Congressional Democrats Finally Breaking Free From Obama's Conservative Consensus?

If Democrats were looking for a conservative vision they would vote for Republicans. Last November when there appeared to be almost nothing but "competing" conservative visions being offered at the polls-- Obama's and the Blue Dogs' mainstream conservatism vs the GOP's off-the-rails reactionary brand-- Democrats stayed home in great enough numbers to make John Boehner Speaker, empower ignorant, nihilistic teabaggers (how'd that work out for everybody?) and derail the whole country. Deservedly, the Blue Dog caucus was nearly obliterated, losing over half its members and almost its entire leadership and helping end the careers of a shitload of ConservaDem quasi-Blue Dog allies like Suzanne Kosmas, Ann Kirkpatrick, John Adler Melissa Bean, and Michael McMahon. Tragically, they dragged down a handful of true-blue progressives like Alan Grayson, Carol Shea Porter, Phil Hare, Mary Jo Kilroy and Steve Kagen with them.



Obama's reelection strategy has always been to take the base for granted-- "where else will they go, to Michele Bachmann?" laughed Rahm Emanuel-- and pursue mainstream conservatives. For congressional Democrats to recover from what Obama and the Blue Dogs did to them last November, they're going to have to distinguish themselves-- as much as they can-- from Obama and his corporate policies next November. I haven't been all that optimistic that they would-- at least not in terms of the congressional leadership. Progressive challengers all over the country are politely telling the voters that they're not big on Obama and that they'll support him when he's right and stand up for him when he's wrong. Nick Ruiz (D-FL) has gone even further:

People ask me all the time-- isn’t the reelection of President Obama the most important thing for 2012? I say to you-– it is the least important thing for Democrats in 2012. The President has already proven he will not fight for the middle and lower classes. Therefore, he should be primaried and defeated by a truly democratic advocate for the majority of Americans.

Don't look for anything like that from Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. But Robert Pear reported something worth reading in yesterday's NY Times about a slight revision in course from the congressional leadership.

In an unusual break with the White House, the Democratic leaders of Congress told the Supreme Court on Monday that President Obama was pursuing a misguided interpretation of federal Medicaid law that made it more difficult for low-income people to obtain health care.



The Democratic leaders said Medicaid beneficiaries must be allowed to file suit to enforce their right to care-- and to challenge Medicaid cuts being made by states around the country.



The Obama administration maintains that beneficiaries and health care providers cannot sue state officials to challenge cuts in Medicaid payment rates, even if such cuts compromise access to care for the poor.



In a friend-of-the-court brief, the lawmakers said the administration’s position “would undermine the effectiveness of Medicaid.” In addition, they said, it conflicts with more than a century of court precedents that allow people to sue to block state actions that are inconsistent with federal law.



The brief was filed by seven influential Democrats, including Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, an architect of Medicaid; Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader; Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader; and Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the Finance Committee.



Similar arguments were made in a separate brief filed by a dozen former federal health officials, including Donna E. Shalala, the secretary of health and human services under President Bill Clinton; Joseph A. Califano Jr., who was health secretary under President Jimmy Carter; and Bruce C. Vladeck, who was in charge of Medicaid and Medicare in the Clinton administration.



The issue, of immense importance to poor people and states, comes to the Supreme Court in a set of cases consolidated under the name Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California, No. 09-958. The court plans to hear oral arguments in October, with a decision expected by the spring. The original plaintiffs in the case, Medicaid beneficiaries and providers, say they were harmed by California’s decision to cut payment rates that were already among the lowest in the country.

Obama, once again, is advocating a Conservative Consenus position, not a position that favors working families. Let the Republicans back him. It's good Democrats aren't. State Senator Eric Griego, the progressive running for the Albuquerque-based open congressional seat being vacated by Martin Heinrich, seemed heartened by the stand Democrats in the House are taking. "I stand with Leader Pelosi and other Democratic House Members who support the right of families who depend on Medicaid to challenge state cuts to their basic health care," he told us. "A quarter of all New Mexicans depend on Medicaid for basic healthcare and two-thirds of them are children. In the State Senate I have opposed cutting Medicaid and instead called for the richest one percent of New Mexicans to pay their fair share and for ending tax giveaways for large out of state corporations."

Austerity Regime Leads To Breakdown In Social Cohesion

Didn't David Cameron looked pissed off having been dragged back to gritty, sweltering, seething, burning London from his lovely £10,000/week 18th Century Tuscan holiday villa near Montevarchi! His answer to the rioters who have spread from Tottenham to almost every corner of London and up to Birmingham and Liverpool is one dimensional: he's going to go all Bashar al-Assad on them. Tonight the police on the streets of London will increase from 6,000 to 16,000.



As he said he's recalling Parliament-- no doubt to force Labour to embrace his harsh plans for repression-- he muttered something about rebuilding the burning communities... but nothing about the roots causes of the three days of rioting. It surely went beyond one instance of police brutality in the extra-judicial murder of community activist Mark Duggan. That was a spark in Tottenham-- a spark that set off hours of peaceful-- if unreported-- protest. But the conflagration that followed, there and beyond, has much more to do with a breakdown of social cohesion in the U.K. There's a hopelessness brought on by Cameron's enthusiastic buy-in to world capital's insistence on an Austerity Regime. Cameron was the first major embraceor of the concept, a concept that the GOP feels will serve their nefarious purposes here in the U.S. as well, regardless of how disastrously it has failed-- in every way-- in the U.K.



From the closure of youth clubs and youth projects to staggering unemployment and cutbacks in life-or-death public services, the poor in England see themselves as victims of the banksters and the political hacks, like Cameron, who the banksters control. Who remembers Janis Joplin singing "If you ain't got nothin', you ain't got nothin' to lose" (Bobby McGee by Kris Kristofferson)? Probably next to no one who's taken to the streets in London in the last few nights. I'm guess they just have the sentiments expressed in the song coursing through their body as a human emotion.



By dragging the country, a very different country now, back towards reactionary Thatcherism, Cameron has opened up dangerous social and economic faultlines that bode ill for a country he is ill-prepared to govern. The Tories insist England has entered "an age of economic austerity, rising individualism, and a reduction in the Christian ethic of ‘love thy neighbour'." For all Governor Perry's pious and inappropriate invocations last weekend as he was about to toss his hat into the Republican presidential nomination ring, this is precisely what we can expect to see coming our way. Republicans-- who, after all, have more guns than England could ever imagine, welcome it even more gladly than they welcomed the S&P downgrade and yesterday's stock market meltdown. Push-back in this country is taking a peaceful approach so far-- tonight in Wisconsin, yesterday outside the offices of right-wing Congresswoman Nan Hayworth (R-NY).

[Elaine] Epstein said she showed up at an afternoon rally Monday outside Rep. Nan Hayworth's office here to protest the congresswoman's support for a Republican budget proposal she says puts Medicare in jeopardy.



"People under 55, she just threw them under the bus," Epstein, a retiree from Somers, said. "She didn't say that, but I'm reading between the lines. I'm afraid for my children and grandchildren."



"I'm really concerned that Nan Hayworth and her Republican colleagues believe we should be balancing the budget on the backs of the people who can least afford it," said Mel Tanzman of Mohegan Lake.



Chanting "Jobs, Not Cuts," protesters targeted the budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.



"We want them held accountable for what they voted for, which in the case of Nan Hayworth is she wanted to make Medicare into a voucher system," said Joe Mayhew, a member of the Working Families Party and political and legislative coordinator for the Communication Workers of America Local 1103. "That's the Republican plan."

After 8 years of Bush's bumbling incompetence, it looked like experience was no longer required for the presidency. So now we're stuck with a weak, inexperienced, untested, vacillating leader here in America, likely to have to face challenges far above anything he's prepared for-- and with nowhere to turn to except, like Cameron, the smiling, salivating forces of repression.

Obama Working With The Republicans To... Undermine Obama

To combat President Obama's goal of bringing down unemployment, the Republican party has systematically-- both in Congress and on a state basis in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Georgia, Maine, where they have installed fascist-leaning governors and legislatures-- slashed "government" jobs. Obama's tepid, go-slow approach to stimulus, didn't factor in determined Republican opposition to fixing the jobs problem. Why would Republicans do that? Two overriding reasons: to hamper Obama's chance for reelection by keeping unemployment high, "on his watch," and for the reason right-wing parties always oppose full employment-- to keep the price of labor low and the power of unions minimal.

In today's NY Times Emory University psychology professor Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, take a look at the other half of the equation, what happened to Obama? We could have seen what was coming on Inauguration Day.

When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. Three-quarters of a million people lost their jobs that month. Many had lost their homes, and with them the only nest eggs they had. Even the usually impervious upper middle class had seen a decade of stagnant or declining investment, with the stock market dropping in value with no end in sight. Hope was as scarce as credit.

In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety. What they were waiting for, in broad strokes, was a story something like this:

“I know you’re scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn’t work out. And it didn’t work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods, with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can’t promise that we won’t make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that your government has your back again.” A story isn’t a policy. But that simple narrative-- and the policies that would naturally have flowed from it-- would have inoculated against much of what was to come in the intervening two and a half years of failed government, idled factories and idled hands. That story would have made clear that the president understood that the American people had given Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement. It would have made clear that the problem wasn’t tax-and-spend liberalism or the deficit-- a deficit that didn’t exist until George W. Bush gave nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and squandered $1 trillion in two wars.

And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.

But there was no story-- and there has been none since.

In similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his first inaugural address, and in the fireside chats that followed, he explained how the crash had happened, and he minced no words about those who had caused it. He promised to do something no president had done before: to use the resources of the United States to put Americans directly to work, building the infrastructure we still rely on today. He swore to keep the people who had caused the crisis out of the halls of power, and he made good on that promise. In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he thundered, “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me-- and I welcome their hatred.”

...[W]hen faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public-- a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.

The truly decisive move that broke the arc of history was his handling of the stimulus. The public was desperate for a leader who would speak with confidence, and they were ready to follow wherever the president led. Yet instead of indicting the economic policies and principles that had just eliminated eight million jobs, in the most damaging of the tic-like gestures of compromise that have become the hallmark of his presidency-- and against the advice of multiple Nobel-Prize-winning economists-- he backed away from his advisers who proposed a big stimulus, and then diluted it with tax cuts that had already been shown to be inert. The result, as predicted in advance, was a half-stimulus that half-stimulated the economy. That, in turn, led the White House to feel rightly unappreciated for having saved the country from another Great Depression but in the unenviable position of having to argue a counterfactual-- that something terrible might have happened had it not half-acted.

To the average American, who was still staring into the abyss, the half-stimulus did nothing but prove that Ronald Reagan was right, that government is the problem. In fact, the average American had no idea what Democrats were trying to accomplish by deficit spending because no one bothered to explain it to them with the repetition and evocative imagery that our brains require to make an idea, particularly a paradoxical one, “stick.” Nor did anyone explain what health care reform was supposed to accomplish (other than the unbelievable and even more uninspiring claim that it would “bend the cost curve”), or why “credit card reform” had led to an increase in the interest rates they were already struggling to pay. Nor did anyone explain why saving the banks was such a priority, when saving the homes the banks were foreclosing didn’t seem to be. All Americans knew, and all they know today, is that they’re still unemployed, they’re still worried about how they’re going to pay their bills at the end of the month and their kids still can’t get a job. And now the Republicans are chipping away at unemployment insurance, and the president is making his usual impotent verbal exhortations after bargaining it away.

...The average voter is far more worried about jobs than about the deficit, which few were talking about while Bush and the Republican Congress were running it up. The conventional wisdom is that Americans hate government, and if you ask the question in the abstract, people will certainly give you an earful about what government does wrong. But if you give them the choice between cutting the deficit and putting Americans back to work, it isn’t even close. But it’s not just jobs. Americans don’t share the priorities of either party on taxes, budgets or any of the things Congress and the president have just agreed to slash-- or failed to slash, like subsidies to oil companies. When it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy, Americans are united across the political spectrum, supporting a message that says, “In times like these, millionaires ought to be giving to charity, not getting it.”

When pitted against a tough budget-cutting message straight from the mouth of its strongest advocates, swing voters vastly preferred a message that began, “The best way to reduce the deficit is to put Americans back to work.” This statement is far more consistent with what many economists are saying publicly-- and what investors apparently believe, as evident in the nosedive the stock market took after the president and Congress “saved” the economy.

So where does that leave us?

Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama-- and by extension the party he leads-- believes on virtually any issue. The president tells us he prefers a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, one that weds “revenue enhancements” (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with “entitlement cuts” (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who’ve worked their whole lives are looking for handouts). But the law he just signed includes only the cuts. This pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence is another hallmark of this president’s storytelling. He announces in a speech on energy and climate change that we need to expand offshore oil drilling and coal production-- two methods of obtaining fuels that contribute to the extreme weather Americans are now seeing. He supports a health care law that will use Medicaid to insure about 15 million more Americans and then endorses a budget plan that, through cuts to state budgets, will most likely decimate Medicaid and other essential programs for children, senior citizens and people who are vulnerable by virtue of disabilities or an economy that is getting weaker by the day. He gives a major speech on immigration reform after deporting a million immigrants in two years, breaking up families at a pace George W. Bush could never rival in all his years as president.

It's painful for those who bought into Obama's campaign themes of Hope and Change but Westen goes on, demanding yo know "why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit" and playing right into the hands of very able and very well-financed right-wing propagandists. Westen's several hypotheses explaining Obama's behavior are all tragically unappealing and his conclusion is chilling-- unless you're a Mitt Romney enthusiast-- or a revolutionary zealot ready for action.

[T]he arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks.

Without digging into Obama's conservative voting record in the Senate, Krugman not only loudly agreed with Westen's analysis today, he wrote that "If you paid attention to what he actually said during the primary and the election, he was always a very conventional centrist. Progressives who flocked to his campaign basically deluded themselves, mistaking style for substance. I got huge flack for saying that at the time, but it was true, and events have borne it out... I went back to look at my own reactions to the inaugural speech; I’m sorry to say that my misgivings at the time have proved all too justified." At the time (January 22, 2009) Krugman wrote in the Times that "I ended Tuesday less confident about the direction of economic policy than I was in the morning. [O]ne wishes that the speechwriters had come up with something more inspiring than a call for an 'era of responsibility'-- which, not to put too fine a point on it, was the same thing former President George W. Bush called for eight years ago. But my real problem with the speech, on matters economic, was its conventionality. In response to an unprecedented economic crisis-- or, more accurately, a crisis whose only real precedent is the Great Depression-- Mr. Obama did what people in Washington do when they want to sound serious: he spoke, more or less in the abstract, of the need to make hard choices and stand up to special interests. That’s not enough. In fact, it’s not even right..."

And Obama still is... and it still isn't right.

Michigan As Micocosm For Democratic Party Doom... Or Renaissance?

Yesterday we looked at Ken Quinnell's crowd sourced study of which state legislatures were the worst in the country. The big 3 were, Wisconsin, Florida and, at #1 worst, Arizona. I was surprised Michigan only came in at the 10th worst. After all, Rick Snyder and his zombie legislators are attacking the foundations of democracy itself and seem to be on the path to full on fascism. Of course, Michigan has a long and sordid history of flirting with fascism. So Snyder's actions this year aren't considered beyond the pale in many Michigan circles.

Michigan became the first state to pass a Financial Martial Law bill, giving unelected emergency managers extensive powers to run local governments without oversight from local officials, effectively eliminating democracy in areas of the state that hit hard financial times.

The law granted sweeping new authority to appointed managers, including powers to cancel or renegotiate union contracts, sell off assets and privatize public services. In Detroit, the school district’s emergency manager, Robert Bobb, announced shortly after the passage of the bill that 8 schools would be closing and 45 others bid out to private charter operators; in April, he issued layoff notices to every teacher and staff member in the district. In Benton Harbor, manager Joseph Harris issued an executive order effectively stripping all city boards and commissions from taking any action whatsoever.

Word is if you are an orphan, Michigan isn't the place to be, since the state is cutting money to help orphaned children get clothes. The Michigan legislature also doesn't seem to like LGBT people much, as it tried to punish universities that give benefits to same-sex domestic partners.

Non-Michiganders were exposed to what the GOP was up to in that state for the first time this spring with this report from Rachel Maddow:





So perfect for a Democratic takeover, right? Um... maybe... if enough voters decide they can get excited about choosing between the lesser of two evils. Last week Eric Baerren did a study of Michigander's attitudes towards the state's Democratic Party. Pretty bad! His conclusion: "Michigan Democrats hate the Michigan Democratic Party" and that "50 percent of Democratic voters in Detroit think that the Michigan Democratic Party is out of date and too focused on the past."

When asked who is the best Democratic leader in Michigan, most Democratic voters in the latest Denno Research poll, conducted on behalf of Michigan Liberal and First Shift with Tony Trupiano, said U.S. Sen. Carl Levin. Levin got 34.5 percent of votes. Coming in second? "I have no idea," or "None of the above," with 31 percent, edging out Debbie Stabenow 26.3 percent. Mark Brewer, the state party chairman, came in second to last with barely above percent.

Know who does well with Michigan Democrats, probably better than anyone else? Barack Obama. We've heard a lot about the possibility that Obama could lose his base support next year. They like his economic policies (well, except in the U.P.), they like his war policy, they think he's struck the right tone, they think they're better off since he was inaugurated. Right now, according to this poll, Obama will have his base support, especially since it's pretty clear that Democratic voters really, really don't like what Republicans are doing right now.

The people that need to worry about losing their base support is, in fact, the Michigan Democratic Party (my guess is that they've already done it). In every relevant question, the MDP polled poorly. Michigan Democrats and independent voters who vote for Democrats blame poor messaging and leadership for much of last year's wipeout, and in a poll of the best Democratic leader, Mark Brewer beat out only Gretchen Whitmer (which was itself surprising).

Taken as a whole, I think what this poll is, is a giant no-confidence vote in the Michigan Democratic Party among Democrats and progressives. To that bloc of voters, the MDP is wallowing in the past, rudderless, out of date, and too reliant on organized labor.

As angry as Michigan voters are at Snyder and his right-wing legislators, "they place a surprising level of blame for their party's failures last year on lackluster candidates and message... Nearly 50 percent [of respondents] said it was a combination of lousy candidates, bad messaging and a lack of leadership at the top."

How indicative is the Democratic Party mess in Michigan of a national malaise across the country? My gut tells me, very. It's why so many millions of Democrats and left-leaning independents stayed away from the polls entirely in 2010 and let the teabaggers take over the House. No one was enthusiastic about seeing malevolent slimebags like Boehner and Cantor take over but voters were repulsed by the empty promises from Obama and the reactionary politics of the Blue Dogs and other corrupt ConservaDems. So they let them go down to a well-earned defeat. More than half the Blue Dogs were driven from Congress. But did the DCCC learn a thing? Absolutely not. They immediately named an "ex" Blue Dog, conservative hack Steve Israel, to head the committee and started recruiting the exact kind of candidates the voters had just defeated-- in many cases, the very same people, like conservative shills Ann Kirkpatrick in Arizona and, reportedly, Chris Carney in Pennsylvania. And some of the DCCC's "new" faces dredged up by Israel are even more disgusting.

Republican mobster David Rivera (FL-25) is probably the most vulnerable Republican incumbent anywhere. Florida Republicans are so embarrassed by his behavior and his blatant corruption that they're considering adding Democratic-leaning Key West to his district to help get rid of him (and make Ileana Ros Lehtinen safer). So what does the DCCC come up with to fight Rivera? It's as though Israel said, find me the worst garbage in the state and bring him to me. Voila-- Luis Garcia, a former member of the Democrats For Jeb Bush steering committee, who recently threatened to switch parties and join the Republicans.

Similarly, in Albuquerque, the DCCC recruited an anti-union, anti-environment corporate shill, Marty Chavez, to run for the open congressional seat, despite the fact that the state's leading progressive legislator, Eric Griego, was already a declared candidate.

And the DSCC is busy trying to get reactionary Blue Dogs Joe Donnelly (IN) and Jim Matheson (UT), who consistently vote with Boehner and Cantor on key issues, to run for Senate seats. Is there any wonder that ordinary working voters are disgusted with the Democratic Establishment in DC? And that's not even to mention Obama offering to make the Republicans' dreams come true with more devastating tax breaks for the rich coupled with catastrophic cutbacks to Social Security and Medicare. Yes, a "D" is better than an "F"... but how much better? Enough to get you to bother to go vote?