid

Obama on the Gaza offensive

Was the Obama team reading Tankwoman's Blue Voice post this morning?

Even if they weren't, this sounds to me like good news, from Obama breaks silence on Gaza, calls civilian deaths 'a deep concern' Haaretz 01/06/08.

Barack Obama, who takes over as U.S. president from George W. Bush on January 20, broke his silence about the violence in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, calling the loss of civilian lives in Gaza and in Israel a "source of deep concern for me."

Obama added he would adhere to his principle that only Bush should be the voice of U.S. foreign policy at this time but he would have plenty to say after his inauguration in two weeks.

Nonetheless, Obama said that he is "not backing at all from what I've said during the campaign we're going to engage effectively and consistently in the peace process."

"We've got plenty to say about Gaza, and on January 20, you'll hear directly from me," he added. [my emphasis]

I'm actually surprised that he spoke out directly on this before Inauguration Day. Cheney and Bush are still in charge, and the Republicans are likely to trash him for saying anything.

But it looks significant to me, optimist that I am for this brief moment in time, that his reference to civilian casualties in "in Gaza and in Israel" could be a signal of a return to at least a nominally independent stance that could allow the US to be a credible mediator. And reiterating his support for the peace process is a positive sign.

Billmon also points to some significant changes that look to be for the better that Obama's team is insisting upon at the Pentagon in A Final Communique From the Neocon Bunker Daily Kos diary 12/31/08. There are real reasons for the Democratic base to be optimistic - cautiously and critically, but still optimistic - about the incoming administration.

Compare that with the sad, superficial performance of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Meet the Press on Sunday, being interviewed by the even sadder and more superficial David Gregory:

MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you about the ground invasion into Gaza. Do you think on the part of this Israeli--of the Israelis this was offensive or defensive?

SEN. REID: I spoke to Prime Minister Olmert a couple of days ago. He indicated that they would do the ground activities. Let's understand the background. For eight years they've been firing rockets into Israel. They've become more intense the last few months. Israelis have been killed, maimed and injured. Sometimes more than 200 a day coming into Israel. If this were going on in the United States from Vancouver, Canada, into Seattle, would we react? Course we do. We would have to. I think what the Israelis are doing is very important. I think this terrorist organization, Hamas, has got to be put away. They've got to come to their senses. The Fatah group, which is--makes up part of Palestinian group, has a peace arrangement with Israel. Hamas should do the same.

MR. GREGORY: And they're in power in the West Bank.

SEN. REID: That's right. And, and, and Israel, for--since 1967, controlled Gaza. They gave it to the Palestinians as a gesture of peace. And all they got are a bunch of rockets in return.

MR. GREGORY: So you think that Israel ought to move forward and try to remove Hamas from power?

SEN. REID: They have to. I, I'm not concerned about removing Hamas from power, I'm concerned about stopping the rocket fire and the mortar fire into Israel. That is the key, and that's what Israel's up to according to the prime minister.

MR. GREGORY: Should there be an immediate cease-fire?

SEN. REID: If the Hamas organization will agree and there is some degree of certainty that they will follow through. They, in the past, have simply not lived up to what they said they would do. If there's a way of enforcing this cease-fire, then yes. Otherwise, Israel has to continue till they stop the rockets and mortars coming into Israel, maiming, injuring...

MR. GREGORY: Right.

SEN. REID: ...and killing Israelis.

MR. GREGORY: So you, you're in sync with the Bush administration on this point?

SEN. REID: Yes, I am.

MR. GREGORY: OK. [my emphasis]

It sounded poor enough listening to it. When I start looking closely at the words, it sounds even stranger. Did I miss something, in particular the fact that Al Fatah has "a peace arrangement with Israel"? Did Reid just let something confidential slip?

I'm more concerned about his reflexive and one-sided position defending the Israeli offensive in Gaza without reservation. If Obama intends to place the US in a more mediating postion - which was the US position before Cheney and Bush took over - then I don't see how Reid's statement helps that a bit.

The incoming Obama administration certainly has some political flexibility among the public and the Democratic base on an Israeli-Palestinian peace, though you wouldn't know it from listening to Harry Reid in that appearance. Glenn Greewald recently reported on opinion poll results (More oddities in the U.S. "debate" over Israel/Gaza Salon 01/02/08):

This Rasmussen Reports poll -- the first to survey American public opinion specifically regarding the Israeli attack on Gaza -- strongly bolsters the severe disconnect I documented the other day between (a) American public opinion on U.S. policy towards Israel and (b) the consensus views expressed by America's political leadership. Not only does Rasmussen find that Americans generally "are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip" (44-41%, with 15% undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive -- by a 24-point margin (31-55%). By stark constrast, Republicans, as one would expect (in light of their history of supporting virtually any proposed attack on Arabs and Muslims), overwhelmingly support the Israeli bombing campaign (62-27%).

And the question of proportionality can't be ignored. Juan Cole adds some important persective in that regard in a post that looks at ways in which the credibility gap that Cheney, Bush, Rummy and the neocons created in the US over the Iraq War is also affecting the credibility of Israeli claims about Gaza (Have Bush and the Neocons Ruined it for the Israelis? Informed Comment blog 01/05/08):

Israelis point to thousands of rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel, without mentioning that no Israelis had been killed by them during the truce stretching from mid-June, 2008 until December 26. That is, the prelude to the most violent Israeli attack on Gaza since 1967 was . . . not a single Israeli death at the hands of Hamas in the preceding half-year. And in 8 years, Hamas had killed about 15 Israelis with those home made rockets, during which time the Israelis had killed nearly 5000 Palestinians, nearly 1000 of them minors. The rockets were small, handmade affairs for the most part and most landed uselessly. Some did damage to property and a few wounded or killed people. That would be a legitimate assertion. But the quotation of "thousands" of rockets is a half-truth and intentionally misleading.

Another half-truth is that Israel is involved in a "peace process" or supports Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, when in fact it has gone on stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank and making Palestinian lives miserable and colonizing them.

Cole doesn't seem to know about that "peace arrangement" between Fatah and Israel either.

Tags: harry reid, israel, obama administration

Iraq War triumphalism

It's not really new. The Cheney-Bush administration, including all our glorious and infallible generals, has said all along that things were going wonderfully in Iraq, that we were winning and winning and winning some more. Of course, after The Surge started, everybody in the administration started saying that we had been on the verge of disaster, though the Republicans had been spewing accusations of treason and such at anyone who was saying that in real time. But as always when they speak in present tense, everything is going wonderfully in Iraq.

It is a significant turning point (finally!) that the Iraqi government and their close ally Iran insisted on an agreement for an American withdrawal with a firm timetable that excludes the option of permanent American bases. If we go back to the partly-unstated but well known intentions of the Cheney-Bush administration in 2003, they were going to overthrown Saddam, get rid of the non-existent "weapons of mass destruction", install a democratic model regime with a model neoliberal economy, make Iraq into an ally of Israel, and maintain permanent military bases in Iraq as the jumping-off point for further wars in the Middle East.

Now, they are essentially claiming victory because a hideous situation created by the US invasion itself is now more stabilized. And Iraq has a Shi'a-theocratic government that is closely allied with Iran and has practiced massive sectarian cleansing to win (at least the first major round of) their civil war with the Sunnis. Four and a half million refugees have been uprooted from their homes as a result of the violence and the sectarian cleansing. Something like a million or more Iraqis have died as the result of the war and the conditions it created. The economy is devastated, the infrastructure is wrecked with little actual development having been accomplished under the American occupation, and provision of electricity has never made it back to the level it was under Saddam's regime.

Oh, and the war made Iran into the predominant power in the Middle East.

I would call that record a "heckuva job", a phrase that the Katrina disaster instantly turned into an insult rather than praise. But to celebrate it as a success is just a prelude to a stab-in-the-back view of the war: our brilliant generals and the steadfast Republicans "won it" but then the Democrats came in and everything went to hell.

Right now, they're working mainly on their the-Republicans-won-it theory. After what we've seen the last eight years, it's not surprising that they would try. But do Democratic leaders have to help them do it?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was on Meet the Press Sunday 01/04/08, spending about half his time making Republican points and the other half making Democratic points, the latter pretty poorly. I was struck by this exchange with his empty-suit interviewer, David Gregory:

MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you about the war in Iraq. In April of 2007, this is what you said: "I believe myself that ... this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything." Were you wrong?

SEN. REID: David, I first met General David Petraeus in Iraq. He was training the Iraqi forces at that time. At that time, he knew it wasn't working. After he became the commander in Iraq, he and I sat down and talked. He said to me, and he said within the sound of everyone's voice, "The war cannot be won militarily." I said it differently than he did. But it needed a change in direction. Petraeus brought that about. He brought it about--the surge helped, of course it helped. But in addition to that, the urging of me and other people in Congress and the country dictated a change, and that took place. So...

MR. GREGORY: But you said the surge was not accomplishing anything. Even Barack Obama said last fall that it exceeded everyone's expectations and succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.

SEN. REID: Listen, at that--the time that statement was made, the surge--they weren't talking about the surge. Petraeus added to the surge some very, very interesting things that changed things. He said a lot--just simply numbers of troops is not going to do the deal. What we need to do is work with the Iraqi people, which we haven't done before. That's where the Awakening Councils came about, as a result of David Petraeus' genius. He's done--he will be written about in the history books for years to come. My original statement was in keeping what David Petraeus said; that is, the war cannot be won militarily.

MR. GREGORY: Do you believe that the war in Iraq has been lost?

SEN. REID: I don't think at this stage we can talk about that with any degree of sensibility. That has to be something that will talked about in the history books to come. We...

MR. GREGORY: So you spoke to soon in 2007?

SEN. REID: David Petraeus and Harry Reid spoke at the same time. David Petraeus said that the war cannot be won militarily, I said what I said. Who, who phrased it the best is...

MR. GREGORY: You said that the war is lost. Today, in 2009, that's no longer your view?

SEN. REID: David, listen, someone else will have to determine that as the years go on. What has the war done? It's brought about--it's destabilized the Middle East. We have a civil war going on in Israel. We have a civil war in Iraq, as indicated today, more than 50 people killed with a bomb in Iraq today. We have Lebanon, a civil war there. We have Iran thumbing their nose with every, everyone. And if that weren't bad enough, our standing in the world community is so far down as a result of this war, so--and that doesn't take into consideration the tens of thousands who have been injured...

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

SEN. REID: ...and the thousands have been killed in the war. So it's, it's--historians will have to talk about what the war in Iraq did. But I think historians today indicate, as I have, the outline that I've given. [my emphasis]

Not to let the airhead interviewer off the hook, Gregory's questions there were directed toward eliciting a "gotcha" moment; he didn't probe Reid on how the horrendous results could be considered anything other than a loss or a disaster.

Even when Reid tried to point out some of the downsides, he could only come up with a fumbling reference to American casualties an muddled references to continuing violence in Iraq and the enhanced position of Iran, though it wasn't as coherent as my summary might suggest. Also, "We have a civil war going on in Israel." What? That's the first time I recall anyone referring to the Israel-Palestine conflict as a civil war. It's hard to guess what if anything he may have meant by that, though presumably he's talking about the current Gaza offensive.

The Democrats let the stab-in-the-back narrative on the Vietnam War keep them on the defensive for decades. The boys and girls of our punditocracy are already heavily invested in the notion of wimpy Democrats vs. studly, manly Republicans. They will likely eat up the Republicans' stab-in-the-back story on the Iraq War. The Dems need to be working now to spike that one. Not praising "David Petraeus' genius" like a starry-eye sports fan.

There's something actually pathetic about senior officials in a democracy thinking they need to hide behind the skirts of some general to state their opinion about the Iraq War. It's one more sign of the unhealthy degree to which our political culture has become militarized. Genius or not, Petraeus allowed himself to become the political spokesman for the Cheney-Bush administration's Iraq War policies in a way that generals shouldn't.

Juan Cole did a couple of year-end lists at his Informed Comment blog. One of them was Top Ten Myths about Iraq, 2008 12/31/08. One of them he describes as follows, having to do with The Surge:

6. The sole explanation for the fall in the monthly death rate for Iraqi civilians was the troop excalation [sic] or surge of 30,000 extra US troops in 2007. In fact, troop levels had been that high before without major effect. The US military did good counter-insurgency in 2007. The major reason for the fall in the death toll, however, was that the Shiites won the war for Baghdad, ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of Sunnis from the capital, and turning it into a city with a Shiite majority of 75 to 80 percent. (When Bush invaded, Baghdad was about 50/50 Sunni and Shiite). The high death tolls in 2006 and 2007 were a by-product of this massive ethnic cleansing campaign. Now, a Shiite militiaman in Baghdad would have to drive for a while to find a Sunni Arab to kill.

Robert Perry also reminds us of the need to counter Iraq War rightwing revisionism in Two Dangerous Bush-Cheney Myths ConsortiumNews.com 12/26/08. Among several important points about the reality of The Surge, he includes:

--Concrete walls built between Sunni and Shiite areas made “death-squad” raids more difficult but also "cantonized" much of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, making everyday life for Iraqis even more exhausting as they sought food or traveled to work.

--An expanded U.S. policy of rounding up so-called "military age males" locked up tens of thousands in prison.

Tags: harry reid, iraq war

The Christian Republican White People's Party

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman describes it well in his first New York Times column of the year Bigger Than Bush 01/02/08:

Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.

If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to "make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second."

Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. "Government is not the solution to our problem," declared Ronald Reagan. "Government is the problem." So why worry about governing well?

Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: "You’re getting so abstract now you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites." In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People. [my emphasis]

I've been going on the assumption for several years now that understanding today's Republican Party and how it got to be the way it is requires two things: follow the segregationists, and follow Dick Cheney. And you get to today's Republican Party. You'll encounter a lot of other stuff along the way, e.g., Milton Friedman economics, neoconservative foreign policy theories. But those two lines of development, segregationists and Dick Cheney, ultimately tell the story about today's Christian Republican White People's Party.

Krugman also makes an important observation about the differences between the Democrats' political position in 1993 when Bill Clinton took office as President and today:

But America in 1993 was a very different country — not just a country that had yet to see what happens when conservatives control all three branches of government, but also a country in which Democratic control of Congress depended on the votes of Southern conservatives. Today, Republicans have taken away almost all those Southern votes — and lost the rest of the country. It was a grand ride for a while, but in the end the Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a cul-de-sac. [my emphasis]

The Democrats, like the music recording business, are stuck in a model of proceeding that's about 20 years out of date. The Dems got so used to bobbing and weaving to keep those Southern conservative Dems with them that they find it hard to stop. One result of that approach has been the perceived need to select Democratic majority leaders in Congress from states and districts that are very contested, as opposed to leaders from solid Democratic districts who are less likely to find their re-elections endangered by being an aggressive partisan.

Watching Harry Reid, flounder around over the Rod Blagojevich's appointment of Roland Burris to Obama's former Senate seat is an example of what can happen. Digby posts about that developing fiasco here and Jane Hamsher here and here. Reid spent years knuckling under to Bush and the Republicans when he should have stood and fought. And now he's taking a stand over something that's less than a substantial issue. But he's afraid if he doesn't, the Beltway press corps will keep milking the Blogojevich scandal. Which they're going to do anyway.

Nancy Pelosi could and should have fought harder over ending the Iraq War. But picking her as Speaker of the House embraces the right idea. Because her San Francisco district is solidly Democratic, she's more likely to see her re-election endangered as a result of not being partisan enough. As opposed to the more contested Nevada, where Reid has to be cautious about coming off as excessively partisan. Exactly what you don't need in a majority leader.

Tags: harry+reid, paul krugman, republican party, segregation

Republicans accuse Democrats of being (gasp, choke!) "partisan"!

The Republicans are feigning outrage at the Democrats' partisanship over Congressional proposals to require withdrawal of American troops from the Iraq War. And Republican mouthpieces among the commentariat (or is that a redundant phrase?) are echoing the complaint along with lazy reporters. Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo blog has been calling particular attention to the press' seemingly studied avoidance of the word "filibuster", which has a somewhat negative implication for Big Pundit conventional wisdom, in which which Joe Lieberman/Zell Miller-style "bipartisanship" is the highest form of political virtue. Since the filibuster in the Senate is almost always used in a highly partisan manner.

Steve Benen at Talking Point Memo flags this Washington Post editorial accusing Democratic Leader Harry Reid of that greatest of sins in the catechism of High Broderism, a lack of bipartisanship, The Phony Debate 07/21/07. It reflects the obviously fake Republican argument from this past week that, well, gee whiz, most of the Republicans want to force a more withdrawal-oriented policy on the administration, too. But it's those naughty Democrats with their shocking, shocking partisanship that are preventing it.

To steal one of the Daily Howler's favorite phrases, gaze on the empty soul of your press corps.

You would think that the Post editorialists, who cheerfully endorsed creating the Iraq War disaster by supporting the 2003 invasion based on the fraudulent claims about Iraq's non-existent WMDs, would just be flat embarassed to accuse Harry Reid of "cynical politicking and willful blindness to the stakes in Iraq". But you would be mistaken.

Benen notes, based on the Post editorial and David Brooks' partisan Republican ventriloquism on the PBS Newshour last night:

It's worth adding, by the way, that a new meme seems to be quickly emerging within the chattering class: the lack of Senate progress on Iraq legislation isn't Bush's fault (he's vowed to veto any measure that undercut his authority to do what he pleases), or the GOP's fault (the party has voted to filibuster any measure that might pass), but actually Harry Reid's fault.

Have the priests and priestesses of High Broderism ever been more disconnected from the viewpoint of the American public than they are over the Iraq War? Have they ever shown less shame at parroting claims that crassly substitute partisan fantasy for what's happening in the real world?

Benen also links to this story Democrats take uncompromising stance by Noam Levey Los Angeles Times 07/21/07, which lazily types up the Republican talking points. The San Francisco Chronicle weighed in on Thursday with a front-page headline, Dems wield war debate to weaken GOP in 2008 by Edward Epstein 07/19/07. We shouldn't blame Epstein for the headline-writer's wording, though. His actual article is relatively decent, much better than the LA Times piece.

I want to be clear. I'm talking about the chronic problem of the severe dysfunction of our mainstream press here. For the partisan advantage of the Democrats, headlines like "Democrats take uncompromising stance" on withdrawal from Iraq is beneficial to the party, it will make them look better in the eyes of most voters. And I'm happy at that result.

But it also gives the Dems too much credit on the policy side. I've said before and continue to think that partial withdrawal proposals if actually enacted into law would represent major steps in the right direction, i.e., getting US troops out of Iraq. But war critics shouldn't lose sight of three key elements: a fixed date for withdrawal, a complete withdrawal of US troops and a clear policy of no permanent bases in Iraq. Pretty much anything that falls outside those parameters is very likely to become an excuse for prolonging the war, especially with a Republican administration in the White House.

This is a good place to mention another Republican talking point, that the Democratic-led Congress is more unpopular than the President. Congress' rating dropped to that point after the Dems failed to push harder this past spring for enacting a withdrawal proposal, and my understanding is that the polls show that Democratic voters discontent over that is what caused that drop. (Plus, there's a bigger issue that people always tend to rate Congress in general far more poorly than their rate their own Congressional representatives.)

So when Levey writes about the Democrats' allegedly "bellicose, uncompromising legislative strategy" to end American participation in the Iraq War, it's a sloppy, GOP-friendly desription of what happened. But on this issue, it's a good thing politically for the Dems to be perceived that way. Down in paragraph eight, he does allow that Reid and other Democratic critics of the Iraq War have been "brushed off and belittled by the White House" for years - but only by way of explaining how intransigent and in violation of the spirit of High Broderism that the wicked Majority Leader is.

Plus, you can be sure that if a Republican mouthpiece like David Brooks is saying that the person most responsible for prolonging the Iraq War is Harry Reid, then Reid must be doing something very right that the Reps think has real potential to be effective.

And he is. He's forcing the WINOs - the suddenly-common abbreviation for Withdrawal In Name Only advocates like Dick Lugar - to show with their votes how phony their vague handwringing about the war really is. If you read far enough into the LA Times article, you see Reid saying:

"Just because you pass something on a bipartisan basis that has no teeth in it and you can circle and sing 'Kumbaya,' " doesn't mean progress, he said. "We need to do something to change the course of the war in Iraq."

That's what the general public is demanding, and that's what a large majority of the Democratic base is demanding.

But the keepers of our public discourse are shocked, shocked to see that our political process involves partisanship!

How long can a democracy survive with a "press corps" this dysfunctional?

Tags: harry reid, iraq war

The Senate Democrats and the Dean Of All The Pundits

Glenn Greenwald asks if we're seeing A genuine political sea change? Salon 04/28/07. He's referring among other thingsto last week's drama around David Broder, the Dean Of All The Pundits.

Broder wrote a Washington Post column trashing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and strong implying (though without specifically saying) that quite a few Senate Democrats were ready to dump him as leader.

Some real reporters then following up and actually talked to Senate Democrats and couldn't uncover any sign of this brewing party revolt. Then, all 50 of Reid's Democratic Senate colleagues - yes, even including Holy Joe Liberman! - signed a letter to the Post praised Reid's leadership and expressing their confidence in him.

Now anyone remotely familiar with the Democratic Party knows that it's a near-miracle for all the Dems in one of the Congressional Houses to agree on anything. He sees that as one sign among several that the Dems are ready to buck "Wise Beltway Wisdom, which endlessly warns them not to adhere to their beliefs too steadfastly or to defy Republican decrees, especially on foreign policy". And I'm willing to be cautiously optimistic on that score, too.

But what is particularly significant to me about the Senate Dems' letter to the Post is that they realized they had to fight the press in this instance, and not let the long-braindead Of All The Pundits get a new press script started about how Reid is embarassing the Dems, is out of touch with his caucus, and yadda, yadda. These phony press scripts have been devastating to Democrats the last 15 years. So let's hope this new habit is more than a passing moment!

Tags: david broder, harry reid