State Of Play

by digby

Last night I happened to hear Dick Morris lecturing Sean Hannity about John Maynard Keynes which was a lot like the time I accidentally ate a hash brownie. On the heels of the bizarroworld “lake” metaphor from Grover Norquist on John King’s show this week-end, I think I need to go to rehab.

The conservatives are simply babbling incoherently on economics and I’m sure it’s confusing to people because the solution of massive government spending is counterintuitive unless somebody explains what went wrong and what needs to be done to set it right. I’ve not heard anyone but wonks do that and it’s distorting the political situation.

For a primer on what went wrong, I think this article by Thom Hartman is a good one and worth sending around to people on your email lists. Here’s Krugman on the bad faith Republican arguments.

In other news, the Daschle withdrawal was the right thing to do. He actually should have taken himself out of contention when he found that he had “forgotten” to pay taxes. In a climate where we are excoriating wall street titans for their bonuses, you just can’t have someone in the cabinet who didn’t pay taxes on his limousine and driver. Obama ran very much as the reformer, almost holier-than-thou in approach, and he just can’t have this kind of thing.

Unfortunately, the gasbags are all saying that Daschle needed to go because Obama’s number one priority is to change the tone and be bipartisan, and the Republicans were ginning up the machine to turn it into a big fight, which just reinforces the illusion of GOP power. As long as Obama is seen as having to be bipartisan and changing the tone, they hold him hostage. Like four year olds, they can threaten to have a tantrum any time they choose, thus ruining Obama’s reputation as a united not a divider. It’s quite a bind.

Apparently, the dittoheads are calling their Senators at a a record pace exhorting them to vote against the economic bill. If you would care to have your voices heard in contrast, you can call as well. Unfortunately, I don’t think blog readers have the clout to stop legislation in its tracks as the Republican base does. (After all, we could not get our presidential candidate not to switch his vote on FISA, a politically free vote.)

That big list is where the Obama movement is, and I understand they are sending out emails, so perhaps that will get people calling. If the bill is really in trouble, which I doubt, the best politician of his generation, with his enormous popularity, will take his case directly to the people. All he stands to lose is the myth of post-partisanship, (which isn’t exactly a great loss in my book).

The bill is going to pass. The problem is that it is larded up with Republican tax cuts but has been painted as a Democratic “wish list,” thus starving the beast while feeding the tax ‘n spend, fiscal responsibility shibboleths at the same time. There’s nothing we can do about that now. Unfortunately, the big battles to come are going to be much tougher because of it.

We’re still in the first round, but I would say the Republicans have already masterfully played it. After just having their asses handed to them in November, they managed to turn the crisis into an opportunity to shore up their base, weaken their opposition and misdirect the commentariat to the debt (which they created) rather than the crisis (which they also created) and narrow the options for the new president. All in the first two weeks.

Oh, and they have successfully portrayed the Democrats as crazed social engineers with a credit card and the President as a very nice young man who just isn’t strong enough to control the congress. It’s good stuff.

Again, it’s round one. The Dems will ultimately win it, but they are bloodied.

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