Self-Inflicted Wounds

By BJ Bjornson

At this point I don't give a damn about Obama.  If he's going to govern like Clinton or a Republican we might as well have a Republican. 

Ron Beasley from I agree with Howard

Sure, Republicans will be worse, but only by degree and not categorically worse.

Dave Anderson from And Think of England

And because it is such a great quote, Lance Mannion, previously quioted here by Ron:

A proud old commie taught me that the real enemies of the Left are Liberals.

Lefties want to make the world all over new.

The Right, the old commie said, breaks things, refuses to fix what�s broken, makes things that worked not work, screws it all up to the point that the People learn to hate the system.

That's where the Left is all set to step in to make things all over new.

But Liberals like the system and they have a bad habit of trying to save it.  Liberals fix things and make the People think the system works again.

This is why it might seem that a lot of Lefties in the blogosphere either hate Barack Obama or are looking for excuses to hate him.

President Obama is a Liberal.

Of course, the reverse of that old commie�s lesson is also true. The Liberals worst enemies are the Lefties, and Dave and Ron�s quotes above show why. They apparently want to replace the guys who are trying to fix things with the guys who broke most of it in the first place and would like to break even more if given the chance.

The reasoning, as near as I can figure, is that in doing so, things will get so broken that the powers that be will have no choice but to turn to them and their solutions to finally get things right.  It is basically the progressive version of Naomi Klein�s Shock Doctrine; make things bad enough that you can force through your preferred policy options.

Since I�m fond of the quotes today, here�s a somewhat modified gem from Orwell:

The political partisan not only does not disapprove of the radicalization of his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even seeing it.

Given the recent NY-23 results and things like the loyalty oath being bandied around by the teabaggers, it isn�t very hard to see the downward spiralling of the right into lunacy land.  It also isn�t too hard while perusing the right wing blogosphere to see their denizens cheering their �victories� in ridding the Republican Party of those they see as little better than Democrats.  In a saner world, such a circumstance would be an excellent opportunity for the opposition to pick up a lot of wavering seats.

Unfortunately, rather than taking this opportunity to further marginalize a Republican Party that has allowed the crazies to take over the asylum, the Lefties who have decided the Liberals are just too damned conservative for their taste are apparently hoping to take over their own asylum, punish those they feel just aren�t good enough for them, and in doing so risk letting the lunatics back into the driver�s seat.

Granted that what is happening on the left side of the aisle is by no means as bad as what has mostly already happened on the right, but that is at least in large part thanks to the fact that the Democratic leadership hasn�t thrown in with their more radical elements as the Republican�s have done. Of course, that�s why said elements hate the Democratic leadership. It would appear that having a large segment of your supposed base looking to destroy the very system you�re trying to repair isn�t terribly conductive to your ability to maintain and expand the power you need to actually do so.

I am as critical of unthinking devotion to the cause as anyone, but pause for a moment here and recall that Obama hasn�t been as completely useless to the progressive cause as some of the commentary here might lead you to believe.  It is often all too easy when looking at politics as closely as we political bloggers do to be overly focused on the immediate story and forget the overall arc in our analysis.  As Nathan Newman summarized some time back, there are quite a few things that Obama and the Dems have done this year that the other guys certainly wouldn�t have.

Quick Summary of 2009 Progressive Victories (more explanation below)

 �   Three major health bills (SCHIP, tobacco regulation, and stimulus funds for Medicaid, COBRA subsidies, health information technology and the National Institutes of Health) enacted even before comprehensive reform

 �   Stimulus contained myriad other individual policy victories, not only preventing a far worse depression but also:

 o    Delivered key new funds for education 

 o    Expanded state energy conservation programs and new transit programs

 o    Added new smart grid investments

 o    Funded high-speed Internet broadband programs

 o    Extended unemployment insurance for up to 99 weeks for the unemployed and  modernizing state UI programs to cover more of the unemployed

 o    Made large new investments in the safety net, from food stamps (SNAP) to affordable housing to child care 

�   Clean cars victory to take gas mileage requirements to 35mpg

�  Protection of 2 million acres of land against oil and gas drilling and other development

�  Executive orders protecting labor rights, from project labor agreements to protecting rights of contractor employees on federal jobs

�  Stopping pay discrimination through Lilly Ledbetter and Equal Pay laws

�  Making it easier for airline and railway workers to unionize, while appointing NLRB and other labor officials who will strengthen freedom to form unions

�  Reversing Bush ban on funding overseas family planning clinics

�  Passing hate crimes protections for gays and lesbians

�  Protecting stem cell research research

�  Strengthening state authority and restricting federal preemption to protect state consumer, environmental and labor laws

�  Financial reforms to protect homeowners and credit card holders

�  Bailing out the auto industry and protecting unionized retirees and workers

But instead of celebrating what has been accomplished, we instead hear cries for the Health Care Reform bill to be scrapped.  Sure, near as I can tell, the bill as it stands doesn�t look like anything to be proud of, but that alone doesn�t mean it should be scrapped, at least not if you want to look at the matter in a pragmatic fashion.

The last attempt to pass any kind of Health Care reform was of course by Clinton in �93.  It failed miserably.  For those bitching about how Clinton governed through his two terms, you should be reminded that it was this defeat that provided the narrative and momentum for the Republican takeover of Congress, effectively ending any real chance of an overall progressive agenda.

And let�s not forget that that was a Republican Party that still had rational men at the helm who were actually interested in governing and willing to occasionally compromise to get things done.  Today�s version is the one that thinks Bush was actually a closet liberal and that the failures of his term were because he didn�t push the conservative agenda hard enough! In short, they�re insane.

Even if Obama was really a Republican-lite, and the above list of accomplishments should provide some evidence that he isn�t, he would still beat the Republcian-insane that is the alternative.

And even more to the point on this, as John Cole points out, defeating this health care reform bill doesn�t mean you get to go back to the drawing board,

 

I don�t know if the �pass the bill and then work on improving its terms later� crowd is actually right, but I do know for damned sure that if the bill doesn�t pass, it means you�ve just condemned tens of millions of Americans to another 20 years of an increasingly dysfunctional status quo.  Kevin Drum sums it up quite nicely:

Here's what I want to know: which one of us is living in dreamland?  If you don't like the Senate bill, fine.  Don't support it.  But in what universe will healthcare reform get revived anytime soon if it dies this year?  2010?  With the legislative plate already jammed, healthcare reform probably polling in the mid 30s, and midterms coming up?  2011?  After Republicans have gained a bunch of seats in both the House and Senate thanks to public disgust with Democratic disarray?  2012?  A presidential election year?  2013?  2014?

I usually don't say much about legislative tactics because I figure you need some serious ground level knowledge before you mouth off about what's possible and what's not on Capitol Hill.  But the fate of failed major initiatives is so obvious that I can't believe anyone is taking this seriously.  When big legislative efforts go down in flames, they almost never spring back onto the calendar anytime soon � and that's especially true when big healthcare bills fail.  It didn't happen in 1936, it didn't happen in 1949, it didn't happen in 1974, and it didn't happen in 1995.  What makes anyone think it will happen in 2010?

So for now I�ll just have to sit back and watch and see if the Leftie/Liberal circular firing squad/inability to see eye-to-eye will neuter the Obama administration and condemn the US to another decade or two or reactionary backsliding.