Short Sighted Strategery
by digby
Joe Klein is piling on Bill Frist, no doubt in anticipation of his future fellatory profile of the man of his dreams, John McCain. He’s just clearing the decks. It’s enjoyable watching Frist get skewered, of course, but did anyone ever believe that such a dry socket could become president? Seriously, he makes Evan Bayh seem like Mick Jagger.
The column is, therefore, as useless as most of his columns, but there is one throw away line that caught my attention:
A series of terrible leadership moves have ensued. There was Frist’s effort to deploy the “nuclear option” — that is, to perform radical surgery on the Senate’s filibuster rules in order to allow votes on President Bush’s more extreme judicial appointments. But the nuclear option was thwarted when 14 Senate moderates cut a deal to keep the rules and allow votes on some of the appointees. “We saved him on that,” said a G.O.P. staff member involved in the negotiations. “Frist never had the votes he needed for the nuclear option.”
Who saved him exactly? The seven Republicans or the seven Democrats who cut that deal?
In case you forgot:
* Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut
* Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia
* E. Benjamin Nelson, Nebraska
* Mary Landrieu, Louisiana
* Daniel Inouye, Hawaii
* Mark Pryor, Arkansas
* Ken Salazar, Colorado
So what are these seven extracting from Bill Frist for their trouble? Nothing? What an excellent deal it was then.
It’s a perfect example of Chuck Schumer’s “protect the marginals” strategy, which is revealed in all its glory in the most amazing piece of narcissistic premature chicken counting I’ve ever seen. Does anyone really think it’s a good idea for Shumer to give an in-depth interview at this point in the cycle outlining his cynical, unprincipled political strategy? Could he not keep his big mouth shut for a few months at least?
It’s disturbing to see that Shumer cares more about big donors and moving the party ever rightward than fulfilling the Democratic vision; there is ample reason to condemn him for some of his decisions and criticize his strategy, which I will discuss shortly. But it’s unbelievable to me that he is such an egomaniac that he cooperated with a story that will damn the Democrats as being phony and hypocritical — which they are if what he’s saying is true. The only earthly reason to discuss his strategy publicly and in such detail is to toot his own horn and bask in the approbation of political pundits and sleazy strategists. And to do this before he has won is simply inexplicable.
What is it about Democratic politicians that they cannot keep their pieholes shut about process and strategy? Note to Harry Reid: think twice about assigning camera hogs to do backround work.
On the substance, I can see both good and bad in his strategy. On the positive side, I think he’s probably been pretty good at attracting good candidates in red states and I think it was very smart to bribe the Democratic senators who were tempted to retire with whatever they needed. We cannot lose any more senators. And I think we all understand that Democrats running in conservative races around the country need to be given latitude to run in a different way than one would run in New York or California. It is an unpleasant reality that the Senate, being a basically undemocratic institution, overrepresents conservatives. It always has.
But there are signs that Shumer’s agenda is not merely to draw a defensive line around red state Democrats — it’s to actually change certain fundamental aspects of the Democratic platform in order to make his job easier. Recruiting anti-abortion candidates in states where being pro-choice is acceptable even for Republicans like Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, for instance, is very hard to reconcile unless there is some attempt to marginalize that issue in the caucus. That will not do. I realize that it is always better to have Democrats in power than Republican when it comes to preserving choice (although history suggests that it is not an inviolable rule — the Hyde amendment was passed by a Democratic congress and signed by a Democratic president.) But to try to undermine choice by actively recruiting candidates in Blue States who believe that abortion should be outlawed looks very much like a move to push the party into the anti-abortion camp. (And like the Democrats’ eventual endorsement of the death penalty, it will not accomplish anything politically in the long run except making abortion illegal. There’s always another issue for the right to demagogue.)
It’s possible that there are forces at work in those two cases of which I’m unaware, but this is how it looks to me out here in grassrootsland. Chuck Shumer seems to be bargaining away choice in order to win and from where I sit that’s no different than endorsing rolling back the voting rights act in order to win. This is a fundamental issue of civil liberties that cuts to the heart of what the Democratic party stands for. Being willing to create the illusion that the party is anti-abortion (when a majority of the population is clearly in favor!) makes it appear that the party will do anything to win. And that, in my view, is what’s killing us.
Shumer puts it this way:
Schumer knew that the full fury of pro-choice Democrats would rain down on him when Casey announced his candidacy. But that was exactly the point. By pissing off the party’s most loyal supporters, Schumer sent a message that he was serious about winning, one that rippled into other states and helped persuade reluctant recruiting targets to run. “I said, ‘Hey, we have to win!’ If we had 58 seats, maybe you wouldn’t do this, but our back is against the wall,” Schumer says.
58 seats! (I suppose we should be grateful to at least know what’s required before we can stand up for our principles.)
I can’t help but wonder, however, if people like Shumer are hoping to win this next election exclusively with Independent and Republican votes; this is a very dicey strategy to employ in a mid-term, which depends upon turn out. On the substance I think he’s wrong. On the politics, I think he’s insane to be saying this publicly. Does he think we can’t read?
I honestly can’t decide which is worse — Shumer doing what he’s doing or Shumer advertising what he’s doing. When you look at both the optics and the substance, I don’t think I’ve ever read an article that makes be feel more depressed about the direction of the Party.
The days of “Sistah Sojahing” the base are over. It was useful 14 years ago but it is deadly now. Democrats should be very congnizant that disrespecting their core voters at this point will produce a backlash. And they should also be cognizant that turn-out of the Democratic base in the fall is not guaranteed by Bush’s unpopularity. There is a strong sense out here that our participation is meaningless — we will have Bush for two more years no matter what and the congress is impotent and unwilling to challenge him no matter how unpopular he becomes. Clearly there will be no accountability for the last five years and the only change in policy the Democrats seem interested in is to bring the nation ever closer to making choice illegal. Why should the base bother to vote in this election?
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