Month: February 2009

Only Sorta Reality Based

by digby

At the insistence of semi-insane GOP senator Kit Bond, Panetta just retracted his statement from yesterday that the United States’ extraordinary rendition program had kidnapped terrorists suspects and transferred them to other countries to be tortured. He wasforced to say that they had been transferred to be “questioned,” and had to promise that he would never say such a thing again and would make sure that nobody who worked for him ever said anything else.

We’re still in the up is down, black is white, “you can believe me or you can believe your lyin’ eyes” era. In Washington, credibility is determined by how well you deny reality.

.

Quote Of The Day

by tristero

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman::

The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

Go Bama

by digby

Good on him:

Obama, speaking to about 200 House Democrats at their annual retreat at the Kingsmill Resort and Spa, dismissed Republican attacks against the massive spending in the stimulus.

“What do you think a stimulus is?” Obama asked incredulously. “It’s spending — that’s the whole point! Seriously.”

Stabbing hard at Republicans who once aligned themselves with his predecessor, Obama made it clear that the problems he seeks to address with his recovery plan weren’t ones of his making.

“When you start hearing arguments, on the cable chatter, just understand a couple of things,” he said. “No. 1, when they say, ‘Well, why are we spending $800 billion [when] we’ve got this huge deficit?’ – first of all, I found this deficit when I showed up, No. 1.

“I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.”

Obama went on to contrast the kind words of House and Senate Republican leaders with their increasingly strident opposition to the stimulus package.

“We were complimented by Republicans saying, ‘This is a balanced package . . . we’re pleasantly surprised,’” he said. “Suddenly, what was a ‘balanced package’ is suddenly out of balance.”

Hopefully, he will never, ever take fatous Republican assurances of support at face value again.

I can’t help but be reminded of this post by Theda Skopkol from a couple of weeks ago:

The idea that “elites” will “get serious about repairing the safety net” if they are FIRST given billions of dollars of payoffs to shareholders who made bad decisions is the height of naivete. There are no corporatist institutions in U.S. politics that can enforce this kind of bargain, that can corral all the interests and get them to carry through on mutual promises. That is why Obama and the Democrats will get for the people in general exactly what they push through right now and will squander opportunities if they give money and leverage to “elites” first!

This is what Ira Magaziner imagined with health care back in 1992 — that he could get up front understandings with powerful interests by giving them concessions in the Health Security proposals, and they would let it get through Congress later. (I remember sitting in his office as I took notes for BOOMERANG and having him complain to me that he could not understand why the business roundtable types “lied” to him about what they would do!) Of course, they turned on him the moment Congress got ahold of things. Same thing will happen here.

I noticed in passing that David Gergen is nearly in tears that Obama has betrayed the promise of bipartisanship tonight. He’s heartbroken that Obama decided that it was more important to save the economy than kiss GOP hems and bow and scrape before the villagers. No word on the parade of GOP jackasses who’ve been all over TV laying down the law that the only stimulus they can possibly sign on to is one that would have been written by Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich. It’s not as if they’ve been acting in good faith. (In fact, Huckleberry Graham’s multiple tirades today were pretty much a throwdown to Obama’s manhood, which is quite a spectacle coming from him.)

At least the spell is broken and the white house will be suffering no further delusions that the Republicans are going to play nice. If they sell out to them, it’s because they have decided to do so on the merits. (Now all we have to worry about is the administration playing some kind of equally delusional byzantine inside game with the Blue Dogs…)

.

QOTD

by digby

From John Cole after watching Joe The Plumber, Michelle Malkin and Instapundit on PJTV:

I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.

Yep.

.

Boiling It Down

by digby

The gasbags have finally decided that Obama needs to explain to the American people what a stimulus is and what he intends to accomplish with this recovery bill. I have thought from the beginning that that was necessary and I had hoped he would do it when he sent the bill down to the congress. Average people just don’t understand what this thing is — all they’ve been told for the past 30 years is that tax cuts will solve all economic problems and government spending is pork. They need to hear from the president why that isn’t true, how this kind of stimulus works and why it’s necessary.

So, to that end, I would offer this post by Robert Reich (which I have excerpted in its entirety against all blogging rules of etiquette) as an excellent starting point for such a speech.

Senate Republicans and the Stimulus: Playing Politics When the Economy Burns

Tomorrow’s job report is likely to be awful. January’s job losses could easily top half a million. We’re deep into the most vicious of economic cycles: Consumers are slashing their spending because they’re perilously in debt and worried about keeping their jobs. But as a result, businesses are facing shrinking sales of goods and services, so they’re slashing payrolls, which of course makes consumers even more anxious and further reduces their spending power. Meanwhile, businesses are cutting way back on new investments in equipment, which hurts upstream suppliers, who are now slashing their payrolls. And so it goes, downward. The gap between what the economy could produce if it were running near full capacity and what it’s now producing continues to widen. The shortfall is projected to be over a trillion dollars this year.

How do we get out of this downward plunge?

Regardless of your ideological stripe, you’ve got to see that when consumers and businesses stop spending and investing, there’s only entity left to step into the breach. It’s government. Major increases in government spending are necessary, and the spending must be on a very large scale. In the last several weeks the President has put forward the outlines of a stimulus plan, and has left it to the House and Senate to fill in the details. A tiny portion of the details that made it into the House version should be stripped away because they seem like old-fashioned pork. But most spending in the bill is absolutely appropriate. My worry is there’s not nearly enough of spending to fill the shortfall in overall demand.

Yet at this very moment, Senate Republicans are seeking to strip the President’s stimulus package of many of its spending provisions and substitute tax cuts. Part of this is pure pander: They know tax cuts are more popular with the public than government spending, even though spending is a far more effective way to stimulate the economy (more on this in a moment). Another part is pure partisan politics: Republicans are emboldened by Obama’s willingness to court Republicans (taking three Republicans into his cabinet, bringing Republican leaders into the White House for consultations, putting all those business tax cuts into the stimulus bill in order to gain Republican favor) without getting anything at all back from the GOP. House Republicans snubbed the bill entirely. So, Senate Republicans say to themselves, what’s to lose?

Plenty. Millions more jobs and a full-fledged Depression, for example.

Can we get real for a moment? Take a look at this chart, which comes from calculations by Mark Zandy and his colleagues at economy.com. You see that each dollar of spending has much more impact than each dollar of tax cut. There are three reasons for this. First, most people who receive a tax cut don’t spend all of it. They use part of it to pay down their debts or they save it. Most of us did one or the other last spring with that tax rebate. From the standpoint of any particular individual, paying down debts or saving may be smart behavior — even commendable. But what’s intelligent for an individual does not necessarily translate into what’s good for the economy as a whole. The only way to get businesses to create or preserve jobs is through additional spending. And unlike tax cuts used to pay down personal debt or add to savings, every dollar of government spending flows directly into the economy and adds to overall demand. Second, even that portion of a tax cut we might actually spend doesn’t necessarily go into the American economy. It goes all over the world. I have nothing against creating or preserving the jobs of Asians who assemble those flat-panel TVs you see at the mall, for example, but right now we’re trying to create or preserve jobs here in America. Sure, the retail workers at the mall who sell the flat-panel TV’s might benefit, but remember we’re talking about how to get the biggest bang for every dollar. When government spends to repair a highway or build a school or help pay for medical services, the money and the jobs stay here in America. Finally, those who say cutting taxes on businesses is the best way to create or preserve jobs forget about the demand side. Even with a tax cut, businesses won’t hire workers unless there are customers to buy what those workers produce. A government stimulus that creates jobs is a necessary precondition. This isn’t a matter of more or less government, however much Republicans and conservatives would like to wedge it in that old ideological box. The issue is how to revive the economy. When consumers and businesses can’t or won’t spend enough to keep the economy going, government has to be the spender of last resort. Period.

I think if people heard that, in those kinds of words, they would support the president. Most Americans feel that it’s counterintuitive for the government to be spending while it’s in debt and losing revenue, just as it is for them personally. Obama needs to explain why government has to do the opposite in a recession (potentially a depression)and tell people that his legislation is a necessity to keep things from getting worse — and beginning the turn-around.

The Republicans have been shoveling so much nonsense (recently aided and abetted by the Blue Dogs and the usual Democratic suspects in the senate) that I don’t think most Americans know which way is up. They are scared and I think they will happily back the president if they just understand what he’s trying to do. At this point, he’s the only one with the credibility and trust to set their minds at ease.

*I would also suggest they consult with Bill Clinton. I always thought his best gift was his ability to speak to average Americans about complicated issues in simple terms. It wouldn’t hurt to reach out to him on this.

Update: Ooops. Just found out that he’s speaking tonight. Hopefully, he will do some ‘splainin’ along Reich’s lines.

Update II: Also a press conference on Monday.

.

Call For The Smelling Salts
by digbyHuckleberry Graham’s working himself into a full-on case of the vapors:

President Obama has been “AWOL” in negotiations over the economic stimulus package, Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday in a scathing rebuke of the new president. The South Carolina Republican told FOX News that Obama has not been providing leadership, and he criticized the president for giving TV interviews and writing an editorial touting the package, rather than addressing the complaints of lawmakers. “This process stinks,” Graham told FOX News, before repeating a lot of his criticisms on the Senate floor. “We’re making this up as we go and it is a waste of money. It is a broken process, and the president, as far as I’m concerned, has been AWOL on providing leadership on something as important as this.” Republican senators and congressmen have been reluctant to direct any criticism at the president since his inauguration. They mostly have fired shots at Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, saying they have obstructed the bipartisan process Obama sought. But Graham broke that practice after Obama granted a round of interviews defending his plan Tuesday and wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post Thursday in which he warned of disastrous consequences if Congress does not pass the stimulus bill. “Scaring people is not leadership. Writing an editorial that if you don’t pass this bad bill we’re going to have disaster — we’ve had enough presidents trying to scare people to make bad decisions,” Graham said. “I like President Obama, but he is not leading. Having lunch is not leading … and doing TV interviews is not leading.”

Graham just said on Hardball that the public hates this bill and he will not be intimidated by this president, the process is broken and he is very disappointed. And then he explained that he is the real bipartisan. (Oh my. Do we have a contender for 2012?)He was whining and fulminating and pretty much working himself into a frenzy. Which means this is an orchestrated hissy fit.
Oddly, with all the media analysis about how Democrats blew it by putting contraceptives in the bill and how Obama screwed up the debate, nobody seems to think there’s a thing wrong with the Republicans being willing to destroy the economy for political gain.If you haven’t called your Reps, you know what to do.

Update: Oh, looky here. Who’d of thunk?:

The leadership of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of conservative Democrats concerned about the federal deficit, sent an open letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) Thursday complaining about the size of the House bill and supporting a Senate effort to toss out much of the spending.“We believe that’s a highly worthwhile goal, and that there are additional provisions that would be better left for consideration in regular order,” said the letter, signed by Blue Dog leader Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) and the rest of the Blue Dog leadership.Eleven Democrats voted against the stimulus package in the House, most of them Blue Dogs from conservative districts bothered by the spending. The letter said that many others voted for it because they expected it to be trimmed back in the Senate or in the conference committee that will hammer out the final package.The letter came as Obama, along with Pelosi, stressed the urgency of passing the package. In an appearance at Energy Department headquarters, Obama said, “The time for talk is over, the time for action is now.”Congressional leaders had hoped to send the package to Obama before the Presidents Day holiday weekend, a deadline that appears increasingly unlikely in the face of growing opposition.

Jesus, is Rahm at it again?

h/t to bill

These People Are Nuts

by dday

Dave Weigel:

This amendment to the economic stimulus bill passed by the House and now being considered by the Senate, submitted by conshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifervative icon-in-the-making Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), was breathtakingly bold. The , from Sen. DeMint’s Website:

o Permanently repeal the alternative minimum tax once and for all;
o Permanently keep the capital gains and dividends taxes at 15 percent;
o Permanently kill the Death Tax for estates under $5 million, and cut the tax rate to 15 percent for those above;
o Permanently extend the $1,000-per-child tax credit;
o Permanently repeal the marriage tax penalty;
o Permanently simplify itemized deductions to include only home mortgage interest and charitable contributions.
o Lower top marginal income rates from 35 percent to 25 percent.
o Simplify the tax code to include only two other brackets, 15 and 10 percent.
o Lower corporate tax rate as well, from 35 percent to 25 percent.

This got the support of all but five Senate Republicans.

And the ones that didn’t support it, like Susan Collins and Ben Nelson, want to kill the bill by 1000 cuts instead of by one. I actually find them more loathsome. At least the neo-Hooverists are open and honest.

This really isn’t a game. 626,000 Americans had to go to their unemployment offices and file a claim last week. Tomorrow we’re going to learn how many jobs were lost last month, and it’ll probably be in the same range. And in response, Republicans are playing out their familiar “Tax Cuts Forevah” fantasies.

There’s nobody to negotiate with. They actually think they’re insurgents.

Frustrated by a lack of bipartisan outreach from House Democratic leaders, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said House Republicans — who voted unanimously last week against the economic plan pushed by President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — will pitch a “positive, loyal opposition” to the proposal. The group, he added, should also “understand insurgency” in implementing efforts to offer alternatives.

“Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes. And these Taliban — I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.”

You have these war porn fanboys who think they’ve just got off the set of Red Dawn in the United States Congress. They are COMPARING THEMSELVES POSITIVELY TO THE TALIBAN.

And Fred Hiatt still thinks the problem is a lack of bipartisanship.

Oy.

…Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer, after saying they have the votes for the bill:

Frustrated Senate Democratic leaders dispensed with calls for bipartisanship on the stimulus package Thursday, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saying that he won’t let anyone “hold the president of the United States hostage.”

President Barack Obama had once hoped to have the package pass with substantial Republican support. But Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that’s now a “distant memory.”

“So far,” he said, bipartisanship “isn’t working. . . . It takes two to tango, but the Republicans aren’t dancing.”

Ya think?

…House Blue Dogs are also sticking the knife in:

In the House, meantime, leaders of the fiscally conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition sent a letter Wednesday to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer urging more scrubbing of the stimulus bill when the House revisits the bill in conference.

Two of the eight leaders who signed the letter joined the unanimous House Republican conference in voting against the stimulus bill last week in the House.

The letter notes that “while a number of Blue Dogs voted against the package considered in the House, many of those who did support it did so with serious reservations and the conviction that the package should and would be improved through Senate consideration.”

“Now that the Senate is debating its stimulus and recovery package, reports indicate certain senators, including Sen. [Ben] Nelson of Nebraska and Sen. [Susan] Collins of Maine, are engaged in a bipartisan effort to pare further spending. We believe that’s a highly worthwhile goal, and that there are additional provisions that would be better left for consideration in regular order,” wrote the Blue Dogs.

“We look forward to working with you to achieve that goal and ensure that any final stimulus and recovery package is properly focused to achieve the results the American people expect and deserve. “

No comment necessary.

.

Worth It

by digby

I have been remiss in failing to celebrate president Obama’s signing of the SCHIP extension bill yesterday after having watched it die under President Bush’s veto for no good reason. This proves that it makes difference who the president of the United States is and why you don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. No matter what differences you may have with Obama, more than six million children’s lives are positively impacted, some of them no doubt saved, by that one stroke of a pen.

It was one of the many low moments of the Bush administration to see the right wing prove that there was fetid compost where their hearts should be, by smearing and stalking a family that was dealing with horrible medical problems. There are a lot more people in the position of the Frost family today than there were when that debate was taking place. And the reason for that can be laid at the feet of the very same conservative fundamentalists who insisted during that debate that people should be forced to sell off every last asset before their catastrophically injured little children could get government assistance with medical insurance.

That is the philosophy that brought us to where we are today.

.

Redux Redux

by digby

As I watch Ben Nelson and Susan Collins on television telling everyone what the vaunted “centrists” dictate is acceptable in the stimulus package, I can’t resist once again re-posting this post I wrote over a year ago. (Sorry, I can’t help myself.)

Just in case anyone’s forgotten or are too young to remember –the former Democratic senator from Oklahoma and current Unity 08 poobah, David Boren, is an egomaniac who stabbed Bill Clinton in the back repeatedly when he was trying to pass his economic plan in 1993. (As did Bob Kerrey and Sam Nunn, among others.) After months of Clinton kissing Boren’s ass and treating him like the perfumed prince he believes he is, Boren went on “Face The Nation” and announced that he just couldn’t support his president.

He had already insisted on getting rid of the proposed BTU tax and wanted a “compromise” that would have dropped all the new taxes on the wealthy and make up the money by capping Medicare and Medicaid and getting rid of Clinton’s planned EITC for the poor. He, like Bob Kerrey and many others, were obsessed with “fixing” social security and other “entitlements” in order to cure the deficit.

But there was one thing he believed in more than anything else:

From The Agenda:

Gore asked, what did Boren want changed in the plan in order to secure his vote?

Like a little list? Boren asked.

Yeah, Gore said.

Boren said he didn’t have little list. Raising the gas tax a nickel or cutting it a nickel or anything like that wouldn’t do it, he said. He had given his list to Moynihan like everybody else in the Finance Committee. It was over and done with, and Boren likened himself to a free agent in baseball. “I have the luxury of standing back here and looking at this,” Boren said. His test would be simple: Would it work? If not, it didn’t serve the national interest.

Gore said he was optimistic for the first time.

Boren shot back. “There’s nothing you can do for me or to me that will influence my decision on this matter.” he added. “I’m going to make it on the basis of what I think is right or wrong.”

Nobody responded for a moment. Clinton then stepped in. Why didn’t Boren think it was in the national interest? he asked.

It wasn’t bipartisan, Boren answered. To be successful in this country it had been demonstrated over and over, an effort had to be bipartisan, Clinton had even said so himself, Boren pointed out. Even most optimists, Boren said, thought they were still not even halfway there.

No Republican voted for the plan. Clinton knew that he would never get any Republicans to vote for a plan to raise taxes on the wealthy after the handful who had done so in 1990 were burned at the stake by the conservative movement. But sure, they would have voted for a “compromise” that raised no taxes, dropped all investment in infrastructure, any help for the poor and capped spending on the sick to cure the deficit. That’s bipartisanship, village-style.

Bob Kerrey eventually agreed to vote for the plan making it a 50-50 tie — which Al Gore broke, passing the plan. (It passed by one vote in the House, as well.)

Right after the vote Kerrey went on the Senate floor said:

“My heart aches with the conclusion that I will vote yes for a bill which challenges Americans too little.

“President Clinton, if you’re watching now, as I suspect you are, I tell you this: I could not and should not cast a vote that brings down the presidency…

“Get back on the high road, Mr President,”Kerrey proclaimed. Taxing the wealthy was simply “political revenge,” he said. “Our fiscal problems exist because of rapid, uncontrolled growth in the programs that primarily benefit the middle class.” Clinton needed to return to the theme of shared sacrifice, he said, and should have said no to the deals and compromises.

And then he went back on his word to Clinton that he wouldn’t demand a bipartisan commission to study how to cut all those middle class “entitlements.”

David Broder loves David Boren and Bob Kerrey and thinks the country is best served by rabid conservative ideologues and preening Democratic narcissists who lay down for Republicans and fight their own president every step of the way if he wants to enact any kind of progressive legislation. That’s called “getting things done.”

If you want to defeat that dynamic, you have to take on the Republicans and win the ideological war. There are always Senators who want to stab their leadership in the back and make themselves feel powerful and there are always radicals and there are always villagers. And there are also true ideological differences among the Americans they represent. You can’t make them all get together and agree. It’s just not the way the system is designed. You have to win the votes of the people and then lead your party to pass your agenda. Making bipartisanship an end in itself is a recipe for failure because it empowers dry sockets like Nelson and Collins and David Broder — people who believe in the Goldlocks theory of politics even in times of enormous challenge and crisis.

The stakes are too high to cater to flat earth Republicans at this point. Here’s Krugman, commenting on David Broder’s belief that Obama should take one from column A and one from column B:

You see, this isn’t a brainstorming session — it’s a collision of fundamentally incompatible world views. If one thing is clear from the stimulus debate, it’s that the two parties have utterly different economic doctrines. Democrats believe in something more or less like standard textbook macroeconomics; Republicans believe in a doctrine under which tax cuts are the universal elixir, and government spending is almost always bad. Obama may be able to get a few Republican Senators to go along with his plan; or he can get a lot of Republican votes by, in effect, becoming a Republican. There is no middle ground

Obama has (finally) been saying something very important the last couple of days and that is that the Republican theories failed. People don’t know what to think right now about economics, but that is the first, vital step toward deprogramming them from thirty years of conservative brainwashing. And it isn’t particularly nice or bipartisan. Fine. Bring it on.

Update: I’m listening to the press conference today and now the reporters are all questioning why Obama would “add to the debt” when he says he’s been left with such a huge debt by the Republicans.

Is economics no longer a required course?

.

.

Who’s He Listening To?

by digby

Greg Sargent over at The Plum line, asks an important question:

…[P]ublications, Newsweek in particular, are asserting that Obama failed because he was too “bipartisan” at the outset, which is not a take you hear often from the Beltway media. Also, the question I’m asking is, Did Obama’s initial failure to draw a sharper contrast with the opposition happen in spite of the D.C. veterans he’s surrounded with who are supposed experts at the Washington power game, or because of them?

Setting aside Michael Hirsh, who both dday and I excerpted, (and whose columns I searched for previous paeans to bipartisanship and didn’t find any) none of the cable gasbags or the village scribblers have any standing to be questioning Obama’s bipartisan strategy. They are the ones who define bipartisan as catering to Republicans. They’ve been doing it for years.

I can prove this by the fact that when George W. Bush seized office under dubious circumstances and without any kind of a popular mandate, they insisted that Democrats cater to his wishes on massive tax cuts telling partisans who disagreed with his agenda to just “get over it.” In 2004 (when George W. Bush won with six million fewer votes than Obama) they giggled over Grover Norquist’s assertion that the Democrats were now neutered farm animals who would be happier now that they’d been tamed.

So, as much as I have railed that post-partisanship is a pipe dream and that while Obama was talented he was not actually capable of retiring human nature, I find the media’s pooh-poohing to be a bit much. They have been orgasmic at the prospect that Obama wouldn’t let the dirty hippies take over and are only disappointed now that the Democrats are getting anything at all. It’s simply not the way things are supposed to work. Their complaints about Obama being too bipartisan, you see, are actually that he failed to capitulate enough to the Republicans, not that he capitulated too much.

As to Greg’s question as to whether or not Obama listened to the veterans, Jane Hamsher has some intriguing insights into the legislative sausage making today. If what she says is true, it means that Rahm was being cleverly Machiavelian and is now trying to deflect the blame for his own bad call.

President Obama has a huge crisis, a Democratic congress, a mandate and the support of a wide swathe of the people. He didn’t need Rahm to pit the Blue Dogs against the Democrats against the Republicans in some sort of abstract kabuki pageant just because he could. There may be a time and a place where such a thing might make sense. But in the first two weeks of the presidency it made things more complicated than was necessary, particularly considering the fact that people have been so indoctrinated in conservative dogma, that even if they want “change” they don’t know what that entails. Once the devil got into the details, it always required Obama to sell it himself with a deft and certain media plan. If Rahm is playing some sort of inside game to make the liberals be the goats and have Obama be the hero in sympathy with the Blue Dogs, it’s the wrong move. The Republicans are already casting the president as weak and this just makes him look weaker.

.