The scandal silver lining
by digby
When the political winds shifted yesterday, and the smell of scandal wafted over the media landscape, one thought came to my mind. Mike Lux articulated it today in this comment to Greg Sargent:
“We don’t know what’s going to happen with this scandal talk,” Mike Lux, a leading progressive strategist who fought in the Clinton impeachment wars, tells me. “But one thing I do know from the Clinton years is that presidents need their bases completely fired up and fighting for them when the scandal stuff hits. Anything that President Obama does to alienate the base, like cutting Medicare and Social Security, would hurt him badly when he needs the base to the maximum. The scandal talk makes a Grand Bargain less likely.”
As Greg points out in his piece, the Monica Lewnsky scandal interrupted Clinton’s plan to “reform” Social Security. (And that really tells you just how determined the elites are to get this done — that was during a boom time, so the excuses for doing it were the exact opposite of what they are today. It doesn’t matter. In good times and bad, they just can’t leave it alone.)
Anyway, I hate this kind of scandal mongering. It’s exhausting and makes your head hurt. And we are, unfortunately, dealing with a package of administration scandals in which two are arguably partisan nonsense that are easy to man the barricades over — and one is actually very disturbing. So it’s not as clear cut as the administration might like.
Still, if this is what it takes to kill the Grand Bargain, I’m not going to complain. Scandals come and go — cuts to the safety net are forever.
*I should also add — don’t let your guard down. Our leaders can do a lot of mischief when no one is looking …
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