Rahm tells Reid to cave to Lieberman; Senate Dems seem ready to comply

by: Chris Bowers

Mon Dec 14, 2009 at 18:51

Rahm Emanuel visited Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his Capitol office on Sunday evening and personally urged him to cut a deal with recalcitrant Sen. Joe Lieberman, two Democratic sources familiar with the situation said.

Some readers may not accept reports from anonymous sources.  However, consider that if any Senate aide put their name to a report about Rahm s/he would be fired instantly and faced an immediate end to his or her career.  The White House deny the report anyway, the vast majority of die-hard Obama administrations believe the White House anyway, and the aide would have been reviled by huge numbers of rank and file Dems.  In short, if an aide had been willing to attach his or her name to the report, it wouldn't have changed anything, except ruining the aide's life.

Further, it fits into a broader pattern of Rahm Emanuel protecting conservative Democrats in Congress at all costs.  For example, it was Rahm Emanuel who argued against more strident tactics on ending the Iraq war, because he thought it would hurt conservative Dems.  It was Rahm Emanuel who organized freshmen Dems to vote against their own caucus on motions to recommit, to try and protect conservative Dems from Republican attack ads.  It was Rahm Emanuel that conservative Democrats worried about leaving the House, as they publicly whined about a more progressive House leadership.  It was Rahm Emanuel who castigated progressive groups for attacking conservative Democrats.  It is Rahm Emanuel that conservative Democrats still long for, whenever they complain about Nancy Pelosi.  Above all else, Emanuel has always been about defending conservative Democrats no matter the consequences to the rest of the party. Unsurprisingly, the conservative Dems in congress love him for that.

Last year, The White House told Democratic Senators to cave and allow Lieberman to keep his chairmanship.  They dutifully complied.  Now, the White House is again telling the entire caucus to cave to Lieberman, and once again it looks like they are going to comply:

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) just walked walked into the Democrats all-important caucus meeting tonight sounding defeatest about the chance that a Medicare buy-in or public option trigger will survive Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-CT) decision to block the compromises this weekend.

Asked by a reporter if the Medicare buy-in will be pulled out, Harkin said "looks that way," before praising a Democratic health care bill without the two public option compromises.

Earlier today, Matthew Yglesias argued that Matt Taibbi's criticism of the Obama administration on financial policy is off because Congress largely has purview over that policy.  Instead, the Obama administration should be criticized for those areas of policy over which it has more direct control:

If you want to complain about the Obama administration, you should complain about their conduct of issues they actually have control over. Foreign policy and the war in Afghanistan, for example.

However, these two Lieberman incidents show that the Obama administration does, in fact, have a lot of influence over many Democrats in Congress on virtually all issues.

By picking Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, President Obama immediately signaled that the White House was not going to use this influence against conservative Democrats in Congress who sought to water down the Democratic agenda.  Then again, as I pointed out last night, Democrats in Congress also don't seem interested in putting pressure on the more conservative members of their caucus who seek to water down the Democratic agenda.  At the highest levels of the Democratic Party, no pressure ever seems to be applied to conservative Democrats who seek to water down the Democratic agenda.

Whatever pressure is applied is going to have to come from the grassroots.  However, there are limits to what pressure we can apply on our own, as Matt Stoller articled in his farewell post on Open Left. Clearly, one year later, we still have a long way to go on solving the Rootsgap.  Despite everything that has happened, we are still in a very difficult environment for passing progressive legislation.  

Closing the Rootsgap, One Fight At A Time

by: Chris Bowers

Mon Apr 20, 2009 at 14:07

It is equally rare that progressive grassroots activism is adopted by a member of Congress, and then quickly translated into a successful, governing victory.

Last week, freshman Representative Eric Massa, who I have been pretty hard on in the past, achieved both at the same time. In so doing, Representative Massa demonstrated that his election to the U.S. House was an important step toward "closing the rootsgap"; that is, the gap between the progressive grassroots and the Democratic leadership. That is big news, both in terms of the open media victory Massa helped secure, and in terms of proving a successful model for grassroots activism to turn into governing policy.