You could quibble with the details of this story but it is essentially correct that the moderate to conservative wing of the Democratic party is ascendant.
Consider the scorecard: The centrist Democratic Leadership Council claims ties with half the group. Movement progressives count a single one, California Rep. Hilda L. Solis, a union favorite, at the Labor Department.
There's an argument that Obama has promised a raft of progressive policies, and that's not wrong. And he's got a great team to deal with climate policies, broadband and media reform, and a bunch of other important areas. Still, the significant element in his first two years is the trillion dollar stimulus, and there were no promises around that during the campaign. It's just spend wherever there's a shovel in the ground, or if you're a company, stick your hand out. Liberals are going to get rolled on this. The progressive caucus released a request that Obama spend one trillion dollars, while literally saying they would follow up with "specific policy proposals" later on. Meanwhile, the right is making noises that they will simply fight a stimulus; they certainly have been doing so over the last year or so. Isn't the logical scenario that the left screams for spending, the right screams for no spending, and the DLC types split the middle by accepting spending, but mostly along the lines of corporate support a la the financial bailout? I think so. Already Pelosi is putting out signals she's worried Rahm is going to triangulate her among Blue Dogs, and Rahm is making plans to return to the House to be on track for Speaker in a few years.
We'll know soon enough, as the contours of the stimulus become clearer. Still, the argument that policy matters, but personnel doesn't (widely popular within the liberal world) assumes that anything called 'a stimulus' and 'Keynesian' is necessarily progressive. I hope so. Still, I have my doubts.
In a town where personnel drives policy, don't bet on it, others say.
"Barack Obama has never made any bones about it: He is a moderate," said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a moderate public policy think tank. "People who ignored that did so at their peril."
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Al From, the DLC's founder and chief executive officer of the DLC, identified ties with eight Cabinet members, including a former chairman (Vilsack), a former convention chairman (Ken Salazar at Interior) and convention keynote speakers (Richardson, incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel).
"Obama made a big promise that he was going to transcend the old politics and create a post-partisan politics," From said. "The first test of that was to reach out and appoint people to the Cabinet that moved beyond party, and I think he has done that."
If you believe that putting a trillion dollars on the table is progressive, then the DLC has conceded their entire edifice was wrong, and they will soon embark on a massive program to put in place policies that us internet progressives will love. But there are many ways to cut taxes in the name of 'stimulus' that will only end up building corporate equity. You could for instance give tax breaks to AT&T to build out broadband when AT&T is otherwise cutting capital spending, thus teaching AT&T that the company should cut all its capital spending and let the government just subsidize all of it through the tax code. That's not going to stimulate the economy. You could also spend badly by, say, launching another war, and stimulate the Pentagon economy. You could build tons of roads and bridges, thus helping subsidize the suburbs for one more go at cheap unsustainable oil.
That is, how you do politics and policy matters in terms of shaping how liberal, democratic, or socially rigid the next economy becomes. I don't think that the people that got us into this mess will be the people who can get us out, and it worries me that we're seeing a replay of the 1990s in terms of personnel. And I guess on that Matt Bennett, Al From, and I agree. Obama is not a liberal and personnel does matter.
I'm not trying to bum anyone out, but I don't think it's wise to be unrealistic about what can be accomplished over the next few years and how it can be done. Amazing things are possible, but they will be done through aggressive and strategic pressure points, probably through the House, which will be far more progressive than any other area of the government. We'll see.
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