For those of you who have an interest in internecine Democratic politics this article by Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney about the power struggle within the party between the progressives and the Blue Dogs is fascinating stuff. It discusses at length the fight for the public option in the House and the influence of the progressives inside and outside the process throughout. Many lessons to be learned.
Of course this is the version set forth by those recounting the story, so it’s probably a good idea to keep just a little bit of skepticism in the back of your mind as one always should do with a story like this. Everyone has reasons for relating things the way they do. But as someone who followed this pretty closely, albeit from outside the beltway, this certainly tracks with what I know of the way the caucuses work and accurately describes many of the dynamics to which I was privy.
It’s an awesome piece of journalism. Kudos to Grim and Delaney.
I would appear that the forced childbirth industry has been doing some focus groups and found out that people don’t respond well to the idea of granting full human rights at conception. So they are changing it to “at biological development” which is designed, I’m sure, to evoke thoughts of ultrasound images of healthy fetuses in the 38th week.
The California Human Rights Amendment needs your help
URGENT: Will you collect ten signatures to help? Collect just ten signatures by April 15!
April 8, 2010
Dear,
The California Human Rights Amendment will amend the California Constitution to define human rights beginning at biological development (e.g. conception), and it will ensure that a preborn baby of any age has the same equal rights and full protection under law as adults.
This initiative will protect the most vulnerable members of our society – our preborn children.
In California, 1.2 million petition signatures are needed by April 15 in order to qualify for the November election.
Please call (800) 836 4937 to order petitions if you’d rather not download/print.
Mail the petition back by April 15 (mailing address is located on the bottom of petition).
Tell fellow Christians about this important initiative.
Thank you for your efforts to defend the life of the pre-born.
AFA is glad to join with the California Human Rights Amendment Team in encouraging you to become a petitioner on behalf of unborn children. For more information on how you can join the effort, call (800) 836 4937 or visit www.CaliforniaHumanRightsAmendment.com.
Sincerely,
Tim Wildmon, President
American Family Association
Too many people became complacent over the last year or two that the social conservatives had been routed and would never come back. Others believed that the teabaggers had usurped them on the right and so they wouldn’t have any backing. This is a fatal error. They are always around, always plugging away at their agenda, no matter what. It’s an industry. And it always has customers.
Tim Wildmon, by the way, is the son of the infamous Donald Wildmon. It’s also a family business.
I got the funniest e-mail today with the header “Join The Cool Kids Table” (which was funny in itself.)
Here’s what it says:
Don’t get left out of The Politics Online Conference! You know what it feels like to read the news about an awesome event and think to yourself “Why didn’t I go to that!”
Granted, I’m not a cool kid (or a kewl kid) but I have spent quite a bit of time in online politics these past few years. And with the exception of John King, Trippi and a couple of other people I hadn’t heard of any of the participants or this conference. Turns out it’s been around for a decade. Go figure.
Is there an alternate internet I know nothing about?
When will they learn that if they’d just stop winning elections and passing legislation that Republicans don’t like, this wouldn’t be happening? If Nancy Pelosi hadn’t made this man mad he wouldn’t have had to threaten her. She has no one to blame but herself:
A California man angry about health care reform allegedly made threatening and harassing phone calls to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, including at least one call in which he got through and spoke to her directly, law enforcement officials said.
Gregory Lee Giusti, 48, was arrested Wednesday at his San Francisco home, said Joseph Schadler, spokesman for the FBI’s San Francisco office. Schadler would not disclose the charges against Giusti, saying they were under seal until his first appearance before a federal magistrate, scheduled for Thursday.
The arrest came a day after a Washington state man was arrested for allegedly leaving threatening voicemails for U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, and as other Democratic lawmakers have faced vicious verbal attacks over their support of the historic health care overhaul.
Several federal officials said Giusti made dozens of calls to Pelosi’s homes in California and Washington, as well as to her husband’s business office. They said he recited her home address and said if she wanted to see it again, she would not support the health care overhaul bill that since has been enacted.
One official said the man is believed to have spoken directly with Pelosi at least once.
And you guessed it:
Rose Riggs, a neighbor of Giusti in a public housing complex in the city’s Tenderloin district, said she saw two plainclothes and two uniformed officers take him away in zip-tie cuffs. Riggs, 62, said Giusti was known for engaging in heated political debates with others in the building…
Sister Lorna Walsh, community operations manager of the Mercy Housing complex where Giusti lives, said he had lived in the subsidized housing for almost 10 years. She would not comment further
How much do you want to bet that he had subsidized health care too?
If you ever wondered if it really is all about money, this should clear it up. It’s about money all right, but that isn’t enough. Not nearly enough. These people want to be loved. And they demand that everyone believe they are right:
Here’s an abbreviated version of the eight-page letter to shareholders included in Goldman Sachs’ 2009 Annual Report: Goldman didn’t bet against its own clients, did nothing wrong with respect to AIG, took steps to limit compensation for its top executives, and “embraced new realities pertaining to regulation.”
Oh, and “Goldman Sachs is grateful for the indispensable role governments played and we recognize that our firm and our shareholders benefited from it.” You are welcome! The American taxpayer is glad to be of service! Well, not actually. The American taxpayer is still steaming mad at the contradiction between the pathetic state of the economy and the fact that Goldman had a terrific year in 2009, thanks to a wide range of drastic efforts taken by the U.S. government to stabilize financial markets and keep all of Wall Street’s blue-chip financial institutions from swirling down the drain after Lehman and Bear Stearns. But if you’re looking for contrition from Goldman Sachs, you won’t find it in the company’s Annual Report.
To me, the biggest proof that these MOUs aren’t as smart as they think they are is their inability to resist the urge to strut and preen and brag publicly about how great they are at a time of great financial stress among the the public at large. It’s not enough for them to have made huge sums of money while the rest of the country is digging out from their catastrophic decisions of the last decade. They must be celebrated for having made huge sums of money while the rest of the country is digging out from their catastrophic decisions of the last decade.
Old Bart is getting hit from all sides and apparently is considering whether it’s all worth it now that he’s taking fire from both sides for being an incomprehensible turncoat:
Amidst growing speculation he might retire, Rep. Bart Stupak’s (D-Mich.) office declined to rule it out on Wednesday.
Spokeswoman Michelle Begnoche said the congressman is evaluating his options, but that he’s ready to run again if he decides to…
The nine-term congressman became a target of the left after he held out on voting for the healthcare bill until he had a guarantee of tougher language to prevent any federal subsidies from being used for abortion services.
Stupak faces a primary with former Charlevoix County Commissioner Connie Saltonstall, who has the support of NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women (NOW).
Never fear, though. He’s getting lot’s of love from the Democrats who apparently enjoy being blackmailed and are hoping to send the message that they want it to happen again:
First Read reported Wednesday morning that Democratic strategists are urging Stupak to stick around, because his seat would be difficult for the party to hold. That task was made tougher, it said, because of the what Stupak went through when he held out for abortion language in the healthcare bill. In an interview with The Hill, Stupak described it as a “living hell.”
So we’re the ones who are making poor Bart’s life “a living hell” even though his friends in the “pro-life” movement are the ones issuing death threats. And Democratic strategists are giving him sympathy for all the “hell” he went through and begging him to stay on. Good to know.
The Democrats are going to lose seats this fall, no matter what. So they might as well send a little message to their members that there’s a price to pay for trying to destroy the party’s signature legislation and the president’s legacy at the expense of the majority of the party. Letting Stupak twist in the wind would be one way to do that. Instead, they appear to be rewarding him.
At some point, the Democratic party is going to have to recognize that it is a majority female party and learn to be a little bit more respectful.
Rupert Murdoch appeared before the National Press Club yesterday and Seth Michaels Ari Rabin-Havt asked him if he thought it was appropriate for a news network to be promoting the tea party.
Of course Murdoch said he didn’t think they should be promoting the tea party “or any other party,” so we know he’s full of it right there. FOX is the propaganda arm of the GO after all. (Believe me, ratings are the frosting on the cake, not the raison d’etre.)
However, I would guess that he, like Rove and some others, are getting increasingly nervous about the teabaggers going rogue on them and voting third party. They would likely only do it once(they’ll come back to the fold in a presidential year unless a wealthy Perot type turns up)but once would be all it takes to thwart the GOP’s plans to take back the congress in the fall and it would lay waste to the claim that Real Americans are taking back their country from the socialist usurpers.
Fox helped create this monster (with the help of other major funders) but it’s not completely trained. The last thing Murdoch wanted was for the Republicans to lose voters, even for just one cycle. Nothing they can do about that now.
Michael Hirsh wonders why Obama is not working to get a strong financial reform bill passed before the election. Evidently, he’s left it up to the retiring Chris Dodd to get some old thing passed and then he’ll swoop in at the last minute and twist some arms. It would appear that they really do believe the their strategy on health care was a big success.
It did pass. But one would still expect them to have assessed how that particular legislative strategy may have not been a perfect model since it was barely resurrected from the dead by dint of sheer stubbornness by Nancy Pelosi and a few others. And since most people think it nearly died because the White House left everything (but their own deals with industry) in the hands of congress to bargain away in small bits to salve every ego in Washington, one might think it would be a good idea not to rely on that particular strategy again. One would be wrong:
What’s most disturbing, however, is the president’s on-again, off-again focus on financial reform. Despite its arcane nature, the issue is still a politically hot topic as we head into a fall election with the economy still rocky and Wall Street apparently still unrepentant and unrestrained. “Everybody’s just deferring to Summers and Geithner. Doesn’t the president realize he’s got a big flank exposed here?” says one Democratic staffer who is pushing for tougher restrictions on Wall Street. “We get through health care, we finally have the opportunity to do something positive on Wall Street reform and we just go ahead and focus on nuclear disarmament and climate change?” The bottom line is that apart from a new “resolution authority” used to take over and liquidate failing nonbanks—a power that is likely to affect what happens only after the next crisis hits—the Dodd bill is fast turning into a nonevent. And that may become more likely if the Connecticut senator seeks yet again to compromise with Republicans, watering down the bill further (for example, by stripping the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which Dodd has already housed at the Fed in deference to the GOP, of some of its independent powers). Compromise will become the easier path as the economy gradually improves, the memory of the Wall Street–engendered crash recedes and Dodd approaches his retirement desperate for a legacy. “We’re gonna wake up one day, tomorrow or two weeks from tomorrow, and there’s going to be a deal between Dodd and the Banking Committee Republicans,” the Democratic staffer says. And that will be the end of reform. One can only hope the president realizes what’s at stake.
It’s a miracle they pulled off any kind of health care bill considering their ham handed strategy and we’ll soon find out how much political damage they caused by allowing months and months of chipping away at a delicate system with many moving parts. That strategy cannot be seen, by any stretch, as successful on its own terms.
In any case, financial reform is not health care reform. It’s very important, but it doesn’t directly affect many average citizens’ lives and does not carry the moral imperative that HCR does, certainly among the liberals. Passing something lame is not “laying the groundwork” for something better, it’s just passing something lame. It’s not creating a huge new program or establishing something important that can be built upon later. This is a fairly simple set of regulations and new regulatory structures which have a targeted job — eliminate or reduce the systemic risk that caused the meltdown of the global financial system in the fall of 2008. They need to do this right.
I’m sure the White House would love to have a lovely bipartisan bill symbolizing a new day of peace, love and understanding. And maybe they’ll get it. But they’d better watch out. There are Democrats on the left who feel zero obligation to play ball on a bill that benefits big banks and whose loyalty to the White House was badly frayed during the last year. And there may be some Republicans on the right who refuse to play ball for any number of reasons, not the least of which is to deny Obama any kind of bipartisan victory. So Obama will likely have to stitch together a coalition of his favorite “centrists” from both parties to put this thing together and hope that he can beat a filibuster in the Senate. (How many of those are there?)It seems to me that if it’s going to be that kind of a dog fight he might as well get a decent bill. So far, it doesn’t look as if he particularly wants one.
Why the White House doesn’t want the Democrats to have even one issue that speaks to the electorate’s populist fervor this fall is a question for the age.
