Your post is particularly timely given Lamar Alexander's comments about Congress and "comprehensive" legislation. (4.00 / 2)

On one of the Sunday shows today, Alexander said that the White House ought to break up health care reform - "clear the deck" to use Alexander's words - because Congress "doesn't do comprehensive" well. All these thousand-page bills shock the system, you see.

So much for the Harvard - well, OK, Vanderbilt - grads milling around Alexander's office.

It's not that Congress is mortally incapable of doing its fucking job and processing complex legislation at a time of maximum peril. It's that Congress "doesn't do comprehensive," like that's written into the Standing Rules of the Senate.

Immaturity.

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by: rollthehardsix @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 10:45:12 AM CDT

Tolerance and Humility (4.00 / 1)

are not the paramount values they should be. Rather, intolerance takes center-stage every Sunday morning. (Ego-loss is certainly not the top priority of a self-serving political class.)

Immaturity can be traced directly back to a denigration of education as an essential pursuit for the young and old alike. Interestingly, segregation is at an all-time high in U.S. schools. It now exceeds stats from the fifties.

They only call it class war when we fight back.

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by: ezdidit @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 10:50:11 AM CDT

thanks for this (4.00 / 1)

Lack of maturity is the right description.

New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.

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by: Hopeful in NJ @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 11:01:04 AM CDT

Public Option (0.00 / 0)

I'm not sure the public option is going to be all that wonderful even if it does pass thru Congress successfully.  The more I read about what the administration and Congress have already given away to the private insurance companies, the more I get behind single payer as the best option.  At this point, I think far too many progressives have bought into the public option because we want Obama to succeed, and because we're desperate for some kind of significant political "victory."

The way we are headed now, the government will be picking up a very large tab for the elderly, our veterans, and those who cannot afford to pay for insurance. Thus we are conceding to the private insurance companies the most desirable part of the health insurance market-- those people who are in the prime of life and don't require expensive diagnosis, treatment, and long term care. We the taxpayers are giving the private players the most lucrative piece of the market, whie we are footing the bill for those who are most at risk and expensive to insure. This is a lousy bargain, and it is why single payer was a better idea in the first place.

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by: global yokel @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 11:51:20 AM CDT

Well, Of Course Single Payer Is The Answer (4.00 / 1)

A robust public option is merely the minimal credible way to get from A to B.

Will the private sector continue to gouge us and gorge itself?

Of course!  What else does one expect with a neoliberal corporate darling like Obama at the helm?

But with a big enough public plan in place, the logic of moving to single-payer in response to this miserable short-term future could be quite compelling. Which is why, of course, the insurance companies are fighting so hard to kill it.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 12:42:47 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

fighting insurance companies (0.00 / 0)

i think the insurance companies are fighting the public option because if they didn't they would be fighting single payer.

But with a big enough public plan in place, the logic of moving to single-payer in response to this miserable short-term future could be quite compelling.

the flip side though is that a public plan failure poisons the well for single payer.

that is why the questions re "what public plan" are so very important. the lack of a coherent definition of the public plan (darcy even contradicts herself -- see my comment in her thread) to support (or reject) is a problem.

sorry for the OT, but the bolded bit above is imo very very important and something i don't think many po advocates get.  

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by: selise @ Mon Sep 07, 2009 at 04:56:25 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Applause! (0.00 / 0)

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by: Paul Goodman @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 12:18:58 PM CDT

Looking for such signs of maturity from the blogosphere A-list (0.00 / 0)

I don't think conservative pols and pundits have a monopoly on refusing to learn or to eat humble pie. High-status individuals rarely muss their Teflon.

Barely anyone in the creative-class Left will own up to their sins of omission/commission in the failure to press candidate Obama to stake out legitimate progressive positions and to drop his retrograde post-partisanship frame, given the country's readiness and desperate need for real change, for a true repudiation of the Reagan Revolution.

Should it turn out that turning a blind eye when single payer was taken off the table in Obama's "open and transparent" process -- and going all-in on flogging the ill-defined "public option" -- were epic mistakes, will there be much rethinking of the dynamics that led to that? It would be risky to hold one's breath for it....

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by: vastleft @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 12:25:21 PM CDT

Such As? (4.00 / 1)

I'm never quite sure who's being referred to when folks talk about "A-List Bloggers".  Not me, I'm sure.  But David surely qualifies, and so does Chris.  Both repeatedly criticized the lack of clear and consistently progressive positions--as did departed Open Left co-founded Matt Stoller.

So,in short, the overwhelming majority here at Open Left, at least, have nothing to own up to in the broadest sense.  Of course we have plenty of more minor mistakes.  But we did not fail to criticize the vagueness, ambiguity and incoherence of much that was propounded during the campaign.

Elsewhere, the blogosphere's a big, big place.  Though he wears some other rather large hats, Krugman's certainly an a-list blogger, and not the least bit captured by your claim.

Unfortunately, much (most?) of the blogosphere divided itself into candidate camps, and this had a very detrimental effect, which I very clearly kept myself apart from--and took some heat for doing, BTW. But if this was a foolish move, in general, as I believe it was, it's not the same kind of foolishness as what I'm talking about now.

As someone who has repeatedly criticized Obama's whole "post-partisan" rap from a very early stage--pre-primary, even--I strongly share your sense that the blogosphere as a whole miserably failed to be as critical as it should have been.  Yet, at the same time, I find it necessary not to confuse that failure with what I'm talking about here.

Are the phenomena related? I would say yes, undoubtedly.  But are they one and the same?  No. Not at all.  The reason is quite simple:  there are simply too many voices in the blogosphere, too little capacity to enforce top-down comformity, and too many cranky non-conformists.

None of these healthy tendencies are as robust as I would like them to be.  But pretending they don't exist is just plain silly.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 12:59:56 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Paul, thanks for a thoughtful response... (0.00 / 0)

... that deserves a more-detailed answer than I have time for today.

I'll respond tomorrow. But I will say I agree that -- from what I saw from Open Left (though I wasn't a regular reader during the primaries) -- this site was not one of those that couldn't brook legitimate criticism of Obama, and it's to your collective credit.

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by: vastleft @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 14:31:20 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Response (0.00 / 0)

Who is the A-list? Indeed it's a broad term, but just as we can generalize about, say, "MSM," we can generalize about "A-list blogs." Very, very few of the top blogs featured much criticism of Obama during the primaries, so the exceptions -- such as Open Left -- are, well, exceptions (not that OL didn't feature some rather shaky, CDS-fueled primary posts).

For the crime of being out-of-step with the creative-class norms cemented in no small part by netroots leaders, Krguman was frequently bashed during, as Eric Boehlert termed it, "The Blog War of 2008." Among A-list sites, there were pretty much no "candidate camps" other than Obama's (modulo some quasi-neutral sites rampant with Obama=God, Hillary=devil comments), once Edwards dropped out of the race. So I don't think the "divided itself into candidate camps" gives an accurate description of the near-unanimity among the top tier.

"It's not the same kind of foolishness as what I'm talking about now." I disagree. Seems to me the topic you're broaching here is lack of accountability among the "expert" class. As you say, "the blogosphere as a whole miserably failed to be as critical as it should have been." What's more, there is, as Boehlert notes in this exchange, zero appetite for the blogosphere to learn or change from that failure:

Q. [W]ill increased criticism of Obama by mainstream bloggers eventually lead to more reflection about the Blog War, or will that topic forever be treated as off-limits in polite company?

A. No, I think it's been flushed down the memory hole.

Seems to me, this is fundamentally the same phenomenon you raised in the post. Opinion-leader elites screw up, and their expertise is never seriously questioned. People who got it right (i.e., those who argued that Obama should earn his progressive bona fides, rather than being coronated) remain in the "out-group" class.

Likewise, there will be no accountability for the mistake of ditching single-payer advocacy (if only for the Overton Window advantages) in favor of the wafty "public option," because the big bloggers hold each other beyond criticism... especially when the elite consensus proves tragically wrong.

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by: vastleft @ Mon Sep 07, 2009 at 17:06:28 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Actually, that list of David Sirota posts... (0.00 / 0)

... was from sites other than Open Left. My bad.

I imagine if he was posting here at the time, he wrote similar posts in this space, which as I noted I wasn't reading regularly at the time. In any case, we agree that "mistakes were made" here as elsewhere, so I won't embark on a hunt through your archives.... My read, again, is that Open Left was considerably less Obama-dazzled, or at least Obama-muzzled, than most of its peers.

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by: vastleft @ Mon Sep 07, 2009 at 17:15:11 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Reading your post I couldn't help but be reminded of this: (4.00 / 3)

From Americablog, regarding Obama's "ten-dimensional" chess:

And for anyone who doesn't have children, or nieces and nephews, or who wasn't a child themselves, that strategy probably makes sense. It's called "waiting until the last minute and then pulling an all-nighter." I had the same discussion with my nephew Anthony in the past year. He explained to me how he always leaves his papers until the last minute, then writes them in one fell swoop where the first edit is the final draft. When I told Anthony that this was the way a kid wrote a paper, not an adult, he protested - no, uncle John, he told me, it's always worked for me in the past, it's my thing.

Waiting until the last minute to get engaged, and then spending all weekend coming up with the details of a one trillion dollar program that you should have been finished with two years ago, is not your "secret style" that you honed through years of experience. It's what kids do. And while it might work for a while, at some point in life you're no longer going to be competing against kids. And when the adults take you on, God help you, and all of us

It is discouraging that children run DC, but on the other hand, as Aravosis points out, when adults get involved the children are in trouble.

Montani semper liberi

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by: Sadie Baker @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 13:24:13 PM CDT

Except (0.00 / 0)

There are no adults.

The trouble comes from reality.  Not from any other team.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 13:34:35 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I was thinking of the netroots, (4.00 / 1)

and the Progressive Block. The kids have been "Home Alone" for a long time but they don't own the house.

Montani semper liberi

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by: Sadie Baker @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 13:46:16 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Oh! (0.00 / 0)

Of course!

How silly of me!

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 14:05:11 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Great rant, Mr. Rosenberg! (0.00 / 0)

I would venture to make conjecture, however, on a point you made.  What if the vermin that "screwed up" know what they did was wrong?  What if they consciously "screwed up"?  I know that may seem incomprehensible if we assume that the far right's goals are even remotely like what they think they are, but if you consider that other goals might be the true objectives...

Consider Orwell's 1984.  What was the one, overriding ambition of Big Brother?  To wield supreme power over society, to control each and every facet of each and every individual life.  To that end, it deliberately created such an inequality of wealth and social position - maintained in large part by a never-ending series of wars - that there was little real danger of the masses rising up in revolt.  So yes, one can let an economy collapse if it benefits the powerful to let it collapse.  Fear is a powerful tool for achieving goals, and it isn't all that unreasonable to think that even something that might appear like a failure might in actuality be a success.  The financial swindles that took place on such a massive scale within the past year are a testament to this.  Why collapse the American economy if there weren't some benefit from it, say, trillions of taxpayer dollars being moved from the bottom to the very top, guaranteeing generations (perhaps even centuries) of social inequality?

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by: Michael Kwiatkowski @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 14:01:14 PM CDT

Rant? (0.00 / 0)

A rant on behalf of maturity?

Hey, I like a good rant as well as the next bloke.  But I was trying for something a bit more elevating.  A mild-mannered tirade, perhaps?


"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 14:08:25 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

What's in a name? (4.00 / 1)

It was passionate and it spoke the truth.  You hit the nail right on the head.  This country is indeed run by overgrown children, who play at being adults and who treat genuine adults as though they are the kids in need of a good spanking.

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by: Michael Kwiatkowski @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 14:55:06 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I have long held... (4.00 / 1)

that the vast majority of people don't grow up past high school (at least in the US, though there's probably a similar phenomenon in other nations).  The reason is because we don't teach our kids how to be mature.  We send them to school and think they're getting some kind of education and maturing naturally, and when they graduate, that's it.  They're adults.  Mature.  Have fun kids!  Maybe go to college.  Get a job.  Get a spouse.  Have more kids.  Repeat.

(Perfect example: Obama is a nerd.  Republicans (and some (many? most?) Democrats) are bullies.  None of these people are actually mature, and it's playing out exactly as you'd expect.)

Maturity is something you learn, just like practically everything in life.  It isn't magically bestowed upon you when you turn 18.  We learn what it means to be an adult by watching the people who are already adults (primarily our parents at first, then our personal heroes, followed by other figures we consider important, and so on down the line).  If they are acting like spoiled rotten brats, then that's the definition of adult we're going to learn, and that's the behavior we're going to follow.  Consequently, that's the level of maturity that we will have.

Any change to that is going to take a long time, even under the best circumstances.  I hope it won't be too late for our species, but I'm not optimistic.  Our technological achievements are outpacing our evolutionary instincts.  That is, we can't evolve fast enough to instinctually survive in the high-tech world we've created.  And in this sense, unless you're still living in caves and foraging and hunting for food, you're living in a fairly high-tech society compared to what our instincts are capable of handling.  We're animals, and any attempt to believe otherwise is pure hubris.

If we're going to survive as a species, we have to learn to stop relying on our instincts.  They're going to get us killed (assuming we haven't already pulled the trigger on the ecological gun).  That means we have to mature, and fast.  Maturation of the species requires maturation of enough individuals so as to be able to prevent the immature members from running the show.

And I guess I went off on a tangent from where you were going, Paul.  I'll leave it at that.

Health insurance is not health care.
If you don't fight, you can't win.
Never give up. Never Surrender.
Watch out for flying kabuki.

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by: Gabriel D @ Mon Sep 07, 2009 at 01:45:32 AM CDT