Month: December 2007

Nuggets Of New Year’s Eve Goodness

by digby

If you are tired of all the horse race and angry back and forth, here’s a nice way to spend your time on line today: Jon Swift’s compilation of the best blog posts of the year, chosen by the writers themselves.

Here’s Instaputz’s “wankeriffic retrospective”

Here’s Monkeyfister’s “Golden Monkey Fist Awards”

Finally, the Group News Blog has put together a compendium of Steve Gilliard’s best writing, which you can read here. A truly worthwhile read. In these days of slow acting Kumbaaya poisoning, I particularly recommend “I’m a fighting liberal” one of my favorite blogposts ever. (Via)

Update: This list of cliches that must be banned has been duly noted by this wordsmith. Sweet.

Update II: TPM announced the Golden Duke Awards. The man who should be president may have won an Oscar, a Grammy and a Nobel Peace Prize this year, but George W. Bush can feel equally honored with his Duke statuette for Best Scandal! Congratulations to the codpiece!

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Sir Yes Sir

by digby

If this doesn’t prove that Fox is just a mouthpiece for the GOP establishment, nothing will. They are excluding Ron Paul from the New Hampshire debate but including Fred Thompson, who is polling lower. (And, as we are all aware, Paul has raised a boatload of money from voters.)

Not that we didn’t know that Fox was a simple Republican house organ, but it’s never been more starkly illustrated than this. The Republicans don’t like what Paul is saying and they told their boy Ailes to shut him down. They aren’t even trying to hide it.

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I’m Disappointed

by digby

…naturally. Still, it was an honor to have been nominated.

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Spoiling For A Victory

by digby

Glenn Greenwald has a nice rundown today on the policies of our lastest post partisan saviour, Michael Bloomberg, of the Wet Bloomer party. Let’s just say it all sounds familiar — a thrice married, pro-choice, New York mayor with distinct authoritarian tendencies and a bunch of jackass supporters and advisors. The only thing truly distinct about him is that he is a big money boy instead of a full-on fascist, a distinction that doesn’t matter much when it comes to what he would do as president.

In reading Glenn’s rundown I realized, however, just what a problem this could be for the Democrats. It’s becoming clear now (and to my surprise, actually) that once Republicans got a look at their own mayor of Sodom, they just couldn’t stomach him, even though he explicitly promised to mow down as many dark people as he possibly could. He’s just too ethnic, too urban, too culturally removed.

Unfortunately, Bloomberg’s the man an awful lot of Dem leaning independents have been yearning to vote for (particularly if the rhymes-with-witch wins the nomination.) There aren’t enough of them to win an election, of course. Just enough to screw the Dems.

Here’s a man who has been in both parties and has now rejected both of them. What could be more wonderful that that! He is richer than God, and there is nothing that makes some American hearts go pitty-pat more than a fabulously wealthy billionaire who might pay a little lip service to poor people, but clearly isn’t going to do anything radical about it. Means he’s a winner. He doesn’t care about religion, and is pro-choice, so there’s little danger that he’ll make them uncomfortable around their friends. He doesn’t have any of the cultural signifiers of Perot, and while he’s not a complete neophyte (which really thrills swing voters) he hasn’t sullied his hands with too much politics, which means he isn’t tainted by that horrible epithet “politician.” Praise be.

Let’s everyone be clear about what’s really happening and go from there. Bloomberg’s candidacy, if it happens, is designed to deny the Democrats a victory in a year when the Republicans are so wounded and tired they probably can’t win it for themselves, even if they cheat. The big money boys aren’t taking any chances.

Update: David Sirota has more at The Big Con today on the hysteria overtaking the villagers at the prospect of some sort of left populist uprising.

This is especially rich:

Klein’s silliness is eclipsed only by Stu Rothenberg – who reliably hands us the old adage that any candidates challenging the status quo will destroy America. Here’s his take today:

“[John Edwards] is also portraying himself as fighting for the middle class and able to appeal to swing voters and even Republicans in a general election…His approach to problems is likely to frighten many voters, including most middle class Americans and virtually all Republicans…Given the North Carolina Democrat’s rhetoric and agenda, an Edwards Presidency would likely rip the nation apart – even further apart than Bush has torn it.”

Rothenberg’s entire career is predicated on his supposed ability to analyze polling data – which is stunning in juxtaposition to his statements today. After all, polls show Edwards performing the best of any Democrat against any Republican presidential candidate. More importantly, polls also show the vast majority of the country – including Republicans – behind his populist economic positions.

Evidently, impeachments, stolen elections, wars based on lies, torture and now immigrant bashing aren’t nearly as “frightening” to the nation as providing universal health care and rejecting the corrupt lobbying culture of Washington are.

And, by the way, where exactly was Rothenberg when Bush was tearing the nation apart?

The last I heard, he felt that everyone was just making too big a deal out of it:

Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Dog Bites Man. Sun Rises Again. Bush’s Numbers Still Stink.

By Stuart Rothenberg

A new Newsweek poll says George W. Bush is unpopular. Very unpopular. The new Washington Post and ABC News survey says that George W. Bush is really, really unpopular. An even newer NBC and the Wall Street Journal poll says that the President is, well, truly, really, very unpopular. And not to be outdone, a hot-off-the-presses CNN poll says that the President is — you guessed it — quite, very, truly, without a doubt unpopular.

I’m all for polls, and with the President giving his State of the Union address this week, I certainly understand the rash of network polls to mark the occasion and the beginning of the end of the Bush administration.

But, the reality is that a poll isn’t particularly newsworthy just because it exits. Is there somebody out there who doesn’t know that the President is unpopular? And if there is, why would I want to meet that person?

I’m not sure that every media outlet and every college and university needs to conduct a poll. But even if they do, I don’t think we need to treat them as “breaking news.” If polls started showing a dramatic change in opinion (in either direction, of course), now that would be news, and therefore worth reporting. But another poll showing the same thing isn’t worth a lot of time, except of course, by the media outlet paying for it.

Why should he have to worry his beautiful mind with the fact that Bush has been tremendously unpopular for years now and yet refuses to compromise, holds his party together against the clear will of the people and basically governs as if he’s a dictator? We know that, ok?

Update II: Booman has more on Rothenberg.

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Which Blogger Wrote This Nifty Rant?

by tristero

Now, now, don’t peek:

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.

In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

We have read accounts of how the government’s top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review.

Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn’t go just a bit too far and actually kill them.

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.

Give up? Then click here.

FWIW, I certainly agree with anyone who says they took up this attitude much too late. Where was this kind of writing in 2002 and 2003 when we really needed it? Still, I honestly don’t recall, even during the heyday of Watergate, that any Times editorial came close to this level of denunciation.

PS Even so, it doesn’t excuse Kristol. What next, a regular religious column by Fred Phelps? Or, or…haha, it’s too funny! How about a science column by John Tierney? Oh, wait.

One More For The Road

by dday

I want to sincerely thank Digby again for giving me this opportunity over the last few days. I remember her very first post when she compared Atrios publishing some of her early stuff on his site as akin to “having Eddie Van Halen invite you up on stage to join him in a guitar solo.” Add in Hendrix, Clapton, Django Reinhardt, Robert Johnson and Yngwie J. Malmsteen to that equation, and that’s pretty much how I feel. Thanks to the community of commenters for taking me in and not TOTALLY bearing pitchforks in open revolt. I appreciate it.

I would be remiss in not using the platform to at least mention where else you can find me if you so choose, or at least places to anti-bookmark.

D-Day (my home base)
Calitics (California politics)
The Right’s Field (about the GOP nomination, good for almost another month!)

This also may be a bit hyper-local, but if any Southern Californians out there are interested in watching the Iowa caucus returns with a fun group, including yours truly and perhaps even the proprietor of this website… we’re doing a special Drinking Liberally event Thursday night in Santa Monica, and the details are here.

OK, thanks a lot, again. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

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No Longer Silent

by dday

It’s despairing to close a year where Iraq still rages, telecoms are poised to receive immunity for lawbreaking, George Bush explicitly states that Congress doesn’t exist, material evidence implicating the CIA in torture is destroyed without batting an eyelash, Democrats act like they’re powerless to do anything about it, and official Washington considers the real problem is that politicians disagree with each other.

But I try to remain optimistic about the future of the country, and though it’s at times damn near impossible, people like Andrew Williams make it easier. He was a JAG officer in the Naval Reserve who resigned his commission because the America he believes in doesn’t torture.

The final straw for me was listening to General Hartmann, the highest-ranking military lawyer in charge of the military commissions, testify that he refused to say that waterboarding captured U.S. soldiers by Iranian operatives would be torture.

His testimony had just sold all the soldiers and sailors at risk of capture and subsequent torture down the river. Indeed, he would not rule out waterboarding as torture when done by the United States and indeed felt evidence obtained by such methods could be used in future trials.

Thank you, General Hartmann, for finally admitting the United States is now part of a long tradition of torturers going back to the Inquisition.

In the middle ages, the Inquisition called waterboarding “toca” and used it with great success. In colonial times, it was used by the Dutch East India Company during the Amboyna Massacre of 1623.

Waterboarding was used by the Nazi Gestapo and the feared Japanese Kempeitai. In World War II, our grandfathers had the wisdom to convict Japanese Officer Yukio Asano of waterboarding and other torture practices in 1947, giving him 15 years hard labor.

Waterboarding was practiced by the Khmer Rouge at the infamous Tuol Sleng prison. Most recently, the U.S. Army court martialed a soldier for the practice in 1968 during the Vietnam conflict.

General Hartmann, following orders was not an excuse for anyone put on trial in Nuremberg, and it will not be an excuse for you or your superiors, either.

Despite the CIA and the administration attempting to cover up the practice by destroying interrogation tapes, in direct violation of a court order, and congressional requests, the truth about torture, illegal spying on Americans and secret renditions is coming out.

The country has largely rejected George Bush and his policies without much help from a media that refuses to intervene on the side of truth and a pundit class that generally contains a range of opinion from David Brooks to Bill Kristol. There are still a lot more fights to wage and a lot more nonsense to refute, but the moral clarity on display from Mr. Williams, the anger, the sense of lost honor, is real and palpable.

Turning away from this moral black hole starts with proud men standing up and refusing to sanction these acts anymore through their silence. I personally think we need our own Truth and Reconciliation Commission so we get it all into the open (some indictments would also be nice).

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Guess That Bipartisan

by dday

Who said this yesterday?

“Some of you worry about your ability to afford health care coverage for your families … Some of you are concerned about meeting your monthly mortgage payments … Some of you worry about the impact of rising energy costs on fueling your cars and heating your homes. You expect your elected leaders in Washington to address these pressures.”

It was that noted bipartisan George Bush, reading from the Bloomity 08 script and emphasizing “progress” while magically taking himself and his goons in Washington out of the equation of obstructing that progress.

Nothing about that in the article, however.

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Negotiating With Ourselves

I hate to use up a little space on Digby’s own blog to essentially say What Digby Said ™, but, you know, that. And let me try and apply it to what everyone feels is the most important domestic issue of the election, health care.

The debate so far, as it’s been set up by the leading Democratic candidates, is extremely narrow. It asks whether you want to mandate coverage through the government, or to bring costs down to the point that people will want to get coverage. And yet what often goes unsaid is what that coverage actually buys you. Why is this not the most fundamental point in the entire debate?

At 13, David Denney’s body functions like that of a baby. Severe brain damage halted his motor development at 4 months.

Unable to walk, sit up, speak or even eat by mouth, David is cared for by a licensed vocational nurse who feeds him formula through a stomach tube, watching closely in case he retches.

Blue Cross of California, the family’s health plan, paid for the nurse for most of David’s life at a cost of about $1,200 a week.Then about two years ago, the company decided that David didn’t need a nurse anymore — contradicting the opinions of two of David’s physicians — and it stopped paying.

“He’s fragile, very fragile,” said the boy’s mother, Amparo Denney of Torrance. “It’s not humanly possible to do this without help.”

As a matter of course, insurers scrutinize what physicians order — watching for unnecessary drugs, questionable treatments, experimental and unproven therapies, unwarranted surgery.

The extent of treatment denials by insurers is unknown. But patients are contesting them more than ever […]

Many people who are denied treatment never contest it because they are unaware that they can or are too caught up in their medical crises to bother. As a result, some denials go unnoticed; some draw headlines.

A much-publicized pair of decisions this month by insurer Cigna HealthCare to deny and then permit a liver transplant for a 17-year-old girl from Northridge drew much criticism after she died hours later.

In a sane world, the fault line would be: eliminating health care that values profit over treatment versus maintaining the same failed system, and the parties would line up on those two tracks. That’s certainly the way the Republicans are playing it. They’d rather smear a seven year-old and his family than give them health care. This so-called “post-partisan” compromise for health care reform in California was passed in the state legislature without one Republican vote, it will continue to pass without one Republican vote, and may become law without one Republican vote. They’re not interested in compromise. They’re absolutists, and as Digby says, they’re better in the opposition obstructing everything.

But the Democrats are so browbeaten by taunts of class warfare and extreme partisanship that they give in halfway before the negotiation even begins. And the Republicans obstruct, so they give in some more, and the Republicans obstruct again, and then the bipartisan zombie goons get all upset at the Democrats for not getting anything done.

So we have these Rube Goldberg plans that try to split the difference between universal health care and placating insurance companies. And we hear all this happy talk about giving a place at the table to all competing interests and forging a workable solution.

I’m sorry, the company that favors the balance sheet over human life isn’t really interested in that. The trade-off is supposed to be a forced market through mandates in exchange for having to sign up everybody. What about quality of care? I can tell you that in our California plan, which many have said is supposed to be better than the major Dem candidates’ plans, there is no defined minimum baseline coverage. The companies have to spend 85% of premiums on health care (Medicare spends 96%), that’s it. Good thing we don’t live in a country where there have been phony accounting scandals recently!

The Nataline Sarkysians of the world, the David Denneys of the world are still at risk in that scenario. My man Edwards at least understands that negotiation isn’t an option, but his plan doesn’t say “Look, the hell with it, they’re not going to compromise, sign everybody up for Medicare.” It tries to sneak that under the door, but the conservative movement really isn’t being sneaky, and they’re not likely to get duped. They’ll lie and call something that doesn’t approach socialized medicine “more from the Commies who wanna control every part of your life.”

So why are we* so interested in being cordial?

* Note responding to the comments; I say “we” because we are the Democratic Party, not these piles of mush who think we can wish our disagreements away.

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Bipartisan Zombies

by digby

It was inevitable. I wrote about it right after the 2006 election — as soon as the Republicans lost power, I knew the gasbags would insist that it’s time to let bygones be bygones and meet the Republicans halfway in the spirit of a new beginning. GOP politicians have driven the debt sky-high and altered the government so as to be nearly unrecognizable, so logically the Democrats need to extend the hand of conciliation and move to meet them in the middle — the middle now being so far right, it isn’t even fully visible anymore.

Today we have none other than the centrist drivel king, David Broder, reporting that a group of useless meddlers, most of whom who were last seen repeatedly stabbing Bill Clinton in the back, are rising from their crypts to demand that the candidates all promise to appoint a “unity” government and govern from the the center — or else they will back an independent Bloomberg bid.

Boren said the meeting is being announced in advance of Thursday’s Iowa caucuses “because we don’t want anyone to think this was a response to any particular candidate or candidates.” He said the nation needs a “government of national unity” to overcome its partisan divisions in a time of national challenge he likened to that faced by Great Britain during World War II.

“Electing a president based solely on the platform or promises of one party is not adequate for this time,” Boren said. “Until you end the polarization and have bipartisanship, nothing else matters, because one party simply will block the other from acting.”

Except the one party is called the Republican Party. When was the last time the Democrats blocked anything?

Isn’t it funny that these people were nowhere to be found when George W. Bush seized office under the most dubious terms in history, having been appointed by a partisan supreme court majority and losing the popular vote? If there was ever a time for a bunch of dried up, irrelevant windbags to demand a bipartisan government you’d think it would have been then, wouldn’t you? (How about after 9/11, when Republicans were running ads saying Dems were in cahoots with Saddam and bin Laden?) But it isn’t all that surprising. They always assert themselves when the Democrats become a majority; it’s their duty to save the country from the DFH’s who are far more dangerous than Dick Cheney could ever be.

And here’s that bucket of lukewarm water, Evan Thomas, insisting that Real Americans — as opposed to the hysterics who are actively engaged in politics — are tuning out, even though there’s ample evidence that the opposite is actually true. He even evokes that moth-eaten old trope about Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan being best buddies over scotch and waters at night after battling all day over legislation. (If Sam Nunn and David Boren will promise to force the congress to outlaw ever telling that story again, I’ll vote for the Bloomity 08 ticket myself.)

The idea among these Village elders is that only through bipartisan cooperation can we “get anything done.” Well, if bipartisanship is defined like this, I suppose they are right:

As Congress stumbles toward Christmas, President Bush is scoring victory after victory over his Democratic adversaries. He:

• Beat back domestic spending increases.

• Thwarted an expansion of children’s health coverage.

• Defeated tax increases.

• Won Iraq war funding.

• Pushed Democrats toward shattering their pledge not to add to the federal deficit with new tax cuts or rises in mandatory spending.

[…]

“The Democrats are learning this isn’t the early 1970s, when the Republican Party was Gerald Ford and 140 of his friends,” said Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “There are 201 of us, and we will be heard.”

Recall that the president’s approval rating hovers at 30% and the rating of the is GOP minority in congress far lower. It appears to me that they know very well how to “get things done” not only on a purely partisan basis but with more than 70% of the country disapproving of their actions. They don’t need no stinkin’ bipartisanship.

To be sure, that story includes old GOP deficit hawk Chuck Grassley howling in the wilderness, but the point cannot be missed that when the GOP was in power they spent like drunken sailors and now that the Democrats have the congress the elders are suddenly up in arms about spending. That will, of course, become the new mantra if a Democrat becomes president and the political establishment decides that the government must “get something done” on reducing the deficit and enlarging the military and lowering taxes and fixing social security and ensuring that Americans don’t lose their excellent health care “choices” and keeping foreigners in their place.

I guess everyone is going to have to pardon us cynics here on the liberal side of the dial for being just a teensy bit skeptical of this demand for bipartisanship. The last time the country elected a centrist conciliator who wanted to leave behind the “braindead politics of the past”, he first got kicked in the teeth by fellow centrists Sam Nunn and David Boren over gays in the military and raising taxes on the rich, and then faced an opposition so vicious that it ended with an illegitimate impeachment and a stolen election. A lot more has happened since then, all of it bad.

That is not to say it will play out the same way again. Things rarely do. But it’s depressing that so many Democrats still seem to have this deep conceit that the Republicans are really reasonable people in spite of fifteen long years of being shown otherwise over and over again. And it’s infuriating that after everything that’s happened, the permanent political establishment is still more freaked out at the prospect of the dirty hippies passing universal health care than radical neocons starting World War III. If only the reasonable people could get together over scotch and waters and talk it all through everything would work as it’s supposed to.

It’s a lovely idea, isn’t it? The only problem is that they keep forgetting to tell the Republicans, who view politics as a blood sport. They aren’t interested in compromise and haven’t been since old Bob Michel shuffled off to shuffleboard-land. They play for keeps, which it seems to me, is perfectly obvious after all we’ve seen over the past 15 years or so. They don’t let little things like electoral defeats keep them down. They always work it, no matter what, and in the process they twist the Democratic Party into pretzels.

The bipartisan busybodies just don’t notice (or care) that as a movement which doesn’t believe in government, the conservatives are just as successful in the minority, obstructing any progressive advance the Democrats want to make. They feel no need to “get things done.” Aside from starting wars, building an ever larger police state apparatus and pillaging the treasury on behalf of themselves and their rich friends when they’re in power, they don’t believe government should “get things done.” So, what do Republicans have to gain by cooperating with Democrats?

I suspect that despite all evidence to the contrary many Democrats believe that the conservative movement is dying, if not dead, and that they will have no choice but to meet Democrats across the table and deal with them reasonably. But if that were true we would not see their many wingnut welfare demagogues ramping up a racist immigration campaign like we haven’t seen since the days of George Wallace. They look pretty determined to keep fighting to me. Yes, they are in disarray because they can’t find a single presidential candidate who perfectly embodies their philosophy of Wealth, God and Guns. (Or perhaps, more appropriately, they can’t find a candidate their base is willing to pretend have all those attributes, even though they don’t.) But that has little to do with the conservative movement as a whole, which functions just as well with a minority as majority.

The truth is that they know the Republicans are very, very likely going to lose the presidency anyway. And they are fine with it. It brings them together. Here’s old hand Richard Viguerie making his pitch for GOP to lose in 2006:

[Sometimes a loss for the Republican Party is a gain for conservatives. Often, a little taste of liberal Democrats in power is enough to remind the voters what they don’t like about liberal Democrats and to focus the minds of Republicans on the principles that really matter. That’s why the conservative movement has grown fastest during those periods when things seemed darkest, such as during the Carter administration and the first two years of the Clinton White House.

Conservatives are, by nature, insurgents, and it’s hard to maintain an insurgency when your friends, or people you thought were your friends, are in power.

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They use their time out of power to grow their movement and one of the main ways they do this is by obstructing anything positive the Democrats want to do. They are organized around the principle of being insurgents — outsiders — victims. It is not in their interest to cooperate with Democrats.

Maybe Broder and Evan Thomas and the rest of the bipartisan brigade think that all of that is in the past and we can begin a new era of good feeling with the red and the blue bleeding into a lovely shade of mauve. But from where I sit, even with the best of intentions, the onus is on the Republicans to prove that after more than two decades of non-stop razing of decent political discourse and partisanship so fierce they are willing to take down the government if necessary, they are finally willing to work with Democrats to “get things done.”

I don’t think they’re there yet, do you?

Paul Krugman made a similar argument the other day much more concisely, by simply pointing out that it’s not Bushism that’s the problem — it’s the conservative movement. From a strategic standpoint it’s just not enough to wish and hope that the conservative movement is going to see the errors of their ways. They are true believers and they are very politically adept at everything but actual governance — assuming you think governance equals serving the people, which they don’t. It is necessary for progressives to fight them and win, especially since Bush’s massive unpopularity has given us the first opening in years to make a case for progressive politics.

Matt Yglesias writes here about how polarization is actually good for the system. I think he’s right. This is a bit country, naturally divided by culture, region and ideology. And that’s ok. We all still identify as Americans and pull together when the chips are down. But we have always had substantial disagreements among us. There have been a few periods of calm, but for the most part we’ve been fighting this out from the beginning. It’s only in the last few years that we’ve seen liberals run away from the battle and pretend that the goal is political comity rather than political progress. Not that I entirely blame them. The well-financed conservative movement has been awesome in its political effectiveness. And, like clockwork, the bipartisan zombies inevitably emerge at any moment of conservative weakness to ensure that the hippies aren’t given even a moment’s breathing room to accomplish something that might benefit someone other than rich people and corporations. (We wouldn’t want them to do anything radical, like allowing a rogue vice president to redefine the constitution or enshrining torture as an American value. Good thing the grown-ups woke up from their naps before something really bad happened.)

I dearly hope the Democrats, both politicians and voters, tune out this crap. If Bloomberg wants to run, let him. They need to run their own game and not let these high priests of irrelevancy influence this race. They don’t have to make every last person in the country agree with them — indeed, it’s impossible. You can’t be all things to all people. And they certainly don’t have to please these villagers who are apparently convinced that the worst thing that could possible happen at a time like this would be Democratic rule. They just need to win and then govern as progressives. It is possible to make improvements, sometimes even real, substantial change. But it doesn’t come easy, as Krugman reminds us here:

…any attempt to change America’s direction, to implement a real progressive agenda, will necessarily be highly polarizing. Proposals for universal health care, in particular, are sure to face a firestorm of partisan opposition. And fundamental change can’t be accomplished by a politician who shuns partisanship.

I like to remind people who long for bipartisanship that FDR’s drive to create Social Security was as divisive as Bush’s attempt to dismantle it. And we got Social Security because FDR wasn’t afraid of division. In his great Madison Square Garden speech, he declared of the forces of “organized money”: “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”

I’m sorry it’s unpleasant for some people to contemplate the idea of a progressive government. But if it’s comity they want, it’s in the hands of the “insurgents” who refuse to behave like decent human beings, whether in power or out. It’s not in the country’s best interest to continue to enable them.

And anyway, the partisan divide is where the big battles in American politics are waged. It’s where they’ve always been waged. The only time the political establishment even notices it these days is when the Republicans are on the run and they get nervous. Democrats should ignore them and take their case directly to the country.

Lambert at corrente wire has an important and comprehensive post along similar lines.

An excerpt:

The “food fight,” obviously a partisan food fight, is purest Equivalation. The Democrats didn’t break the world record for filibusters when they were in the minority; but the Republicans just did. And when the press covered the (very few) Democratic filibusters, they called them “filibusters.” And when the press covers the (never-ending) Republican filibusters, the word “filibuster” gets magically transmuted into the “60 votes needed to pass.” And last I checked, Democrats were allowing anybody to come to their election rallies, but Bush was screening his to make sure only Republicans attended. This is the Conservative Movement in action. Sure, there’s a “food fight,” but most of the food that’s in the air is coming from one side of the cafeteria!

This all reminds me of the period before the Iraq war when everyone was trying to figure out some way to explain what they were seeing before their very eyes in light of what everyone was telling them. We aren’t crazy. This stuff really is happening.

We can wish for conciliation all we want, but unless the Democrats can do it without any cooperation from the Republicans, it will be just another game of Charlie Brown and the football. David Broder is fine with that. He’s more afraid of hippies trashing the white house than of fascists* trashing the country, so he’s happy to help Lucy hold the ball. Democratic voters must be clear eyed and willing to fight because if we don’t, they will win again, even if they lose. I don’t think the country can take it.

*Now that Jonah Goldberg has made the word acceptable for use against liberals, it’s back in circulation as far as I’m concerned and I’m using it.

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