Axelrod hopes GOP gains will bring cooperation
By Tom Cohen, CNN
October 10, 2010 3:48 p.m. EDT
Washington (CNN) -- White House senior adviser David Axelrod is looking for a silver lining in expected Democratic losses in November's congressional elections.
While saying he thought his party would retain its majority in both the House and Senate in the November 2 voting, Axelrod told the CBS program "Face The Nation" that that he hoped Republican gains would bring more cooperation.
He accused Republicans of deliberate obstruction as a political strategy since President Barack Obama took office last year with majorities in both the House and Senate.
"The posture of the Republican Party from the moment we got here has been basically to deprive the president of bipartisan support so they could accuse him of not being bipartisan," Axelrod said.
"So I'm hoping that with more seats, the Republicans will feel a greater sense of responsibility to work with us to solve some of these problems," he said.
This is sort of like saying, "2+2=4. But with a little, it will soon be 22!"
You literally cannot analyze shit like this, because it makes absolutely no sense at all. Consider a mathematical metaphor for the moment. In calculus & the theory behind it--analysis--a function is analytical if it's "well-behaved", that is, infinitely differentiable, in every neighborhood. One can think of these as functions without irrational discontinuities popping in whenever they like, thus making it possible to understand them in terms of consistent--albeit sometimes incredibly complex--patterns. But the way Axelrod is "thinking" here--much like Obama apparently always has and does--is the exact opposite of this. The apparent regularities are only for show at best, and to totally throw you off at worst. The very essence of his "thinking" is totally insane and contrary to any rational pattern.
Although, come to think of it, maybe that's the whole point. The DFHs are the only ones left who give a damn about trying to make sense of anything at all, so this would make perfect sense as a big Fuck You! to the last remnants of the reality-based community.
Either that, or Axelrod just has some really incredible drugs.
Must be hanging out with Rush Limbaugh again.
p.s. Just to be clear, when Susan Collins says the same sort of thingshe is stupid. Dumber than a rutaga, in fact. But for Axelrod to agree with her. Now that's insane.
I feel compelled to make a quick comment about the Axelrod/hippie punching moment in the blogger call yesterday, because I have been in Axelrod's shoes and know how tough those moments are.
I'll say at the outset that I have been extremely critical of the Obama political strategy much of the time over the last couple of years, including in a sharply worded post just a couple of days ago which Susie referenced in her question to David. I have been angry at the "left of the left" and "professional left" type of insults thrown out too often by this White House, not because I was personally offended but because I thought it was stupid politically and I want this President to succeed. I think the White House needs to expect these kinds of questions from bloggers when they dish out the insults themselves.
Here's the deal though: when your job is to speak for the administration, and defend it from attacks, you can't be passive when asked a question like that. Axelrod has been criticized for pushing back on Susie's question, but I don't think he had many options. I was on the call and all the questions up until then had been more traditional sounding questions in topic and tone, and then Susie went for it. I don't blame Susie for the question, not at all- like I said the White House needs to understand they will get these kinds of questions from bloggers. But I think David didn't have many options but to try and push back a little, try to form some common ground (with his "you're right, on both sides" line), but also to defend.
Look, a White House spokesperson can't just say "you are right, we suck" in reaction to that kind of question. And I have been in his situation, being forced to take the heat for things done by other people in that building. The irony here is that, admitting some bias here because David is an old friend, I think Axelrod is one of the good guys inside. From everything I have heard, he has been on the right side of most of the debates inside, has pushed back pretty consistently against folks like Geithner on policy and personnel decisions, and has been the leading advocate for a more populist message and policy. By all accounts, he was the leading advocate for bringing Elizabeth Warren in. And I am fairly sure I know who has done most of the anonymous left trashing talk, and it has definitely not been David, who I am consistently told is the leading advocate for reaching out to the base.
David's answer to Susie wasn't eloquent. The tone wasn't just right because he was caught by surprise. Having been in his shoes, I know these moments are tough. But I do hope people will cut him some slack on this, because I think he is one of the good guys in that building on Pennsylvania Avenue.
This afternoon, I took part in a roundtable discussion with Senior White House adviser David Axelrod and various progressive media types. The discussion hit on a wide range of topics, but was particularly focused on procedural matters in the Senate.
Axelrod said that because Republicans have decided it requires 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate, they now share responsibility for governing. As such, the White House will make a big push in 2010 to increase public awareness of Republican obstructionism through the use of the filibuster. "They get to work with us, or they have to pay a price,' Axelrod said.
Mixing lobbying with journalism, I told Axelrod it was not think it was possible to make Republicans pay a political price for their egregious use of the filibuster. I told him about the Pew poll released today showing that only 26% of the country knew it took 60 votes in the Senate to end a filibuster. I also told him about Pew polls during the nuclear option fight back in 2005 showing that the public never really took an interest in news about the filibuster, even when it was the top political news story for a couple weeks. Concluding, I told him that, given how few Americans know what the filibuster is, given how little interest they have shown in the past when it became a big political story in the past, there is no way that the White House can engage in a public education campaign large enough to ever make Republicans pay a meaningful political price for their use of the filibuster. As such, wouldn't it be easier to for 51 Senators to change the Senate rules on the first day of Congress in 2011, so that only 51 votes are required to pass anything through the Senate?
Axelrod responded that was "a worthy discussion." While he indicated the White House was mainly focused on passing legislation in 2010, rather than on what happens in 2011, in no way did he dismiss, challenge, or denigrate the idea.
Further, later on in the discussion, David Waldman of Daily Kos asked Axelrod if the White House would assist a campaign to change the Senate rules in 2011, if such a campaign started to take off on its own.
To that, Axelrod responded, "we have an interest" in such a campaign.
While Axelrod again emphasized that the White House would be focusing on 2010 for now, and on attempting to make Republicans either work with them or pay a political price for obstructing them, he offered no pushback against the idea of changing the rules of the Senate to eliminate the filibuster.
From my vantage point, the implication was very much that the White House would be working on educating the public about how Republicans are using the filibuster to defend the status quo, and that the White House would be very interested if a campaign to end the filibuster altogether if it began to take off concurrent with their efforts. Perhaps, toward the end of 2010, the White House would even be interested in helping such a campaign if a coalition of Senators, progressive groups, progressive media types, and progressive grassroots could push the ball far enough down the road.
A very encouraging meeting. A campaign to end the filibuster should now be considered a viable option.
The news around today (via FLGibsonJr in Quick Hits) is that Obama will once again refuse to insist on a public option during public remarks next week. I of course feel the same way that John Aravosis does, in that Obama has lost fights he has picked with the left, and that with an excited conservative movement, a dispirited and divided left, and his polling numbers way down, it's maddening that Obama chooses to continue the exact same path on health care. That path would be 1. laying out his series of principles 2. Saying the public option isn't essential but it would be cool if it were there 3. Going on vacation repeatedly while teabaggers dominate the media.
But I'm more interested in thinking about how Axelrod said this today:
I'd be lying to you if I told you I don't look at polls -- I do.
And yet, as Adam Green pointed out last night, 62% of Americans support a public option, including 61% of Jim Cooper's constituents and 47% of Baucus' constituents, showing that there is pull on this in conservative places- yet Axelrod is sticking his fingers in his ears and saying lalalalalalala. The challenge for progressives is making him care.
The polls for months have shown broad support for the public option, to the point that I even saw a SUSA poll figure of 77% earlier this summer saying it was "quite important" or "extremely important". Yet Axelrod and the folks in the White House look at the numbers and consider them about as useful as polling people on whether they support world peace, or more choice of insurers, or lower health care costs. One problem I think is the phrasing- asking people if they support a position is useful, but not nearly as useful as what the folks at Firedoglake are doing- getting a group of people to draw a line in the sand. That line for the Progressive Block is no public option, no bill.
There is no such line drawn among the public. I have yet to see any cross-tabs of public polling ask a similar question of the public (if you have seen any, please link in the comments). The 77% figure comes from this question:
In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance--extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?
Asking whether a voter "supports" or how "important" the public option is much different than "insists upon". That, I think, is one reason Axelrod and co. refuse to insist on what such a large majority of the public supports- even large numbers in conservative districts. They may (hopefully) take the Progressive Block seriously, but they will not take the public seriously on a stated position unless the question is something more like:
"If Congress passes health care legislation with no public option in it to compete with the private insurance industry, do you think things will get a lot better, only a little better, not better at all, or worse?"
or
"If you were a member of Congress, would you only support legislation that has a public option to compete with private insurance?"
or
"Do you think health care legislation without a public option is more useful, less useful, or just about the same as a warm bucket of spit?"
Perhaps DKos could poll on these questions. We need something to communicate to Axelrod and co. that voters will not reward them in 2010 unless things actually do get better. There are policy people at Council of Economic Advisers who work on health economics- in fact, my boyfriend's PhD adviser from grad school is one of them. Hopefully they are communicating to Axelrod and co. what I wrote the other day- if a bill passes and there is no competition in it via a public option, things are likely to get worse, not better. But we need that communication to come from the public, as well, in order to get the White House's attention. The public has to be shown drawing a line in the sand.
David Axelrod, whose political instincts I suppose I've respected from afar, may be on the verge of writing his own chapter in political history -- as a loser...the guy who helped lay the groundwork for massive Democratic defeats in 2010.
Obama is considering detailing his health-care demands in a major speech as soon as next week, when Congress returns from the August recess. And although House leaders have said their members will demand the inclusion of a public insurance option, Obama has no plans to insist on it himself, the officials said.
“We’re entering a new season,” senior adviser David Axelrod said in a telephone interview..."I think it’s fairly obvious that we’re not in the second inning. We’re not in the fourth inning. We’re in the eighth or ninth inning here, and so there’s not a lot of time to waste.”
More:
On health care, Obama’s willingness to forgo the public option is sure to anger his party’s liberal base. But some administration officials welcome a showdown with liberal lawmakers if they argue they would rather have no health care law than an incremental one.
...“We have been saying all along that the most important part of this debate is not the public option, but rather ensuring choice and competition,” an aide said. “There are lots of different ways to get there.”
A tip: When a reporter quotes a single source in a story (quoting him eight times, no less) and then has a random controversial comment from "an aide" -- chances are that aide is Axelrod.
Axelrod apparently is missing the polls.
August Quinnipiac national poll (question 23): 62% support a public option. 80% of Dems, 64% of Independents, and even 40% of Republicans
August Research 2000 poll of Max Baucus's "red state" Montana constituents: 47% support and 44% oppose the public option
August Research 2000 poll of Blue Dog Jim Cooper's constituents: 61% support and 28% oppose the public option
Axelrod -- do you know the surest way to ensure that Dems running in 2010 have a diminished base and lose independent voters? Force them to oppose the public option!
From the makers of FightTheSmears.com comes this today over email from David Axelrod:
Given a lot of the outrageous claims floating around, it’s time to make sure everyone knows the facts about the security and stability you get with health insurance reform.
That’s why we’ve launched a new online resource — WhiteHouse.gov/RealityCheck — to help you separate fact from fiction and share the truth about health insurance reform. Here's a few of the reality check videos you can find on the site:
There's more information and a number of online tools you can use to spread the truth among your family, friends and other social networks. Take a look:
I supported Wesley Clark and Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic primaries, and for bloggers driven by ideology and idiots on Daily Kos intoxicated by TV charisma, this pairing was more or less incomprehensible, but for anyone looking around for an honest candidate, it was obvious. Kucinich and Clark were the only honest Democrats in the race.
Did it really matter?
Suppose there's a candidate (like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton) who bullshits almost constantly (like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton), but promises low taxes, world peace, free medicine, cheap gas, new frontiers in renewable energy, tolerance for gays, more jobs, better jobs, better schools, a huge defense establishment, and ... did I mention low taxes?
Doesn't it make sense to vote for a candidate who promises you a package of wonders for cheap, in the hope that the laws of physics and economics and even the axioms of mathematics will undergo a miraculous transmogrification immediately after election day, and our elected Messiah will transform five loaves and two fishes into a feast for everybody?
No.
It makes about as much sense to elect Obama or Clinton or Bush or McCain or that other Clinton or Reagan or that other Bush as it makes to award the Nobel Prize in Physics to a candidate who promises to simplify the laws of physics into one easy-to-remember formula that any idiot can understand, on the basis of mathematics that everybody knows is bullshit.
The Presidency of the United States really is a job for a rocket scientist, meaning somebody outstandingly more intelligent than you and me, and if we can't find anybody more intelligent than you, at least we have to try, and the obviousness of this maxim for almost everybody is convincingly demonstrated by the fact that we haven't elected a President without an Ivy-League diploma since 1984.
So almost everybody more or less accepts the fact that we live in a monstrously complicated world, and nobody but a genius can sort out all the conflicting advice that constantly rains down on every President, and somehow maintain the equilibrium of our monstrously complicated nation. But genius expresses itself in an infinite number of categories, and because we are weak, foolish creatures, we keep electing geniuses in the category of bullshit.
It gets worse.
As recently as 1996, we could still find a genius-bullshitter who was also appealing enough on TV to get himself elected, but no such individual appeared in 2000, and the era of Siamese Presidents was inaugurated by the mutant-hybrid Howdy-Doody-and-the-Devil frontman-puppetmaster combination of George W. Bush and Karl Rove, now replaced in the Oval Office by David Axelrod and Barack Obama.
These new twinsies have already managed to dump trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars into black holes only thinly disguised as stimuli and bailouts, with no end in sight, and nothing like an honest explanation of any of it even expected by anybody except a few out-and-out drool-buckets at the very bottom of the category of idiots who elected the current monstrosity-hybrid of a bullshit genius.
I also like voting for geniuses, as long as they're honest, and only a few months before the beginning of the Democratic primary season, I still had two to choose from, although the Rhodes Scholar Wesley Clark fit a lot more obviously into that high-falutin' category than the indomitable little ex-mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, but Dennis Kucinich is so honest, and his honesty keeps so much bullshit from getting in his way, that now his incredible clairvoyance about the many boondoggle-bailouts looks infinitely more like genius than the bullshit-twin-geniuses we foolishly installed in the Presidency, along with all their fumbling, bumbling Ivy-League assistants.
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