Month: January 2010

Let’s Do it

by digby

Howie caught a statement about yesterday’s results that’s well worth reading:

Marcy Winograd, the progressive Democrat running against Blue Dog Jane Harman, could well be swept into office on the same kind of tide– although of a more enlightened variety– that helped Scott Brown. On the surface she blames overnight bank bailouts and mandated health insurance for what happened last night. Her perspective:

Unfortunately, the Republicans were able to craft Brown’s campaign as an insurgent struggle for the working people against ever-intrusive big government. All they had to do was point their finger at overnight bank bail-outs & mandated private health insurance, then scream about corporate welfare and attacks on individual freedoms. Too many Democrats stayed home, no longer energized by the possibility of change, only deflated by the politics of appeasement. We need the Democratic leadership to keep the keys to our treasury, rather than allow the banking, health insurance, and big pharmaceutical interests to raid it under the banner of the Democratic Party. If we stand for the people, the people will stand with us. Campaigns for progressive congressional challengers offer the greatest promise for re-energizing the base and mobilizing Democrats to vote in mid-term elections.

Washington faces the danger of drawing the wrong conclusions, of believing that the current Democratic Party leadership must abandon a progressive agenda for labor rights and immigration reform and, instead, bow to the most reactionary forces in American politics. Quite the contrary. The Party must redefine itself as the voice of working people, of immigrants, of women, of the populist.

On a practical level, the Democrats need Plan B for providing quality and affordable health care. Where is the other bill? I keep waiting for it– for the alternative that isn’t 2,000 or 3,000 pages, but just a simple paragraph or sentence: Expand Medicare to begin at age 55… and require health insurance companies to drop pre-conditions.

On the economic front, now is not the time for retreat but for a strong offensive against unemployment. We need a Green New Deal, something along the lines of the WPA during the Great Depression; a new incarnation to fix our infrastructure, develop renewables, and construct mass transit. For the Democrats to bounce back, they need to put America back to work.

There are other good statements as well from Grayson, challenger Doug Tudor and others at the link.

Howie adds:

There’s a way to harness the demand for Change that is sweeping the country, a way that insures it isn’t only a teabagger phenomena. It’s why Blue America started Send The Democrats a Message [They Can Understand]— and it’s why Marcy Winograd and Doug Tudor are on that list. Please take a look.

What’s also interesting about Winograd’s statement is that Ezra Klein floated something earlier today that would probably make her very happy:

Democrats could scrap the legislation and start over in the reconciliation process. But not to re-create the whole bill. If you go that route, you admit the whole thing seemed too opaque and complex and compromised. You also admit the limitations of the reconciliation process. So you make it real simple: Medicare buy-in between 50 and 65. Medicaid expands up to 200 percent of poverty with the federal government funding the whole of the expansion. Revenue comes from a surtax on the wealthy.

And that’s it. No cost controls. No delivery-system reforms. Nothing that makes the bill long or complex or unfamiliar. Medicare buy-in had more than 51 votes as recently as a month ago. The Medicaid change is simply a larger version of what’s already passed both chambers. This bill would be shorter than a Danielle Steel novel. It could take effect before the 2012 election.

If health-care reform that preserves the private market is too complex and requires too many dirty deals with the existing industries, then cut both out. But get it done. Democrats have a couple of different options for passing health-care reform this year. But not passing health-care reform should not be seen as one of them.

As far as I’m concerned, if something “has to be passed” so that we can come back later and “fix” it, I’d much rather see it go this way. Let’s open up medicare to a buy-in from 50+, and expand medicaid by taxing the wealthy. We’ll come back and “fix” all the cost controls later (which is the only way the “fix” will ever get done.)This is aqn excellent plan. I’m all for it.

Yes we can!

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Translating The Message

by digby

The other day I wrote a post about what would happen if people decided to vote for Republicans to send a message that the Democrats shouldn’t take their base for granted. I said this:

Many people believe that the only thing Democrats understand is pain and so the thing that will change this dynamic will be to deliver them a loss of their majority and perhaps the presidency to show the consequences of failure to fulfill the progressive agenda. That certainly sounds right, except you can’t ever know exactly what lesson will be taken from this sort of pain and if history is any guide, the likeliest one is the simplest and most obvious: they lost because people preferred what the other side had to offer. Obviously, that’s not necessarily the case, but it isn’t illogical for them to believe that. And the exit polls or whatever other data may be available rarely clearly show that it was base demobilization that caused a turnover. Often people don’t even know why they failed to vote and you can’t exit poll those who didn’t bother.

More importantly, you have the ongoing, pernicious problem of the conservative Democrats who will always pimp the anti-liberal line and their friends in the media who pull the old “this is a conservative country” narrative off the shelf by reflex.

So Howard Dean goes on Hardball today and points out that today’s DFA poll shows that of all the people who voted for both Obama and Brown, three out of five voted for Brown because they had wanted a public option and of the Obama voters who stayed home, 80% wanted a public option.

Here’s what followed:

Matthews: There’s two facts on the table right now. The Democratic candidate was for the public option. She was very aggressive, very progressive. She was much more progressive than the president. She stuck to the line, “I want an individual mandate and I want a public option.” Period. She said it right to the end and never broke from that. So she took the position you’re advocating right now. The other guy said I’m going to kill it in its bed. The voters voted for the guy who said he was going to kill it. So the voters had a choice between the public option candidate and kill it and they voted to kill it. So how do you explain that?

Dean: The voters were sending a message to Washington. They asked for change and they haven’t gotten change…

Matthews: But she said “I want to give you a public option” and they said no to her…

Dean: They’ve had a year of dealing with every interst group, the banks …

Matthews: Governor, you’re whistling past the graveyard here. She ran for the public option.

Dean: Our polling shows what it shows.

Matthews: But she’s for the public option and got blown away.

Dean: People who are for the public option …

Matthews: Why didn’t they vote for the public option?

Dean: because they wanted to send a message to Washington of real change …

Matthews: How about voting for a candidate who’s more progressive. Wouldn’t that have done it?

Dean: You know voters as well as I do and the voters ….

Matthews: I’m just saying that “I’m more progressive than the president, vote for me” and that was Martha Coakley’s position and they said no. And the other guy comes along and says, forget about it all, I’m voting to kill it.” Ok. He’s calling himself Mr 41. This guy, Scott Brown is walking around signing his name, “Scott Brown 41” I’ll be the 41st guy who votes for the filibuster.

Dean: There are a lot of people outside Washington who don’t thiunk that bill ought to pass because it’s too watered down…

Matthews: Not Martha Coakley…she was all the way for a pogressive, public option.

Dean: You’re being silly Chris because you know very well what voters do. Voters were sending a message to Washington: we don’t want business as usual. That’s what they were sending the message about.

Matthews: How do you know that?

Dean: Because we polled

Matthews: But the poll that was taken yesterday, the official poll where people had to go into the booth and vote, they had a choice between a public option candidate and a no candidate. How do you explain that position.

Dean: You can’t know what people do in the booth unless you ask them. And we asked them overnight. And we found out that of the Obama supporters who either stayed home or voted for Scott Brown, they overwhlemingly wanted to do more on health care, not less.

matthews: So they were more progressive than the president.

Dean: That’s right.

matthews: So on all the issues raised inthe campaign, debt, taxes, the arrogance of the democratic party in Massachusetts, where were the voters?

Dean: the voters were upset by Washington as usual, dealing with special interests, writing a bill that was great for the insurance industry, not doing much about the bankers.

Matthews: That’s your position!

Dean: That’s not my position that’s the voters of Massachusetts.

Matthews: You say the voters of Massachusetts agree with you but they voted republican. Tthat makes no sense.

Dean: It does make sense…

Matthews: You’ve been in the voting booth. Would you have voted for Scott Brown?

Dean: Of course not.

Matthews: So you rationally would not have voted for the Republican because he’s against health care. But you say the voters are irrational. They somehow send smoke signals in their vote. They vote for a conservative Republican who’s totally against health care to tell the country they want a progressive health care program. That’s crazy.

Are voters crazy? Are voters crazy?

Dean: Chris, there’s only one crazy person around here and if I hold up- a mirror you may see him.

Matthews: Voters vote right wing Republican to express progressive values…

[…]

Matthews: Why do you believe that Martha Coakley’s defeat meant people wanted a more progressive health care bill?

Dean: I think people are sending a strong message to Washington they want strong leadership, they want real change, and they don’t want to accomodate the special intersts. And they think for the last year that the democrats have accomodated special interests. Not just in health care, but in the banking industry and Wall Street, and these other areas as well.

Matthews: So, if you’re Scott Brown, and he’s listening to this program, and he’s learning from you that what he really ought to do is back a public option because people who voted for him were really secretly for the progressive position not for him.

Dean; i’d say you are being silly and you know they’re not saying …

Matthews: Are you saying he should vote for a public option now that he’s in the senate?

Dean: You know he’s not going to do that. let’s be …

Matthews: Dut you said your polling showed they were for that …

Dean: Let’s be real about this for a minute. the public option is dead this year…

Matthews: But it would be in his political self-interest to vote for the public option you’re saying …

Dean: What I think we ought to do is look forward from this …

Matthews: But you said the polling said pthe people were for the public option …

Dean: I said this is silly, we’re not getting anywhere. Do we want to move forward …

Matthews: No you’re being silly. You’re saying that no matter who wins an election, your argument wins.

Dean: What I’m saying is, we need a health care bill…

Somehow, I don’t think Matthews or any other villager was convinced by Dean’s argument. They just don’t think that way. Therefore, electing a Republican will never result in the political establishment and the media understanding that it was because the Democrat wasn’t liberal enough. Best not to get too fine with this stuff and just send them a message they can understand.

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Sounds About Right

by tristero

From a TPM Informant who’s a staffer inside Congress:

The worst is that I can’t help but feel like the main emotion people in the caucus are feeling is relief at this turn of events. Now they have a ready excuse for not getting anything done. While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas. They’re afraid to actually implement them and face the judgement of the voters. That’s the scariest dynamic and what makes me think this will all come crashing down around us in November.

I believe President Clinton provided some crucial insight when he said, “people would rather be with someone who is strong and wrong than weak and right.” It’s not that people are uninterested in who’s right or wrong, it’s that people will only follow leaders who seem to actually believe in what they are doing. Democrats have missed this essential fact.

Yup, that feels like a good part of the truth, that a lot of Democratic congresscritters are just plain giddy with relief.

—

PS: For the record, Clinton may be describing something real when he says that “people would rather be with someone who is strong and wrong” but that is not a good thing. And also for the record, liberals do have it right. Gotta work on that other part. Suggestion: we’ll get strong when progressives get truly effective at organizing major levels of funding to specific, electable candidates.

Return To Bizarroworld

by digby

Glenzilla’s post about the ritual blaming of the left this morning points me to Sullivan, with this smart observation:

Here’s why it’s hard to see anything positive coming out of this debacle. Stephen Bainbridge, an intelligent man and one of the few conservatives who also found Bush and Cheney appalling, can write this:

Obama and the Congressional Democrats (especially in the House) governed for the last year as though the median voter is a Daily Kos fan.

This must come as some surprise to most Daily Kos fans. But if one had traveled to Mars and back this past year and read this statement, what would you assume had happened? I would assume that the banks had been nationalized, the stimulus was twice as large, that single-payer healthcare had been pushed through on narrow majority votes, that card-check had passed, that an immigration amnesty had been legislated, that prosecutions of Bush and Cheney for war crimes would be underway, that withdrawal from Afghanistan would be commencing, that no troops would be left in Iraq, that Larry Tribe was on the Supreme Court, that DADT and DOMA would be repealed, and so on.

But when even a sane and honest person like Bainbridge has lapsed into believing the FNC mantra, you realize that ideology has simply altered our understanding of reality.

The problem is that the mantra is becoming conventional wisdom — and the Villagers don’t even know it.

Update: Here’s Dave Neiwert with the words of America’s fourth most admired man in the world:

Glenn Beck was in top form yesterday, anticipating Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts by launching into yet another tirade about the Monstrous Evil Known As Progressivism. This one was flat-out eliminationist, describing progressives variously as objects fit only for extermination, including diseases and monsters:

Beck: Progressives were lurking like a virus, waiting for their chance to suck all of the blood out of the Democratic neck. They were looking for the opening to infect the system. And once they were inside that system, I warned in 2004, the Democrats — it will be a battle to the end of your party to get them out.

… What we are talking about is an ideological movement that has set its sights on the destruction of the Constitution and the fundamental transformation of our Republic. It is called the progressive movement, and it has been using both parties for a long, long time.

But mainly, it’s the Democratic Party that has played host to it. And this parasite has been feeding on that host.

If Obama does the smart thing and re-energize his base, however, Beck will consider that confirmation of his running theory that Obama is a closet black Marxist/fascist radical bent on destroying America:

Beck: America, if these people are only politicians, they will do what they did in 1994, and they will migrate, starting tomorrow, right to the center.

But if we’re right, that these are Marxist revolutionaries, that these are progressives who follow Mao, they are gonna put the foot on the gas — it’s not gonna be pretty. And they will eat their own, the Democrats, first.

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It’s Stupak Stupid

by digby

So everybody in politics today is having a breakdown because the Senate lost a seat last night and Barney Frank said that the House can’t pass the health reform bill as is. Oy vey.

Here’s the thing. They really don’t have the votes and frank is just stating the obvious. And it isn’t because of the liberals. Here’s dday one more time discussing the possibility of the House passing the Senate bill as is in the event of a Brown victory:

Enough of the 39 conservative Dems would see the Senate bill as closer to their priorities for health care reform to offset liberals who may defect. And House liberals always seem to come back to the herd anyway.

But that treats passage of the Senate bill in a post-Brown environment as a policy and not a political problem. Cohn says that anyone who has already voted for the bill has sealed their fate on it in terms of attack ads, but that doesn’t account for those who, in Cohn’s world would flip their vote to Yes after a Republican was elected in Massachusetts largely on the slogan that he would be the 41st vote to block health care. As Ben Smith notes, there would be mass panic (Mass panic?) in the caucus, and people don’t usually pass political courage tests in that environment.

And you would have to get some flippers, because the pool of 220 votes from when the House passed their bill in November is gone. Robert Wexler resigned, dropping it to 219. Setting aside the fact that the affordability credits aren’t good enough for the House, the excise tax deal with unions would be invalidated, the exchanges would be state-based, and all the rest – just on the abortion issue alone, and remember the Nelson amendment is in the Senate bill, which Bart Stupak has derided, you probably lose a dozen more. It’s pretty confirmed that you’d lose three – Stupak, Republican Joseph Cao, and Steve Dreihaus.

Democratic Rep. Steve Driehaus said he will oppose any version of health care reform legislation that doesn’t clearly prohibit federal funds from being used to pay for abortions.

“I believe in clarity and simplicity, and we should make it simple and clear that taxpayer funds aren’t going to abortion coverage,” said Driehaus, an anti-abortion Catholic from West Price Hill.

Dreihaus is the guy who’s down by 17 points for re-election in the latest poll, so he’s probably dying to come off the bill anyway. [He’s now decided to retire — ed] So a bill with no negotiating room on abortion won’t fly, because those dozen or so Stupak holdouts won’t have much of a problem tanking it. And that’s presuming every liberal swallows hard and takes the bill as it is.

If something is to pass should Brown win, it would only be available through reconciliation – ask Chris Van Hollen. Heck, ask John Podesta, as David Gregory did on Meet the Press yesterday.

It’s convenient for everyone to get mad at liberals for tanking health care reform because they “refuse” to pass the Senate bill as is, but the fact is that even if the liberals all voted for it they still wouldn’t have the votes.

This bill had a huge problem already because in one house you have a bunch of anti-abortion zealots who insist that this bill be used to advance their cause. In the other, even with the ostensible 60th vote, you had a couple of right wing Democrats and one narcissstic Independent who would have likely voted against a final bill that changed even a comma of the one they originally voted for. And you have a president who allowed Max Baucus to play Romeo with Olympia Snow for months in a misguided attempt to bring together the Democratic Capulets with the Republican Montegues and ended up souring the American public on the whole damned thing.

It is what it is and it is the same thing it was before yesterday. It’s a mess. You can blame Frank all you want, but the fact is that politically, the problem doesn’t lie with the liberals. It never has. Not that it will stop people from blaming them for everything from the failure of health care to global warming. They are the designated sin eaters of American politics.

Update: if you want HC, you have to go this way:

Dems Eye Bold Plan to Salvage Health Care
By Michael McAuliff

Democratic insiders say they are weighing several options to save health care reform, and one actually may be bold enough to revive a depressed, turned-off Democratic base: use the obscure reconciliation loophole to pass a public option.

“Let’s do a public option, or let’s go back and do a single-payer plan,” a frustrated senior Democrat told the Mouth. “You can have people say, ‘Look, if we’re going to do reconciliation, let’s get more, not get less.’”

“If you’re going to use reconciliation, then use it hard,” the Democrat said, adding that it’s a serious option.

We look at some of the other ideas in the paper today, but that’s the one progressives want.

For instance, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee immediately began sending around a petition last night advising Democrats not to take the wrong lesson from Massachusetts, and to use reconciliation.

“The loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat — due to a lack of enthusiasm among Democrats and Independents — sends a clear message to Congress. The Senate health care bill is not the change we were promised in 2008, and it must be improved. The Senate must use ‘reconciliation’ to pass a better bill with a strong public option.”

You can sign here.

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The Messiah Compulsion

by digby

There are many post-mortems in the press and the blogosphere today and they all have interesting things to say. Quite a few are saying that the Democrats should adopt a more populist tone and aggressive economic policy, something which many of us have been advocating since the economic meltdown last year. The long months of ugly health care deal-making and coddling of bankers has only made it more essential — but possibly too late. It’s obvious that the zeitgeist out here in the country is angry, frustrated and scared and people want some acknowledgement of that. The spectacle of elites diddling each other while Real America burns naturally tends to lead to bad results.

The Democrats are all running around this morning looking panicked and freaked out which doesn’t give anyone confidence. Everyone seems to forget that a year ago, Obama only had 58 votes in the Senate and everyone was in a state of near hysteria over his massive institutional power and soaring mandate. Now he has 59 and he’s suddenly impotent. But this reaction was sadly predictable. And the message from the media and their centrist muses is also predictable — move right immediately. SOS.

So it’s hard to see today exactly where this is going, particularly on health care which many people are saying should be passed piecemeal — “just the popular parts.” I’ll be looking forward to a bill which says that health insurance must cover everyone and can’t cancel anyone but which has no cost controls. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to be popular for long. So, that’s very much in flux as well.

Anyway, there are obviously many factors here, and frankly, because there were no exit polls done, we will probably never know exactly what combination of factors drove this race in Massachusetts. My personal opinion is that Scott Brown ran a vague campaign based upon personal charisma in the Barack Obama mode and became this year’s vessel for protest against the status quo. The tea partiers are claiming him, as is the GOP establishment. And the media has declared him a maverick independent. Nobody knows who he *really* is, but in this era it seems that everybody’s just looking for a young, handsome hero with a beautiful family to step in and save the day. (In fact, I think this particular paradigm was set by the special election of Arnold Schwarzenneger in California in 2003. As usual, as California goes … oh lord.)

All the happy supporters at Scott Brown’s victory party last night were shouting “yes we can.”

It’s fairly clear that this inchoate desire for “change” going forward is not going to benefit liberals much, and it’s not just because they are erroneously perceived to be in charge in Washington. And that’s because I think people are very much undestimating the conservative propaganda arm, and its creation, the teabaggers.

Dave Weigel writes about them in the Brown race:

The volunteers, journalists, and donors who entered the ballroom of the Park Plaza Hotel on Tuesday were greeted by enthusiasm that didn’t usually belong to Republican campaigns in Massachusetts. The room was packed–no one else allowed in–only an hour after the polls closed. And among the throngs were Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler, leaders of Tea Party Patriots, who’d flown in from Georgia and California to watch the final stretch of Scott Brown’s Republican U.S. Senate bid. Meckler held up a Flip Video camera, panning it across the room to film Brown supporters as they chatted and lined up for food and drinks.

“What you’re seeing here in Massachusetts is a reflection of what’s happening all across the country,” said Meckler. Democrats, after all, had tried to turn the momentum against Brown by attacking his endorsements from Tea Party groups and painting him as a tool of out-of-state right-wingers. In a fundraising appeal, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had even called Brown a “far-right teabagger Republican.” Laura Clawson of Daily Kos derisively called him “the first teabagger senator.”

“Clearly, they’re paying attention to us,” said Martin. “They’re not ignoring us.”

[…]

A few steps away from the stage where Brown would make his victory speech, a team of conservative activists–some from the state, some not–focused on how they’d brought together their movement to outsmart and outspend one of the country’s most effective Democratic machines. Two months ago, several of them had worked for the insurgent campaign of Doug Hoffman, a first-time candidate who ran on the Conservative Party ticket for a House seat in New York’s 23rd district, forced the Republican Party’s moderate candidate out of the race, and narrowly lost what had been safe GOP territory. Those activists looked at Brown as Hoffman 2.0, a candidate and a campaign that learned the right lessons from that experience and leveraged them into a winning effort.

“They were better funded than Hoffman,” said Eric Odom, the executive director of the American Liberty Alliance. “More importantly, NY-23 lacked any sort of a coherent get-out-the-vote effort. That dominated here. Phone banks, visibilities, giving everybody something to do.” Tea Party activists, said Odom, had flooded into the state. A few feet behind him stood Hannah Giles, the young conservative activist who’d posed as a prostitute for video stings of ACORN, and who had come to the state for (mostly unsuccessful) crowdsourced investigations of possible “voter fraud.”

Brown’s short campaign–he announced for the seat on September 12, 2009, the very day that many Tea Party activists participated in a “taxpayer march on Washington”–masterfully wove together traditional campaign strategy and outreach to old and new conservative media. The arc of his victory demonstrated just how the modern conservative movement can boost a campaign without generating a backlash from voters. His online campaign strategist, Rob Willington, explained to TWI that Brown focused early on outreach to conservative media and built on that with technology that let local and out-of-state activists grab a piece of the campaign.

“I concentrated on specific conservative opinion leaders here in Massachusetts for the first part of the campaign,” said Willington. “Right around Christmas, I started targeting some national political leaders, using certain hashtags, and using video.”

[…]

From that point, Brown became a cause for the Tea Party movement and the people who’d backed Doug Hoffman…

[…]

Every negative Coakley storyline was amplified and made infamous by the same means. On January 14, the Wall Street Journal–owned, like The Weekly Standard and Fox News, by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp–ran an op-ed on Coakley’s record as attorney general, putting the spotlight on a gruesome case of sexual abuse involving a curling iron. The story, aired out earlier by the Boston Globe but not yet known to activists, became infamous, as did Coakley’s verbal stumbles. At Brown rallies attended by TWI, there was universal awareness of Coakley’s gaffes and the curling iron case.

[…]

“He’s almost like a messiah,” said Deborah Strange, a former Ted Kennedy supporter–although she’d voted for George W. Bush and John McCain–who sat resting her bad knees as Brown gave his victory speech. “He’s given us hope. He’s given us hope.

Read the whole thing. That story is important. Political messiahs have a pretty short shelf likfe these days, but the Republican propaganda arm is stronger than ever. And it would behoove all of us to spend some time watching exactly what it is they are saying.

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Let’s Think This Through

by tristero

John Kerry:

I hope as a party we don’t succumb to the temptation to form a circular firing squad.

Hmmm…A circular firing squad would eliminate all the current leaders of the national and Massachusetts Democratic Party as well as their legions of grossly overpaid consultants, advisers, and strategists.

And that’s a bad idea…why, exactly?

Teabag Revolution

by digby

Attorney Scott Brown said in his victory speech:

“Our tax dollars should go to weapons to defeat [terrorists] not lawyers to defend them.”

“Raising taxes and giving new rights to terrorists is the wrong agenda for our country.”

And his crowd is chanting “yes we can.”

He also said that he asked Obama if he wanted him to drive the truck down to Washington. ????

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Off And Running

by digby

AP just reported that Coakley has conceded. There you have it.

And AP also just reported this:

President Barack Obama is likely to name a special commission to come up with a plan to curb the spiraling budget deficit under an agreement forged with top Capitol Hill Democrats.

No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer of Maryland predicts Obama would name the deficit panel by a presidential order and that Congress would at the same time strengthen so-called pay-as-you-go budget rules designed to make it more difficult to pass legislation that would increase the deficit.

The twin developments come as the Senate is about to take up a bill to permit the federal government to issue the bonds required to fund government programs and prevent a first-ever default on obligations. Budget hawks have held the measure hostage seeking the anti-deficit steps.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Democratic infighting over demands by moderates to turn over some of Congress’ decision-making power on taxes and spending programs to a special deficit commission is complicating prospects for a must-pass borrowing bill headed for the Senate floor.

The legislative minuet is blending brinksmanship with hard bargaining as the White House summoned top House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a meeting Tuesday to try to figure out how to pass legislation to permit the federal government to issue the bonds required to fund government programs and prevent a first-ever default on obligations.

Moving to increase the so-called debt limit is a major source of anxiety for Democrats, and moderates in both House and Senate have responded with demands for action on the deficit as a condition of voting for it. The debt limit legislation – likely to exceed $1 trillion – could come to the floor as early as Wednesday.

Senators such as Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., want to create a bipartisan deficit commission whose findings would be awarded a mandatory up-or-down vote after this year’s election. They’re using their votes to increase the debt limit as leverage to win a separate vote on the plan.

Conrad’s deficit commission plan, however, appears to be sinking after assaults from interest groups on both right and left. Conservatives worry about their ability to stop tax hikes; liberal groups fret they wouldn’t be able to block cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

The predicted reverberations are already being felt. Chris Matthews is already going on about deficits being the most important problem in the whole wide world and how his daughter is really worried about government spending and taxes.

And the Democrats are subsequently making it much more difficult to fix the economy by playing into this deficit propaganda themselves. I suppose the only good thing we can take from it is that they may have allayed the move to have congress do it and give it the force of law. But it’s not good.

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Eating At Each Other

by digby

You’ve probably heard that everyone believes that if Coakley loses, the House will have to pass the Senate bill as is and the “fix it” in reconciliation. Anthony Weiner said earlier that it’s going to be very hard for the House to do that, no matter what leadership wants (and I’m guessing that it isn’t going to be the liberals who will balk anyway.)

Here’s the Village’s BMOC, Mike Allen on the Ed Shultz show reacting to Weiner’s comments:

There’s a little bit of shadow boxing going on here. You know were having today leaders for the first time saying yes, they maybe could accept the Senate bill if they promise changes in reconciliation. But I think that that may be more laying the groundwork for concessions to Republicans, scaling back the bill. So I think there’s a lot of posturing going on today. I wouldn’t take them as the final answer.

So Allen thinks that not only are they going to have to swallow the Senate bill, but they are going to have to make some concessions to Republicans and scale it back. Awesome. Maybe they can get rid of all those costly subsidies and the Medicaid expansion and just leave the mandate.

Ed Shultz went on to talk about Michael Moore’s promise to back primaries against any Democrat who voted against health care reform:

Shultz: So, Mike Allen, what’s the next move for progressives?

Allen: Well, I would remind you that when Republicans started to eat each other up we talked about how it wasn’t very smart. I think a lot of people will make that point about Democrats as well.

Ok. Eight or nine months ago the villagers were all saying that the Republicans were eating at each other and that it wasn’t very smart. And the Republicans told them to go to hell, Fox News started the tea party movement and the right wing media in general launched what seemed like a lunatic campaign to demonize Barack Obama as a socialist. All that seems to be working pretty well for them at the moment, so Allen’s admonishment doesn’t make a lot of sense.

In fact, the only lesson to be learned is to not listen to anything the village media says. Ever. The Republicans learned that a long time ago. The Democrats need to learn it too.

Here’s another example of the pervasive (and predictable) CW, courtesy of Gloria Borger on CNN:

Borger: I was talking to a bunch of Democrats asking [what the lessons are] and the answer I got resoundingly is that the Democrats have to do a better job of talking to independent voters. Right now a majority of independent voters in this country disapprove of bartack obama, they are unhappy that he has failed to deliver the kind of change that he promised and there’s a belief that he’s misinterpreted his mandate. That the mandate for change was not necessarily a mandate for bigger government because voters just don’t trust government…

The silver lining is, one, that Barack Obama may decide that he needs to talk to republicans, call Republicans’ bluff. now there are lots of folks who say that it is not in any interest of Republicans to see this president succeed so we’ll have to see. Also Wolf, this is early. They have time to recoup.

Blitzer: That’s the silver lining, if they can get their act together between now and November maybe they can salvage the midterm elections.

Borger: If you’re an optimist, yeah.

Update II: And, by the way, this meme about the Independents, (the “values voters” of 2010) has been coming for quite a while now. you watch these people over time and you can see which pre-digested narrative they’re going to pull off the shelf from a mile away.

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