Pitched Battle

by digby

Kevin Drum wonders why Obama doesn’t name check the Republican party in his speeches:

I continue to be a little puzzled by Obama’s unwillingness to plainly brand this as a failure of the Republican Party. People may or may not understand nebulous philosophies, but they can pretty easily be convinced that DC Republicans are basically shills for Wall Street and the rich and should therefore get 100% of the blame for this mess. At least, they could be convinced if Obama just went ahead and said it. After all, if the tables were turned do you think McCain would be so chary about blaming it on Democrats? I don’t think so either.

I’m pretty sure it’s because he still hopes to govern in a post-partisan way. He wouldn’t be the first:

My book, Secrecy & Privilege, opens with a scene in spring 1994 when a guest at a White House social event asks Bill Clinton why his administration didn’t pursue unresolved scandals from the Reagan-Bush era, such as the Iraqgate secret support for Saddam Hussein’s government and clandestine arms shipments to Iran.

Clinton responds to the questions from the guest, documentary filmmaker Stuart Sender, by saying, in effect, that those historical questions had to take a back seat to Clinton’s domestic agenda and his desire for greater bipartisanship with the Republicans.

Clinton “didn’t feel that it was a good idea to pursue these investigations because he was going to have to work with these people,” Sender told me in an interview. “He was going to try to work with these guys, compromise, build working relationships.”

Perhaps that isn’t the way Barack looks at governing. But it is what he’s been promising. It’s possible that this rough campaign has disabused him of any illusions he may have had about the Republicans and their willingness to engage in good faith. But after watching them operate for the past 16 years of hand to hand combat in a nearly equally divided country that, short of a landslide victory, it’s been clear to me that there was never any hope of bipartisan cooperation.

If this election is close they will fight back any of Obama’s proposals ferociously. They see such elections as illegitimate four year respites from rightful Republican rule. They will not see themselves as having been repudiated, but rather having been failed by both Bush and McCain — because they were apostates. True conservatives never give up, never give in, never … compromise with Democrats.

Liberals are going to have to decisively defeat the modern conservative movement in a big election if they want to move past this partisan fighting. As long as each side is roughly equal in numbers, and the races are close, this will remain a pitched battle.

Let’s hope this will be a big decisive progressive win in November. But — let’s not count on it. I think the smart money is on a close election, which means there is no margin being nice to Republicans. They certainly aren’t going to be nice in return.

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